A grapnel soared high over the Espiritu Santo’s bows to fall and catch on the beakhead. For the moment Sharpe and Harper were alone on the small hidden platform of the beakhead, and neither man moved to cut the rope free. “We’re joining the fight then, are we?” Harper asked.
“I like Ardiles,” Sharpe said, “but I’m damned if I’ll fight for a man on the same side as Bautista.”
“Ah, well. Back to the wars.” Harper grinned, then instinctively ducked as another carronade fired, this one from the forecastle above them. The Espiritu Santos forecastle carronade, unable to depress its muzzle sufficiently, had not done great damage to the attackers, but its noise alone seemed to encourage the Spaniards who now began to shout their own war cry, “Espiritu Santo! Espiritu Santof
“So what do we do?” Harper asked.
“We start with that big bugger up there.” Sharpe jerked his chin up toward the forecastle carronade. He had to shout, for more big guns were firing, these new ones from down below on the gundeck where the Spanish were evidently firing straight into the Mary Starbuck’s upper deck. Sharpe could hear the screams of men being disemboweled and flensed by the close-range horror of the big guns. Sharpe jumped, caught the edge of the forecastie’s deck, and hauled himself up to where three men were serving the carronade. One of them, the gun captain, snapped at Sharpe to fetch some quoins so that the breech of the carronade could be elevated.
“I’m not on your side!” Sharpe yelled at the man. Behind Sharpe, Harper was struggling to haul his huge weight up the sheer face of the forecastle which, though only eight feet high, was too much for a man as heavy as Harper, which meant that Sharpe, for the moment, was alone. He grabbed one of the carronade’s heavy spikes: a six-foot shaft of hardwood tipped with an iron point. The spike was used to aim the heavy gun by levering its trail around, and the wooden deck under the carronade’s tail was pitted with holes left by the sharp iron point. Sharpe now lunged with the spike as though it was a bayonet. He did not want to kill, for his attack was unexpected and unfair, but the gun’s Captain suddenly pulled a pistol from under his coat and Sharpe had no choice but to ram the spike forward with sudden and savage force so that the iron point punctured the man’s belly. The gun Captain dropped his pistol to grip the spike’s shaft. He was moaning sadly. Sharpe, still lunging forward, slammed the wounded man against the rail and, still pushing, heaved him overboard. Sharpe let go the spike so that the gun Captain, blood cartwheeling away from his wound, fell to the sea with the spike’s shaft still rammed into his belly.
Sharpe turned. He ducked to retrieve the gun Captain’s pistol and the carronade’s rammer, swung with terrible force by one of the two remaining crewmen, slashed just above his head. Sharpe’s right hand closed on the pistol just as he charged forward to ram his left shoulder into the Spaniard’s belly. He heard the man’s breath gasp out, then he brought the heavy pistol up and hammered it onto his attacker’s skull. The third crew member had backed to the inboard edge of the forecastle where he was uselessly shouting for help. Harper, abandoning his attempt to climb the forward face of the forecastle, had ducked through the galley and was now climbing the companionway steps which led from the maindeck. The third crewmember, thinking that help was at last arriving, leaned down to give Harper a helping hand. Harper grabbed the offered hand, tugged, and the crewman tumbled down into the churning mass of men who fought in the ship’s waist.
That larger fight was a gutter brawl of close-quarter horror. Cochrane’s invaders had succeeded in capturing a third of the Espiritu Santos main deck, but were now faced by a disciplined and spirited crew that fiercely defended their ship. Cochrane’s men, screaming like demons, had achieved an initial surprise, but Ardiles’s hours of practice were beginning to pay dividends as his men forced the invaders back.