er. What little had been
left of them.

The cannon's heat was his rage. The cannon's boom was his roar. The
grapeshot was his vengeance. He hurled his hatred over the water and
into the trees, blowing Indian bodies to shreds.

He heard something hum past his head and plunk into the pilot house
behind him. He saw smoke puff from the shadowy base of a clump of
spruces. Another puff, and another. The reports of rifles carried across
the water.

"Sir!" Kingsbury's hand gripped his shoulder, the fingers digging in.

Raoul realized he had been momentarily out of his mind with fury.
Breathing heavily, he got his eyes focused on the brown-mustached
lieutenant.

"Get down, sir, before you get hit."

Reluctantly, because he wanted to see where the grapeshot was hitting,
Raoul crouched down behind a hay bale. When he'd first come out on deck
he'd been afraid of being shot at. Now he felt sure they couldn't hit
him.

The six-pounder repeatedly tore into the area on shore where powder
smoke had appeared. Raoul saw no sign of Indian bodies, but the firing
from the trees stopped.

"Gawd, I'd hate to be on the angry side of this gun," said Levi Pope.

A dozen or more Indians burst from the trees and dove into the water.
Some of them started swimming out toward the _Victory_; others turned
south, following the current. Some just splashed helplessly.

"Shoot!" Raoul shouted.

Gleefully, he ran into the pilot's house and grabbed his breech-loading
Hall rifle. He rushed back to stand by the rail. He took aim at the
nearest Indian in the water. He heard his breath coming heavy, as it did
when he was in bed with a woman.

Only the warrior's shaven head, scalplock flowing behind, was far enough
out of the water to present a clear target. The Indian seemed to be
trying to swim past the _Victory_, toward the distant shore opposite.
Raoul took his time aiming at the shiny brown dome and pulled the
trigger. He saw a splash of red, then the Indian's arms and legs stopped
moving and the body drifted southward with the current.

Pushing cloth-wrapped bullets down the tight, rifled bores of their
muzzle-loaders with practiced speed, Raoul's men could easily get off
three shots or more in a minute. The sky blue of the river soon turned
red with blood from bodies that floated swiftly away.

"Yee-hah!" Hodge Hode yelled. "This is more fun than huntin' wild
goose."

"The ones we do not get, they will drown," said Armand Perrault. "The