"Like treadin' water 'mongst a pack o' sharks," Will Cony said, scowling hellish-black as the rakish craft approached within hailing distance, dividing and passing down the larboard side, between the village and Jester's starboard side, or astern to flaunt their courage, almost under Pylades' guns, and within "close pistol shot."
"Like the Lanun Rovers at Spratly Island," Lewrie whispered,
"Well, sir… least there's only th' six. An' not thirty of 'em, this time," Cony replied with a mirthless snicker. "Manageable."
"Odd, how things turn out," Captain Rodgers commented, flexing his fingers on the hilt of his small-sword. "Coincidence, hey? Think back. I could swear this is the same lot you drove off from that Dutch merchantman in th' Hvar channel, Commander Lewrie."
"Then they've already had a taste of our iron, sir," Lieutenant Knolles vowed. "Perhaps they'll know to mind their manners 'cause of it."
"Perhaps, indeed," Rodgers mused impatiently, waiting for their vaunting show of seamanship and braggadocio to end, and the negotiations to begin.
"Deuced cocky buggers, sirs," Midshipman Hyde decided to say for them all.
"Anyone see artillery?" Rodgers snapped.
"On the largest, sir," Lewrie pointed out. "Looks to be a pair of six-pounders forrud. She's gun-ports to either beam, but I can't see much beyond some very old, long-barrel swivels, or boat-guns."
"Just the one six-pounder or so forrud on the next-largest, sir," Midshipman Spendlove was quick to contribute. "And more swivels."
The seamen who crowded the rails of the pirate ships were armed, and were most happily brandishing their weapons, all but ululating like painted Red Indians. They were armed with curvy, scimitarlike swords and matching daggers, some very long and slim Arabee muskets with convoluted, curling butts, some inlaid with ivory or brass, like the Hindoo jezails Lewrie'd seen in the Far East, at Calcutta, or among the Mindanao pirates.
"Damme if 'at's a swivel-gun, sir," Buchanon exclaimed, pointing at the nearest forty-footer. "I could swear 'at's a falconet! A wrought-iron breech-loader! Barrel made o' hammer-welded iron rod bundles, an' hooped t'gether. Beer mug sorta iron cartridge gets stuck in the rear o' I th' barrel, an' wedged in place. Lord, sir, 'at was old in the days o' th' Spanish Armada! Blow up, peel apart, an' shoot backwards, if yer not careful with 'em, so 'twas said."
"Dhey are heffing grade need ohf you… unt your veapons, ja!" Leutnant Kolodzcy archly sniffed. "You see how I dell you? Ach, now we be beginnink."
The local vessels had at last left off their pirouettes to show off their prowess, and their lack of fear, and were handing their sails and coming to anchor in a loose gaggle off Jesters bows, where they'd be safe from artillery fire. A boat was got down from the larger two-masted dhow and made its way to the galliot, even as a second boat was being hoisted over from her, and a boat-crew broke out her oars.
"What sort of side-party does a pirate captain rate, I wonder?" Lewrie japed. "What sort of honours should we award him, Leutnant Kolodzcy?"
"None, herr Kommandeur Lewrie," Kolodzcy prinked with asper sion. "You show him nothink. No gondempt… but no honours, eidder."
"No side-party, Mister Knolles. No pipes."
"Aye aye, sir."
The larger rowing boat from the galliot, another Levant-looking craft like a felucca without her single mast, was stroking over to the sloop of war, with two men in her stern-sheets, who stood while others sat and rowed or steered.
"De one from de dhow … de arschloch we speak, yesterday," Kolodzcy said sharply. "De odder, de taller-he ist dheir leader ve are havink to deal vit." The felucca reached Jesters side, her larboard side, below the already opened and inviting entry-port. Not the side of honour, as the starboard was in worldwide naval usage. Whether their leader was aware of this insult or deigned to sneer at his welcome, they couldn't tell, for he sprang from the gunn'l as soon as the boat bumped into the hull, and scampered up the boarding-battens to the gangway in a flash, eager and wolfishly smiling a dazzling white-toothed smile half hidden below a bristling, flowing set of moustachios. He looked about in appraisal, almost as if judging to the pence what the value of looting her might fetch him, before he was joined by his goat-skinned compatriot, a shorter, thicker-set fellow with a lush, unkempt beard.
There was a feast for his eyes, an untold Alladin's Cave of riches laid before him: artillery, muskets, swords, shot and powder… rope and timber, sails and blocks. Even Jesters hatch-covers would be the sort of well-crafted wealth far beyond his wildest imaginings.
Yet he put his hands on his hips, gazed upward at the height of the European mainmast, bared another dazzling smile… and laughed out loud! Like a child overawed by a stroll down the Strand past the toy-makers', Lewrie could conjure, the fellow actually shook his head with what he took for a "Well, what'll they think of, next?" marvelling.
"I speak to him, unt bring him to you, sirs," Kolodzcy offered primly, shooting his lacy shirt-cuffs and settling the hang of a dazzling fresh pale-blue waistcoat.
