Chapter 329: A Fine Day for a Reckoning

"I’m away to the mortars, James."

Anne caught his sleeve between finger and thumb and gave it one short, merciless tug. "Time and place, darling. And you’ll have the both of ’em, but there’s a few navy lads I’ve to be buryin’ first, and it’d be the height of bad manners to keep the poor devils waitin’."

"Aye, lass. I’ll keep the place warm."

She walked down the ladder, copper hair streaming behind her. James kept one hand on the wheel and took the spyglass from its hook beside the binnacle with the other, the brass having grown warm in the sun.

A forest of masts appeared at the glass, stretching across the channels, only considerably more crowded. A man o’ war sat across the passage, with a frigate on either side and two more behind her, while the sloops occupied whatever spaces remained, packed together near the shore.

The King’s ships had taken a beating. Fresh, pale planking showed against the dark frigate hulls, whole sections of railing were missing, and several gunport lids hung crooked. The man o’ war’s entire side had been scorched black, while her gilded figurehead still stood at the bow, now sporting a face with very little left in the middle.

As for the sloops, they were in no better shape, with bowsprits reduced to stumps, sails hanging in strips, and a bearing a patch of canvas and tar over a hole large enough to accommodate a barn door.

One sloop was beyond repair. She sat low in the water, her mast cracked and held in place by her cable. Her crew worked the pumps, bailing with enough determination to suggest they intended to empty the Caribbean itself.

The island remained green and low at the edge of every view.

James moved the glass past it.

On the man o’ war’s forecastle, a sailor was hauling on a bell rope hard enough to pull the thing off its beam. The bell swung wildly, but not a sound reached the Rose, the wind coming off Andros and carrying everything out towards the open sea.

The alarm therefore travelled along the blockade, with hundreds of redcoats running about, their mouths open and no one hearing a thing. Bells swung all along the line, flags climbed the mizzenmasts, and drummers beat away at drums that might as well have been made of wood and painted for decoration.

A frigate slipped her cable, leaving a buoy bobbing where her anchor had been, while gunport lids rose one after another, none of them keeping time with the others. A gun came halfway out and stopped there, looking rather useless, while an officer waved his sword at everyone and no one in particular, then lost his hat over the side.

The whole blockade was having an argument, arms waving everywhere.

James’s grin showed a little more tooth.

Then the glass before his eye turned white as milk, and lines began appearing across the sea.

? [BATTLE OVERVIEW]

ALLIED — CALLOWAY’S FLEET

Bloody Rose — Combat Ready, Closing

Whydah Gally — Combat Ready, Closing

Marianne — Combat Ready, Closing

Spry Eel — Combat Ready, Closing

ENEMY — ROYAL NAVY BLOCKADE SQUADRON

HMS Ranelagh — Lightly Damaged, At Anchor

HMS Seahorse — Moderately Damaged, At Anchor

HMS Lowestoffe — Moderately Damaged, At Anchor

HMS Hector — Moderately Damaged, At Anchor

HMS Greyhound — Moderately Damaged, At Anchor

Auxiliary Sloops (8) — Some Moderately Damaged, One Heavily Damaged and Immobile

I have calculated the odds. I should be delighted to share them, but experience has taught me that you treat figures the way a drunkard treats a sermon, with tremendous enthusiasm and no recollection whatsoever the following morning.

An ally has also been fighting that squadron for rather a long while.

I shan’t say who, the suspense is good for your character. And watching you think on your fingers remains the only free entertainment this experiment affords me.

"Och, and there you are!"

James lowered the spyglass an inch and addressed the empty air. "Not a peep out of you the whole bloody time I was dying. Not a wee cough of contempt, while you might’ve sent flowers, a card, even. ’Get well soon, regards, the management.’"

The wind carried his words away and delivered them to the gulls.

I was present throughout, I assure you. Your condition, your reaction to it, and whatever alterations it has presumably left behind were all enormously interesting.

Everything has been entered into the experiment.

The subject, I find, is at his most instructive when no one is there to help him.

James let out a short, delighted laugh. "Alterations, is it? What bloody changes?

I decline to list them.

Boots came pounding up the quarterdeck ladder, three rungs at a time.

