He pictured the lead balls tearing into howling Indians, ripping their flesh apart. He remembered Helene's body in Lake Michigan. He remembered Black Salmon's lash on his back. He saw—as he had seen them two weeks ago—the heap of blackened, split logs that had been Victoire, his home, the place where Clarissa, Phil and Andy died. He saw the mound of earth in the family cemetery where they lay together. 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.