Chapter 304: Anchors Aweigh, Sanity Ashore

The rain hit the Rose like the Almighty had dropped a hatch cover out of heaven. An hour earlier, the evening over the creek had been all clean gold, but now it was gone, and no one had been asked whether he preferred it that way.

All around them, the waters rose in short, steep waves that battered the Rose against the mangrove roots and ground her there, while thunderclaps crashed in from the land in threes, as regular as a crew at drill.

James walked the length of the deck with Cudjoe a pace behind him, orders shouted down the waist over a noise fit to drown a thousand drums. The expedition party scratched at their necks while they hauled, which was about the best the jungle had to offer a sailor, and the captain scratched with them as he bellowed at the hands on the hatch to mind the corners.

Five iron-bound chests went below on ropes, with hands at the coaming easing each one over the lip as carefully as if they were lowering a sleeping child. Four more went across to the Whydah in a boat so low that the sea poured over the gunwale, but no one in it bothered bailing, since that required letting go of a chest.

The chests got a tarpaulin. The wounded, brought down to Hobbs’s table with blood dripping off the planks, got the canvas.

"There be men a-bleedin’ down here, ye heartless bastards!

Some couple sailors laid their cutlasses across their knees and protected the treasury chests with the seriousness of grooms protecting a bride.

"Dermot’s knee’ll mend, so it will. Knees are grand for that, the jade won’t."

At the deck, the pirates called out their numbers, their voices hoarse in the downpour.

"Twen’y-two!"

"Twen’y-three, an’ sodden!"

Then came the rain, and nothing where twenty-four ought to have been.

"Twen’y-FIVE!"

James swung round at the head of the deck, rain pouring off his chin, and bellowed. "Cut the stern lines! Hands to the capstan, topsails reefed, and get us shot of this stinkin’ swamp afore it takes a fancy to keepin’ us!"

Cudjoe passed the same orders to the watch. "Hands tae the capstan! Heave the kedge short, SHORT, mind! THEN stand by the stern lines, and reef on my word and nae afore it. The first bastard tae lay a hand on a reef-point afore I say, I’ll have him swimmin’ home."

Ahead of them and into the quarterdeck, captain and quartermaster took the ladder two rungs at a time. James took the spokes himself.

The wheel kicked with every wave, and his wrist throbbed along the bone. He pushed his weight on the wheel and swallowed a mouthful of rain to wash the gravel from his throat.

Cudjoe came up beside him and waited until the wind was strong enough to drown their conversation.

Then, he spoke. "Aye, well. We’re at the wheel, there’s no one tae hear us but the Almighty, and He’s busy. Now, what in the fuckin’ hell is goin’ on, Captain?"

James kept his eyes on the black water. "Reckon the ruins ain’t happy, and the bloody commodore says there’s company bound for Concordia, a fleet, near as makes no difference. Might be talk, might be wind, might be they’ve sailed already and we’re the last fools in the room to hear of it."

Lightning lit the entire jungle, and the dark came back thick enough to chew

"Have ye a number? Ships, guns, days, anything’ I can pit ink tae?"

"Not so much as a bad guess to me name."

"Then it’s a feelin’, is it? Well, well."

He took his hand out of his coat, and let the next words come out slow. "A sandbar we can’t see, a night like Noah’s Flood, and a feelin’ in yer name. I’ve sailed on less, I’ll no’ deny it, nae often, mind, and never gladly."

The shimmer gathered above the binnacle, where only James could see it.

? [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]

Quest Complete : Know Your Enemy, Intimately

Reward : 50 Fate

I priced your curiosity at fifty, on the assumption that you would labor for it, spy on the commodore, press him, or coax it out of him by some terrible method. Instead, the news fell out of his mouth on his way out, and you received it by the oldest talent in the trade, standing where it landed.

Payment has been made in full regardless, as this experiment has yet to learn the difference between a wage earned and a coin that merely washed your way.

Your balance now stands at one hundred and fifty.

