Not even pausing to dart after the cutla.s.s which had clattered from the lifeless fingers, Jack spun on his heel and wrenched at the heavy bar across the forecastle door and felt it slide from the fastenings. He tugged it clear and swung himself up to the roof to draw the bolts which secured the hatch. Rusted in their sockets, they resisted him but he spied a pulley-block within reach and used it as a hammer.

All this was a matter of seconds only. The pirates grouped amidships had been waiting for Ned Rackham's word from aft and they were muddled by this sudden shift of action. The other sentries stared in foolish astonishment. The brief delay was enough to let Jack c.o.c.krell free the hatch. While he toiled furiously, several pistols and a musket were snapped at him but the flint sparked on damp powder in the pans and only one ball whistled by his head.

Out of the forecastle hatchway and through the door, the enraged sailors of the _Plymouth Adventure_ came rocketing like an explosion. They stumbled over each other, emerging head or feet first, blinking like owls in the daylight but with vision good enough to serve their purpose.

Their goal was the nearest stand of boarding-pikes at the foot of the mainmast.

But as they came surging on deck, they were not empty-handed. In the forecastle was a bricked oven for warmth in winter and for cooking kettles of soup. This they had torn to pieces and every man sallied forth with a square, flat brick in each hand and more inside his shirt.

Those who were first to gain the deck pelted the nearest pirates with these ugly missiles. The air was full of hurtling bricks and the earliest casualty was a stout buccaneer who stopped one with his stomach.

Driven back in yelling confusion, the pirates found their firearms almost useless, so drenched had the whole ship been by the battering seas, but they were accustomed to fighting it out with the cold steel and they were by no means a panicky mob. The fusillade of bricks held them long enough for the merchant sailors to escape from the forecastle and this was an advantage more precious than Captain Wellsby had hoped for.

What the pirates required was a leader to rally them for attack. Quicker than it takes to tell it, Ned Rackham had raced along the p.o.o.p and leaped to the waist at peril of breaking his neck. Agile, quick-witted, he bounded into the thick of it, cutla.s.s in hand, while he shouted:

"At 'em, lads! And give the dogs no quarter!"

With hoa.r.s.e outcry, his gallows-birds mustered compactly while those who had been in the cabin came scampering to join them. Curiously enough, Captain Jonathan Wellsby had been forgotten. He was left alone to handle the ship while the pirate helmsmen stood by the great tiller. To forsake it meant to let the vessel run wild and perhaps turn turtle in the swollen seas. And so the doughty skipper was, for the time, a looker-on.

And now with Ned Rackham in the van, it seemed that the British sailors were in a parlous plight and that their sortie must fail. Craftily the pirates manoeuvered to drive them back into the forecastle and there to butcher them like sheep.

CHAPTER V

RELEASING A FEARFUL WEAPON

JACK c.o.c.kRELL sprawled flat upon the forecastle roof and knew not what to do. He could lay hands on nothing to serve as a weapon and he bade fair to be trapped like the sailors whose cause he had joined. With a feeling of despair he let his gaze rove to the scrawny figure of Joe Hawkridge who still bestrode the nine-pounder and took no part in the fray. But Joe had no comfort for him, as a gesture conveyed. It had been Joe's wild scheme to obtain the help of Jack and Captain Wellsby, at the least, and so cast loose the gun and slew it around to rake the deck and mow the pirates down. But the men were lacking for this heavy task, and the sailors of the _Plymouth Adventure_ were too intent on fighting against fearful odds to pay heed to Joe Hawkridge's appeals. He had even skulked into the galley and was ready with a little iron pot filled with live coals which was hidden under a bit of tarpaulin.

Ned Rackham was a young man and powerful, with a long reach and a skilled blade. He fairly hewed his way into the ruck of the dauntless sailors who had no more bricks to hurl. Several pirates were disabled, with broken arms or b.l.o.o.d.y crowns, but the others crowded forward, grunting as they slashed and stabbed, and well aware that Ned Rackham would cut the laggards down should he detect them.

