“Never mind me relief!”
“Ah, there’ll be much weeping in Tarbutón this night for our brave lads. And weeping, too, in another world where men are nervous beyond account as they slumber. And how many will be the obituaries in the morning paper? Accidents, heart failure, murder. By the way, you haven’t any people, I trust.”
“I have my mother!”
“And a girl, too, I suppose. She’s probably down at the wharves now, straining her eyes to sea in the hope of seeing the red banner returning. But, from the way that water rushes under us, I think she looks in vain. Personally, it’s nothing to me. Returned, I’d be executed. It matters very little how a man dies just so long as he is in one piece. This is a nice place now. The water is coming up under us at a very fast rate. We’re hulled between wind and water and higher too, I’ll wager. And as she lowers herself in the sea, more water will pour in—”
Round shot splintered a timber over their heads and the guard ducked to rise an instant later and steady his pistol, looking ashamed.
“Stop it!” grated the sentry. “When water comes over this deck, there’s time enough to worry about that.”
“Ah, but I was just about to tell you that water is already seeping over it from under this bunk. See?” And he pointed to a trail of oozing slime, the scum of the bilges carried seven feet above their safe level. “We’re sinking,” he said quietly.
But the sentry stood firm. The fury of the fight was deafening and the sound of activity on their own decks gave him heart. He twitched as spars crashed down over them, one end protruding through the gun deck. It had dropped through the hatch.
“Do you smell smoke?” said Jan.
“How could there help but be smoke?” challenged the sentry.
“Wood smoke, I mean. And what is that crackle?”
“Muskets, you fool.”
“But you’re testing the air. We’re on fire and that means we’ll have to come to grips with another ship and the toss of grapnels aboard. And they’re enough for yet another to grapple from the other side and sweep our decks as we have . . . There! You heard that? Irons! There they go again! We’re locked to another ship!”
The sentry heard hull grating against hull and the savage yells of sailors as they swept over the rails. Cutlasses clashed and pistols barked.
The sentry was uneasy. If they were swept from their own decks the ship would be deserted, abandoned to burn and sink. But he steadied the pistol in his hand and watched Tiger.
The tide of the hand fighting crashed back and forth over their heads, now in the stern, now in the waist. The smell of smoke thickened even in the double bottoms.
“Hear that rattle? We’re locked port and starboard to Barbossi vessels now. That’s the end of us.”
And indeed the yells did redouble and the decks sagged under the crushing weight of men. The violence of this finishing fight ate into the sentry’s nerves. The water was almost to his knees now and the rush of it back and forth as they rolled in the trough made it hard for him to stand.
A blasting smash close at hand almost knocked the sentry down.
“Hulled!” cried Jan. “Hulled from a range of a foot!”
The water was roaring into the ship now and the sentry could not stand at all. Suddenly his nerves gave way. He wheeled, forgetting his prisoner, and vaulted up the ladder to the open air.
Jan shouted with relief. He slapped his hand over the seal and cried, “Open wide!”
The brig door was shattered on its hinges. He rushed through it and dashed up the ladder which led to the gun deck. The planking was slippery with blood and he had to leap to clear piles of dead and dying behind the gun carriages. A square of blue showed over his head and he swarmed up the ladder to the quarterdeck.
Two sailors wearing the badge of the clenched talons were at the top. They faced him and their stained cutlasses swept back. Jan saw an officer stretched in death across the companionway mat. He ducked and snatched up the sword, flashing it erect to parry the downcoming slashes. He pressed back their steel and gained the deck.
All was carnage about him and the once trim vessel was but a sinking hull, held up now only by the grapnels of the two Barbossi vessels on either side. But Jan had no time to consider the situation. A third sailor had joined the two and the three cut at him from as many sides. He skipped backwards to put his shoulders against the taffrail. He caught a glimpse of the last of the seventy-four’s sailors fighting against the house and thought he saw the glint of blue there, showing that one or two officers were yet alive.