The fellow didn't wait for that, but, bouncing on his feet with impatience, sprang into action again and towed his compatriot to the end of the gangway, then onto the quarterdeck, where he'd espied the better-dressed officers.
"Ratko Petracic," he boasted, thumping his chest and naming himself to them, as if it should mean something to them, before Leutnant Kolodzcy could even open his sour-pursed mouth. Petracic gave Kolodzcy a withering, amused once-over from head to toe, before turning to his companion of the bearish beard and goat-hair weskit and slithering out a comment that made them both chuckle.
"Well, go on, sir," Rodgers urged. "Say the bloody how-de-dos. Name us to the bugger."
"Boog-er," the bearded one parroted, then laughed, nudging his
leader. "Ha, boog-er!"
Kolodzcy smoothly performed the introductions, no matter what the pirates had said about him or how rowed he was. "Dey are, chentlemen, Kapitan Ratko Petracic, leader of dis seagoink bent. Unt, Kapitan Dragan Mlavic, who ist second-in-command… main leutnant of his… fleet.
"Fleet, mine arse," Midshipman Hyde muttered to Spendlove, just loud enough to be heard, drawing a scathing glower from his captain.
"Mine-eh arse," the shorter pirate repeated once more. "Arse!"
What is he, a bloody magpie? Lewrie wondered.
He didn't look quite sane, for starters. Dragan Mlavic had beady little black eyes that threatened to cross, did he leave them open too long, which made him blink rather a lot. His face was pockmarked and rough-textured, a tad swarthy and full-all round knobbiness to cheeks, nose and forehead. Lewrie gave him an up-and-down, with one brow cocked, as Kolodzcy garbled off some gilt-and-beshit politenesses. The short pirate chieftain could easily be dismissed, he thought. Mental defective, borderline loony… something like that? He'd traded a drab brown homespun knee-length smock this day for a white cotton one, gaudy with red and blue embroideries. Under that rank goat-hide waistcoat, o' course. His very baggy pyjammy-trousers, which gathered below the knee like an Ottoman version of proper breeches, were the roughest sort of homespun. His shoes were little better than goatskin versions of Red Indian… what'd they call 'ems?… moccasins? There was a round knit skullcap… Well, the weapons, o' course, jammed into a wide belt-a brace of all-metal Arabee flintlock pistols with barrels over a foot long, a very expensive-looking scimitar in a parrot-green leather scabbard, both sword and scabbard awash in brass, brads, inset ivories and… damme… gem-chips? Bolstering his arsenal, though, was a very plain butcher-knife of a dagger, with rough wood hilt, hardly a haft at all beyond a black-iron ring-guard, in a rough, hairy sheath.
The other, Ratko Petracic, was an entirely different breed of cat, and Lewrie put him down as a damned dangerous customer. He was too self-possessed, too sure of himself by half. Too handsome and cocksure, this'un! He wore soft leather boots to the knee, made from a coral-red dyed hide; shimmery burgundy pyjammy-trousers, a flowing smock of startling white and sewn with gold thread, silver thread and ornate with sequins. His waistcoat was of hide, too, though of a very short-haired, very sleek fur. He sported no headgear, just a full, lush mane of shiny brown hair clubbed back at the nape of his neck. His weapons consisted of a pair of gold-inlaid Arabee pistols, a gem-studded scimitar in a red velvet scabbard set with gilt fittings and a magnificent dagger on his left hip in a silver-and-ivory, jewel-bedecked scabbard, which made an impossible forty-five-degree bend. Atop the hilt of the gilded dagger there was set an emerald the size of a robin's egg, clutched in elaborately fil-igreed real-gold claws!
Aye, he knew what a raffish, dangerous impression he was making, Lewrie realised; he'd planned it this way! Put on his best to overawe!
"He asks me, are we de British Royal Navy vich hezz so vahry much silver to buy brot unt sheep," Kolodzcy was explaining, leaning to and fro from translatee to translatee. "I tell him we are. He ist askink, do we fight de French. I say we do. He asks me, do ve dell de druth… ve take many rich ships, oud ad sea. I say ve dell druth, alvays, unt daht dhere are vahry many more rich ships… good bickinks. Kapitan Petracic is askink… he vould vahry much like de riches dhat we take. Uhm… Gott in Himmel, was ist das? Ldcherlich! Umph!"
Kolodzcy leaned away from the pirates.
"De Kapitan Petracic sayink he ist master ohf dis goast… unt… unt!" Kolodzcy gargled, outraged. "Ve are owink him… tributes! His share!"
"Tell 1m t'go buy a hat, shit in it an' call it a brown tie-wig," Rodgers barked. "The bloody nerve o' th' man!"
"Plenty… blood-ey… nerve, Ratko Petracic," the short man hoorawed, as good a sycophant as Clotworthy Chute any day, Lewrie told himself. Once he got over his shock, o' course. His shock of hearing English from the hairy churl-and the smug look of satisfaction on Ratko Petracic's face. "Plenty bloody nerve," indeed! Lewrie thought.