Chapter 305: Battle at the Gulf of Darien

? [BATTLE OVERVIEW]

ALLIED — THE DARIEN EXPEDITION

Bloody Rose — Engaged, Storm-Driven

Whydah Gally — Engaged, Storm-Driven

Spry Eel — Engaged, Storm-Driven

Marianne — Engaged, Storm-Driven

Fisher — Engaged, Storm-Driven

ENEMY — ROYAL NAVY SQUADRON

HMS Dragon — Engaged, Storm-Driven

HMS Adventure — Engaged, Storm-Driven

HMS Scarborough — Engaged, Storm-Driven

Escort Sloops (3) — Engaged, Storm-Driven

HMS Dragon sat on the Rose’s lee bow, with her frigates spread out beyond her.

James had to bring the Rose up into the wind and lay her across the waters to give the mortars a clear shot, a maneuver no sane helmsman would attempt in a gale unless he had a particular wish to drown alongside his friends.

Down in the waist, the gun crews lashed themselves to their pieces and hauled shells up from the hatch, every sailor bending over his slow match beneath a hat or coat to protect it with the care usually reserved for a candle in a house full of children.

At the foremast, Briggs stood watching the sky, his coil of rope forgotten in his hands. The boatswain met every storm with a grunt, so his sudden interest in the weather was enough to worry the crew.

"Oi! Oi, lads, LOOK! Briggs is STARIN’! Briggs is starin’ at the bleedin’ sky!"

"Gawd’s teeth, say yer prayers, boys! We’re done for! We’re all done for!"

The Rose leaned over, stalled in a trough with her bow against the darkness, and refused to come around as a swell crashed along her side and the wheel went slack in his hands.

Cudjoe’s voice came down the deck. "Foresail! Shake the water out of the foresail and brace it hard! Ease the mainsheet, EASE it, I said! Topsails bide reefed, and the bastard that lays a finger on one, I’ll reef HIM!"

At the foremast, Briggs seized the brace himself, and that caused a groan to rumble around the deck.

"He’s HAULIN’! Briggs is haulin’ wi’ his own hands!"

"Wake me mum, lads, it’s the end o’ the bloody world!"

Cudjoe stepped up beside the wheel, looking no happier than the rest of them. "More canvas on a night the sky’s comin’ down about our ears. Aye, why not? I’ve never cared for that mainmast anyway."

James braced his boots against the deck and threw his whole weight onto the spokes.

"Come round for me, lass, come round, you great claret-sailed beauty!"

Every swell kicked the wheel, sending the shock up his arms and into his back, the punishment of a gale that had got hold of a ship by the rudder.

The next swell caught the Rose under the quarter, and this time she answered. Her bow came around an inch at a time, her lee rail sank close to the water, and the waist was washed over while the lashed gun crews clung on.

At last, she came up streaming, her lee side square to the King’s ships.

"PIECES REA-DY, CAP’N! An’ may the Lord be lookin’ the other way!"

Rook crouched beneath a tarred hat, his slate soft inside his coat, while Twice nodded beside him at every stake.

Somehow, his voice thundered over the storm. "Gents, gents, GENTS! Layin’ odds, layin’ odds! Short of the frigate, evens, and I’m bein’ generous! In the bleedin’ briny, three to one! Hit the man o’ war, THIRTY, an’ God have mercy on me purse!"

Anne bent over the mortars, water streaming off her chin.

"Elevation’s true! Give the word James, before the Devil changes his mind!"

Farrow’s fist went up over the next piece, white-knuckled.

"Wait on the roll! WAIT on it, ye mad bastard, or we’ll be shellin’ the bleedin’ MOON!"

The Rose climbed, and when she reached the top of the roll, James bellowed with his whole chest.

"FIRE! FIRE, and let the King hear it in his bed!"

Both mortars roared together, making enough noise to split the thunder in half.

? [PERK ACTIVATED] — True Shot

The shells rose on a clean angle, their fuses spitting in the rain like sparks from an anvil.

For one heartbeat, every sailor could already see the enemy ship dead in the water, but a gust came off the land at the top of the climb, caught both shells, and shoved them aside.

The first shell struck Dragon’s lee side below the rail, its fuse flickering before the explosion came late, outside her planking. The iron fragments swept across her waist and upper deck, knocking a knot of redcoats flat, but not nearly enough to even be considered a scratch.

The twin shell drifted wide and burst in the breeze short of the nearest frigate, scattering iron into the sea with a hiss like a handful of nails thrown into water.

"WIDE! Short an’ into the drink, so it is!

Rook howled.

"Pay the sea, Twice! Pay the bleedin’ SEA, three to one!"

Twice nodded, and sailors cursed the gust in three languages.

Dragon’s upper deck lit from end to end, and lightning struck the water a ship’s length off her bow, turning the surface white as milk. The thunderclap came down with the broadside.

