Chapter 226: The Devil Doesn’t Flinch

The Rose stayed heeled hard into her turn, sails cracking overhead, the whole deck slanting so badly that a man had to spread his boots wide and hope the ship remembered to stay under him.

San Felipe’s bow kept swinging after her, slow as a drunk chasing his hat through a crowded street, while guns ran out along her flank, still trying to bear.

Matches burned low and ready aboard both ships, even if there was no clean shot yet.

That sort of thing never lasts.

Some ship built that big, with that many frightened and angry sailors aboard, only needed one heartbeat to make a mistake.

San Felipe found hers first.

A ragged handful of her foremost guns, four or five at most, were hauled around on their tackles until they could bear. They fired together in one ugly crack that shook the timber beneath every pair of boots on the deck. Smoke and flame punched outward from the muzzles, rolling across the water as the shot came screaming through the haze.

It was enough to open the Rose up.

Iron struck her flank with a hard, glancing blow, and the deck near the waist burst apart in a shower of splinters that cut anyone foolish enough to be standing close. Boards jumped underfoot, shattered wood flew through the smoke, and the deck vanished beneath a choking cloud of dust and splinters.

One of Farrow’s gunners went down screaming, a jagged length of oak driven clean through his forearm, blood already spreading black across the boards beneath him. Around him, the gun crews staggered and ducked as more splinters tore through the deck.

"WE’RE GONE! WE’RE ALL BLOODY GONE!"

Some voice shrieked it through the smoke, raw with terror.

Cries answered with nothing but noise, and for one long, filthy breath the whole deck felt like a ship that had already sunk and merely neglected to tell its crew. Crewmembers shouted over one another, boots hammered against the planks, and beneath the smoke came the wet groans of the wounded.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — Devil’s Hull

The smoke dragged itself clear a moment later, and there she stood.

A rail near the waist was torn, one gunner was bleeding hard into the strip of canvas Hobbs had wrapped around his arm, and fresh splinters stood out of planking that ought to have been cut clean through. The wreckage was scattered across the deck, but the ship itself remained whole beneath it all.

That was the whole bill.

A ship that size had thrown that much iron at them, and the Rose had a torn rail and one wounded man to show for it.

James stared over the wreckage for a moment, then laughed outright, loud enough to turn heads all the way down the deck.

"Christ, is that ALL ye’ve got?"

The seventy-gun bastard didn’t answer.

Under the circumstances, that was answer enough.

James had no intention of standing there admiring his own luck.

"Swivel guns! Bert, put somethin’ back on that deck for me!"

Bert and Wesley beside him swung their little pieces around and fired together. The swivels barked as one, their muzzles flashing through the smoke as grapeshot scattered across the gap.

Grapeshot swept across San Felipe’s forward rail, where a knot of her gunners stood crowded and exposed. The little shots ripped through the packed men in a single violent sweep, throwing bodies backward and sending blood across the rail and planking.

Three went down where they stood, and the rest reeled away with hands clapped over torn arms and faces. The survivors stumbled over one another trying to get clear, leaving blood smeared across the deck behind them.

Cudjoe crossed the deck in three hard strides, his knuckles still pale, and planted himself square beside the wheel.

"Are ye tryin’ tae get us all killed, or is this just how ye mean tae spend yer days now?"

"Bit of both, I’d wager."

"That’s nae an answer, Calloway."

The flatness had gone clean out of his voice, and what remained beneath it was enough to make even the nearby sailors stop and listen. "I’ve watched ye walk out of things a reasonable man’s got nae bluidy business walkin’ out of, and every time I tell meself the next’ll be the one that finally does it. Ye cannae keep bettin’ this crew’s necks on some devilry trick."

"The Rose’s fine, Cudjoe."

"Aye, this time."

"Trust me on this one."

James kept hands steady on the wheel, grinning through the haze.

"That’s all I’m askin’ of you."

Before Cudjoe could answer, James was already past him, bellowing down the length of the deck.

"Hold her over hard, damn ye! Don’t ye dare ease that helm a single inch!"

Cudjoe stood there for a moment, teeth clenching, thinking of every wreck he’d watched this man crawl out of and what remained of his own good sense.

Whatever he found there, it was not enough to win the argument.

"Bluidy hell."

He spat over the rail.

"Ye’ll haunt me in me sleep long after ye’ve finally got yerself killed, ye ken that?"

James laughed outright, loud and delighted, both hands locked on the wheel through every second of it.

"Aye, probably. Try not to enjoy it too much."

There’s a plain truth about a ship built to carry that much iron, and San Felipe’s gunners were learning it the hard way.

All those broadside guns sat run out along her flanks, built to smash anything that came alongside and dared trade iron for iron.

Forward and aft, she had next to nothing worth naming, a bow chaser or two at best, small pieces a determined man could nearly outrun.

Let some quick and stubborn lass get square across your bow, close in and refusing to sit still, and you’d built yourself the finest floating fortress in the whole Spanish Armada with the front door wide open.

San Felipe found another chance to bring a few guns to bear before the Rose finished her turn.

Three or four of her guns were hauled around far enough to answer this time, and they let go together in another ragged, furious volley. The guns belched fire and smoke, and the roar rolled across the water hard enough to swallow every other sound for an instant.

The blast caught the Rose high in the rigging. Cannonballs tore through the upper works, snapping rope and timber apart as fragments rained down across the deck.

A length of the foretop shroud parted with a crack like a musket shot, canvas tore loose and whipped wild overhead, and two men dropped from the ratlines into waiting hands below. More men were driven from the rigging as torn rope and canvas came whipping down around them, while the deck below erupted in shouts and scrambling boots.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — Devil’s Hull

The timbers groaned beneath the blow and held, just as they had the first time.

The deck that ought to have been kindling by now stayed stubbornly itself. Splintered wood and torn canvas littered it, but the Rose kept surging forward through the smoke as though the guns had done nothing more than bruise her.

Near the mainmast the crew laughed, short and half-mad with it.

Mackerel Jim had both hands locked around a stay, with a wide grin. "Christ, I’ll be tellin’ this one till I’m too old to remember me own name! A ship o’ the line, and she couldn’t so much as scratch us! I’ll want witnesses for this, mind, nobody’ll believe a word of it otherwise!"

Near the wheel, Tomás crossed himself once, as calm as ever despite the haze drifting past his shoulder, and murmured words too low for most of the deck to hear.

"What was that?" James called over.

"A thanks, Captain."

Tomás’s mouth curved just barely.

"For a ship that does not know when to stop being difficult."

Then, at last, she found it.

The Rose swept clean across San Felipe’s bow and came there, so close James could make out the carved eyes of her figurehead staring back at him, painted gold and blind to the disaster beneath them.

All seventy of San Felipe’s guns sat useless across flanks that could no longer bring them to bear.

A handful of sailors scrambled forward along her forecastle, wrestling with the two small bow chasers she carried, their hands shaking too badly to lay them true before their chance came and went.

James looked down the length of San Felipe’s open deck, packed with men who had nowhere left to run and nothing left to shoot back with, and almost felt sorry for the poor bastards.

Almost.

"Right then."

He raised his voice down the length of the Rose, the grin never once leaving him.

"She’s laid in already, lads! Every gun true down that deck, and let’s not waste the invitation!"

"Aye, Captain."

Farrow called his gun crews into line, quoins knocked square and breeching ropes checked one final time.

"She’ll be laid true within the minute. Every last piece of her."

James kept his eyes on San Felipe’s open deck, on sailors who had no earthly notion yet just how much trouble they were standing in.

The match glowed low and ready.