The King - Dewey Lambdin

"Aye, sir."

Alan was soaked to the skin, even in his lightest clothes. He wanted air, and a long drink of water from a scuttle-butt. "Take over for me. I'll go on deck where I may see the better."

He flew up the ladder to the hatch and emerged on the upper gun deck. McTaggart was there among his gun crews as they sponged out and reloaded.

"Warm enough work fir ya, Mister Lewrie?" McTaggart teased, wearing a pleased expression. "Twas a plucky pack o' rascals they sent ageen us."

"We almost had them in for tea below decks, Mister McTaggart," Alan replied with a smile, not to be outdone in calmness, now that the enemy was flying. "Shocking manners they had, though."

"Och, aye, nae the sairt ya could take tae p'lite comp'ny." McTaggart laughed, which made his gun crews respond in kind.

"Cease fire!" Choate, the first officer, bellowed from the railing of the quarterdeck. "Mister Lewrie?"

"Aye, sir?"

"Take a ship's boat to yonder praoT Choate ordered. "A file of those soldiers as well! Mister Twigg wants prisoners, if there are any!"

"At once, sir!"

The pirate boat they had gutted was rocking slack on the sea, her red hull slimed with fresh crimson from all her dead and wounded. No one challenged them as they came alongside. No swords were raised as they gained her bulwarks and dropped over to the rowers' benches. Those pirates that were not incapacitated shrank away with fear as they saw European faces on their decks, followed by a havildar, or sergeant of Bengali infantry, and a squad of sepoys came on board with bayonets fixed on their Brown Bess muskets.

"My God!" Alan gasped. The smell of death was everywhere so quickly in the searing sun! Coppery odors of spilled blood mixed with spilled entrails, smashed limbs, opened vis-ceras, loose bowels and bladders. Pirates, now looking small and wiry instead of seven feet tall and dangerous, lay quivering in their death rattles, or whimpering and crying in pain.

"Stopped their business most wondrously, sir," Twigg said as he poked and prodded the nearest corpses with his smallsword. "Aha. What have we here?"

He bent down to tear a necklace loose from a dead man who was dressed in silk. It was heavy gold links, and depended from it was a large pectoral about 3 inches across, set with emeralds and a large ruby in the center big as a robin's egg. Twigg pocketed his prize, wrapping it in a calico print handkerchief. "A bloody prince of someone's blood," he spat. "A successful sea-robber. Until today, that is. Havildar-ji. Disarm those men and bind them."

"Jeehan, sahib," the sergeant replied.

"What are we looking for, sir?" Alan asked, wishing he was anywhere else.

"Evidence, Mister Lewrie!" Twigg said expansively. "A bit of loot from a ravaged ship. Some clue that these might be the ones we seek. And some sign of who encouraged them. It's not often I've seen their kind take on a ship big as ours, even if the wind was against us. They're not fools, Mister Lewrie. The hope of gain would have to outweigh their fear of European firepower. Poke about. See what you may turn up."

"Aye aye, sir," Alan replied. He wandered up forward towards the fo'c'sle platform, his sword drawn and ready should one of those mangled bodies show signs of life. God knew there were weapons in plenty scattered about to use, should one of them wish to take one of the infidels with him to Paradise. The peoples of the region were mostly Muslim, he'd learned. Killing him would raise their stock with Allah.

What he found was some gold coins of Asian minting, a heavy gold ring or two. Some earrings. All useful, he thought, so he stuck them in his breeches. The muskets were chased with silver, of an ancient pattern, with long barrels and crude match-locks or even wheel-locks. The swords and knives… curved Eastern-looking things or wavy bladed krees, mottled with Damascan forging techniques.

"Profit for the morning's work!" Twigg exclaimed back aft as he turned up a small chest of treasure. The sailors and sepoys were not averse to looting the corpses, either.

"Sir?" Alan called. "Come take a look at this."

One of the cannon on the forecastle platform was a nine-pounder. The truck had been smashed, and its crew draped about it in death. But it was not a brass or bronze Asian gun with fanciful adornments. It was a brutally plain and functional European gun, with a flintlock striker and British proof-marks. To further prove its origin, there were serge powder bags scattered about, and a flask of quick-burning priming powder hung round the dead gunner's neck.

"No way of knowing which ship it came from, but it's a start," Twigg nodded, rubbing his horny palms together. "Could have been off any of those ships reported missing. And the date is within the last two years."

"No rust, sir," Alan commented, kneeling by the cannon. "I'd not expect their sort to take this good care of an iron gun. She's fresh-painted and well-greased, still. For an iron barrel at sea to be this clean, it had to be very recent. And flints, sir. You know how often flints break or wear out. Look at this one in the dog's-jaws of the lock. That's English, too, sure as I'm born."

"Very astute of you, Mister Lewrie," Twigg congratulated. He was interrupted by the havildar, who had turned up several Brown Bess muskets, Short Land Pattern, also fairly new. "Now we'll have the truth out of these rascals. Fetch me that one, havildar. We'll find where they hailed from, and we'll go pay them a visit they'll not soon forget!"

