Read Online The Swashbuckling Yarn of Milady Vixen by Christopher Newman - Free Book Online Page B

us without a fight!”
    “It’s the H.M.S. Lady Jane !” an eagle-eyed sailor cried from the rigging. “Cap’n, we’re as good as dead!”
    “Belay that chatter, you drivel swigger!” Vixen hollered at him. “Shut ye yap before I slit your gullet!’
    Black doom was closing in, flying the hated colors of the nation that had expelled her. Vixen sighed deeply, for her race was truly run. Yet within her bosom beat a fierce heart. She might die today, but she wouldn’t go unaccompanied to Hell, for she would take as many of the Effingham Marines with her as possible as an escort.
    An hour and a half-hundred leagues later, the two ships traded volleys. Wood splintered and men died. Sharpshooters on either craft drew a deadly bead upon their enemies, their muskets booming. A ball passed by Vixen’s head and slew one of the powder monkeys standing near the monkey cannon on the poop. The shot shattered his young skull and dropped him to the deck. He died without a sound. A wave of white smoke poured over the ship as the Sea Fox ’s remaining three guns on the port side belched fire and shot. Below decks, Vixen knew those manning the other weapons had been sent to stand in judgment before their Creator. Vixen swung the wheel, and it spun wildly in her hands. Her ship cut across the waves and slammed into the Lady Jane ’s starboard side.
    “Are you mad!” Tom called out.
    “Our only hope is to cut them down man-to-man!” she relayed with a tight grin.
    Grappling hooks arched into the air from both ships, biting into wood like a shark sinking its teeth into soft fishy prey.
    “Let us go meet them!” Vixen sneered, drawing her needle-like blade.
    Leaping over the railing, the sure-footed privateer commander drew, shot and killed a red-coated Marine who landed on the deck. Pitching back with a chest wound, he gurgled out his last.
    “We’re out manned two-to-one!” Tom said, suddenly standing beside her.
    “Kill two before ye die; then the odds be even!”
    Muskets flashed, cutlasses glittered and men rushed toward the fray. With a bone-chilling cry Milady Vixen jumped into the mix, dealing death with every swing of her arm.
    Let me pause here for a sip of rum. My throat grows dry, and this part is too important to come from lips crackling and breaking like some old hag’s. Ah! That’s better; now where was I? Oh yes.
    The day drew to a close, and the decks of the Sea Fox ran red with both pirate and Marine blood. Upon athwartships—that’s the very center line of a Marine vessel, a rough circle of red-jacketed maritime soldiers had ringed a pair of desperate freebooters. Bayonets, soot stained and yet deadly, pointed in the pirates’ general direction. The muskets had run dry of powder and shot, but still posed a threat to the two refusing to surrender. Dripping with sweat and streaming injuries, Milady Vixen and Ginger Tom took a brief respite from the battle. Weariness tugged at their limbs, and the two heaved with every breath.
    “Surrender!” a young, aristocratic-featured Marine officer commanded. “You are finished!”
    Vixen lunged, but an expertly wielded musket easily deflected her blow. The slither of steel on steel sang the final note of her life as a privateer.
    “Kill us,” she wheezed. “I will wear not a hempen halter!”
    “Aye, you’ll dance on the end of a rope, you pirate!” a shout came from behind.
    Tom slapped his cutlass against a musket’s pointed accessory as they rushed forward. Vixen managed a thrust into a man’s face, the tip of her blade piercing his eye and into his brainpan.
    “Arggh!” a familiar voice cried out.
    Spinning in place, she saw her lover’s shoulder affixed upon a bayonet. Another Marine raised the deadly equipped barrel of his weapon.
    “No!” she screamed, lunging to save Tom.
    Something struck her hard on the back of the head, and the vision of the blade streaking arrow-like toward Tom’s heart was snatched violently away.
    It is here you expect