On Stranger Tides Read Online Free PDF Page A

gushed up from it, and he heard the dismayed shouts of the sailors: “Jesus, one of the guns blew up!” “Three of ’em did, they’re all dead below!” “To the boats! The powder’ll go next!”
    The crack of a pistol shot cut through the rising babble, and Chandagnac saw the man who’d advocated abandoning ship rebound from the capstan barrel and sprawl to the deck, his head smashed gorily open by a pistol ball. Looking away from the corpse, Chandagnac saw that it was the usually good-natured Chaworth who held the smoking pistol.
    â€œYou’ll go to the boats when I order it!” Chaworth shouted. “No gun blew up, nor’s there a fire! Just smoke—”
    As if to verify the statement, a dozen violently coughing men came stumbling up the companionway through the smoke, their clothes and faces blackened with something like soot.
    â€œâ€”And it’s still just a sloop,” the captain went on, “so man the swivels and break out muskets and pistols! Cutlasses hold ready.”
    A sailor shoved Chandagnac aside to get at one of the swivel guns, and he hurried back to the relative shelter of the jammed table, feeling wildly disoriented. Damn me, he thought bewilderedly as he crouched behind it, is this seagoing warfare? The enemy dancing and blowing horns, men in blackface rushing up from belowdecks like extras in a London stage comedy, the only serious shot fired by our captain to kill one of his own crew?
    There were now several sailors standing near him, tensely ready to manipulate the sheets and halliards, and a couple more had sprinted up to the two swivel guns mounted on the poop deck’s port rail, one on either side of Chandagnac, and after checking the loads and priming they just waited, watching the pirate sloop and, every few seconds, blowing on the smoldering ends of their slow matches.
    Chandagnac crouched to peer between the stanchions rather than over the rail, and he too watched the low, shallow-draft boat gain on the ship. The sloop carried several fairly sizeable cannon, but the capering pirates were ignoring them and hefting pistols, cutlasses and sabers, and grappling hooks.
    They must want to capture the
Carmichael
undamaged, Chandagnac thought. If they somehow do, I wonder if they’ll ever know how lucky they were that some mephitic catastrophe incapacitated our gunners.
    Benjamin Hurwood came struggling back up to the poop deck now, and he absolutely bristled with pistols—there were still six in his sash and one in his hand, and he now had another half-dozen thrust under his belt. Peering over the table edge and seeing the determined look on the one-armed professor’s face, Chandagnac had to concede that there was, in this perilous situation, at least, more of dignity than ludicrousness in the man.
    The sailor at the aft swivel gun, grasping the ball at the end of the long handle, turned his gun astern and lowered the muzzle to sight along the barrel. He raised his slow match carefully. He was only about five feet from Chandagnac, who was watching him with tense confidence.
    Chandagnac tried to picture the gun going off, all the swivel guns going off, muskets and pistols too, lashing lead and scrap shot down into the crowded little pirate boat, two or three volleys perhaps, until a cloud of gunpowder smoke veiled the listing, helpless vessel, on which a few pirates would be glimpsed crawling stunned over the ripped-up corpses of their fellows, as the
Carmichael
came back about onto course and resumed its interrupted journey. Chaworth would have had a bad fright, thinking about his insurance-evasion trick, and would be readier than ever for that beer.
    But the gunshot crack came from behind Chandagnac, and the sailor he’d been watching was kicked forward over his gun,and before he tumbled away over the rail Chandagnac had seen the fresh, bloody hole in his back. There was a heavy metallic clank on the deck and then