Chapter 8

The First Mate had been keeping a casualty count, and figured that his regular crew had killed or wounded five pirates, but Josh had killed four pirates, and I had killed five, counting the pirate helmsman. Considering the size of the average pirate crew, 15 casualties was going to put that bunch of pirates out of business for at least three weeks while they recruited replacement crew members. The contribution that Josh and I made was really appreciated. We even met with the Captain and he thanked us personally for what we had done to save his ship and the other passengers.

I was amused at the attitude of the other passengers. Five of them were very grateful for what we had done to drive away the pirates, and four of them were not going to have anything to do with such “wanton killers” as we obviously were. That same group of four was appalled that Ajax was allowed to roam the ship unsupervised. I wondered how they would have felt, especially the women, if the pirates had taken over this ship. Oh, well, I was not going to let it bother me!

We pulled in at Los Angeles and two passengers got off, but three got on. The one passenger left who didn’t like us made sure that the new passengers knew all about the little adventure. The three newcomers all made a point to say to us that they hoped that we would do the same if we were attacked again by pirates. Okay, I admit to secretly laughing at that.

We had a quiet voyage to Santa Barbara, which was our next stop. The stop after that was for San Luis Obispo. For some reason I never understood, the run between Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo was the most dangerous part of a trip north. That was not necessarily true heading south. As we left Santa Barbara, the First Mate checked with us to be sure that we were going to be in the anti-boarding squad. We said we would, and he looked very relieved.

Hardly had we left Santa Barbara when the lookout spotted two ships heading to cut us off by sailing in front of us. The First Mate warned us of the approaching pirates and asked us to split up. He wanted each one of us to take a side of our ship as a defender. He was going to split the sailor defenders and place them under the command of either Josh or me, since it was obvious that we both knew what we were doing.

Unfortunately, he was going to be busy with sailing our ship, so he would not be able to command the defenders. Of course, we agreed to do that if he would call up the defenders now and explain the plan to them. We didn’t want them to be confused by this last minute change of command. The first mate did as we requested, and divided the six sailors at that time. The sailors had seen what we had done during the first fight, so there was no reluctance to accept our temporary authority.

I told them that my detail would take the starboard side and Josh’s detail would take the port side. This conversation had hardly ended when the signal came from the Captain to assemble the defenders and issue the guns and ammunition.

I took some of the things that I had learned in Afghanistan and applied them here. I assigned each man a place to stand and an area to take responsibility for. I also called for volley fire on the first shot. After that, they should shoot as soon as they had a target. Josh listened to what I said and gave the same orders to his detail.

I had already told Josh my true history and that I had been in combat in several wars, with the latest being in Afghanistan. Of course he was amazed, and he said that he had suspected something like this from the way I had acted on occasion. Anyway, he believed me and started listening carefully to my ideas whenever I made a suggestion. His action with the defense against the pirates was just one more case of his attitude. He, also, was prepared to fire a hog-load at the helmsman of the pirate ship if he had the chance.

Well, as expected, we were finally caught by the pirates and a pirate ship came alongside us on each side of our boat. The grappling hooks were thrown onto our rails and the battle commenced at almost the same time on both sides of our ship. The men followed my orders and waited for me to call for the volley fire. Once there were enough attackers assembled on the pirate ship, I ordered the volley.

My God, the results were amazing! Very nearly half of the pirates assembled on the deck were killed or wounded by that one volley. They were completely disoriented and chaos reined on the pirate ship. Apparently, Josh had ordered his men to fire a volley just moments after our shot because I could hear the roar of those shotguns. I hoped that he had as much success as we did.

My men were shooting at targets of opportunity, now, and those were mostly pirates struggling to get below deck to escape our shooting. That left me a few moments to check on the helm of the pirate ship. Yes, I could get off a shot at the helmsman, so I switched to a hog-load and fired. I hit him in the upper chest, and the upper part of his body simply disappeared in a cloud of mostly blood.

He fell to the deck and the pirate boat began to wander. In fact, it wandered so much that all of the ropes holding them to our boat broke. The two vessels separated, and the pirate boat seemed to wander about as the wind pushed it from one place to another almost at random.

