Chapter 12

Act 2

Scene 5

Paul clambered back on deck with a sense of guilty relief. Relief; because his sister, her husband, and their other daughters and friends were here and safe. Guilty; since he now knew that he and Dragon Lady weren't alone in their predicament. He watched his son's try to eke every bit of speed out of the sails. They were doing a fair job, but he could do a bit better. They had made almost a half-mile passed the point and the two pirate brigantines were almost even with them, but almost a half-mile further out from Roanoke Island.

Paul took the helm and directed Lewis to ease the mainsheet and Clark to tighten the jib sheet. They picked up a quarter knot. He grinned at the boys and said, "Good job! Now, if we can just make it into those tiny islands, we should be able to loose these yahoos."

Lewis pointed back toward the point. He shouted, "There they are! Damn dad, you were right. They are faster than us."

Paul used practiced nonchalance, and barely glanced back at the oncoming longboats full of cutthroats. He hefted the thirty aught six and gave the boys his best feral grin. "We are probably going to have to persuade them. They need to be a bit closer though. Those muskets they have should only have an effective range of about a hundred yards. So, we can let them get quite a bit closer. Shooting from one moving boat at another, even with this, I wouldn't want to try at anything over three hundred yards. On the other hand, we don't really need to hit anything. Just the sound of bullets zipping passed them aught to break their rhythm. Don't you think?"

Both boys looked at the other, giving simultaneous grins, nodded and answered, "Oh yeah!"

They all shared a chuckle. Clark pointed to the pirate ships. He asked, "What do you think they will try next?"

Paul considered for a moment, rubbing his chin in thought. "If I were them, I'd try to circle round the end of the chain of small islands to the south, and try to catch us in the channel before we can reach the mainland."

"Will that work?" Clark asked nervously.

Paul waved his hand in a sharp negation. "Nah. Not unless we get slowed down by the longboats. What they don't know is that we can point so much closer to the wind. They have to go almost twice as far in total distance to make the same distance to windward. It was called wind gauge back in the days of sailing warships. Whoever was more to windward could control the engagement. One of the reasons the British Navy regularly handed the French and Spanish their heads was the prevailing winds in the English Channel blow from England toward France. Thus, the English could control the engagement, attacking where they wanted, or breaking off as needed."

Lewis complained, "What the hell does that have to do with us, Dad?"

"Not a damned thing. Except trust me, we don't want those guys controlling this engagement! Now, Lewis, take the helm and let me see the binoculars."

The longboats had closed to five hundred yards. A long shot, especially from the deck of a moving vessel. Paul brought the binoculars to his eyes and quickly scanned the crew of the closer longboat. A dozen of the pirates had their backs to him as they worked the long oars in unison, six to a side. Paul couldn't make out much about the oarsmen, but there was one man in the rear manning the tiller, and another at the bow that were both facing him. The one at the bow was better dressed and held a musket with casual distain. Paul made him to be one of the officers. The one at the rear was a crusty seadog, missing half of his teeth and one eye.

Paul continued to look for details that would tell him more about the pirates. What sort of rifles and pistols did they have? Matchlock? Flintlock? Wheel lock? Paul just hoped they didn't have any rifled long rifles, like the Kentucky Rifle. Even a musket could be accurate out to three hundred yards if it had a four-foot barrel and rifling. So, Paul tried to make out some of the details of the officer's weaponry. He carried two large pistols stuffed in his belt, alongside a cutlass. His pistols didn't have the distinctive round housing of a wheel lock, or the fuse of a matchlock. Paul concluded that he must have been looking at flintlocks although at this range he couldn't rule out percussion caps. To tell that, he'd have to watch the man reloading his weapons, and that wasn't in the plan for the day.

Paul decided he'd seen enough. He wasn't going to learn any more without letting them get closer, and there was no way he'd risk letting them get a volley off. He knew that even the relatively low velocity musket balls would punch right through the light fiberglass hull of the Dragon Lady. So, letting the binoculars fall to dangle against his chest on the neck strap, he raised his rifle and settled with his arm resting on the gunwale to steady his aim. He was in no hurry. The pirates were still over three hundred yards away, and he didn't think that their weapons were accurate much beyond one hundred yards. So, he got used to the motion of the Dragon Lady, and started trying to judge when the dancing target would fall on the lead longboat. Under these conditions, there was no aiming at a particular man. Besides, he didn't know if hitting any of them would be good or bad. He just wanted to get each round near enough the longboat so that its crew would know that they were under fire.

