The Firedrake
Keith Taylor
Billy was having nightmares about his life on the London streets. He hadn't picked enough pockets, and the brute who claimed to be his father – but probably wasn't – was kicking the daylights out of him. Again. He lashed out with both fists and yelled.
‘Let me be, Crusher! Or I'll punch yer lights out!'
A thoroughly empty threat. Crusher Borley was huge, while Billy was only ten years old. He never could control his red-headed temper when mistreated, though. Some cringed in that situation. Billy's nature was to fight, even if he hadn't a chance.
‘Blast yer eyes, Crusher!'
Then he awoke, confused, with someone shaking him by the shoulders.
‘Lord above, cully! It's the bad dreams you're having again. Come on. Time to rise.'
Billy's nose recognised the below-deck smells before his brain caught up. Ship's timbers made their constant creaking and popping all around him, and he lay in a swaying hammock – his hammock, painted with his ship's book number. He'd been awakened by Dermot O'Byrne from Cork, a ship's boy third-class like him, and the day was beginning.
All of which came as a mighty relief after the nightmare.
Breakfast, as always, was cold; the coarse porridge called burgoo, a ship's biscuit, and cocoa. Billy didn't mind though. Food aboard the sixty-gun ship of the line Eagle came regularly, and there was enough of it. Another improvement over the London gutters.
‘The grub ain't as bad as I always heard navy tack was,' Billy commented. ‘Is that usual?'
‘Better than on some ships,' Dermot answered, tucking in. ‘The purser's a thief, and a crimson thief, like all of them, but he's good at a contract. “If I get cut amounts or cut quality”, he says, “I cut the feller's throat that sold it to me”.'
‘Listen to you talk,' said someone else. ‘Two months in the navy, that's all. Spend a year away from land and see what the grub's like.'
‘Suits me so far,' Billy retorted, scoffing the remainder to prove it.
Afterwards, he and Dermot were ordered to the ship's powder magazine. It lay deep in the hold for safety, below the waterline, at the end of a narrow passage. The only light came from another room, through a glazed window. Men – and the boys, the powder monkeys – entered in bare feet or slippers, so as to make no sparks.
‘Right, then,' the powder-room yeoman said briskly. ‘This is practice, lads, the gun-crews won't fire live this morning. The charges are dummies. But I want you to rush ’em to the guns just as fast as if it was real. You all know which guns you're to serve, eh?'
They knew. Aboard a navy ship, you learned quickly.
All morning Billy raced between the magazine and the upper gun-deck, carrying the dummy powder charges to his designated guns, where the crews sweated non-stop to run out the cannon, point them, pretend to fire, then worm, sponge, load, and go through the routine again. Over an acre of wind-filled canvas spread above them. Black clouds tumbled through the October sky. Lightning forked on the skyline.
Gun drill stopped at last. Billy, panting hard, paused by the number four gun and discontentedly asked the gun-captain, ‘When do you fire her, sir?'
‘Stone me! I ain't no sir, lad. Nor we don't often fire live at practice. Powder and shot cost guineas. Ain't you heard?'
‘Only been two months in the navy.'
‘Don't you worry. We're hunting a French convoy. These guns'll talk soon enough.'
Then lightning struck the foremast.
Thunder boomed in the same second. A red bloom of fire surrounded the mast's tip. Billy, staring upward, saw something appear at the heart of the blaze, something hot and yellow-white like a tiny star. It flashed through empty air to the nearest sail – and the sail caught fire.
Billy heard whistle signals blown and orders barked. The fore-topmen scrambled to work, casting the blazing sail loose and manhandling it over the side with muscle-cracking effort. Watching intently while they handled the job, Billy saw a shape spring away from the sail as it fell, and scurry down the mast like a squirrel. Glowing like a furnace, it trailed yellow-orange streamers behind it.
Reaching the deck, it raced for cover from the rain, and crouched near the gun Billy had been serving. Pitch bubbled under its claws, and wood started to smoulder. It seemed about the size of a spaniel dog, though it hurt Billy's eyes to look at it directly.
‘What are you?' he asked wildly.
He spoke on impulse. It never occurred to him that the thing could speak. Yet it did. Its voice crackled and hissed.
Firedrake, born of the lightning! I obey no one. I do as I please – and what I please is to burn!
The railing and the deck smoked at its touch; little flames began moving. Green as he was in the navy, Billy knew that fire aboard ship was a disaster. Yes, and this thing was fire, a living, moving blaze.
The gun-captain realised it too. Seizing a bucket of water, he hurled it at the firedrake. It flashed ten feet away before a drop touched it. The movement dazzled. Then it kept moving, to start a dozen fires on the gun-deck, with every man who tried to stop it left gasping behind. Having displayed its capabilities for arson, it came back to the number four gun.
Do not attack me with water again, you slow ugly beings! I will burn this wooden castle to ash!
Billy looked about him. Luckily none of the fires had really taken hold; they were all on the upper deck, it was still raining, and the crew had been quick to extinguish them. But if the firedrake went below and started fire-raising in earnest, the king's ship Eagle would be a memory.
