Chapter 224: The Birth of a Legendary Pirate

It was madness by any reckoning.

Two galleons had them boxed in on both quarters.

Blackbeard put the wheel over hard and drove the Queen Anne straight through the space between the two Spaniards.

"BRING HER IN TIGHT, ye rot-livered pack of sodomites!"

His voice thundered the whole length of the ship and came back off the water twice.

"Close enough to spit on both the whores at once!"

The Queen Anne came around hard, her canvas cracking as she ate up the last stretch of water. Her hull heeled into the turn, timbers groaning beneath the strain, while spray burst white along her bow and the two Spanish hulls seemed to swell larger with every yard she ate up.

"The first man who slacks a line, drops a match, or even looks like he’s thinkin’ of runnin’, I’ll have him keelhauled under this very keel till the barnacles shave him down to bone!"

Blackbeard kept the wheel over.

"Then strung from the yardarm by whatever’s left of his guts for the gulls to fight over!"

By the time Carmen and Rosario understood what he intended, there was no distance left between any of the three ships.

"And when they’re done, I’ll have the carpenter make belayin’ pins out of what’s left, so every man aboard can curse his name every time he makes fast a line!"

Whatever happened next would happen close enough to count the buttons on a man’s coat.

"Mortar’s laid for Rosario! Elevation, Captain?"

"None! Lay her flat and throw it in their belly!"

That was no way to fire a mortar, and every man serving the piece knew it.

A mortar wanted a high, slow arc and some distance so its shell could fall where nobody could shoot back. Laid flat like a great smoothbore, it put its crew close enough for men on Rosario’s rail to pepper them with musket balls while they worked.

Even then, not a soul argued with the captain. They had seen enough of his temper to know when an argument was a luxury.

The mortar crew heaved the shell into place, hauled back, and touched her off.

The piece thundered so violently that smoke and sparks vomited across the deck, and the shell went skipping low over the water before smashing into Rosario’s hull just above the waterline.

Timber burst outward in a shower of splinters, iron, and smoke, ripping a ragged black mouth through the planking.

Spaniards across the Rosario’s deck were thrown off their feet as fragments scythed through them, while blood splashed across the rail and deckboards. The wound gaped at the waterline, already sucking in the sea.

Sailors who had spent the battle watching their sister ship bleed now saw what it cost when Rosario finally joined the fight.

Both of the Queen Anne’s batteries fired together in that same breath.

Port and starboard guns went out almost at once, and the broadsides erupted in a single wall of flame and smoke.

Iron screamed across the water and smashed into Carmen’s flank and Rosario’s together, punching through planks, bursting guns from their trucks, and shredding rigging as timber exploded from both hulls.

Blood and screaming rose from two decks that, a moment before, had known only one ship’s misery.

Carmen, already gutted by the fighting, found enough life left in her spent hull to answer once more.

Her shot came low across the Queen Anne’s waist and swept a whole gun crew off their feet in a spray of blood and broken rope. The crew vanished beneath a storm of splintered wood and torn tackle, their blood spattering the guns and deck around them.

The survivors stumbled through the wreckage, dragging the wounded clear while loose rope and broken timber whipped across the deck.

Rosario answered a heartbeat later, her first shot of the entire battle.

It struck the Queen Anne’s rail amidships and tore twelve feet of it into the sea, taking two sailors with it who had been leaning there a moment before.

The rail exploded into a storm of splinters. Sailors were hurled backward as shattered timber and iron tore through the waist, and the wreckage vanished over the side in a churn of blood and white water.

Smoke rolled thick between all three hulls, and for a long while neither side could see enough of the other to know whether it was winning, losing, or merely getting shot at in the dark. Guns flashed blindly through the smoke, their reports rolling together until the whole bay seemed to shake.

Musket fire cracked from somewhere in the murk, followed by shouts, screams, and the splintering crash of shot striking timber.

It was in that smoke that the Queen Anne came nearest to breaking.

The crew caught between fire on both quarters at once forgot, for a moment, what they had signed on for.

The gunners froze with their match halfway to the touchhole, staring at nothing.

Then some dropped their rammer and stood there with hands shaking too badly to pick it up again.

Israel Hands crossed the deck and hauled the frozen gunners bodily back to their piece by the collars. Caesar did much the same three guns down, lifting gunners off his feet and putting them back at their station.

Then Blackbeard found his second wind, and this one went farther and did considerably worse.

"STAND TO YER GUNS, the whole rotten lot of ye!"

The crew had barely recovered from the last exchange before his voice came crashing over them again. "I swear before God and every fish in this sea I’ll drag the next coward from hell by his ankle, feed him to Caesar’s pot, and serve him to the rest of ye for supper with his boots still buckled on for garnish!"

A gun crew hauled another charge into place.

"I’ll pull every tooth from his head with these two hands and dice with ’em for his miserable soul!"

Sailors bent to their work.

"I’ll marry the wretch to a barnacle before the whole crew and pitch the happy couple over the rail still exchangin’ their vows!"

Whatever terror the guns had put into that crew, it was a small thing beside what their own captain had just put there.

Every hand still standing found his gun again inside a breath, and this time nobody’s fingers shook.

The second exchange came harder than the first.

Carmen’s guns stayed silent, every man who had served them either dead, bleeding, or scrambling through shattered timber while the sea poured in faster than any man could fight it.

The Queen Anne’s broadside went into her, striking the wounds already carved into her by the mortar and the first two broadsides.

Rosario found her second hit in the same exchange.

Her shot punched through amidships and knocked three guns clean off their trucks, crushing sailors beneath the wreckage while the rest of the crews scrambled clear through smoke and blood.