James clicked his tongue at it, rain dripping into his lips.

Then he turned to the rail and bellowed.

"CAST OFF! Capstan, you idle weans! Pit your backs into it! Axes, STAND BY!"

The capstan bars filled with sailors, their boots skidding on the wet planks and their palms raw against the wood. The kedge came up out of the Panama mud with a deep, heavy cry, and the axes fell, sending forty fathom of good anchor into the creek for the King to find.

Cudjoe winced at every stroke.

The Eel’s lamp swung and began to move. The Rose followed, then the Whydah, her gilded stern lurching out of the roots, while the Marianne and the Fisher came after, five hooded lamps strung through the mangrove as branches scraped their topmasts on the way past.

Inside the creek, the rain fell straight down because the roots broke the wind, but at the open waters, it came sideways.

The gust blew in from the land, straight over the ruins, and found the Rose, laying her over until her prow went over. At the sandbar, the waves spread one way and the wind the other, and where they met, the water rose in a white heap as large as a church.

The rain smelled of wet old stone, cold and green and mossy. James had been breathing that stank since the ruins down and would have known it blind, yet he looked inland, toward the blackest part of the sky, and grinned up at it.

"Borrowin’, Yer Majesty! BORROWIN’, I said, and I’ll thank you to hear it right!"

Thunderclap answered in three cracks. The crews spat to leeward until there was no more saliva left to spit, then crossed themselves desperately.

"A THIRD! A full third o’ the lot, an’ me poor mother’s good name thrown in for luck."

"Only blow us OVER that bar, ye drownin’ sow!"

"Ye already promised the dead a fifth, ye lyin’ son of a sea-cook!

"Sell the same cargo twice an’ the Devil’ll come for the second helpin’!"

The Rose climbed a wave as big as a house and plunged down its back with her bowsprit buried, and every sailor aboard who wasn’t holding something grabbed the nearest man instead.

Then she pushed through the wave, and the sky split open across the horizon.

In the glare, the navy appeared.

Three ships occupied the same narrow waters, close enough for the pirates to see their gunports.

There was a man o’ war with two gun decks, a frigate on either flank, shoals breaking on both sides, and a scatter of little lamps beyond that could only belong to sloops.

Somewhere a bell clanged the watch, while the same wind that had driven the pirates out of their creek pushed the King’s squadron off its coast, and the gale drove both fleets into the only waters leading out of the gulf.

The darkness washed over the sea, followed by the guns. Flashes spread across the man o’ war upper deck.

The cannonballs struck a wave, and the wave swallowed it. Then threw up a tall torrent of water beside the Rose’s bow, which came down across her whole length and swept the waist to the knees, while the next shots whistled over the main topsail and hit nowhere.

Cudjoe’s voice came off the quarterdeck, flat and absolute, every syllable shod in iron.

"ALL HANDS TAE BATTLE! MOVE YER BLOODY ARSE, afore I nail it tae the mast!"

The crews rushed over, every sailor cursing as he went.

On the lee side, a gun crew threw open a port to run their gun out, but the Rose leaned and the waves came straight through the hole, drowning the lot of them to the thighs.

"SHUT HER! SHUT THE BLEEDIN’ PORT, afore the whole bloody gulf’s aboard an’ payin’ rent!"

The port slammed shut, and the gun captain stood there streaming like a drowned cat.

"She’s no’ for openin’ the nicht, Cap’n! The sea’s got a haund on her, an’ it’s no’ lettin’ go!"

James held his course.

The next thunderclap lasted over the water a breath longer than the first.

Behind him, the Whydah climbed a wave, her gilded stern flaring at the sky, while the Marianne and the Fisher hung on behind her, two small black shadows in the dark.

Ahead and abeam, three ships sat close enough to hit with a biscuit, the man o’ war guns lighting a downpour that fell in sheets. Between them, the sea heaved, its waves turning white with every flash, and the waters were too narrow for all of them.

"FARROW! ANNE!" James roared. "Get the caps off the mortars!"