Twigg was not too particular about how he got his information. In local lingo, he began to shout and rave in front of the first man fetched up by the sepoys. He made passes with one of those wavy-bladed knives. Lewrie thought he was merely threatening, until he at last made contact along the struggling pirate's bare waist. Just the slightest touch, and there was an instant line of blood droplets.

Twigg seized the man by the scruff of the neck and shoved him to the rail to look over the side, with the krees at his throat. The tropical sharks had been drawn by the blood in the water, the dead of the other praos they'd shattered and sent down with gunfire. Fins cut the calm sea, some lazy and searching, some darting and quicker on a scent. The pirate began to scream and shout, louder than Twigg and his accusations and questions.

"Look here, Mister Twigg, sir," Alan was finally forced to say when he knew the older man was dead-serious about dumping him over the side as shark-food. "He's not anybody I'd care to know, but damme, sir, it's just not done!"

"If you'd rather not watch, you're welcome, Mister Lewrie," Twigg replied. "Go back to the ship, then."

"It's not just that, sir. Surely there's a better way than to…" Alan protested. Both he and his English sailors were upset by this treatment. Try as they had not too long ago to cut these people to minced meat, once a foe surrendered, to their code, he was to be well treated. British tars had a strong sense of what was right or wrong, and were not averse or slow to voice their opinions, even under the threat of Naval discipline.

"Feeding survivors to the sharks is nothing more than they expect, sir," Twigg argued, his blade still to the struggling man's neck. "No more than we could expect from them were we at their mercy. We are not dealing with honorable foes who've struck their colors, you damned puppy! They're bloodthirsty, murdering, piratical butchers! Look over the side! Look under their bows, sir! See the skulls of their victims? Some of those are Englishmen, sure as you're born. Aye, we can treat 'em Christian, and they'll laugh in our faces for our pains. But we'd not know where they sailed from, nor who supplies 'em. And that'll mean more English sailors murdered or tortured to death for their barbaric amusements. Now which do you prefer, sir?"

"Seems to me, Mister Twigg, that one person's barbaric amusements is pretty much like yours," Alan drawled. "Sir."

"Goddamn you, you priggish little hymn-singer! Back to the ship. I'll deal with you later! Leave the sepoys and fetch me when I've done."

"Gladly, sir."

They rowed back to Telesto, still lying slack and idle on the gently heaving ocean with her sails slatting and booming for want of wind. Hammers and saws thudded or rasped as repairs were made to what damage they'd suffered. Lewrie accosted Captain Ayscough on the quarterdeck and related what Twigg was doing.

Ayscough drew his pocket watch from his breeches and studied the face, then cast an eye aloft to the coach-whip of the long, narrow private house flag, which flicked lazy as a cat's tail in the weak zephyrs.

"Shall we allow him to proceed, sir?" Alan asked, hoping for an order from his captain to go back and tell Twigg to leave off. As he waited for Ayscough to answer, there was a shrill scream from the prao, followed by a splash, and a sudden commotion in the water as the sharks found a tasty new tidbit.

"I'd admire if you assisted the third officer aloft, Mister Lewrie," Ayscough grunted, his countenance dark and suffused with repressed emotions. "There's damage to the fore-topmast to put aright. God grant there'll be wind soon so we may proceed, 'stead of lying here, boxing the compass."

"But, sir…"

"Enough!" Ayscough snapped, then relented with a bitter sigh. "Welcome to the mysterious, and cruel, Far East, Mister Lewrie."

"Aye, sir."

The wind came up about an hour after noon sights, and Telesto made her way north once more. The prao they burned, as a warning to the others. Her survivors, those that had not suffered Twigg's cruel attentions, hung like plucked fowl from her lateen yard by the neck.

Chapter 2

They anchored at Macao two weeks later, after riding out several heavy gales of monsoon winds and rain. Twigg, Wythy and Ayscough went ashore to the Chinese Customs House, to get what they called a "chop," which would allow them to proceed up the Pearl River to the traders' anchorage at Whampoa, an island twelve miles below the "City of Rams," China 's only trade outlet to the outside world. In the meantime, they would transfer cargo.

Even before their party had returned from shore, a rickety local lorcha came alongside, with written instructions from Twigg that they should transship the opium to her. Reputable merchantmen could not be seen engaging in the opium trade; that was for the local Portugese, who did not require a "chop" to go up-river a short way.

The captain and mate of the lorcha were filthy brutes, part Indian, part Chinee and only part Portugese. Oh, they were clean enough to not stink as bad as Telesto's crew, but there was about them such a nefarious and desperate air of the practiced cut-throat that no one, especially after the affair with the pirates, wanted to get anywhere near them, as though they reeked of evil. The lorcha was long, low, rakish and fast-looking, armed to the teeth with swivels and lighter four-pounder guns. And her crew sprouted wickedly sharp weapons from every pocket.

"They look as though they sleep armed to the teeth," Alan commented to Mr. Brainard, the sailing master. Once he was in warmer waters Brainard had shucked most of his woolen clothing for light cotton or nankeen, and looked particularly keen and energetic once more.