At the moment when there seemed no chance of salvation for the crew of the _Plymouth Adventure_, Joe Hawkridge leaped from the gun and beckoned Jack. The grin was restored to the homely, freckled visage and the salt water gamin danced in jubilant excitement. Down from the forecastle roof tumbled Jack c.o.c.krell and went sliding across the deck, heels over head, to fetch up in the scupper. Joe hauled him by the leg, close to the wooden carriage of the gun, and swiftly told him what was to be done.

Obediently Jack began to loose the knots which secured the rope tackles but it was a slow task. The wet had made the hemp as hard as iron and he lacked a marlinspike. Joe dodged around the gun, saw the difficulty and sawed through one rope after another, all but the last strand or two.

Then the lads tailed on to the breeching hawsers, which held the carriage from sliding on its iron rollers, and eased the strain as well as they could.

The ponderous ma.s.s was almost free to plunge across the deck. Joe sweated and braced his feet against a ring-bolt while Jack c.o.c.krell found a cleat. Ned Rackham's men were moving forward, cut and thrust, while the sailors grappled with them bare-handed and battled grimly like mastiffs.

"The next time she rolls!" panted Joe Hawkridge as the hawser ripped the skin from his palms.

"Aye, make ready to cut," muttered Jack.

The ship heaved herself high and then listed far down to starboard. Joe slashed at the last strands of the tackles and yelled to Jack to let go the hawser. Instead of discharging the nine-pounder, they were employing the piece itself, and the carriage of oak and iron, as a terrible missile. The moment of launching it was shrewdly chosen. The pirates, still in compact formation as led by Ned Rackham, were directly abreast of this forward gun of the main deck battery. The deck inclined at a steep and giddy pitch. With a grinding roar the gun rolled from its station. It gathered impetus and lunged across the ship as an instrument of fell destruction. It was more to be feared than an a.s.sault of armed men.

The warning rumble of the iron wheels as they furrowed the planking was heard by the pirates. They turned from their game of butchery and stood frozen in their tracks for a frightened instant. Then they tried to flee in all directions. Their tarry pigtails fairly stood on end. Well they knew what it meant to have a gun break adrift in a heavy sea. Two or three who had been badly hurt were unable to move fast enough. The gun crunched over them and then seemed to pursue a limping pirate, veering to overtake him as he fled. He was tossed against the bulwark like a bundle of b.l.o.o.d.y rags.

The gun crashed into the stout timbers of the ship's side and they were splintered like match-wood. It rebounded as the deck sloped sharply in the next wallowing roll, and now this frenzied monster of wood and iron seemed fairly to run amuck. It was inspired with a sinister intelligence, resolved to wreak all the damage possible. The pinnace, the water barrels, the coamings of the cargo hatches, were smashed to fragments as the gun turned this way and that and went plunging in search of victims.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BRAWN OF THESE LADS MADE THE PIKE A MATCH FOR A PIRATE'S CUTLa.s.s]

Left to themselves, the seamen of the _Plymouth Adventure_ would have risked their lives to cast ropes about the gun and moor it fast. But now they were quick to see that the tide had been turned in their favor. The pirates were demoralized. Some were in the rigging, others atop the bulwarks, and only the readiest and boldest, with Ned Rackham in the lead, had an eye to the task in hand, which was to regain possession of the ship.

And now the boatswain of the _Plymouth Adventure_, a rosy giant of a man from South Devon, shouted to his comrades to follow him. They delayed until the runaway cannon crashed into another gun, and then they broke like sprinters from the mark and sped straight for the mainmast, seeking the rack of boarding-pikes. They ran nimbly, as men used to swaying decks, and compa.s.sed the distance in a few strides.

Ned Rackham perceived their purpose and tried to intercept but his few staunch followers moved warily, expecting to see that insensate monster of a gun bear down upon them. The swiftest of the merchant sailors laid hands on the pikes and whirled to cover their shipmates, until all hands could be armed. Then the gun came roaring down at them but they ducked behind the mast or stepped watchfully aside. Men condemned to death are not apt to lose their wits in the face of one more peril.