He said fiercely, ‘It ain't a castle, you talking Roman candle! It's a ship! And you can't burn it, see? Because it'll sink, and you'd be in the ocean. That'd be the end of you, wouldn't it?'
The firedrake made a sound like a snort of contempt, but it didn't answer, and that meant Billy had made a point – or so he inferred.
‘Are you crazy, lad?' the gun-captain demanded. ‘Why are you talking to it?'
‘Blimey, mister, it talks itself! You didn't hear it? Said it likes to burn things, and it'll burn this ship!'
‘Indeed it will not.'
Billy turned around and saw the captain. Not the gun-captain, but Captain Rodney himself, master of the Eagle, whose word was law and whom Billy had only seen before as a remote presence on the quarter-deck. He was a man of thirty with windburned skin and a big jaw. The duty lieutenant stood behind him.
‘You, powder monkey. You say this – creature – speaks and you can understand it?'
‘Aye, sir.'
‘It threatened to burn the ship?'
‘Aye, sir.'
Captain Rodney made a brusque attempt to talk to the firedrake. It understood, and answered as though it was the haughty prince of the universe. But Billy saw that to the captain it was only noise such as any blazing fire might make.
‘It doesn't talk.'
‘No,' Billy said desperately. ‘Begging yer pardon, sir, but I hear it!'
‘Then why don't I? Or others?'
‘Don't know, sir. But I'm fiery-natured meself, they said in London. They didn't have to ask me twice as a rule if it was a fight they wanted. Maybe –'
‘There's a sort of affinity?' The captain studied the wiry, homely redhead before him. ‘Maybe. But I cannot just take your word.'
Billy lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Sir, begging your pardon, if that there firedrake burns the Eagle as it says it wants, it'll get bigger same as any fire, and it might burn the fleet next! Lion, Windsor, Defiance – the lot!'
Navy men did not frighten easily. Still, the captain cast one look across the sea at the line of the king's ships cruising south, fourteen ships and several frigates strong, and muttered, ‘Blazes!'
Behind them, the lieutenant had bent close to the firedrake. He had a liking for science, and his curiosity got the better of him.
‘Extraordinary,' he muttered. ‘A salamander? Fire elemental. I've heard about them. My uncle dabbled in alchemy. I doubted – but it's true.'
The firedrake voiced crackling laughter and sprang over the lieutenant's head, trailing fire like a comet. It left his uniform smouldering and his cocked hat ablaze. Sweeping the ruined lid furiously from his head, the lieutenant stood there humiliated and swearing while Billy tried not to snicker.
Blimey, he thought, it's not only right conceited, it's got a sense of humour, too!
Glancing at Captain Rodney, Billy thought he even saw his mouth twitch; but if so it set grimly in the next second.
‘We depart the fleet at once, Lieutenant. Change course. A long tack, three points to the wind. Once you have seen to that, change your uniform. You're improperly dressed.'
Then he turned to Billy. ‘Lad, suggest to your – friend – that it had better go below since we're headed for dirty weather. Make a hearth where it can be contained in some sort of safety. Remind it always that it's far at sea, and needs this ship as much as we do, so it had better control its urges.'
‘Aye, sir.'
The firedrake listened. Rocks and sand from the ballast made a reasonably fireproof place on the orlop deck, and there was fuel to sustain it while it remained spaniel-sized. Anything that would burn suited its needs.
Billy crouched by the makeshift hearth for hours, talking to it, trying to form some idea of how to deal with it. One truth emerged clearly; the firedrake was short on self-control. Curbing its urge to grow huge by consuming everything around it went against its nature. The single thing it seemed to fear was the immense waste of water.
Dermot, in his time off, came down to keep Billy company. He didn't share Billy's fascination with the firedrake at all. He was afraid of it, and said so; believed it was a minor devil, and said that, too.
‘I don't think so,' Billy argued. ‘Look, Irish, if it was a devil, it'd cringe away from yer crucifix, wouldn't it?'
‘Whatever it is, I can't see us carrying gunpowder and primers in action while it's around,' Dermot said. ‘Suppose it gets curious and comes near us – me, for instance? It'd rain Dermot O'Byrne for days.'
Billy thought that over. He was still thinking about it when the thunder, rain and squalls had passed and a clear morning showed the Eagle to be alone on the sea, out of sight of the British fleet. The captain sent for him.
‘We have to get rid of it, lad. We cannot have a king's fighting ship at its mercy – and that, in essence, we are. I've a notion that might work. The ship's carpenter says he can do it – but the firedrake must not notice him at work. Can you hold its attention for a couple of days? Above all, keep it away from the forecastle?'
‘Bit like catching starlight in a jug, sir. But I'll try.'
He felt both scared and fascinated as he settled down to the job. The firedrake was beautiful. Pity it was so dangerous. He realised soon enough that he could tell it nearly any lie, because it was like a newborn in most ways, and the warship Eagle was all the world it had ever experienced. It didn't seem to know that there was such a thing as dry land.
Billy made the mistake of letting that information slip. The firedrake became highly excited.
