And then a great ball of flame came rushing out of the hole, followed almost immediately by a roaring crash so loud that even Arabella’s already deafened ears rang.
A gust of black smoke rushed through the gun-port, making Arabella choke and completely obscuring her view. Shouts, screams, and confusion followed, men coughing and colliding in the sudden dark. Heedless of exposure, Arabella pulled up her shirt and breathed through the fabric.
Gradually order returned. The force which had pressed them against the deck eased, then vanished. The smoke began to clear, and Arabella quickly tucked her shirt under her belt again. All the men gathered around the gun-ports, peering through the filthy, cluttered air.…
And then someone called, “Huzzah!”
Soon all the rest joined him, including Arabella. The corsair had been blown completely in two, smoky flames guttering in the wreckage. The Frenchmen, stunned or dead, floated everywhere. The only sound that penetrated the ringing in Arabella’s ears was the crack of small arms fire, Diana’s marksmen and the few surviving privateers trying to finish each other off.
The men on the gun deck cheered and clapped each other upon the back. From somewhere a flask of whisky appeared and was passed around. Even Arabella took a swig of the harsh, burning stuff.
And then Watson, one of the young midshipmen, appeared in the hatch. “Damage report!” he called in his small piping voice. “How many casualties?”
Gowse and the two other gun captains tallied the men and materiel lost or damaged during the battle. The gun deck had caught only one ball from the corsair, which had wounded three men but not killed any. “The captain’ll be pleased to hear that, I’m sure,” said Gowse.
At that the midshipman looked grave. “Haven’t you heard?” he said.
Arabella’s heart, so recently lightened by victory, suddenly felt as heavy as lead.
“Quarterdeck took a hard hit just before that last shot,” the midshipman continued. “The captain was struck in the head by flying wreckage.”
He swallowed. The whole gun deck fell silent, all the men focused on his small pale face.
“We don’t know if he’ll make it.”
12
AFTERMATH
After the battle, Arabella’s mood resembled the air around the ship, still fogged with dense, stale smoke and cluttered with wreckage and clumps of black, clotted blood. Any joy that might have remained from the victory over the French, and Arabella’s small part in it, was extinguished by the reality of that victory and its aftermath.
The captain still lay in the cockpit, under the constant eye of the surgeon. The ship rattled with rumors as to his condition, but even when real news could be had it was inconclusive at best, discouraging at worst. The bleeding had stopped, it was said, and his injuries were supposed to be survivable, but he was still completely unconscious and his prognosis was uncertain.
The situation made Arabella sick with worry. If the captain were to die …
No. The idea was too terrible to contemplate, and so she would not do so. She would instead continue on, just as she had before the French attack, so that he would be proud of her when—when—he returned to command.
*
Fourteen of Diana’s crew had been killed, including Arabella’s messmate Hornsby. Though she hadn’t known him well, he had been kind to her, always willing to share his considerable knowledge of the air, and his absence from her mess was like a missing tooth—an aching gap that would never be filled again in this life.
Hornsby and the other dead were given a traditional aerial burial: wrapped in canvas, splashed with lamp oil, set alight, and cast away aft, where the wind from the pulsers would keep the flame going until the body was consumed or drifted beyond sight.
Another of those whose flaming carcass had vanished abaft was Kerrigan, who’d been killed by the same final shot that had knocked the captain unconscious. Arabella’s feelings on this loss were mixed. The man had been harsh to her personally, but the captain had plainly respected his talents as an officer, and she had to admit that he’d been no more demanding of her than he had been of any other crewman, even himself. Even though she’d never liked him, the lack of his strident voice from the quarterdeck somehow made Diana feel like less than herself.