Chapter 2

Captain Joseph McFadden, the man hired by Stanly to captain the Elizabeth, was a firebrand when in a fight, but was cool and calculating when presented with a sailing problem. In between the two extremes, he was a good fellow and the best kind of leader for his men. Everybody liked him, but, also, everybody obeyed him without hesitation.

He and Stanly held a meeting aboard the Elizabeth to discuss their next move. They planned to take on the smaller of the two remaining pirate gangs the following night. Captain McFadden felt that the better strategy was to capture their ship first, then attack whoever might be on land. Stanly considered the situation carefully and agreed, so the only thing left to do was work out the details of the attack on the ship, where they expected to find most of the pirates. If there were any on the shore, they could be attacked in the mad rush style that had been used against that last group of pirates.

Stanly left it to Capt. McFadden and his first mate, John Sessions, to work out the details of the attack on the pirate ship. Stanly decided it was time for him to get some sleep. He had decided to cede the captain's cabin to the captain and take one of the other cabin for himself. Therefore, he bid the others in the cabin "good night," and went to his own bunk where he slept for 12 hours. He had not realized that he was so tired.

Stanly got up, ate some breakfast, and worked the kinks out from sleeping so long. After his workout, he talked with the captain for a while, and made an overland trip to look more closely at the major pirate installation on the island of San Christabel. He wasn't planning to cause any trouble at this stage, but he took his full fighting kit with him just to be on the safe side.

He arrived in the afternoon and was presented with an interesting sight. Several young women were brought out of the "jail" and marched to a kind of dais or stage. They were forced to stand there while their clothes were stripped from them and they were auctioned to a number of men standing on the ground in front of the platform. These men appeared to be members of the pirate crew who were selecting their partners for the night. Stanly seethed, but there was nothing he could do about the situation just then.

Once the selection was made, the women were allowed to dress. The ones who had not been purchased were marched back to the "jail" and the rest were led by their purchasers to the other building which looked like a fort. Stanly watched the pirate stronghold for a while longer before he had to return to his own group to get ready for the night's activities.

When it was dark enough, they sailed around the island in the skiff, hoping not to attract too much attention. It took them less time to reach the target pirate gang than Stanly had expected. Capt. McFadden and his crew were truly gifted sailors.

The skiff was maneuvered up to the rope ladder leading from the main deck and the 7 invaders climbed aboard. Three, led by Stanly, headed aft toward the poop deck and the wheel. The other 4, led by McFadden, moved toward the fo'c'sle. Stanly's crew was to secure the wheel and any lookouts left on deck, while McFadden's men were to capture and/or kill any pirates they could find sleeping aboard the ship.

Stanly sent one of his men into the rigging to be a lookout for any approaching boats from land or sea. He sent the other up the port side to the top of the fo'c'sle to check for a lookout while he checked on the poop deck. Stanly found a pirate sleeping on the job and dispatched him with a sword stroke into the belly and up through the lungs and heart. There wasn't much blood, so Stanly just left the body where it was. He didn't want to make noise by dropping the body over the side.

There were no more lookouts fore or aft, so Stanly figured that the pirates must be very sure of their safety. This probably meant that the raiding party would not be disturbed by exterior agents while they were capturing the ship.

A few minutes later, Capt. McFadden showed up on the poop deck to report that 9 men and 1 woman were killed during the sweep of the ship. A man and a woman had been in the captain's cabin when the raiders broke in. At first, the raiders assumed that the woman was a slave of the captain, since they were both sleeping in the captain's over sized bunk, but the woman fought harder than the man and was killed by one of the raiders in self-defense.

They had killed all of the pirates on board, and there appeared to be none on the shore, so Capt. McFadden ordered that the belly of each corpse be slit open so that it wouldn't float and the corpse dumped over the side. His men found buckets and mops and cleaned the blood and shit from the deck and below. Once this was done, a guard rotation was set, and the men settled in for the night.

The next morning, a thorough search was made and the booty inventoried. This was a very rich haul, and every man was going to have a tidy sum to spend when they sold the prize in Los Angeles. There was so much loot that any of the sailors who wanted to could retire on his share. However, their appetites were now awakened, and they could hardly wait to attack the last pirate stronghold on the island.

It was a certainty that the capture of the last band of pirates was not going to be as easy as the first three had been. The expected to have to lay siege to the "fort" as well as capture the pirate ship. The pirate ship was such a valuable prize that they were going after it first. Once it was safely captured, they would turn its guns on the fort. Even if it should be damaged in the subsequent battle, the ship would still be a valuable prize.

A ship that size normally carried a captain, a mate, and a crew of 22. There would be a permanent land contingent who were responsible for maintenance and defense of the shore facilities. Stanly estimated this to be a force of 6 to 10 people, so they could expect to face 30 to 34 pirates during the battle. The four-to-one odds were going to require some careful planning if they were going to carry off the raid successfully.

Stanly and Capt. McFadden realized that they couldn't be ready by the next night, no matter what they did, so they decided to take the current ship, Luck Lady, to Los Angeles and sell it, along with the loot they had found. They left with a favorable tide, pulling the skiff, and rapidly made their way to Los Angeles. Stanly used some of his banking contacts and made arrangements for an agent to handle the sale for them. He was an honest and reliable man who only took a fair percentage of the sale receipts as his fee. Everybody was happy, so they took the skiff back to San Christabel and the Elizabeth.

Stanly and the captain spent the rest of that day and the next planning and training the seamen for the attack the next night. The plan was to seize the pirates' ship as the first step. This would take all 7 men and some luck. They hoped to have the same good fortune they had against the Lucky Lady, but Stanly was not going to settle for luck.

Despite the fact that it would warn the men on shore, Stanly planned to be free with the use of his shotgun if he had to. The intent was to kill every pirate on board with knives or clubs in order to keep the noise down, but they would make noise if necessary. Fortunately, the Elizabeth had a well stocked armory, so cutlasses and clubs were available to all. Stanly vetoed the use of the muskets they found; it took too long to reload a musket for it to be useful in the initial fight. The newly captured ship would have muskets if they were needed later on in the siege of the fort.

If there were male prisoners in the jail, they hoped to recruit them to fight against the pirates for a small share in the loot. Capt. McFadden was sure that they would have no trouble recruiting any prisoners they might release who would fight out of sheer hatred for their captors. Stanly suspected that some of the women would fight, too, if given the chance.

On the night of the attack, they loaded themselves and their fighting kit into the skiff and set sail for the pirate ship. There was really too much light for a completely stealthy approach to the ship, but they would need the light later, so they tried to move in fast enough to escape notice. They counted on overconfidence to keep the guards from being too alert.

Stanly's uncompromisingly good luck held, and they made it all the way to the ship without being detected. The ship was tied up to the wharf, so they used that as their means of boarding. Capt. McFadden steered the skiff up next to another skiff tied to the wharf, and they dropped sail as they slipped into position beside it. A seaman tied them up and they swarmed over the wharf to the gangplank leading to the ship's main deck.

They were all experienced at boarding an enemy ship, so they knew what to do without close direction. Each man went to his assigned position and undertook his task with a will. One man who was skilled at knife throwing was assigned to eliminate the man on watch on the poop deck. Another was sent forward to eliminate any watch on the fo'c'sle. Both men did their job well, and there were no other guards on deck.

It was not likely that more than a skeleton crew would be on board. Most likely, the main complement of the crew would be at the fort where there would be more room to relax. Nevertheless, Stanly's men were prepared for a fight. As it turned out, there were only 3 more men on the ship, and they were eliminated quickly and easily.