Chapter Nineteen
Gunpowder
The Polly touched off both escaping Whalers with two broadsides to each. The USS Nathaniel had been busy too. Of the two ships it was the more proficient of the two at giant killing.
Matt and his crew had polished off the giant watch guards on the two other sunken ships. There appeared to be no giants on the two ships that had tried to escape the harbor. Those ships could have been let go if it weren’t for the fact that it would have been a possible means by which the plantation owners or the giants could have come hunting the Whale People with.
Flynn glanced toward the shore and didn’t like what he saw. It looked like all the giants were drawn up in a group watching what took place within the harbor as they conferred as to what to do among themselves.
Suddenly all of their heads whipped back to look inland. That wasn’t good at all!
They must’ve heard something to do with the prisoners escaping. Something harsh was said by the one who appeared to be the leader of the group whose bellow echoed out across the bay. He and half the others tore off for the hills while the other half ran out into the sea towards them.
Flynn cranked the wheel over and turned broad side to the beach and Jim read his mind by firing off a salvo aimed at the group of giants headed for the hills. Three of the giants fell to the exploding cannonballs, but that was all. The rest never even looked back. Eli was on his own now.
Flynn looked at the giants in the water and turned the wheel hard for the open sea. It would be a near thing for them to escape given the fast rate at which the giants could swim at.
The Polly headed forward at top speed, which wasn’t all that impressively fast. Flynn wasn’t worried about the Nathaniel as it was faster than Polly by a good bit.
Maybe that’s why Matt had picked it Flynn thought darkly, as he felt the pressure of the swimming giants trailing in his wake.
Come to think of it where was the Nathaniel?
Flynn glanced around, but didn’t see it anywhere. He glanced behind and in horror saw that the Nathaniel wasn’t following, but was rather closing in on the giants in the water as her twin guns were depressed as far as they could go, as they continued to spew out the deadly grapeshot that was turning the water red. They were killing giants, but they didn’t stand a chance!
As one the surviving group of giants seized a hold of the Nathaniel and vaulted their way aboard to land on the flat iron clad deck. They as a group were universal in their desire to rip the ship apart and devour its occupants. They tore away at the heavy steel plating in an effort to make a way through to the ship’s interior.
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Matt picked up a torch, as did the rest of the crew gathered together around him, as the sound of protesting nails and splintering wood infiltrated the interior space loudly. The giants would soon be inside.
Matt looked around the somber group and said, “To slightly paraphrase on what a great man once said I say this, ‘I regret that I have but one life to give on behalf of my friends!’ For freedom!!!”
“For freedom!!!” The others echoed out loudly, as they all tossed their torches onto the open casks of gunpowder that lay all around them.
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The explosion rocked the harbor with its deafening crash of force and flame. The attacking giants were obliterated by the outpouring of shattered metal and wood splinters.
The USS Nathaniel was no more than scattered pieces of driftwood afloat upon the harbor’s surface.
Flynn turned away from the grisly sight and back to steering the Polly forward out to sea. He had entirely underestimated the little professor with a love for history. Now he would never forget him.