If any one could.
The captain lowered the telescope and cast a stern glance across the deck, assessing the condition of his ship and crew. For a moment he and Arabella locked eyes. The message of his stark expression was plain: Get to your station!
She leapt with alacrity to the forward ladder, hauling herself hand over hand down the guide rope to her action station in the gun deck.
*
The situation in the gun deck was chaotic, all three gun crews struggling to free the cannon from the chains and bindings which kept them secure when not in use. Not one of the three gun crews was entire; West, the captain of number two, was now writhing on the deck above, leaving that crew floundering and leaderless. For her own part, Arabella hung back, recognizing that adding another body to the scrum around the guns would slow rather than speed the process.
Another bang and jarring shudder ran through the ship’s frame. Arabella risked a glance through the nearest gun-port, but the corsair was nowhere to be seen. Plainly the other ship had the advantage; Arabella prayed that situation would not continue long.
At last one of the officers, not Kerrigan, appeared on the gun deck and began chivvying the men into some semblance of order. At his command Arabella clapped on to one of the hawsers and helped to haul the number three gun into position to be loaded. As soon as it was ready she sprang away for the magazine.
Her traversal of the length of the ship had a nightmare quality. Shattered fragments of khoresh-wood spun and tumbled everywhere, a deadly litter of aerial flotsam. Men cried out in pain or floated limp in the air. Drops of blood spattered every surface; the very air tasted of iron. Bang-bang-ba-bang, came the quadruple report of the French guns, followed shortly by the howl of cannonballs through the rigging. A clean miss, this time, but as the ships drew closer together Diana could not continue that luck.
At the magazine a new man worked nervously with the wooden scoop and bucket, filling the charges much less rapidly than his predecessor. Arabella, wondering what had become of the previous man and hoping the new one would learn his job quickly, grabbed a charge from the loose floating pile and leapt away.
Returning to the upper deck from the magazine, she was shocked to find sunlight streaming in through a ragged hole in the hull. Smoke and slivers of wood made the sunbeams seem as sharp and hard-edged as the rough fragments that tumbled in the air within them, seeming to glow and flicker as they passed from shadow into light. A knot of frightened, confused men were trying to tend to the several wounded, their pandemonium of shouts and screams making the scene still more infernal.
Then Higgs, the boatswain, appeared, sticking his head down from the main-deck above. “Get those wounded clear!” he shouted. “Where there’s one ball, a second won’t be far behind!”
At once the men changed tactics, dragging the screaming wounded aft to the sickbay, and Arabella dashed down the ladder to the lower deck, hoping to find a clear path to the gun deck. A moment later, true to Higgs’s word, a second ball came crashing in behind her.
Most of the crew on the lower deck were laboring at the pedals, grunting and straining more feverishly than she’d ever seen before. Binion exhorted them to still greater effort, hammering the drum brutally, but she paid him no mind as she shot the length of the deck and made her way to the gun deck.
“There you are, d—n you!” cried the officer as she tossed the charge to Gowse. “Where are the others?”
Arabella looked around. All three guns were now unshipped and awaiting their charges, but she was the only powder monkey in sight. “I don’t know, sir!” she cried, even as Gowse and the rest of his crew rushed to load the number three gun.
“D—n!” the officer swore again. “Well, hop to your duty, lad!”
Arabella hopped, speeding off to the magazine again. Behind her she heard the officer shouting to someone to find him two more powder monkeys.
*