“Tell your mother to be more careful! Making such a commotion, if you alarm the pleasure boat, Old Harris will have to act ahead of schedule...” the lean man outside shouted in a low voice.

Edward Sullivan jumped over and bolted the cabin door, hoping to delay the lean man outside for a moment. He had just taken down his sword when a miserable scream rang out—most likely the boatman’s life was forfeit. Edward Sullivan didn’t care about anything else; he swung his sword like a knife and slashed at the man hiding in the corner of the cabin.

The man’s eyes had been stabbed and were bleeding, so he couldn’t see how long the broken blade in his hand was. He raised his hand to block, following the sound of the wind, but missed, and the steel sword was driven straight into his brow bone. The sword got stuck in the bone, and Edward Sullivan didn’t have the strength to pull it out. Hearing the sound of someone banging on the door behind him, he didn’t hesitate for a second—he picked up the broken blade, climbed out the window, and jumped out. His body plunged into the water, and he swam under the stern’s wooden oar before surfacing to catch his breath.

By now, several boats at the ferry, including the pleasure boat, had moved seventy or eighty meters away from the riverbank, and chaos had erupted. Two boats had even caught fire, and in the blink of an eye, the flames turned the river and night sky a blazing red. People were constantly being cut down and falling into the water. On one of the swallowtail boats, two archers had arrows nocked, watching the water’s surface. Edward Sullivan hid behind the wooden oar, not daring to show himself. After a while, he heard someone jump onto the black-awning boat and ask, “Peter Brooks, what’s going on?”

“Tiger slipped up, the soft-legged shrimp jumped into the water...” It was the voice of the lean man.

“Damn it, how could Tiger mess up?”

“Tiger went into the cabin to kill, but was ambushed. When I went in to check, his brow had been struck by an iron sword, the window was open, and the person was already gone... Should we send two men into the water to chase him?”

“A soft-legged shrimp in the water is like a sinker—he’ll die even faster. Ignore him... Hurry up and get on the pleasure boat, we can’t let it reach the shore.”

At this moment, Edward Sullivan’s body was submerged in the water up to his nose—he didn’t look like a sinking stone at all.

The commotion here had also alarmed those on shore. At the disaster relief camp on the hilltop, many torches were lit one after another, and dozens of dark figures could be seen running toward the ferry, all holding weapons—these were the knife and bowmen stationed on the hill.

The awakened disaster victims also shouted in support from all over the hills: “Master Brooks is here, and the river bandits dare to come courting death!”

“Master Brooks says, kill a bandit and you’ll be rewarded with silver. No matter if you’re an official or a commoner, kill one bandit and get ten taels of silver.”

Some of the bolder disaster victims even ran toward the ferry with the knife and bowmen.

“This jinx is in Baisha County, it’s a tough situation. Come with me. Burn this boat, and whatever you do, don’t let it reach the shore.”

Edward Sullivan listened to the voices at the bow of the black-awning boat and wondered if the bandits were actually wary of the Weiyang prefect William Brooks. Then he saw the two men at the bow abandon the black-awning boat and jump onto a three-masted sand ship about the same height as the pleasure boat. Several long poles with iron hooks were extended from the sand ship and latched onto the pleasure boat, quickly pulling the two boats together. Dozens of bandits gathered at the bow, weapons in hand, ready to storm the pleasure boat.

Seeing this, Edward Sullivan was now certain the bandits were after Grace Bennett, and that their plan was meticulous. Under the pretense of coming to listen to music at night, they had sent people to sneak onto other boats at the ferry from the shore, so that when they struck, they could force these boats away from the riverbank, preventing them from being used by those on shore to support the pleasure boat. That three-masted ship was likely the main warship of the river bandits this time. It looked like a sea vessel—who knew when it had slipped in and docked at the ferry without arousing suspicion? Clearly, many elite bandits were hidden aboard, and now they were all being put to use.

The seven or eight boats moored at the ferry were all small to medium-sized merchant or fishing boats, with few crew and no defenses, so they were silently taken over.

On Grace Bennett’s pleasure boat, the cook, maids, and servant women didn’t need to be considered. Besides the three-person team of John Foster and his apprentice acting as guards, they had also hired boatmen and oarsmen from the Jiangning river guild—more than ten people in total—so they weren’t completely defenseless. For now, no bandits had managed to get onto the pleasure boat. John Foster stood at the bow, holding a round shield in his left hand and a short halberd in his right, forcing a river bandit trying to board back into the water. Edward Sullivan was slightly surprised—he had thought John Foster was just a down-and-out martial artist. After all, what ordinary martial artist would carry a short halberd as a personal weapon? The hired boatmen and oarsmen had spent years on rivers and lakes and had encountered river bandits before. Under the command of John Foster and the lead boatman, they armed themselves and prepared to fend off the bandits.

Edward Sullivan saw that the pleasure boat was less than thirty zhang from the shore, and since it was a rowboat with six wooden oars on each side, the crew could reach the shore in moments. What’s more, the county yamen’s knife and bowmen on shore could provide covering fire. If the bandits couldn’t storm the pleasure boat in time and let it reach the shore to join up with Baisha County’s knife and bowmen, the pleasure boat would become a fast warship for the authorities to pursue the bandits.

The river bandits had anticipated this. Besides the three black-awning boats packed with bandits at the bow, the other boats dragged to the middle of the river were set on fire. After the bandits on the three-masted ship hooked the pleasure boat, they quickly unfurled the sails and began dragging the pleasure boat toward the far side of the river. Edward Sullivan, hidden in the water, watched all this and thought to himself how thorough their plan was.

The fire on the black-awning boats was growing. Edward Sullivan, still hidden underwater, was safe for the moment, but he didn’t dare make any rash moves. In all this chaos, who knew if swimming toward the shore would get him killed by mistake?