Take me there! Now! Put me ashore where I will not be surrounded by this horrible wetness!
‘Wait, now, Mister Roman Candle,' Billy said. ‘It ain't that easy –'
Take me to land!
Billy wheedled. ‘Blimey, now, what do you think we're doing? The Eagle's headed for land right now! The captain can't wait to let you off! But you have to do the right thing by us, see? No leaping about starting fires. No more burning the sails for a lark. Most of all, stay in one place.'
The firedrake shimmered and sparkled.
How long until we reach this dry land?
‘Five days,' Billy lied. ‘A week at most.'
The crackling voice grumbled and threatened. The firedrake had no patience. At last, though, it accepted what Billy told it.
He seldom left the creature. He wasn't supposed to. He wasn't supposed to look at the work in progress under the forecastle, either. He squirmed forward and spied on it nevertheless.
At first it made no sense to him. The carpenter had cut a hole about a yard square in the deck. Underneath it, he was building an odd-looking engine; a long thick plank fastened down at one end to a heavy timber block, a bit like a see-saw, but with one side much longer than the other. By the long end stood a drum-winch with strong cable wound about it.
Billy crept away, puzzled. What would that do? He couldn't imagine any mechanical engine being much good against the firedrake. It moved too fast. Besides, anything made of wood it could simply burn.
The cap'n had better know what he's doing! thought Billy.
A couple of days later, the captain sent word that the firedrake might come up to the open air. It welcomed the chance. Billy didn't think he could have kept it below for much longer. The square hole in the forecastle deck had been covered, now, by a neat wooden hatch with a shallow sand-filled tray nailed atop it for the firedrake's use. Lamp oil and rum stood nearby. Billy poured a cup of the raw spirit into the firedrake's mouth; it breathed out little blue flames and purred with pleasure. Gazing ahead, past the bowsprit, it demanded to know where land lay.
‘The way we're headed,' Billy answered. ‘Two or three days and we'll see the shore.'
He remained puzzled. That long plank and winch must be just about exactly beneath the firedrake, of course …
Suddenly he realised. Chainshot and grape in a broadside! Captain Rodney was a genius! Only why was he waiting?
Then a call came from the masthead lookout. ‘Sail! Sail! French fleet and convoy dead ahead!'
That must be the convoy they had been sent out to intercept. Billy's heart hammered. What a time! The Eagle was alone, and they couldn't move or load one charge of gunpowder with the firedrake aboard. They were helpless.
The captain said dispassionately, ‘Clear the decks. We engage the enemy.'
The Eagle made straight for the French fleet. Ten fighting ships. Half of them carried more than seventy guns. An immense merchant convoy with them.
Dermot's lips had become very dry. He licked them and whispered to Billy, ‘The Frenchmen must be about to die, cully. Laughing.'
The firedrake crackled and hissed with delight. French ships or English, it did not care; all it saw in the great flotilla yonder was food. If it consumed twenty ships there would still be abundance left.
Billy shivered. Enemies or not, he didn't care for the thought of that happening to the French. They were men. Not fish to be fried.
He looked at the firedrake with new eyes. It wasn't a mischievous sprite, it was a menace, and if it got ashore it might consume whole cities. What was the captain waiting for?
Under the forecastle, the ship's carpenter said quietly, ‘Go.'
A brawny seaman promptly swung a mallet, knocking the brake off the winch, which spun wildly around. The long plank sprang upward with all the force of flexing wood. It smashed into the underside of the new hatch with a kick like a giant's boot. Billy, standing beside it, was knocked off his feet. He fell down on a deck that was vibrating like a drum.
The hatch shot upward like a cork from a bottle. Sand scattered everywhere. Hatch, sand, and the crowing firedrake all hurtled over the side. The hatch struck the sea with a great splash. The firedrake fell after it. With a hissing shriek it vanished into the ocean.
As swiftly as that, it was over. The menace was gone. Billy, springing to his feet, scanned the heaving green water. There was nothing to see but a wooden hatch bobbing afloat.
Captain Rodney roared from the quarterdeck, ‘About ship! Action stations all!'
The powder magazine opened for work, and from then onward Billy was far too occupied for any thoughts of the firedrake's demise. While he and Dermot and the rest sweated in the guts of the ship, the rest of the English fleet hove in sight, to find the Eagle again – and the French convoy they had been hunting.
Billy had often wondered how he would do in real fighting action. He found out that day. He laboured among the fearful noise of the guns, the strangling, blinding smoke and the whizzing shrapnel. He saw men die.
He and Dermot came through it alive. The English won, with most of the French warships captured, and even though there was an inquiry into the Eagle's sudden departure from the fleet, every officer and man swore to the firedrake's reality and danger. It was believed, on the whole, but was reckoned too fantastic to enter in official records.
Captain Rodney received a commendation for gallantry. He rewarded Billy by having him taught to read and write, and then making him a midshipman. Billy hated being educated at first. Years afterwards, though, wearing his lieutenant's coat, he felt more grateful.
And he never forgot the firedrake, or doubted for a minute in his life that the world was an amazing place.