"I see her!" Scott shouted. "Deck, there! Crack on all sail! Lively, now! Lively!"
The captain returned to the deck and studied the stranger. "She looks like a merchantman," he said to his officers, who had descended to flank him. "Steer for her, Mr. Rogers."
"Aye, aye, sir! . . . Steer more to windward!"
"Steer more to windward, sir!" the helmsman responded cheerily.
Canvas blossomed and flapped on the yards. The privateer heeled over eagerly, taking the bit in her teeth.
Within the hour they were certain the quarry was a British merchantman, a deeply laden brig. They could see that she was under all sail.
"She's making for Kingston," Peary said.
"We'll head her off," Scott said grimly. His ring hand strayed to the locket hanging from his neck by a gold chain. "Rim up our colors, Mr. Peary."
Excitement gripped Peary now. Leaping to obey, he answered smartly. "Aye, aye, sir!"
Scott made his way to Rousseau, who was standing beside the helmsman now. The little captain grinned at him. "We're faster than she is, my boy. Load our guns with grape and issue arms from the locker."
Scott spoke calmly despite growing excitement. "We're going to board her, I take it?"
"That we are," Rousseau answered. "We're going to take her."
Scott touched his forehead in a salute. "We'll take her, sir."
The British merchantman Mary Bell, bound from Bristol to Kingston with tea, paper, silk and cotton cloth, wheat, ironware, and three thousand pounds sterling, had been at sea since early December. Her passage had been plagued by storms and American privateers: she had weathered two gales and outsailed three commerce raiders. She was pierced for fourteen guns and actually mounted twelve. Manned by a crew of forty, she carried as passengers twenty artillerymen to beef up royal troops in Kingston. And she had almost reached her destination this morning.
Thus she responded to the Jasper’s hostility with a round shot that skipped off the sparkling sea and hulled her well forward at the water line. The privateer shuddered under the impact of the twelve-pound ball that let water into her hold.
She's not just making a show of resistance, Scott thought; she's going to make a fight of it. He licked his lips, wondering if Peary was as nervous as he. He supposed a man never really got over being apprehensive when sailing into determined fire.
"Steady on!" Rousseau ordered the helmsman.
Scott could see the scarlet coats of the artillerymen among the Englishman's gunners. He saw two puffs of smoke, quickly whisked away by the wind, and he heard a ball screech harmlessly through the Jasper's rigging.
Most of the privateersmen had fought at sea before, and they answered defiance with a spontaneous outburst of jeers and curses.
The Jasper bore onto the British brig's larboard quarter, her men crouched on the gun deck and in the waist. Sunlight glinted on muskets and cutlasses. Scott walked among the seamen amidships, showing a nonchalance he was far from feeling. He knew they had to risk being pounded to pieces in order to lay alongside the quarry.
The Mary Bell fired a broadside of twelve- and eighteen-pound solid shot. Her gunners were good. The Jasper shuddered under the impact of iron that hulled her. Another ball went through the forecastle, showering men with splinters and carrying away the head of a sailor. Cries of agony mingled with shouted imprecations. Scott's hand tightened on the hilt of his cutlass.
Still the Jasper held grimly to her course, making straight for the Mary Bell. She was closing fast now and her men were tense under the insistent hammering of the Englishman's guns.
Rousseau's voice rose loud and clear.
"Make ready to come about!"
A round shot chipped the main mast of the privateer. Wood splinters stung Scott's face. He touched his cheek and felt the stickiness of blood there. Then he became aware of a man sobbing and moaning almost at his feet. The ship's sail-maker lay on the deck, one leg shot away. Scott's instinct to kneel by him and try to help took over. Suddenly the man's cries died away. He was dead.
Rousseau clung to the course. The Jasper was so close now that the shouts of her people carried to the merchantman. Scott wondered when the captain would bring the privateer about. With calmness that surprised him, he made ready to grapple.
A man tugged at his arm, yanking insistently.
"Mr. Rogers! Mr. Rogers!"
Scott turned impatiently. The sailor pointed aft. The wheel was unmanned.
"Stand by!" Scott ordered sharply. "We're coming about to grapple and board."
He ran aft to the poop. Peary got there ahead of him. Rousseau and the helmsman lay in a welter of blood. The captain was alive, though, and Scott read his moving lips.
"Come about!" he ordered. "Fire—grape—and—grapple!"
Scott sprang to the wheel just in time to prevent the Jasper from broaching to. The Mary Bell swept her with grapeshot.
"I'm coming about, Clay!" Scott shouted. "Fire a broadside when I do. Then grapple."
Peary's voice was cool. "Aye, aye, sir!"
Scott spun the wheel hard over. The ship heeled sharply, answering her helm smartly. She came alongside the merchantman, with only a few feet between them. Peary let go a five-gun broadside of grapeshot, blasting the English gunners from their pieces. Rigging and tackle showered down on the Mary Bell's deck. Her wounded screamed above the defiant shouts of valiant men still able to stand and fight.
"Take in sail!" Scott roared.
Men leaped to obey, swarming into the rigging like monkeys. Scott lashed the wheel and ran forward into the waist. He caught up a grapple and flung it toward the other ship. The boatswain threw another. Both irons caught.
"Haul away, lads!" Scott bellowed. "Haul, damn you, haul!"
The Mary Bell wasn't whipped yet. A sailor cut away one of the grapples. One of the Jasper’s men flung another. Peary and the sweating gunners swarmed on deck to lend a hand. Under pelting small-arms fire the privateer was hauled close against the merchantman, so that wooden hull rasped against wooden hull.
High excitement swept Scott's mind clean of everything but the red fury of battle. He fired his pistol at a red-coated soldier who was aiming a musket at him. He lifted his voice.
"Away, boarders!"
He led the way, naked cutlass in his right hand, and screeching men followed him with pistol, cutlass and boarding pike. They jumped into the Mary Bell in the face of musketry and in defiance of steel that gleamed in the tropical sunlight.
Scott's voice rose in a wordless hunting cry as his feet hit the merchantman's scarred deck. He slashed at the nearest man, a brawny fellow whose face and chest were black from burned gunpowder, and the stroke felled the seaman. He didn't hear the cries of the men at his heels. He fought boldly, recklessly . . . fought to kill ... to win as quickly as possible.
The master of the Mary Bell, a red-whiskered bundle of muscle shaped like a barrel, had no thought of surrendering. Bellowing like a baited bull, he fought his way to meet Scott, and his men and the soldiers drew fresh courage from him.
In the heat of man-to-man combat on a deck slippery with blood and tangled with grape-slashed cordage and smashed gear, Scott fought as a man alone. He attacked with all the fury of the wild buccaneers of the seventeenth century. His face was set in a terrible grim mask. The merchant captain appeared in front of him and they clashed like two fiends. The blades of their cutlasses rang in slash-parry-stab-and-slash give-and-take. Each man knew he would never cry for quarter.