Cudjoe appeared at the top with his notebook open. He placed it on the binnacle, licked the end of his pencil, and looked over the crowded line of masts with a sharp expression.

"Orders, Captain, and a number tae go with them, for pity’s sake."

James swept the spyglass along the blockade and back. "The man o’ war and four frigates. Eight sloops, if I’ve checked right. The big one’s the Ranelagh."

Cudjoe stopped writing. "The Ranelagh, is it? And how, in the name of all that’s holy, would ye be knowin’ a thing like that, Captain? Did she send ye a letter?"

James held out his hand.

Cudjoe shook it once, as if acknowledging delivery of a parcel he had never ordered.

"Beans."

Then the pencil went back to the page, scratching hard enough to score the paper. "Two tae five, then, the Rose and the Whydah against the big ships, and two tae eight among the wee ones, with the Marianne and the Eel. I’ve seen better odds on Rook’s slate, and he’s a cheat, a liar, and a bloody disgrace tae the trade."

"Och, will you look at them, Cudjoe."

James pointed the spyglass down the coast. "Cables down, canvas furled, and half the lads runnin’ about like hens in a thunderstorm! They’ve the wind in their teeth, the reefs up their noses, and every last bloody ship pointed at the island."

He put down the glass and fearlessly laughed. "They’re not ready for us, mate! They’re not ready for anything! The lass and the Whydah’ll do a hell of a lot of damage in one pass, while the Marianne and the Eel keep the wee ones too busy to think."

Cudjoe’s pencil began to tap the page, tick, tick, tick. "Aye, and a bonnie plan it is, till the Ranelagh swings round and shows us her teeth. What then, Captain? Do we ask her politely tae stop?"

"Then she hurts us, my friend, and we hurt her worse."

"And if it sours, Captain?"

"Then we go through them and down the channels, and home. Simple as that."

Cudjoe snorted. "Aye, well. Better the day than the morn, I’ll grant ye that. Give the navy a night and a carpenter and they’ll have every plank of it mended by sunup, the bloody cowards."

"The Fortune and the Dame were sittin’ in port when we sailed..."

"Two ships cannae chew up a whole squadron like that."

The wind riffled through the notebook pages.

"Then reinforcements, I’d reckon."

"Which is?" Cudjoe waited, pencil raised.

"No notion in the wide world. Isn’t it grand?"

Cudjoe wrote it down regardless.

He snapped the notebook shut, took the ladder in two strides, and sent his voice ahead of him down the deck.

"To yer stations, the lot o’ ye, braw wee choirboys! Give yer lungs a rest and put yer backs tae it!"

The crew changed from singing to working without any trouble at all. Sand came out of the buckets and spread across the deck in thick yellow streams.

Much akin to a machine gun, Cudjoe fired the orders. "Topmen tae the sheets! Look lively, look lively! More sand on that, ye lazy sons of Satan! More! I’ll not have the planks slick with some lad insides, not on my watch! Light the slow match! Run out the guns! And the first bastard tae fire afore I say can swim across and apologize tae the King in person, with his hat in his hand!"

James threw open the flag locker. "Edmund! Flags!"

The courteous giant came running, Wesley following a pace behind him.

He told them without missing stride. "Red over white to the Whydah, form on me, and look bonnie about it! Yellow to the Marianne and the Eel. The wee ones are theirs, every last one of them, to keep or to break! And tell them, mark me now, Edmund, tell them the channels are home if it sours!"

Edmund straightened. "I beg your pardon, Captain, but the signal book contains no provision whatsoever for ’if it sours.’ I shall hoist the plain white and pray, with considerable fervour, that Captain Bellamy does not mistake it for surrender."

Wesley took the halyards in his fists, and the first flag went up.

"Certainly."

The Whydah replied first.

Sam swept his hat across the sky, and her flags climbed to meet those of the Rose. The Marianne followed, then the Eel, their signals small and bright against the hard blue.

The Rose and the Whydah sailed abreast, with the Marianne and the Eel on their flanks, four ships carrying every stitch of canvas they owned and heading straight for the blockade. To starboard, the island stood green and patient.

James folded the spyglass away and placed both hands on the wheel.

The water between the two sides grew narrower.

Across it, the King’s ships began opening their gunports, one after another, until the entire side of the man o’ war stood lined with black squares.