The officer’s sword, a rapier half again as long as a cutlass, flicked like the tongue of a snake and kept them at bay, no matter how hard they strove to smash it down and so, breaking it, close in to the kill.
A flag was caught by Jan’s eye. The vessel on their starboard was a flagship! Zongri’s vessel! And that towering ifrit who waded forward to help finish off the last of the seventy-four’s crew was Zongri!
Jan redoubled his efforts and, leaving off mere guarding, began to attack on his own. The long steel flashed and laid open a sailor from shoulder to belt but the pain of it only brought the man on with fury.
Slowly, Jan was working himself along the rail, approaching the ratlines of the mizzen. His swift wrist worked tirelessly and finally, ripping under a cutlass, dashed in and came out dripping.
“Two!” exulted Tiger. “Come on! You can’t live forever! Come on, I say! I want you!”
The rapier licked over one of the sailors’ hilts.
“One!” cried Jan. “One! Come on!”
But the fellow had enough and rushed away. Jan flung himself up into the rigging, swarming to the crosstrees. So great was the vessel’s list that he was out over the deck of the Barbossi flagship.
Before him spread the battle, covering half a dozen square miles of blue water. White smoke drifted like scud clouds everywhere but the cannonading was done. Somehow Tarbutón had gotten eight ships into commission and had reinforced these with merchant vessels. But now the superior number of the Barbossi—pirates they were at best—had locked all but three Tarbutón men-o’-war in iron grips. The three were far off, already hull down, fleeing for their lives with a score of Barbossis in pursuit.
Jan took a deep breath, not knowing whether he would meet with success or not.
He wrapped an arm about a halyard and gripped the ring. “By the Seal of Sulayman!” he roared, “I command the sundering of every bolt and lock in these two Barbossi ships below!”
He reeled from the jerk he received. The grapnels which held so tight to the railings went abruptly limp, their splicing unwound. And then, slowly, the two Barbossi men-o’-war began to fall apart! Plank by plank they disintegrated, but all at once so that, within a minute or two, they were nothing but floating wood upon the water, all snarled in hemp and canvas through which struggled hundreds of men, screaming with terror as they fought toward the maimed seventy-four.
The knot of fighters on the quarterdeck below drew back, staring at the wreckage. For a moment friend and foe were side by side without offering a single blow.
Already, four Barbossi men, two on each ratline and others waiting to step up, were intent upon Jan in the rigging.
Jan looked down, seeing cutlasses flashing in their teeth as they paused to wonder and shudder at the wreckage of their own.
Zongri had leaped back from the fray, his massive torso red with blood, his face blacker than ever with the grime of smoke. And now he seemed to rise two feet in stature.
“The seal!” he bellowed. “Who . . . ?”
He looked aloft. The seal’s flashing in the sunlight was not easy to miss. And Zongri saw something more. He sprang to the ratlines, knocking his own men aside and raced up, roaring, “YOU! By RANI, today you die!”
“Rani is dead!” Tiger mocked him from above, tightening his hold on the rapier. “Last night she died in a heap of rubbish just as I shall kill you!”
Zongri was losing no time. His fangs w
ere agleam and his eyes had lightning in them. His red hands shook the rigging and the very mizzenmast.
“By the Seal of Sulayman!” cried Jan. “I demand that every bolt in every Barbossi—”
SLASH! Zongri’s great saber passed within an inch of Jan’s feet.
Jan’s rapier licked out and stung the ifrit and then Jan raced up the mizzen topmast.
“I command,” he roared, “that every Barbossi vessel be treated as these two!”
He had no time to witness the caving in of the fleet. Zongri was reaching for his boots, but far off he heard the terrified screams of the Barbossi pirates and the splash of masts dropping into the sea.
“Are you satisfied?” cried Jan. “Down or I’ll burst this very ship apart under us!”
“I’ll have your heart!” roared Zongri. And the topmast quivered underneath their climbing weights.
Jan got to the t’g’l’nt and paused for an instant. “You fool! You’re done! Your fleet is gone and you’ve lost!”
