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Sixty-Nine

Shouts awakened Kryger. His first reaction was that men were cheering overhead; they must have gotten word that the fortress was taken, or the king. Whatever.

He rolled out of bed and was pulling on his drawers beneath his nightshirt when he heard the shouts again. They were not cheers. He had his nightshirt off and was putting on his shirt when he heard an enormous explosion, as if nearby some ship's powder store had blown.

Werlingus pounded on the cabin door. "Lord Kryger!" he shouted. "Lord Kryger! Something is happening!"

"Go! I'll be out in a minute!"

Kryger grimaced as he pulled on his trousers and buttoned them. "Fool! Of course something's happening," he muttered, then heard another explosion, this one small, and muffled as if under water, then another muffled but large, close, and the ship twitched beneath his feet. The shouting loudened, became urgent. Quickly he shrugged into his jacket, pulled on shoes, hurried into and along the passageway. Climbing the companionway, he was aware of commotion on deck, and what sounded like two more muffled explosions.

Emerging under the cloudy night sky, he paused. There was a deckhouse amidships; vaguely he saw sailors disappearing into it, down into the vacant troop hold. Nearby, to port, some debris was burning on the water. Kryger started aft toward the quarterdeck, concerned, confused. He couldn't imagine what was happening. Muffled explosions continued singly and by twos and threes, some seeming nearby, some at the edge of hearing.

The captain wasn't there, but the admiral and the commander-in-chief were. Neither was talking. Faces carven, eyes narrowed, they were staring shoreward, where now the guns were all but silent.

"What is it?" Kryger asked. "What's going on?"

It was the admiral who answered. "Something's causing explosions in the ships."

As if to punctuate his statement, demonstrating it, there was a string of the dull thudding explosions, half a dozen within two or three seconds.

"But—What could be causing them?"

"Shut up and look!" It was the CIC who spoke, his voice irritated, his arm pointing. Kryger looked. Slowly a nearby ship was heeling, her masts silhouetted against fire-ruddied cloud. They canted at ten degrees, twelve . . . elsewhere were two more dull explosions, another, another, but his eyes stayed fixed on the leaning ship. Thud! Then thud! again, louder, nearer, another farther off, two more almost simultaneous. The masts he watched leaned farther, farther. At about forty degrees they accelerated from their own weight, and he heard them snap. The vessel rolled slowly onto her side; water spilled into her broken stack, and her boilers exploded with a roar, blowing her stern apart.

As he watched her sink, there was another explosion in the flagship, almost under his feet. The deck beneath him had been tilting gradually forward. Now there was an abrupt lurch. Her captain came out of the midships deckhouse and shouted to abandon ship, then came over and ordered Kryger and the two ranking officers to a lifeboat.

While they moved to it, down the roadstead another ship blew apart as her powder stores exploded.

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Framed