Chapter 179: Sink the Spaniard, Save the Spaniard

Across the water, the Santa Bárbara snapped with a low, grinding groan that no decent ship ought to make. The lass had already been broken twice and, by any sensible accounting, it had to be enough.

Yet she was turning, slow and awkward, her bow swinging back toward the larboard side instead of quietly to the bottom of the sea, where a wreck properly belongs.

Under that groan came another cry, much less grand and much more troublesome. The grapples struck wood in quick blows beyond the starboard rail.

James and Tomás were back at the stern, both with blood drying dark across their hands.

Tomás charged for the companionway, while James went toward the larboard rail where Sam, Jim, and Kit were scrambling among the aftermath of the battery.

Milagros required no instruction and cut across the deck after Tomás, toward the gundeck below.

Five guns were still loaded and ready to fire. Two below, three on the larboard rail.

Santa Bárbara was coming on beyond the rail by then. James reckoned better than half her crew were still on their feet, either stubborn enough to keep fighting or foolish enough to believe a wiser captain would have stopped by now.

He got his breath under control and called the only command that made sense.

Another broadside into her hull would kill more of her men, but she still had enough men to keep coming. Bring down her mast and the fight would be over.

His voice cracked across the deck.

"Lay for the mainmast! Every piece, together, on my word, and mind ye lay her high!"

Sam had his gun ready, sighting along the barrel with the patience of a gambler.

"Fancy that, from a crew that couldn’t hit a barn door a week back!"

Jim called from two guns down, driving his own charge home with both hands. "Speak for yerself, I’ve hit finer things than barns!"

"Fire!"

All five guns roared together.

Their carriages slammed backward against the breeching ropes, and for one breath the smoke hid everything that mattered.

James could not tell whether they had struck her or merely frightened the gulls.

Then the smoke began to thin.

Sam’s shot had found the mast, and so had Jim’s. Both cannonballs had struck high enough to do the work, and the standing rigging faltered almost at once, one shroud after another snapping like whips.

The spar and torn canvas folded sideways together while the sailors working above the deck went down with them.

The mast came down across with a splintering crash, smashing the men beneath it into the planks. Those caught in the falling rigging were jerked off their feet and dragged through the wreckage before the slack lines whipped them over the rail.

Their cries broke across the water, then vanished beneath the crash of canvas and timber as the sea took them.

Kit muttered, insulted by the whole affair. "Bloody hell, mine went wide."

Santa Bárbara wallowed dead in the sea while the Rosario sailed on, leaving her behind.

James laughed once, short and hard.

"Some wounded beast don’t always know it’s dead yet, aye? Reckon she knows it now."

Unfortunately, there was no time to enjoy the joke.

A sharper crack came from across the ship.

James rushed across the open deck.

What he found waiting for him, at the starboard rail, was an even worse situation.

La Golondrina was alongside now, close enough that there was scarcely room for daylight between the two ships.

Two grapples had bitten into the rail, and a boarding timber was wedged across beside them, broad enough for two men to cross together instead of trusting their lives to a bare rope.

The Spanish sailors were already pouring over in large numbers while more packed the sloop and waited for their turn.

Tomás and Milagros had got one of the guns around toward the nearest grapple and wrestled it into place.

"Grape!"

Milagros shoved the canister down the barrel without any of the ceremony a gunner might have preferred.

Tomás drove the charge in behind it and stepped clear.

The gun spoke, and the nearest grapeshot vanished.

Dozens of iron shards tore through the men clinging to the grapple, bursting through flesh as it carried them from the rope. Their blood sprayed across the rail and the deck below as the whole knot of sailors came apart, falling in a tangle of severed rope and broken timber into the water.

"¡Toma esa, cabrones!"¹

Milagros grinned as if she had finally found the one place in the world where she belonged.

Tomás muttered under his breath while hauling the gun around for the second line.

"San Miguel, guía esta mano."¹

He touched the match himself.

The second grapple went just as badly for the sailors hanging from it. The shot struck through the packed sailors at the rail, tearing into the mass of them and throwing blood across the splintered timber, enough to knock them loose together, limbs and rope tumbling into the water while the grapple itself tore free and came clattering back against the hull.

The boarding timber was another problem altogether.

Their boots were reaching the deck now, and more were crowding onto the plank behind them with every heartbeat.

James threw himself behind the one gun on that stretch of rail, and began dragging the carriage around toward the timber and whatever was crossing it.

Match in hand. Lay the gun. Fire.

He never reached the last step.

Some couple Spaniards had already crossed the timber while his back was turned, and their boots struck the deck almost unheard beneath the gunfire.

One hand seized his arm and wrenched it wide against the rail while another arm locked around his throat from behind, crushing the breath out of him.

The grip bit hard enough to make his vision jump, while his shoulder twisted against the rail, and his boots scraped helplessly across the deck before the combined weight hauled them clear. The burning match trembled in his fingers while the arm around his throat tightened until there was nothing left in his lungs to give.

For a moment both men’s weight took his boots off the deck.

James was dragged backward, the match still burning uselessly in his free hand.

The rail, the smoke, and the sky swung sideways together as the gun he had never managed to fire slid farther away.