“I’ll have your life!” screamed Zongri, mounting still.
The wind had drifted the Tarbutón seventy-four away from the floating wreckage. The list was so bad that no man could have climbed the downside of the shrouds.
Jan took one last look at Zongri and then at the sea. He had to dive, there was nothing for it. But a hundred feet down made him wince.
“By the Seal of Sulayman!” he shouted, kicking off Zongri’s reaching grasp. And then, in a long dive, Jan left the mast. Even before he started to go he had begun it and it was scarcely out of his mouth before he hit the water. “Out with the mast!”
Green raced by him and he struggled to stop his descent. He fought his way upward again, swimming hard all the while to get as far from the ship as possible. Concussion hit him before he reached the top again and when he came spluttering and blowing to the surface he saw that the seventy-four had no mizzen.
He tried to raise himself in the sea but a wave did that for him and he saw the mast, all tangled, floating some distance away.
Zongri, naturally, had been unable to clear himself of the rigging and, with it looped all around him, he fought hard to stay up, stunned and bleeding from the concussion.
Jan struck out swiftly for the seventy-four. There were halyards trailing now that the mizzen had dropped and he snatched one and pulled himself up it.
Almost against his head a serpentine thundered. He ducked and then bobbed up again to leap over the rail.
A strange sight met his eyes. Wounded and beaten into hiding, the seventy-four’s crew, a full three-quarters of which remained, were massed upon the quarterdeck and still they came out of the hatchways. In the waist of the ship, Barbossis, weaponless now except for what they could pick up on the frigate, were trying to organize for a rush.
The three stern chasers and the serpentines were being loaded again in great haste and others were being lifted up through the afterdeck to reinforce the battery.
Flame and thunder and smoke rolled down like a blanket over the attackers in the waist and when it cleared there were furrows plowed through them. But the Barbossi men had not given in. They were finding muskets and cutlasses and hurriedly forming, their front ranks already beating at the men on the raised quarterdeck.
“By the Seal of Sulayman!” cried Jan, “I order that every weapon in Barbossi hands fall apart!”
Astounded, the seventy-four’s gunners stopped at their loading to stare down into the waist where equally astounded sailors were hastily trying to fit blades to hilts and barrels to stocks. And even when they picked up whole ones from the deck, they came apart.
“Surrender!” roared Jan, “or be shot down where you stand!”
It did not take them long, confronted with the battery and small arms on the quarterdeck, to make up their minds. They threw down the useless segments of weapons and a deafening cheer resounded from the quarterdeck.
Jan turned to see two hairy, clawed hands wrapped about the rail. Zongri, bleeding and soggy, mounted. But he had no more than set his foot on the deck than twenty muskets were at his breast.
“Chain him,” said Jan. “We’ll take him as a trophy to Tarbutón!”
A growling voice beat upon Jan’s ears. “What’s this? What’s this?” said Tyronin. “Who issues orders here? TIGER! Why, you—”
“Aye, Tiger!” said Jan. “And I’ll be issuing orders for many a day to come. Get those decks cleared of prisoners. Put them under hatches and pick up those afloat on wreckage. Assemble your fleet and with all speed make way for Tarbutón!”
The audacity of it made Tyronin reel. He was about to bluster but Jan cut him impatiently short.
“I want no trouble from you. This is the last time I’ll remind you, but I’ve no use for an ingrate. Get busy!”
The men, beginning to understand now what had happened, their eyes fixed upon the flashing seal on Jan’s wrist, but also appreciating how he stood there, battle grimed and terrifying, raised another cheer.
Tyronin was stupefied by it. He looked slowly all about him and then, seeing light, nodded briskly and set to work.
Hakon, severely cut up, had energy enough to touch Jan’s hand and smile from Jan toward the abruptly busy admiral.
“I knew, Tiger. Someday this had to happen. God bless you, my friend.”
Tiger smiled back at him and then strode toward the companionway in search of Alice.
Late that afternoon, the huge black doors of the palace were thrown wide to admit the triumphal procession which now left the city hoarse with cheering behind them.