The guns toppled sideways in a tangle of broken carriages and splintered deck, crushing men beneath them as the recoil and impact sent fragments flying through the crew.

Smoke rolled along the deck with blood running between the planks, while the gunners crawled, stumbled, and hauled themselves clear.

Carmen came apart like a rope giving up one thread at a time.

Seams that had survived two broadsides finally spread along the length of her hull, frames cracking one after another beneath decks that had taken more punishment than any shipwright had ever meant them to bear.

The hull shuddered with each fresh impact.

Planks buckled outward, seams split open, and the wounded timbers groaned beneath the weight of the sea forcing its way inside.

A whole stretch of her upper deck folded into the hold.

The Spaniards standing upon it went down with it, crushed beneath the wreck before they had time to understand that the boards were no longer there.

The deck collapsed in a thunder of timber, dragging sailors, guns, and shattered gear into the dark below.

Bodies disappeared beneath the wreckage as the sea burst through the broken hull and washed blood, splinters, and debris across the slanting deck.

Fire found her below, whether powder, lamp oil, or more nobody could say.

Black smoke boiled through her hatchways while men screamed inside it, some burning before the water ever reached them. Flames licked through the lower decks, then surged upward in sudden bursts, turning the smoke orange before it poured from the hatchways.

The screams of trapped men mingled with the crackle of burning timber and the thunder of the sea rushing into the hold.

Around the sinking hull, the water filled with wreckage and struggling sailors, hands clutching at spars, ropes, and whatever floating timber they could reach.

The pumps still rose and fell aboard her, but the sea poured through the wounds faster than the crews could drive it back.

Above the noise, an officer tried to get an order out and got no farther than "¡Abandonen..." before the deck dropped out from under him as well.

She went down slowly, listing hard until the sea came pouring through every wound she had taken. Her masts leaned farther and farther over the water, burning fragments tumbling from her rigging as the last of the deck vanished beneath the rising sea.

When she rolled at last, she brought the fire, the screaming, and the last stubborn hope of her crew down with her.

The wreck disappeared in a boiling rush of black water, flame, wreckage, and bodies.

Then the sea closed over it, leaving only floating timber, torn canvas, and scattered men fighting among the wreckage.

The Queen Anne turned her whole weight on Rosario while Carmen sunk, the entire crew free now to pour everything they had into one ship.

Blackbeard stood at the wheel and hollered clean across the water, loud enough that no man aboard either ship needed a translator.

"YE HEARD YER OWN LADS CALL ME THE DEVIL!"

He pointed across the smoke toward Rosario.

"And I’ll not disappoint a soul that’s put in a good word for me!"

The Spanish crew scrambled around their guns.

"Strike now, or I’ll send ye down to keep yer sister company at the bottom of this bay!"

The Queen Anne’s crews rammed home their charges.

"And I’ll tell the fishes down there ye sent along yer regards personal!"

The guns ran out.

"I’ll have every man of ye singin’ hymns through a mouthful of seawater before this hour’s out!"

Rosario’s crew stayed at their guns regardless.

Pride, orders, or the simple fact that they had nothing better to do with the little life they had left might have kept them there.

The Queen Anne’s third broadside crashed into her, every gun now free to answer one target.

The entire broadside struck almost together.

Her upper works erupted in flame and splinters as iron tore through bulwarks, guns, rigging, and Spaniards, throwing wreckage high into the smoke.

The deck vanished beneath a rolling cloud of powder smoke and dust, with bodies and broken spars tumbling over the side into the sea.

She managed an answer of her own in the same breath, one last broadside of real defiance that caught the Queen Anne across the forecastle. Cannonballs smashed through it in a burst of timber and canvas.

Pirates went down amid the wreckage as blood ran across the deck, while torn sails and ropes came crashing down around the surviving crew.

Then the mortar spoke a second time, laid flat and close just as before.

The shot found Rosario’s mainmast at the root.

It struck with a splintering crack, and the great mast lurched, shuddered, and tore free.

Rigging snapped taut with the force of it before giving way in a cascade of rope and canvas, and the whole rigged tower came crashing down across her deck in a ruin of canvas, cordage, and crushed men.

The falling mast smashed through guns and Spaniards alike, burying the deck beneath a tangled mass of timber, canvas, and cordage. Those were crushed beneath the wreckage as the impact drove shattered planks through the deck and tore the hull open below.

Water rushed through the new wound, spreading across the deck beneath the smoke and blood.

Rosario stayed afloat regardless.

Dismasted and holed through, she wallowed so low that one good swell might finish what the guns had begun.

Her crew had already abandoned the guns and were fighting the sea instead.

The wounded hull rolled heavily in the water, its broken spars dragging through the sea while the wreckage of her rigging streamed alongside.

Spaniards crowded wherever they could find footing, hauling at ropes and clinging to the remains of the ship as water climbed across her decks.

Aboard the Queen Anne, not a soul cheered.

There was not enough breath left in them for cheering.

Pirates moved through the drifting smoke, clearing splinters and dragging the wounded below.

Blood streaked the deck beneath their boots, mingled with seawater, powder soot, and fragments of shattered wood. The wounded were hauled from among the wreckage while loose rigging swung overhead and broken timber still shifted beneath their feet.

Matches burned low in hands that were already waiting for whatever came next.

The Queen Anne’s scars showed plainly on every scorched and shattered plank she had earned since the fight began.

That left one more fight still waiting to tell its story, beyond the smoke, where the Bloody Rose stood alone against the one ship in the whole Spanish Armada that had been built to eat a broadside and laugh about it.