Blood Diamond: A Pirate Devlin Novel by Mark Keating Page B

strode along. Dandon pointed upwards and right to the large arched windows. ‘That is the street. Our captain is near the street . . . if he has not been moved, that is.’
    Peter Sam opened one of his apostles of powder, lifted a cartridge from his belly-box and reloaded. Hugh covered him as they followed Dandon’s steps to the door. This one was iron also. Locked also, after nine o’clock, as Adam Cowrie had warned them. The three rescuers were now prisoners by choice.
    Behind them, miscreants who had murdered men, women and children, who had viciously stolen what no man from their streets could afford to buy honestly, lay still in their beds and held their breath until the intruders moved on. Only then did hands in the darkness scurry over Bill Dunn’s body like crabs, to strip his corpse naked.
    Richard Maynard watched the defilement, the bloodied corpse worse now unclothed. He felt his stomach rise into his mouth as he crept away back to his tunnel.
    Peter Sam holstered his weapon on his back and studied the door. It was locked from the outside and another grenadoe was the only way. He went again for the bag but Dandon tapped his shoulder.
    ‘You have had too much of your own way, Peter.’
    Peter scowled. ‘If I had my way this would be done by now, popinjay.’
    Dandon soothed him with a smile. ‘This is not a place I wish to be, amongst this walking dead. Beyond this door is a corridor that will lead to the lodge. A fat turnkey named Thomas Langley has heard an explosion. He has heard the boom of your weapon. He is near and clutching his pitiful club and wondering what goes on. We need only to let him know.’
    Peter Sam’s expression demanded more from Dandon, who merely stepped past him to the door. ‘I believe that the fire that last befell this place is still ingrained in the memory.’
    He banged his fist against the door fast enough and hard enough for the sound to run down the corridor beyond and echo to the floors above and below, bringing others to hurl themselves against their doors as they heard his cries.
    ‘ Fire !’ Dandon screamed and hammered. ‘Fire within! Thomas! We burn !’
    Dandon charged the door harder and Hugh joined him until it sounded like a hundred desperate fists pounding the stout iron.
    Five floors of the gaol took up the cry, for although the burning of the gaol was not of their living horror its rebuilding was very much so. They had seen the charred bones carried out in buckets, the skulls locked in screams later sketched for the broadsheets as stone by stone the Newgate hell was raised again.
    Men condemned to die but still fearing judgement and an earlier dispatch by fire, too close to judgement, howled for release. Thomas Langley sped from his lodge to the nearest door. The Common Felons ward. That was where the horrendous clamour that had broken his sleep was coming from.
    He soon had the right key rattling off his apron leathers, his pizzle in his fist. Buckets of sand along the walls stood ready and prisoners to aid him, for they would help to save themselves. The governor would be pleased that he had averted tragedy. With a few of the constables from the wards to assist, the fire would be quelled. There would be no fire on his watch. Why was he so heavy? Damn his feet.
    Shouts for mercy ricocheted about as he scurried along the corridor. He heard his name called again and again from above and below, yet something was not quite right. Certainly there was the smell of smoke but the stench of the sea-coal was always present and screams were nothing new. Whatever niggled him was forgotten as Langley reached the ward. The key turned soundly even though his hand trembled and the faces beyond the open door seemed right – but only for a moment.
    It was the black turnover pistol emptied into his face that told Thomas of his error.
    No fire without smoke.
    Hugh Harris stepped over the body and switched the double barrel to its second load as calmly as winding a watch. Peter