Chapter 225: Nelson’s Tactics

The Rose’s fight had been going on all the while, right beside the other two.

Every minute, the Guadalupe took in more sea through her broken flank and sank a little lower with each roll. Water rushed through her shattered side in a white, foaming torrent, while every plunge sent fresh spray and wreckage skittering across her deck.

Every minute, smoke curled thick enough around a captain’s beard to make him look like the Devil himself. Now and then, ember coals for eyes moved inside that smoke, and then vanished again behind it.

All three fights were happening at once on the same stretch of water. Gunfire thundered across the sea without pause, overlapping until the background became one continuous thunder.

James had the Rose standing into her part of it now, with San Felipe el Real ahead of her. Those two were the only ships left in the world that mattered to either crew.

Every gun was run out, muzzles gaped over the rail, black with soot while canvas was trimmed hard for close, brutal work. The deck had been cleared of loose gear and coiled rope, there was no sense letting a cannonball find a target on its way through.

Cudjoe went the length of the deck, handing out orders. A brace was hauled tighter here, a coil laid over again there, sailors snatched ropes of their boots and dragged anything loose out of the way, knowing that once the guns spoke, the deck would become a storm of splinters, iron, and blood.

This was all business.

Grey had his charts spread across the binnacle as usual, though soundings weren’t likely to do him much good against a ship standing in open water.

James let him keep them.

One man might want familiar objects under his hands before a fight. Chart or cutlass, it made no great difference.

Kwaku had the arms trunk chest open, working through it with no wasted motion.

Cutlasses went out first, then boarding axes, then pistols for any man who asked for one. His chain stayed wound easily around one wrist the whole time, and he looked for all the world like he was handing out bread instead of steel.

"Beggin’ yer pardon, matey, but what in the name o’ all seven bloody seas am I meant t’ do with this against four hundred some souls? Wave it at ’em? Ask ’em polite-like t’ line up fer a axe fight? There be enough Spaniards aboard that monster t’ fill a town, an’ I’ve got one axe! One! What am I supposed t’ do, chop ’em alphabetically?"

Kwaku blankly, and not so gently, forced the boarding axe onto the crewmember hands. "I recommend swinging the damned thing until they kill you. It shall give your hands respectable work to occupy themselves with while the rest of you is being introduced to eternity."

"Comfortin’, that be, an’ I’ll be sure t’ mention it whilst I’m dyin’."

Kwaku shrugged one shoulder, the chain shifting with it.

"Truth rarely is."

Ragged laugh broke across the line. It was badly timed, which made it perfectly timed for sailors.

Hobbs came up from below with his roll of instruments and laid them along the top of a barrel. Knife, saw, needle. Each went exactly where his hand expected to find it, even blind.

He checked the saw’s edge against his thumb, idly speaking his thoughts aloud. "Ship that size, make that eight arms and three leg before supper, generous estimate. Question is whether I’ve brought rum enough to see us through it, or whether I’ll be pourin’ from the one bottle while they’re both screamin’ for it."

Bert appeared again at his post beside the swivel gun, his coat straightened as though the coming fight required a gentleman to look his best for it.

Then he saw the towering shadow of San Felipe close enough to trouble him personally. "I confess, I once observed that so many guns constituted an extravagant quantity of artillery for a single vessel to carry with any dignity. Having now seen it personally, I find myself considerably more alarmed than I was when the number remained merely a rumor."

Edmund said, shading his eyes to get a better look, "The extravagance, is, I must say, magnificently committed to."

"Certainly," said Wesley, from wherever Wesley always was.

James caught himself grinning despite the terrible bulk bearing down on them.

"Mortars out!"

Anne’s crew acted on it in an instant. Powder was measured, elevation set, and the match already glowed low against the wind.

Twin shells went up, hung for a breath against the grey, and dropped across San Felipe’s deck for the second time.

It landed closer than the first attempt. The explosion punched through the smoke with a deafening crack, throwing timber, iron fittings, and splinters outward in a bloody spray.

Spaniards were knocked from their feet as wreckage burst across the deck, and bodies sprawled among the torn timber, blood darkening the planks while the smoke rolled over the fallen and the living alike.

Timber tore loose, and more of the deck came apart beneath the blast, jagged fragments sticking out of the wreckage as sailors scrambled clear.

James watched the smoke thin over her deck and grinned, because there wasn’t much else worth doing about a ship that size.

"Christ, ye could put the whole of Nassau’s fleet into her broadside and she’d only ask us to try harder."

San Felipe held her course through it, patient and certain. The great ship seemed to swallow the damage without breaking stride, her hull looming through the smoke as splinters and wounded sailors still littered the deck.

She closed in until her great weight of iron could end the matter in one exchange.

James understood the whole thing in the time it took her bow to settle.

Some old certainty from a life three hundred years away rose whole and complete. The trick was not to fight her broadside for broadside, where a ship like San Felipe could grind them to splinters and call it a fair contest.

He needed to cross her bow, cut through her line, and get inside the reach of that monstrous battery before she could bring the guns around. It was the sort of reckless-looking tactic that made sense precisely because the other captain would think it too reckless to attempt.

James knew it at once, the devil tactics from another age, practiced by an one-eyed admiral who had made a habit of driving his ships straight into the enemy’s line, where every reasonable captain ought to have known better.

"Hard over! Cut across her bow. Don’t lie alongside her, cut across it!"

Grey’s head snapped up from his charts. "Cut across, Captain? There’s no line I’ve ever plotted that answers a course like that! Ye’ll give her the whole of us to shoot at!"

"Trust me, Grey."

Cudjoe’s hand closed on the rail hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

The Rose answered the wheel as if she had been waiting her whole life for her captain to finally ask this of her.

She heeled hard into the turn, her deck tilting sharply beneath the crew as the sea surged up against the rail. Sailors grabbed for ropes and guns as loose gear skidded hard across the planks, while the Rose swung her bow around with sails straining and canvas cracking overhead.

Canvas cracked overhead as she cut a path no captain aboard either ship had ever been trained to expect.

She cut inside the space a fight was supposed to leave open, and the water between the two ships vanished so quickly that a sailor could nearly see a stranger’s face across it.

The two ships rushed toward one another until the towering side of San Felipe filled the Rose’s view, close enough that her guns and crew could be seen through the smoke.

San Felipe’s great bow began dragging around to answer her, but it was too slow. Sailors scrambled across that towering deck, trying to bring guns to bear on a target that refused to sit still.

Gunners hauled on tackles and cursed as the heavy pieces lurched against their restraints, trying desperately to swing the muzzles toward the Rose. Sailors crowded the decks behind them, some stumbling over wreckage and blood already scattered across the planks.

Behind the quarterdeck, officers shouted orders that had never trained a man for anything like this.

Every gun on both ships stood run out. Every match burned low and ready.

Smoke clung low over the decks. Gunners crouched behind guns, hands tight around tackles and weapons, while splintered wood and the first dark stains of blood marked the planks beneath their feet.

Yet none had the clear sight to fire.