STO'B 35

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Two sailors and a marine grabbed the grapnels, tossing them up over the snow’s bulwark. Two of the grapnels caught and as the third was tossed up a second time, Philip grabbed the nearest rope and began hauling himself aboard. They would have to be quick, to take the merchantman before the battery smashed them all to kindling.

They would also have to be quick if they wished to climb aboard the snow before her crew cut the grapnel ropes. Philip’s rope quivered, and looking up he saw a striped-shirted seaman chopping away at it with an axe. The man lifted his axe for another stroke, and another, but now Philip was up, one foot scrambling for purchase on the snow’s smooth side but the other in her main chains, and his pistol reaching over the bulwark, toward the man with the axe. “Rendre!” he cried, “Rendre!”

But the man already had his axe raised, and he turned to Philip, swinging the axe at him. Philip ducked, firing the pistol and falling back, down into the boat, on top of the two men behind him on the rope, and a moment later the rope itself, finally severed, fell on top of them.

Philip looked at the other two boarding ropes. A marine was still working to get catch one on the snow’s deck, the other was choked with climbing men. He had to find another way aboard.

“Axes!” he cried, and a marine placed one in his hand. He reversed it, swinging the pick head deeply into the snow’s side. “Another!” he said, and he swung the next blade into place, higher up and slightly aft of the first. An explosion sounded next to his ear as he wound up with the third axe, deafening him, partially blinding him, but with what was left of his vision he made out a body toppling from the snow’s bulwark, still gripping a pistol. Philip nodded to the marine beside him, busily reloading his carbine, and climbed up his makeshift ladder, swinging yet another axe into place for the next step.

Philip climbed, cautiously peering through a scuttle. Two or three men were involved in a scuffle near the bow, but otherwise there was little activity on deck. He hoisted himself up on board. “‘Vast fighting, there,” he roared at the fighting men, “she’s struck!”

This was sophistry - the snow’s French merchant’s flag still flew from her ensign staff, but the knot of men in the bows fell apart from each other, one of the Britons politely, formally accepting a belaying pin from the surrendering French sailor. All other resistance had already stopped. One of the Badgers stepped aft to actually strike the French colors, but Philip stopped the man - the French fort was not firing on them, and while Philip did not know why, he had no intention of provoking them unnecessarily.

“All prisoners into the hold,” ordered Philip, repeating the order in a bastardized French, and the surviving Frenchmen - all four of them - stepped into the darkness below. Four more French bodies lay on the deck, two of them moving, and a marine reported that a ninth man had escaped in a boat. The English, with the exception of one man clutching a bloody arm to his chest, were uninjured. “Kent, take the tiller - head her for the Badger,” said Philip. “Needle, Pope, see to the injured. The rest of you, sheets and braces.”

Author's Note|First Post|Previous|Next
GLOSSARY