These pikes were ashen shafts with long steel points and the merchant seamen had been trained to use them. And the brawn of these lads made the pike a match for a pirate's cutla.s.s. Ned Rackham bounded forward to swing at the broad, deep-chested boatswain. A wondrous pair of antagonists they were, in the prime of their youth and vigor. The pirate's cutla.s.s bit clean through the pike shaft as the boatswain parried the blow but the apple-cheeked Devonshire man closed in and wrapped his arms around his foe. They went to the deck clutching for each other's throats and the fight trampled over them.

Meanwhile Joe Hawkridge and Jack c.o.c.krell, unwilling to twiddle their thumbs, had rushed aft as fast as their legs could carry them. It was a mutual impulse, to release such of the men pa.s.sengers as might have a stomach for fighting and also the ship's officers. Into the doorway which led from the waist, the two lads dived and scurried through the main cabin now clear of pirates. Locked doors they smashed with a broadaxe found in the small-arms chest and so entered all the rooms.

The women pa.s.sengers were almost dead with suffering, what with the turbulence of the storm and the wild riot on deck. The lads pitied them but had no time to console. Several of the men, merchants and planters of some physical hardihood, begged for weapons and Joe Hawkridge bade them help themselves from the spare arms which the pirates had left in the great cabin. In another little room the boys found the mates, steward, surgeon, and gunner of the _Plymouth Adventure_ and you may be sure that they came boiling out with a raging thirst for strife.

"Harkee, Jack," said Joe before they climbed to the p.o.o.p deck, "if the pirates are driven aft, as I expect, they will make a last stand in this cabin house which is like a fort. These 'fenseless women must be hidden safe from harm. Do you coax 'em into the lazarette."

This was a room on the deck below, in the very stern of the ship where were kept the extra sails and coils of rope and various stores. It was the surest shelter against harm in such stress as this. Alas, Jack's persuasions were vain. The frantic women were in no humor to listen, and so the lads bundled them through the hatch as gently as possible and for company gave them such male pa.s.sengers as lacked strength or courage to join the battle.

While they were thus engaged, two pirates came flying down the ladder from the p.o.o.p deck into the main cabin. They revolved like windmills in a jumble of arms and legs. Close behind them, in a manner more orderly came Captain Jonathan Wellsby who had tossed the one and tremendously booted the other. They were the helmsmen whom he had replaced with his own officers at the steering tackles, while his first mate had been left in charge of handling the ship.

The skipper was now free to follow his own desires and he fell upon those two stunned pirates in the cabin and trussed them tight with bits of rope. Then he reloaded with dry powder all the pistols he could find and made a walking a.r.s.enal of himself. The two lads who now joined him needed no word of command. At his heels they made for the main deck and the shout which arose from those British sailors, so sorely beset, was mightily heartening.

Blazing away with his pistols, the skipper cleared a path for himself, the pirates being taken aback when they were attacked in the rear. And they were leaderless, for Ned Rackham had been dragged aside with the marks of the boatswain's fingers on his throat and a sheath-knife buried in his side. He was alive but n.o.body paid heed to his groans.

With the skipper in the thick of it, there was no danger of being penned in the forecastle again. The pirates were crowded aft, step by step, before the play of those wicked boarding-pikes. It would be hard to match a sea fight like this, amid the spray and the washing seas, on a deck that tipsily danced and staggered, with a truant gun smashing a good ship to bits and the wounded screaming as they saw this horror thundering at them. Captain Wellsby's men were at pains to drag their helpless comrades to safety but the pirates were too callous and too hard pressed to care for aught save their own worthless skins. They fought like wolves but they lacked the gristle and endurance of the stalwart sailors. Wheezing for breath, they ceased to curse and reeled back in silence while the sailors huzzaed and seemed to wax the l.u.s.tier.

As was bound to happen, the stubborn retreat broke into a rout. It was every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. The pirates fled for the after cabin-house, there to take cover behind the timbered walls and use the small port-holes for musketry fire. Thus they could find respite and it would be immensely difficult to dislodge them.

