Chapter 222: An Easier Kind of War

The Rose’s fight, and the Queen Anne’s fight, would have to wait for their own telling. The Grand Dame’s quarrel came to a head first, and of the three, hers was the easier war.

The Guadalupe, coming in to meet her, showed much the same shape as the Dame herself, broad in the middle and heavy in the water. She was a galleon built to carry cargo rather than outrun trouble, and at any respectable distance the two could have passed for sisters.

The difference was in the guns and the crew behind them.

Forty against the Dame’s forty-six, and a crew taken from garrison duty in some sleepy port against sailors hardened by savage months in Port Royal.

On the old lady, Rodrigo held the wheel with one hand loose on the spokes. His parrot muttered on his shoulder in old Spanish that nobody aboard could translate.

"Mmrr sí... las cuentas... maldito maese... tres barriles... no, cuatro... mmrr... ¡Alvarez!... ¿dónde puse..." ¹

The captain then called for the bird. "¡Alvarez! ¡Alvarez, voto a Dios, traedme acá el catalejo! ¿Qué hacéis, hombre? ¿He de ordenaros cada menester como cuando llevabais las cuentas? ¡El catalejo, digo! ¡Traédmelo presto, que tengo una nave delante y no pienso combatir a tientas por vuestra maldita holgazanería!¹"

The name came out as naturally as breathing, though Alvarez had been dead thirty years and Rodrigo apparently saw no reason to let that interfere.

Nevertheless, the parrot objected the name.

"¡Catalejo! ¡Catalejo! ¡Alvarez! ¡Traed el catalejo! ¡Traed! ¡Traed! ¡Maldito maese!"¹

Then the range began to close, and the old man changed.

He took to the wheel as though he and the ship had done this a hundred times together. The delusions vanished from him as easily as a coat slipped from a shoulder.

What remained was a conquistador who had stood at a thousand wheels before this one, in worse water and against worse odds, with more years behind him than anyone else on that deck had lived through twice.

Roberts moved across the gun deck below with his board tucked under one arm, checking each piece as he went, making sure powder and shot were ready and enough crew stood ready to serve each gun.

His borrowed coat remained buttoned to the throat, and if the sweat bothered him, he didn’t consider it worth mention. "Powder’s open, the spare spars are below, and the sand is fresh laid. By the articles of common sense, Captain, we are presently in very good standing with Providence."

Rodrigo nodded once. He was sharp now, with no trace of the dreamer left in his voice.

"And the galley?"

"Secured, sir. The tea is under guard as well. It would be a poor sort of victory to survive the Spaniard and find the pot gone when we came to celebrate it."

The two ships came onto side by side and held there, close enough now that a sailor could count the gunports if he had nothing better to do with his courage.

Rodrigo’s command went across the deck, certain, old habit finding old words without needing to search for them.

"¡Fuego a discreción, en cuanto la tengáis a tiro!"¹

Every gunner aboard understood him, whether he knew the Spanish or not.

Both ships roared.

The Dame’s broadside came down as one disciplined blow. Twenty-three guns fired by sailors who had drilled the motion into their hands, and the whole side of the ship seemed to leap with flame and smoke, the concussion rolling across the water hard enough to shake the deck beneath their feet.

Iron slammed into the Guadalupe’s side in a single murderous rush, and from there timber burst into white splinters, some punching through sailors where they stood, scything across the deck and sending bodies tumbling among the guns.

Gun crews were thrown from their feet or cut through before they had properly begun their work, and blood washed across the planks beneath boots and bare feet, mixing with splintered wood, torn canvas, and the blackened mess of powder smoke.

The cries rose all along the deck, then broke apart beneath the thunder of the guns. More never had the opportunity.

Smoke rolled thick from Guadalupe’s flank before her own guns answered, and when they finally did, the reply was ragged and thin. Half her battery fired late or not at all, while shot fell short or wide of anything worth hitting.

Where the smoke cleared, sailors were dragging the wounded aside or simply lying where the broadside had left them, while blood and wreckage marked the places where the guns had stood.

A garrison crew might have brought courage to the fight, but courage alone was poor competition for sailors hardened by the wickedest city on earth.

Aboard the Dame, Bran had the crew working overtime. She shouted for a slack rope overhead with sharpened bite. "That brace, ye lazy sods, before the whole yard comes down on ’em fools head! I’ll not have my riggin’ shamed in front of a fuckin’ Spaniard!"

It held.

She moved on without waiting for anybody to thank her.

The Dame reloaded quickly to press her advantage, and then fired again. The guns spoke and another wall of flame punched outward from the gunports. The broadside opened worse wounds, tearing away more of the Guadalupe’s timber and shutting down the gun crews.

More planks and fittings flew outward with the impact, and the Spaniard’s deck vanished again beneath smoke, splinters, and the cries of sailors caught in the wreckage.

This time the Spaniard found the Dame in return.

Iron struck high and tore away a length of it in a hard spray of splinters. The rail burst apart under the shot, fragments whipping across the deck as sailors went down in the wreckage.

Beside the bodies, some gunner stayed at his post without breaking rhythm, ramming the next charge home as steadily as if he had been born to it.

Only three weeks earlier, a raised voice had been enough to make him flinch.

An iron shot was apparently less troubling now.

More fire followed close behind, an exchange rather than one clean blow, and by the end of it the Guadalupe wore her wounds plainly enough for anyone to read.

She had taken on enough of a list that half her crew seemed to be fighting the sea as hard as they fought the guns still firing at them. Water surged against her wounded side, washing through shattered timber while the remaining crew struggled to keep their footing among the wreckage.

Smoke poured from her gunports, and blood darkened the decks wherever the broadsides had found their mark.

Roberts made his analysis, watching the smoke thin until the answer became obvious.

More guns were still answering on the Dame’s side. More sailors were still standing at their posts than the Spaniard had left standing at hers.

Across the Guadalupe’s deck, whole stretches of her gun crews had been cut down, leaving silent carriages among the smoke and shattered wood. Whatever the numbers had looked like before, they were telling a much simpler story now.

"She is beaten, Captain. The guns have given their judgment, the crew have heard the sentence, and only the Spaniard’s pride remains to plead its case."

Rodrigo watched the galleon a moment longer. "A fight won on paper still needs to end on the water, hijo. She has struck no surrender, and she has not gone under either. Until she does one or the other, we keep our guns run out."

The Dame kept her course, canvas trimmed tight and steady beneath her. Her decks were scarred by shot and littered with splinters, but the guns still stood ready, their crews working through the smoke.

Across the water, the Guadalupe rode low, wounded, and stubborn, neither struck nor sunk nor finished. Her torn canvas hung from the yards, her battered flank streamed smoke, and the sea showed dark through the rents in her hull.

Every sign said the fight was decided.

The only thing that mattered now was the choice she had yet to make, surrender or sinking.