The turpentine took the greased ways with a sound like tearing canvas.
A wall of greasy orange flame leaped ten feet into the midnight mist, fed by eighteen tierces of Arch-Pine pitch staved beneath the Sea-Gull’s floor timbers. The heat struck Tomas Reed like a fire draft, carrying the reek of boiling resin, charred animal fat, and smoldering oakum. Black smoke rolled off the timber skids in choking billows, blinding the boat ramp and blotting out the lanterns.
“Clear the ways!” Corvin’s voice shrieked through the draft. “Keep water-buckets off! Let the keel-blocks take the flame!”
Through the smoke, the privateer captain swung his iron-basket cutlass. He drove two apprentices back toward the mud ditch. Behind him, a dozen hired thugs wielded iron pry bars and smoking torches. It smashed the copper discharge pipes of the yard’s manual fire-carts.
They weren’t fast enough.
From the dark alleys between the timber-stacks, eighty striking dockworkers surged onto the granite setts of Slipway Four. They moved in the heavy, practiced wedge of men who shifted fifty-ton baulks of timber for their daily bread. In the vanguard strode Dunley, a twenty-pound sledgehammer across his shoulder, his brass rigger’s whistle screaming between his teeth. Beside him walked Sile Rook, his scarred neck rigid, his six-foot hooked pruning blade held level at his chest.