Meantime, there was no reason for us to continue shooting at the pirates, so I called for a cease-fire. Our shooting stopped, and the shooting from Josh’s side stopped shortly after us. Apparently, we had again repelled the pirates. I dismissed the men after thanking them for doing such a superlative job.

I walked to the other side and discovered that Josh was standing on the deck of the pirate ship. I asked him, “How did this happen?”

“I ain’t quite sure. All of a sudden there were no live pirates to be seen. I am sure that there are some below deck, but I do not know what to do about it.”

“You stay where you are, and I will chase down the First Mate.” Actually, I didn’t have to take a step because the First Mate was walking up to me.

“My God, Mrs. McIntyre, you have captured a pirate ship! You are sure to be rich when the boat is sold.”

“That may be, but neither one of us knows what to do to sail it. We are in desperate need of help on this.”

The First Mate laughed and said, “I will speak to Captain Miles about this. Is every one of the pirates dead?”

“I doubt it. My husband thinks that there are some down below. What should we do about that?”

“That is easy to answer—you have to kill them before they kill you. If you take them to shore, they will be hanged for piracy, and the only way they can escape is to kill you. I suggest that you go after them while they are still in shock.”

“Can you send somebody with us so that we will know where to look? If just Josh and I hunt, we are bound to miss somebody.”

“Tell you what, I will see what the Captain is willing to do. You will have to pay whoever he sends to you.”

“That is no problem. We will work something out.”

The First Mate excused himself and went to speak to Captain Miles. He returned a few minutes later with the statement, “Seaman Salmon and I will go below decks with you, but you two will have to do all of the killing. We will take belaying pins and cutlasses with us, but they are purely for self defense. We can discuss payment after we see what the pirates already have on board.”

“Fine, just please hurry. I do not know how much longer our advantage will last.”

Again, the First Mate left and returned shortly with a very burly seaman. Both of them were carrying belaying pins and cutlasses. We jumped to the other boat and joined Josh. The four of us went down the steps to a bunk area. It was very dim and smelled to high heaven of various body odors, so I did not intend to stay any longer than I had to. The two seamen did not seemed to be bothered by the odor, but Josh was as nauseated as I was.

Salmon had a lamp with him, and he lit it with a lucifer match. Dear God, I was afraid that the ship would explode when he lit the match, but I guess there was just not enough oxygen available for that. Anyway, the lantern made a big difference in our ability to see. There were several piles of clothes lying around, and Salmon stabbed them with his cutlass. There was no yelp of pain, so we moved on.

Nobody could be found at this level, so we went down to what had to be the hold. The moment the light showed, five men rushed at us. Josh and I fired both barrels of our shotguns, and the rush ended suddenly as five men dropped dead. Most of them had been hit in the head and upper chest by the buckshot. We found two more men who must have recently died of their wounds. It appeared that we had now killed every pirate unless some had jumped into the ocean, and I don’t think that had happened.

The First Mate said, “That appears to be all of them. I think that you owe us $200 each. How does that sound?”

Josh and I agreed that was a fair sum and promised to pay the two men as soon as we could get the money from the ship’s safe where we had stashed all of our money when we had boarded the ship in San Diego. We left the pirate ship to talk to Captain Miles.

He agreed to supply us with a skeleton crew to get the ship to San Luis Obispo and a qualified man to command the ship for us. We were to pay the men their regular wages and 1% of the pirate ship’s value to the owner of Captain Miles’ ship. Well, it turned out that there was nothing of real value aboard the pirate ship, which meant that it had just left port, wherever that was.

However, the ship sold for $55,000, so we paid Captain Miles $550 to be transferred to the owner of this ship. By God, we were filthy rich! There was hardly enough room in the ship’s safe to hold all our money. All together we now had close to $60,000, which was a fortune even in California.

We finally reached San Francisco after meeting one more pirate ship. The pirates were beaten off with the same tactics as we had used the previous time. San Francisco turned out to be a dud for us. The only interesting place was the Barbary Coast, and one quick visit there showed us that we would be just as bored there as anyplace else in the city.