The officers of the shattered fleet were bunched together, sullen or hopeless or defiant, and many of their looks were reserved for Zongri who marched quite alone, almost sinking under the weight of his irons—Zongri, who had come back to again take up his rule and lead them swiftly to appalling defeat.
Behind the captives were borne several figureheads salvaged from the vanquished ships, gaudy things of frightful mien which glowered now all in vain.
The hall resounded to the echoes of the marching feet, and the assembled army officers, half of them glad and the other half sad about the navy’s victory, sent up a great shout when roaring drums and screaming horns heralded the approach of the victors. No news as yet had reached the palace beyond the tidings that the fleet returned victorious, and so it was that Ramus sat up like a giant poker in her throne and wiped her disk eyes and blinked very hard. And so did every courtier and secretary and officer blink.
For in the van was a great chair of gold—Tyronin’s personal chair, reserved always for the Lord High Admiral—and in that chair sat two human beings! It was so great a shock that the queen was heard to gasp. A slave—no, two slaves, and one robed as a temple dancer!—riding in such state?
And what was this? Behind them trooped Tyronin and all his captains, perfectly willing, even anxious, to cheer their leader onward!
“By the blood of Baal!” croaked the queen. “What insanity is this? TIGER!”
The chair stopped before the throne with all the horde of high officials grouped about and Jan stepped down. He was grimed and tattered but the radiance of his handsome face made up for all the rest of it. He helped the dancing girl to the floor.
Alice, told time and again on the voyage in, that such was such and this was that, still could not realize it. Later the dancing girl would gradually take a part of her personality and so brighten it. But now she was dazzled by the jewels and silks and still unable to believe that this handsome devil who was but yet was not Jan Palmer had the upper hand amidst these frightful people.
“TIGER!” cried Ramus again. “By the death of the devil, man, what’s this?”
“Your Majesty,” said Tiger, bowing perfunctorily, “I give you Zongri again and I give you the prisoners of a shattered fleet. The pirate might of Barbossi is no more.”
“Admiral Tyronin!” thundered Ramus. “However this miracle came about is less amazing than why you allow a human—albeit Tiger—to occupy your p
lace. . . .”
But Tyronin indicated Tiger and said no more.
“Your Majesty, last night I thieved a dancing girl from the Temple of Rani . . .” there was a sharp gasp, “and unfortunately caused a goddess of granite to be destroyed. I see there on your right a high priest. He has business with me?”
The high priest stepped angrily forward, purple at the confession. “Chattering ape of a human, you have the face to confess that you—”
“Hush,” said Jan. “Commander Hakon, have the fool removed.”
The high priest was removed and half a dozen other priests took heed and made a great show of getting out of the hall. The army, knowing not which side to take, took none for the moment.
“Your rule has not been onerous to this land,” said Jan. “Pray retain the throne. I care not for its worries.”
“You . . . uh . . . what?” cried Ramus.
“Unless of course,” said Jan, “you want every human being in this world to awake this instant and so swarm over you and put you down. I dislike threats.” But he touched the glittering seal upon his hand and all saw it and recognized it. In that instant the army set up a great shout for Tiger and almost brought the roof down on their heads.
“Your Majesty,” said Tyronin, “have no fear of this man. Single-handed he routed the enemy and he has convinced me that he intends no ill.”
Indeed she could have done nothing about it. Alice felt the shock of her eyes and moved nearer to Jan, holding his arm tightly. He touched her hand reassuringly.
“You . . . you leave me the throne?” said Ramus.
“Aye,” said Jan. “It is yours.”
Ramus covered up by instantly getting busy. She roared out for the guards to take the Barbossi prisoners and strike off their heads. But Jan, marching up boldly between the two lions from which Alice dodged, shook his head.
“They’ll cause no more trouble,” he said. “In them you have the nucleus of your new fleet.” He had come up to her right and leaned against the arm of her throne. “Zongri, now, that’s a different matter.”