Chapter 227: Trap Within the Trap

The window of opportunity started to disappear per every heartbeat.

By the time an order could make its way from one end of the deck to the other, San Felipe’s carved and gilded eyes had slipped away.

The Rose was still carrying her way through the turn, her bow drifting a few stubborn degrees beyond the square broadside the lass had worked so hard to find.

James felt it happening under his hands and didn’t wait around to learn how bad it might get.

"FIRE AS SHE BEARS!"

His voice cracked across the ship.

Cudjoe caught the order at the waist and sent it roaring down the deck, hoarse and furious.

"Fire as she bears, and none o’ ye wait on yer neighbor to find his aim first!"

Farrow’s voice came last, certain, carrying along the whole row of guns.

"Lay and touch her off the second she’s true! Nobody waits on the next man!"

The guns thundered in a ragged chain, one crack chasing another across the whole starboard side as each crew fired when it could. Muzzle flashes punched through the distance in quick succession, the concussion spreading across the deck hard enough to shake loose ropes and send sailors staggering against the guns.

Smoke rose thick across the water, gun after gun firing the instant its crew had San Felipe in its sights. The cannonballs tore through the haze with shrieks and splashes, throwing up white bursts around San Felipe’s bow as the two ships kept their macabre dance.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — True Shot

Some shots went wide or merely glanced off San Felipe’s curved bow, but enough found their mark to strike home despite the chaotic engagement.

Her forecastle rail burst apart in a shower of splinters, and one of the bow chasers was ripped clean from its mount and thrown into the wreckage.

Timber exploded outward in jagged pieces, some of it disappearing into the smoke while the rest clattered across the deck. The forward crew vanished beneath the blast of splintering wood and flying debris, and dark blood sprayed across the planking where the exposed Spaniards had been standing a heartbeat before.

For a moment the whole forward section seemed to disappear inside smoke, splinters, torn canvas, and screaming voices.

James grinned at the sight, delighted despite the smoke thick between the two ships.

"That’s one bow chaser she’ll not be needin’ again!"

It was reasonable damage, enough to ruin a lesser ship.

Against the ship of the line, it amounted to a scratch, and every soul aboard the Rose knew it.

From that point on, whichever gun happened to come into angle as the two hulls swept past got its chance. Each piece fired the moment it found her, and the exchange fell into a ragged rhythm neither side could properly control.

Every discharge seemed to vanish into the next, the deck cracking beneath the crews as recoil slammed through the carriages and smoke swallowed the water between the hulls.

Anne’s mortar crew stood beside their silent pieces, but the fight had grown too close and too quick for guns that needed time to set their elevation. They could only watch the rest of it unfold without them.

James never stopped talking through any of it.

A degree here, a degree there, corrections thrown out low and steady. In the end, one wrong turn was all that stood between them and the broadside San Felipe so eagerly hunted for.

Sawyer came up through the after hatch with sawdust still stuck to his forearms, and straight to the quarterdeck. "The lass been groanin’ at me fierce down there, Captain. Come up to see if she was ’bout to come apart on me, or just complainin’ about it."

James laughed without taking his eyes from San Felipe’s looming shadow.

"Does she look like she’s comin’ apart to you?"

Sawyer watched the Rose answer another hard turn, and the worry on his face gave way to wonder.

"Never seen her turn so quick in her whole life."

He laid one hand flat against timber, whispering words too low to catch.

Then he continued louder. "Which is exactly what’s got me worried. The lass doesn’t turn that hard without payin’ for it, and I’d sooner know where before she goes and shows me herself."

"Rose’s payin’ in rope and canvas, Sawyer, not planking. The devil’s holdin’ up his end of it today."

"Then he can settle his accounts proper, same as I would with any man workin’ on my ship without askin’ first."

The next hard heel very nearly finished Kit before San Felipe ever got the chance.

His boots shot loose along the yard, one hand waving at nothing. Briggs’s fist closed around his collar and hauled him back against the mast without even breaking stride.

The yard lurched beneath them as the Rose heeled over, rigging snapping taut overhead and boots scraping hard across the deck below.

Kit came up laughing.

"Ha! Missed me clean, the both o’ ye!"

He didn’t even look down to see how close it had really been. "That’s goin’ in the tale, Mister Briggs, see if it don’t. Saved twice in one afternoon by the same bastard who never says a word, and he didn’t even look like he was tryin’!"

Briggs grunted, which was, as usual, the whole answer.

Across the battery, Pete’s gun came up clean on its own, and the shot struck San Felipe aft along her quarter.

The impact punched through the quarter with a deep, splintering boom, tearing open the planking and kicking fragments of wood and paint into the air.

Pete let out a whoop fit to wake the dead.

"That’s mine, that is! Wager on it, lads, I’ve broke her bloody spine!"

"Ye’ve broke her paint, Pete, and nothin’ more," his mate called back down the row.

"Same shite, once the curse takes hold." Pete called back, reloading with satisfaction.

Around him, the gun crew worked through the smoke with soot-blackened faces and ringing ears, dragging the piece back into place while the ship shuddered beneath them.

San Felipe tried everything a ship of her size knew to try.

She shortened sail to force the Rose past her, then crowded on more canvas to outrun her. She hauled hard one way, then just as hard the other, but every attempt failed against the smaller and quicker ship.

Canvas cracked overhead with every change of course. Her great hull rolled heavily as she tried to answer the helm, yards swinging and rigging groaning under the strain.

She was a bull chasing a rag it could never quite catch, enormous and furious and always half a turn behind. James laughed each time she lumbered past another chance she couldn’t take.

Each failed turn left her exposed for another heartbeat, and another burst of smoke and thunder crashed out from the Rose before San Felipe could bring her guns to bear.

Blackened scars marked her planking, torn canvas snapped uselessly in the wind, and smoke leaked from fresh wounds in her hull. Across her decks, the remains of shattered gear and splintered timber lay among the blood and wreckage left by the exchange.

Small things, each of them.

They counted all the same, and for the first time since the fight began, the crew of the Rose let themselves believe they might actually win the thing outright.

Cudjoe had kept half an eye on the wider water the whole while, the old habit of an even older sailor.

He suddenly snapped.

"Captain!"

James didn’t have the breath to spare.

"Bit busy, Cudjoe."

"Look past her."

Cudjoe’s voice had lost every trace of its usual dryness.

"Look past the whole bluidy ship!"

James looked, and there stood the fort walls of El Morro and La Punta, near enough now to pick stone from mortar without raising a glass to his eye.

The water beneath the Rose’s keel had gone pale as well, the bottom rising fast beneath her.

"Well, I’ll be damned."

Cudjoe’s expression turned dead serious. "Every turn she’s fumbled today, Captain, she’s fumbled the right way. Straight toward them guns, every single time."

James felt his grin disappear. He had to make a decision.

Break off now, trade one complete and decisive broadside while there was still enough room to survive it. Or keep the dance going a little longer and gamble that no fort, however clever the trap, could fire precisely enough to sink their ship from that distance.

Neither man said which he favored.