Free Web NovelChapter 38: Just in Time to Take Credit
James hauled the wheel over as far as the Rose’s battered bow would let him.
"Helm hard over, NOW! Cudjoe, get on those braces! Swing that yard! I need every inch we can steal from her!"
Cudjoe already moved before the words were out. He grabbed two sailors and practically dragged them toward the lines, roaring about useless hands and dead men’s wages. Whatever else he said vanished beneath the noise of battle.
"Christ, here it comes again!" someone shouted from amidships.
"Get down! Hold on to somethin’, ye fools!"
The Rose answered the helm, but not quickly.
The damaged bow groaned from the strain of the ram. Every timber forward of the mast seemed to protest being asked for one more effort tonight. James felt the delay. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was a fraction he couldn’t afford.
The stern was swinging, just not fast enough.
Through the smoke, San Felipe’s gunports seemed to grow larger with every heartbeat. Along her rail, matches burned steadily.
Then the night split apart with a sound none of them had heard before.
A shrill scream climbed through the darkness, rising higher and higher until it seemed impossible that anything could stay airborne that long. The noise hung overhead for a heartbeat.
Then came the impact.
The explosion flashed beneath the smoke, bright enough to light it from below like trapped lightning.
The shell struck San Felipe’s deck near her gun crews.
One moment the Spanish sailors were crouched at their stations.
The next they weren’t.
Fire burst across the deck and burning scraps of cartridge and wadding scattered in every direction. The neat line of Spaniards waiting for the order to fire dissolved in an instant.
Men were thrown from their feet. Others stumbled through smoke and flame with blood running from fresh wounds. Some fell and did not rise. Shipmates dragged the wounded clear while fire spread through a deck crowded with powder.
"What in the hell was that?" someone yelled from the Rose.
"That weren’t us!"
"Where’d it come from?"
The answer emerged from the smoke.
It parted around a familiar shadow.
The Revenge cut through the haze, already in position, already sliding alongside San Felipe’s exposed flank. She was close enough that the firelight from the burning Spanish deck outlined her hull in sharp black against the dark sea.
Thatch stood at the wheel.
Across forty yards of smoke and wreckage, his eyes found James’s.
The look lasted only a moment.
It was enough.
Both men understood exactly what was about to happen.
"Fire as she bears!"
Thatch’s voice carried cleanly across the water.
The Revenge answered at once.
Her entire broadside erupted in light and thunder. Eight guns fired together into a ship whose crew no longer had orders and no longer had time to receive them.
San Felipe’s side burst apart like staves beneath an axe.
Her mainmast leaned.
Paused.
Then crashed over the side in a tangled mass of rigging and canvas. Sailors screamed as it dragged men into the sea with it. Smoke and fire poured upward through the hatchways until it became impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
San Felipe did manage to fire back.
It accomplished nothing.
The few shots that discharged went wide and two splashed harmlessly into the water between the ships. Another passed above the Rose’s quarterdeck without striking anything at all.
Whatever destruction San Felipe had intended for James’s ship, she never got the chance to finish it.
When the smoke cleared, she sat heavily in the water. Flames crawled up her rigging. Her crew had abandoned the guns and any pretense of continuing the fight.
"He cut that fine."
Mackerel Jim shifted against the mainmast, cradling his bloodied arm as casually as a man discussing the weather.
"Knew it the second I heard that whistle overhead. Told Pete so meself, didn’t I, Pete?"
"Ye told me nothin’."
Pete tugged a splinter free from what remained of his coat.
"Did ye see that?"
Kit’s voice floated down from rigging. "The mortar dropped right on top of ’em! Right when they had us dead to rights! That’s the bit they’ll be tellin’ in Nassau for years. Mark me!"
James laughed despite the smoke burning his eyes.
Before he fully decided to, he found himself shouting across the water.
"Bloody generous of ye to show up, Thatch! Another minute and I’d have had to do it myself!"
"Another minute and ye’d have had a hole clean through that stern of yers, Calloway!"
Even at this distance James could hear the grin in Thatch’s voice.
"Try lookin’ a bit grateful! I came all this way!"
"Aye, ye took yer sweet time about it!"
"I was busy savin’ yer arse! A man can only do one miracle at once!"
James grinned and let him keep the final word.
Mostly because there wasn’t time to argue properly.
The battle, or what remained of it, stretched across the dark water.
La Esperanza had already gone down somewhere behind them. Nothing remained except drifting wreckage and scattered survivors.
La Trinidad sat low in the sea, sinking by the bow. Her crew had long since abandoned her for whatever boats they could find.
San Diego listed heavily where the Rose had left her, water pouring through the wound opened by the ram.
Santa Isabel drifted near the battle with her foresail gone and no fight left in her.
And San Felipe burned.
Broken and defeated, she was already striking her colors. The flag jerked downward along the halyard as the men still aboard reached the obvious conclusion that surrender was considerably cheaper than the alternative.
"I’ve sailed with pirates, privateers, smugglers, and murderers." frёeωebɳovel.com
Cudjoe watched the colors descend.
"There’s easier ways to earn a livin’, ye know."
There was still a trace of disbelief in his voice.
"Aye, but they rarely leave three treasure ships sittin’ about waitin’ for us."
James grinned.
Then he looked past the shattered escort and toward the open water beyond.
The three cargo ships were still there.
Exactly where they’d been left.
Around them floated the remains of an escort that was burning, sinking, or surrendering.
James could already see movement along their rails. Sailors watched from the decks, men who had just seen five Guarda Costa sloops cease to matter in less than an hour.
The battle was over.
The prize, however, was still waiting.