The first mate of the _Plymouth Adventure_ and his own two helmsmen saw what was taking place and they were of no mind to be cut off at the stern of the ship. They footed it along the p.o.o.p and the cabin roof as the pirates were scampering inside and so gained the waist and were with their comrades. The tiller deserted, the vessel careened into the trough of the sea with a portentous creaking of spars and rending of canvas.

The mainmast had been dealt more than one splintering blow by the fugitive gun. This sudden strain, of a ship broached to and hurled almost on her beam ends, was too much for the damaged mast. It broke short off, a few feet above the deck, and the ragged b.u.t.t ripped the planks asunder as it was dragged overside by the weight of the towering fabric of yards and canvas. One merciful circ.u.mstance befell, for the tangle of shrouds and sheets and halliards ensnared the ramping monster of a cannon and overturned it. Caught in this manner, the gun was dragged to the broken bulwark and there it was held with the battered carriage in air.

The mainmast was floating alongside the ship which it belabored with thumps that jarred the hull. It was likely to stave in the skin of the vessel and Captain Wellsby shouted to his men to hack at the trailing cordage and send the mast clear before it did a fatal injury. A dozen men risked drowning at this task while the others guarded the after cabin lest the pirates attempt a sally. These besieged rogues were given an interval in which to muster their force, organize a defense, and break into the magazine for muskets and powder and ball.

Now Captain Wellsby was no dullard and he purposed to make short work of these vile pirates. Otherwise his crippled ship might not survive the wind and weather. He conferred with his gunner who had bethought himself, by force of habit, to fetch from aft his powder-horn and several yards of match, or twisted tow, which were wrapped around his body, beneath the tarred jerkin.

"It grieves me sore to wreck yonder goodly cabin house," said the skipper in his beard, "but, by Judas, we'll blow 'em out of it. Haul and belay your pieces, Master Gunner, and let 'em have a salvo of round shot."

Reckless of the musket b.a.l.l.s which began to fly among them, the sailors jumped for their stations at the guns. First they set aright that capsized nine-pounder which had wreaked so much mischief and found that it could be discharged, despite the broken carriage. Joe Hawkridge and Jack c.o.c.krell blithely aided to swing and secure it with emergency tackles and Joe exclaimed, with a chuckle:

"This dose is enough to surprise Blackbeard hisself. 'Tis an ironmonger's shop I rammed down its throat."

The gun was laid on the largest cabin port-hole just as it framed the ugly face of a pirate with a musket while another peered over his shoulder. Joe shook the powder-horn into the touch-hole and the gunner was ready with the match which he had lighted with his own flint and steel. Boom, and the gun recoiled in a veil of smoke. Through the cabin port-hole flew a deadly shower of spikes and bolts while the framework around it was shattered to bits. It was a most unhealthy place for pirates. They forsook it instantly. And the musketry fire slackened elsewhere. It was to be inferred that there was painful consternation in the cabin.

With boisterous mirth, the sailors deftly turned other guns to bear and were careful not to let them get adrift. The muzzles had been well stopped against wetting by the sea and with a little dry powder for the priming, most of them could be served. They could not be reloaded for dearth of ammunition but Captain Wellsby felt confident that one round would suffice.

Methodically the gun-crews aimed and fired one gun after another, watching the chance between the seas that broke aboard. The solid round shot, at short range, ripped through the cabin walls and bulkheads and buried themselves in the frames and timbers of the ship's stern. A good gunner was never so happy as when he saw the white splinters fly in showers and these zealous sailormen forgot they were knocking their own ship to pieces. They were on the target, and this was good enough.

The beleaguered pirates made no more pretense of firing muskets or defying the crew to dig them out. Their fort was an untenable position.

At this sport of playing bowls with round shot they were bound to lose.

Captain Wellsby sighted the last gun himself. It was a bronze culverin of large bore, taken as a trophy from the stranded wreck of a Spanish galleon. With a tremendous blast this formidable cannon spat out a double-shotted load and the supports of the cabin roof were torn asunder. The tottering beams collapsed. Half the structure fell in.