Paul breathed out steadily, and started to squeeze the trigger. Crack! As all good shots, when it went off it came as a bit of a surprise. Paul saw the round strike the longboat right at the top of the gunwale on its starboard side and send a flurry of splinters into the crewman nearest it. Everyone in the longboat suddenly flinched down, and the oarsmen lost their stroke. It took nearly a minute before the officer was able to get them going again. To do so Paul watched the man at the tiller bludgeon one of the men with a belaying pin. Meanwhile, the other longboat passed them by, and Paul could hear the catcalls going out towards the floundering boat.

Lewis crowed, "Hell of a shot Dad!"

The second longboat was closing fast, so Paul didn't take the time to check them out with the binoculars. He just started to line up for the shot. This time, there was a last minute dip in the Dragon Lady's roll, and the round hit forty yards short, but skipped once and slammed into the bowsprit. The officer dropped like he'd been pole axed, but the crew didn't lose their stroke. With them still coming on, Paul just waited for another shot. A moment later the officer peeked over the gunwale and started sliding his musket up to take aim on the Dragon Lady.

A drop of sweat dripped off Paul's eyebrow and fell onto the back of his hand. The strain to make a good shot was ratcheting upwards. The men in this longboat hadn't been dissuaded by a hit to the hull. He supposed they'd been under fire before; he was going to have to hit one of them to break their rhythm. This longboat had closed to within two hundred yards, but the Dragon Lady was still over a quarter mile from the southern tip of the island. Crack! The round impacted on one of the oars, near the chocks during a stroke. The oar snapped off sending the man tumbling into the transom, and knocking two other oarsmen off their seats. The off center pull of the oars from the other side almost swamped the longboat and all the men gave up their grip on the oars to steady themselves.

Paul let his breath out with an explosive whoosh.

Clark whooped, "Can't touch this!"

Paul looked to the point they were trying to reach, and back to the first longboat, which was underway once more. He judged that the Dragon Lady would make the point, but that maybe the pirates needed another object lesson in why not to threaten his boat. He brought the rifle back up for one more shot, but as soon as he did, the officer made a signal, and the longboat turned. He pulled out of his sight picture in surprise. Damn! They learn fast! Not fast enough. The range was down to less than two hundred yards, an easy shot for his thirty aught six. He decided that this time he'd give them an example of semiautomatic fire, so as the longboat slipped and swung into his sight picture, he snapped off three quick shots.

Immediately, he raised his head to see what effect his shots had, since he'd fired too fast to see the results of the previous shots before firing again. Complete chaos was the best description. The officer was sprawled on his back screaming and holding the gushing wound in his upper arm. Since he landed atop of the men manning the oars, they had all given up on stroking, and some had even lost their oars overboard. The coxswain was literally hopping mad and his jumping around was rocking the longboat wildly.

The other longboat had fallen over a quarter mile behind, and although it was underway once more, it wasn't making the same speed, as it was short one oar. Paul settled back, satisfied that they would now clear the point with enough of a lead on the longboats. Besides, maybe they would finally understand that the Dragon Lady had teeth!

As Dragon Lady rounded the point, Paul took the helm to pilot them through the narrow channels between the dozens of tiny islands.

Clark jumped to his feet, transfixed. Suddenly he pointed at one of the islands just coming into view. "Dad! Dad! Check it out!"

Paul and Lewis both turned to look at the tiny unnamed island. No more then two hundred feet long and forty feet wide on average, it was a solid teeming mass of seals and their pups. The water here was crystal clear and no more than seven feet deep, even at the deepest channel between the postage stamp islands. Paul spotted dozens of sharks swimming lazy circles near the island.

Paul had to force himself to concentrate on his helmsman duties. He would have loved to stare at the seal colony in fascination. It wasn't an opportunity that had ever come his way before, but then, that was because there weren't supposed to be any seal colonies within thousands of miles! While still trying to digest the thought of a seal colony on the barrier islands of North Carolina, Paul got another surprise.

A slightly larger island, not much more then a sandbar sticking up four inches out of the surf had hundreds of walrus soaking up the sun.