Chapter 220: A Fair Fight

The three sloops held their approach, guns run out and matches burning low. Each waited on the others before committing to whatever grand idea they meant to carry out together.

Black Sam understood it well enough. Three separate threats trying to turn themselves into one great rush against a ship that already proved her mettle. He had no intention of letting that happen to the Fortune, not after the fight she’d already handed the Spanish Crown.

"Bring her round."

He called down the Marianne’s deck, one hand on the wheel.

"That one on the near flank, the one fancyin’ herself invited to a party."

Williams looked over the numbers of guns.

"Fourteen against twelve."

He sounded almost pleased by it. "First good wager I’ve seen all mornin’. Might be worth the bother of winnin’ one clean, instead of watchin’ another ship do all the sportin’ work for us."

"Then let’s make good use of it, Williams."

The Marianne answered the helm and cut hard across the sloop’s course. It forced her to choose a fresh fight whether she fancied one or not.

She fancied it well enough.

Both ships ran out their guns inside the same heartbeat, and the broadsides went off so close together that the two roars sounded like one.

The Spaniard’s iron tore a length of rail from the Marianne’s waist and put many pirates down together in the wreckage. They vanished beneath the broken rail or lay twisted among the splinters, hands pressed uselessly against wounds that soaked their shirts red. The cries went up from behind the guns, followed by sharp calls.

Blood spread quick across boards gone slick beneath their feet, into the scuppers as the Marianne heeled away from the strike.

The Marianne’s reply tore into canvas and cordage on the sloop’s foremast. Cannonballs punched through the sail in a dozen places before smashing into the mast itself, and the timber groaned under the blows.

Rigging parted in whipcracks over the guns, and her crew scrambled aloft to save what they could. The Spaniards above tumbled and struck the deck hard in squelching sounds.

Neither ship broke from the exchange and both crews went straight back to their guns, swabbing and loading through smoke the wind hadn’t the decency to carry away quickly.

On the Marianne, the bodies were dragged clear of the deck and the wounded shoved against whatever shelter the crew could give them, while the gunners rammed home their next charges.

"Gods, ’tis a fair fight fer once! No tricks, swarm o’ ships, nor bloody devilry!"

"Aye, an’ after watchin’ the Rose an’ Fortune fight, I near forgot what a broadside looked like!"

Bellamy read the wind under the sloop’s next roll and knew her turn before she’d committed to it herself.

He kept the weather gage through the whole business, wind at his back and the Spaniard clawing for every foot of water she wanted. When the next exchange came, the advantage was his outright.

The broadside caught the sloop high and low together.

One line of shot brought her foremast down across the deck in a ruin of spar and torn canvas, burying half her forward battery beneath it. The Spaniards disappeared beneath the falling wreckage, and the deck filled with shouts as those still standing hacked at ropes and canvas to free them.

The other punched in low enough to set the sea working through boards, and water burst through the new holes in dirty sheets, washing loose splinters and blood across the deck as the sloop began to drag her damaged side deeper into the swell.

She fell out of the fight dismasted and crippled, still afloat, still drifting, her crew fighting canvas and flooding at the same time with nothing left over for anything that could be called a fight.

Her remaining sails hung uselessly from the surviving mast, and every attempt to work the ship brought another shudder through the wounded hull. The crew crowded the deck with buckets, axes, and lengths of rope, shouting over one another as they tried to keep her from sinking beneath them.

Bellamy grinned at that, wide and unguarded. "There’s the difference between winnin’ with a trick and winnin’ with yer own two hands, Williams. Feels a sight better, don’t it."

"Coin’s coin either way, Captain. I’ll take mine however it comes."

"Christ, ye’ve no soul left in ye at all."

"Never claimed to have one, did I?"

Two sloops remained for the Fortune, and Bonnet was ready for them.

One hung back, cautious, hunting a clean shot from range. The other pressed in close, bold enough to believe she had the shot she needed.

Bonnet let the Fortune’s scarred flank drift open toward the cautious one, leaving her a target too tempting to ignore, while he put every ounce of speed the ship had towards the bolder Spaniard instead.

He informed courteously even then. "She may take the bait, or she may not. Either way, I confess I’d sooner spend the risk on my own terms than leave the choosing of it to the Spaniard."

Mary made that choice for her own guns.

She stood over the nearest piece with one hand flat against the barrel, calling her aim down the deck.

"Lay her low, lads! Through the belly, and let the sea finish it!"

The Fortune closed on the bold sloop faster than any hull her size had business to accomplish. The cautious one found only empty water where her target ought to have been.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] - Wind Dancer

"Fire as she bears!"

The cannonballs went in exactly as called, low along the waterline, and the hull opened beneath the surface in a wound the sea wasted no time finding. The first shot punched through below the waist and blew a ragged hole through the planking, sending a spray of seawater and splinters through the waist.

The crew abandoned the guns wholesale to fight the water instead, but buckets and orders couldn’t stop the flood of seawater. The wounded ship lurched, her guns breaking loose from their tackles and crashing against the bulwarks, and the sailors seized whatever they could reach as the deck climbed beneath their feet, or were swept bodily toward the low side.

More than a few went into the sea themselves before the ship went down by the head at last, slow and complete, her colors trailing after her. Her stern rose as the water took her forward deck, leaving Spaniards clinging to wreckage and screaming for help that could no longer reach them.

Then the hull slid beneath the swell, her last mast vanishing after it, and the cries were swallowed by the sea.

The cautious sloop found her nerve at last and put her broadside through the chance Bonnet had left for her.

Iron struck the Fortune’s already-battered flank, tearing away another stretch of rail and cutting clean through the rigging above it. The impact threw pirates from their feet and smashed guns from their carriages, and the gun crews went down together in the wreckage, blood splashing quick through fresh splinters laid over the scars.

The Fortune shuddered under the blow but kept her way, sails drawing hard as her crew cleared the wreckage from the deck. She came about onto the sloop, guns run out and matches lit, point-blank and with no room left for argument.

Her partner was already gone under, and there was nowhere left to run.

Beyond all that, the battle hadn’t stopped. San Felipe el Real and her three galleons crept on regardless of what five sloops had or hadn’t managed against two ships built to embarrass them both.

Five accounted for, one fashion or another, and the day business only half finished.