The frigates fired after her, their shots skipping over the dark waves and singing as they came.

Most passed harmlessly by.

The couple that hit tore a cloud of splinters from the windward rail beside the main shrouds, sending sailors sprawling with their palms full of wood and blood, two hauled below, howling.

The few cannons the Rose could bring to bear from her open deck fired with the sea, their shots skipping off the waves before striking a frigate’s bow rail.

Astern, the Whydah answered, and one of her shots skimmed Dragon’s shrouds.

"AIM at the SHIP, ye cross-eyed King’s whores!"

"She’s the size o’ a bleedin’ cathedral, ye can’t miss ’er!"

"Me old granny aims better than the lot o’ ye, an’ she’s been in ’er grave since Michaelmas!"

Jim hauled at his brace with rain off his nose and a gleam in his eye that bode no good for the listeners. "Seen worse! I’ve seen WORSE, I have! Squall off the Azores, it were, blew the wig clean off a bishop in Lisbon, and me three leagues out to sea, mark ye! Landed square on a goat, it did, and the goat were made a saint on the spot!"

The deck answered him as one, in six different voices.

"Shut it, Jim!"

"Shut yer gob, Jim!"

"Gawd ’elp us, ’e’s started!"

Jim only hauled harder, wounded to the marrow. "It’s TRUE, I tell ye, true as I’m standin’ here! Ask the goat! Go on, ask him! He’ll swear to it, an’ he’s a saint, so he can’t lie!"

The passage narrowed, white water breaking on both sides where the shoals lay, while the frigates’ lamps hung abeam, close enough to resemble a neighbor’s lantern across a street.

Grey clung to the binnacle with a chart that had turned to pulp inside his coat.

The leadsman’s call came out of the chains in the old drawn-out chant, flung up the deck against the wind.

"By the maaark... FI-I-IVE!"

White water broke on the larboard shoal a cable’s length nearer, and the man’s voice tightened.

"An’ a half... FOU-OUR!"

Grey clung to the binnacle, white to the lips. "Four fathom and fallin’, Cap’n! Four and FALLIN’! Chart says six, and the chart’s a bloody liar! I’ll have words with the man what drew it, and I know it was bloody me!"

Far ahead, the Eel’s lamp jumped once. Cudjoe’s head snapped toward the white water on the larboard bow.

"Shoal tae larboard! A cable aff, nae more! And if we-"

James, hands locked on the wheel, roared into the din.

"AGAIN! Say it again, Cudjoe! The wind’s eaten the half of it!"

"Shoal tae larboard, Captain. A cable aff. Keep her out of it."

Lightning flashed again, revealing the wave at the sandbar behind them.

It stood higher than the Whydah’s gilded stern gallery, a black hill crowned with white teeth, and came charging up the passage.

The Fisher was last in formation, so the wave reached her first and fell on her, tipping her lamp flat against the water until it went out. On the enemy’s side, one of the escort sloops was swallowed by the same wave and disappeared in the same flash.

The wave passed beneath the Marianne, lifted the Whydah’s stern toward the sky, and finally reached the Rose. She climbed with her bowsprit directed at the stars, and for a moment every sailor boots left the deck before she dropped, the wheel spokes bucking in James’s hands until he hauled her straight again.

Then came the hush. The crews crossed themselves where they stood, and not a sailor abandoned his post.

From the Whydah’s stern, a voice spread across the water, torn to pieces by the wind.

"FISHER! FISHER! Sing out, damn yer eyes! Answer, ye stubborn bastards, ANSWER!"

Only the gale replied.

James looked astern. Three lamps had followed the Rose out of the creek, and now only two remained, small and swinging in the darkness.

"Hold her, James," Cudjoe reached him low. "Eyes on the lane."

The Dragon guns flashed again, breaking the hush, and the Rose and the Whydah answered in turn. Every shot from both sides fell into a trough or skipped off a wave and disappeared beneath the water, while sheets of spray swept across both decks.

Neither side managed to hit much.

James kept the Rose on the line through the passage. The lightning remained over the water a breath longer than any flash had a right to.

In that brief white light, they saw a row of waterspouts directly ahead. Grey torrents hanging from the black cloud across the passage like pillars holding up the sky. The nearest was as thick as a tower, with lightning up its inside.

White water thrashed around each base and boiled, their roar crashing over the thunder.

"Mother o’ God an’ all her saints, will ye LOOK at ’em!"

James had the helm hard over before the next roar reached him.

The Rose heeled until green water washed along her lee rail, and he steered her away from the torrents toward the very edge of the passage.

There, a narrow strip of black water spread between the last waterspout and the white breakers over the shoal. He drove the Rose into that gap, keeping as far from the water pillars as the shoal permitted, while the Whydah and Marianne wallowed around to follow.

"Round we go, lass! Wide of the lot, and don’t look back!"