Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926
- Автор: Bailey H. C., Bechdolt Jack
- Год: 1926
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 18, No. 3, September 18, 1926». Краткое содержание книги:
Freebooters who fight like fiends and live like great-hearted missionaries? Why not rather make us believe in white blackbirds, I can hear some of my readers exclaim. Moral pirates! Bewildering; no, worse, incredible! Well, life and truth are so often bewildering and incredible. But let the story of Francois Misson and Thomas Tew speak for itself.
Francois Misson was the youngest of a brood of children born to a none too prosperous French family in Provence. In such circumstances a boy if he is the youngest will find himself at the bottom of the heap, or he will develop fighting qualities.
The Misson children liked to play at soldiering. Their forbears were soldiers. And always Francois, the youngest, was general.
There was never any dispute among them as to who was to lead the valiant Misson army against the fire-belching dragon who guarded the luscious orchards of Marquis de Braie. For it was Francois who created the dragon, made him seem almost real to his brothers and sisters, fired them with the sense of their mission to slay the wicked monster, and made their mouths water with promises of delicious apricots and grapes that would be theirs as the reward of the adventure.
Then, born captain that he was, he would outline the battle tactics, lead the assault, set examples of high valor, and crown the enterprise with ringing victory.
The only thing his troops didn’t like about their general was his habit of making long-winded speeches about liberty, brotherhood, fraternity, love of one’s neighbor, sharing one’s possessions with the whole world, and so forth and so on interminably. But as he permitted his loyal troops to gorge themselves on their loot while he talked they didn’t mind it so much.
Francois had the physique of a wrestler with the face of a poet. At sixteen he had the body and strength of a young man. His glossy brown hair was long and wild; he had great, brown, glowing eyes; his fine skin was always bronzed with wind and sun. His was the broad-boned square face of the man born to withstand the battering of storms and circumstance.
He had a strong mouth alive with sensibility, gleaming teeth, and vivid lips; whether set grimly in fighting or flashing with eloquence it was mightily convincing mouth.
Home and the village soon became too small to hold Francois. He was like a wild colt in a stable. It was hard on both the young and his narrow environment for them to remain together. So the family proposed to make a soldier of him.
But that meant living in barracks, traveling on foot, and although the period did not lack in wars and fighting, inevitably in a soldier’s life there are long periods of inactivity. That didn’t suit the temper of Francois.
He wanted action even when there was nothing to do; and the sea is the only element that provides a storm to rock you even when you are asleep. So to the sea went Francois as naturally as a gull goes to salt water.
He had a cousin, Captain Fourbin, who commanded the frigate Victoire, fighting for the Grand Monarch. Francois joined his cousin on board the ship not as an ordinary sailor, but as a sort of gentleman volunteer, who could go with the ship or leave it as he pleased.
The Victoire was sent on a cruise in the Mediterranean. France was at war with England at that time and the cruise of the Victoire was a highly colorful affair, full of fighting and plundering of the enemy.
No Lack of Fighting
The captain’s job was replete with exigencies that called for all the talent a man had, both for seamanship and fighting. Captain Fourbin was a master at both. And always at his side in the press of storm or battle stood young Francois, learning the art.
He was a glutton for learning, whether from books, men, or life. It was not long before the voracious youngster could, so to speak, steer a ship with one hand and wield a cutlass with the other. And the more able he grew the more impatient he became to use his talents.
There was no lack of fighting for any one with the Victoire. She was pierced for forty guns; she carried only thirty; but Captain Fourbin always acted as though he had the full complement. For instance, off Sicily they encountered two Sallee rovers, the Lion and the Dragon, both Englishmen, therefore enemies.
The Lion carried twenty guns, the Dragon twenty-four, forty-four against the Victoire’s thirty. But Captain Fourbin shut his eyes to mathematics and pitched into the fight.
The Lion got to one side of the Victoire, the Dragon on the other and then they let fly from every porthole. They aimed not at men, but up at the rigging of the Victoire. Their idea was first to disable the Frenchman and then board him.
But the French at the guns fed them, as though they were modern stokers feeding an ocean liner’s fires and their mates pointed them with eyes as keen as hawks’. Every shot bit into the hull of the Lion just below the water line.
The result was the Lion found itself so badly hulled that it began to list heavily. Fearing capsize the captain of the Lion ordered guns and cargo to be shifted to the other side so as to careen his vessel and keep the shot holes above water. Answering to the maneuver the ship began to tilt over. Up above the water showed the wounds in her hull. So far so good.
But to the horror of all on board the Lion the ship kept on careening. Down and down went her ports, freighted by all the guns on board her. Would she never stop? Suddenly with a sickening lurch the Lion completely capsized, keel in the air; then sank.
Now the Victoire had only the Dragon to deal with.
The latter, although it had shot to pieces the Victoire’s rigging and raked its decks with gunfire, now decided for discretion, and turned to run. But Captain Fourbin had become too interested in the fight to call it a draw. So he gave chase and steadily gained.
Misson, the Leader
It would be only a question of minutes now before one could leap from the deck of the Victoire to that of the Dragon. And at the rail of the Victoire poised for the leap stood young Francois Misson at the head of a boarding party.
His long, brown hair was whipping in the wind; his shirt was torn by a bullet and discolored with sweat and blood; he was actually laughing aloud with the exultation of fighting; his right hand held a cutlass, the left a pistol.
Mere yards now separated the two ships. The decks of the Dragon were simply swarming with dark-faced Moors. The Frenchman had lost heavily under the cannonading from the two ships. Captain Fourbin had concentrated his guns on the now vanished Lion and the heavily manned Dragon had as yet suffered little loss. The odds in man power were against young Francois and his followers.
Now the two ships ground their timbers against each other and onto the deck of the Dragon leaped young Misson and his crew. Instantly they found themselves in the thick of the fight of their lives.
One French blade had to parry the thrusts of two and three Moors. Slashing and cutting, yelling exultantly, young Misson fought as miraculously as against the dragon he himself had created in his childhood’s exploits.
Agonies of Remorse
But the scores of fighting Moors led by English pluck and brains were no figments of a boy’s imagination; and back to the rail were pressed Francois and his men. Some of them were hacked to pieces. Some were thrown down the hatches or into the sea. Some fought on partly disabled. But those who survived went as mad as their young leader and for every man they lost their cutlasses and pistols took usurious toll.
Then from the Victoire to the Dragon leaped another boarding crew, and back this time went the Moors, firing and slashing, on the defense. The decks were treacherous with blood and cluttered with dead and wounded. The fighters stumbled and plunged like stampeded cattle.