Chapter 306: Through the Jaws of the Tempest

The Rose entered the strip with one waterspout roaring to leeward and to windward, and for one breath James had nothing to trust but the dark water between them.

The strip was a cable wide, about one tenth of a nautical mile.

To windward, the shoal broke white, close enough to spit spray aboard. To leeward, the nearest waterspout stood grey and thicker than the Rose was long, hanging from the black cloud like a rope from a gallows beam, while lightning crawled up its inside and the sea boiled white around its foot.

The rest of the spouts marched away to leeward, each torrent appearing in turn whenever the lightning obliged.

The wind, which had been coming straight off the land, began turning toward the nearest waterspout. The Rose’s lee rail dropped, her stern started sliding, and the helm grew heavy in James’s hands, then light, then heavy again.

He gave it a quarter-spoke against the pull before it reached them, but it came regardless, climbing up through the spokes. The strain ran into his arms and back, heavier than ever, and he planted his boots farther apart.

James meant to hold the ship straight, and the Rose seemed willing to do her part.

"She’s a-drawin’ us in! She’s a-DRAWIN’ us in, lads! The great bleedin’ beast wants the mast!"

The stern slid another yard.

He bared his teeth at it. "Away with you! Go and tug at the shoal! It’s bigger than us and uglier than you, and you’ll not find a better fight in the whole of the continent!"

The foresail slammed aback against the mast with a crack like a broadside.

The wind had swung onto the front of the sail and pinned it flat, and the Rose lost her way, her bow directed toward the torrent with all the good sense.

"Brace the foreyard round!" Cudjoe bawled down the deck. "Ease the foresheet!"

At the weather brace, the sailors ended up tailing out behind Wesley, who was hauling the rope by himself while the others hung on like washing cloth on a line.

Together with him, Edmund hauled rope as he gloriously proclaimed. "Brethren, it is my sorrowful duty to inform you, and I do so with the very deepest regret, that the wind has come round upon the foresail! The quartermaster, in his patience, requests that the yard be braced round with all possible speed! I beseech you, haul!"

The brace came through their fists a hand at a time, slow and steady, with a row of useless hands swinging off the end like bait.

"Certainly."

Wesley replied, and the yard came round with a groan, as if it had thought better of complain.

The bow lifted a point, then stopped.

Cudjoe clicked his tongue. "Forget the topsails, I was wrong! The sea’s seen to that! TOPMEN ALOFT! Shake out the reefs, and nae dawdlin’!"

There was no apology in him, only an old sailor reading the sea and changing his mind to suit it. The order spread forward from mouth to mouth, each man bellowing it on to the next, until it broke over the topmen’s heads.

"Aloft wi’ ye! Shake out them reefs! Shake ’em out, lazy sods, SHAKE ’EM OUT!"

The topmen scrambled up the shrouds, and the topsails dropped open with a bang.

Each lightning flash left a ghost hanging in the darkness for a breath afterward, so James blinked the rain from his eyes thrice. He popped his shoulders loose after the strain since the creek, then laid her up a point as the helm kicked again.

The Rose came up with her lee side square to the row. In the next flash, HMS Dragon appeared in white light between two waterspouts, with her frigates beyond her, all running for the lee end.

Anne crouched over the mortars with rain sluicing off her chin and the slow match cupped in her fist. "Laid and loaded, and hungry as wolves! Give me a chance, James! A CHANCE, d’ye hear me? Afore the sea goes and changes its mind on us!"

Farrow’s fist went up, knotted and white in the lightning, and the whole gun crew froze under it. "HOLD! Hold, ye eager devils, HOLD! Let the spouts walk off the line! That gust ate the last one whole, an’ I’ll not be feedin’ it again, not while there’s breath in me!"

The spout ground aside, and the chance opened like a door.

"NOW!" James roared. "FIRE AS SHE BEARS!"

Both mortars roared together.

? [PERK ACTIVATED] — True Shot

The first shell threaded the gale with its fuse spitting and burst on HMS Adventure’s forecastle, dropping a knot of redcoats into a heap. The second flew into a torrent’s wind, got snatched aside like a leaf, and burst over nothing.

Doyle poured a spill of green liquor from beneath his coat over the slow match at the open-deck cannons, as it flared green and stayed alight in the rain, illuminating the crew’s faces like a row of drowned men.

He bellowed eagerly. "Ah, SWEET Reprieve, me darlin’s, me green-eyed beauties! Would ye look at her burn! She’d light in the Flood itself, so she would, and old Noah would be beggin’ a pipe-light off her!"

The cannon roared, and a frigate’s rail burst into splinters along her waist.

Dragon answered from her upper deck with tearing orange flash. The shots punched a hole through the mainsail large enough for a man to walk through, and struck the hull amidships with a boom that rang through every plank.

? [PERK ACTIVATED] — Devil’s Hull

The timbers groaned, then shrugged the blow off.

The next shot cut through a foremast shroud, and the loose rope whipped across the foredeck, knocking three sailors flat onto the planks as blood washed into the rain and the wounded crew was hauled below.

Cudjoe kept his voice high. "Tackle on that shroud! Set it up this instant, afore the mast goes for a swim! Hands to it, and mind the blocks!"

Astern, the Whydah skimmed Dragon’s bowsprit rigging. Lightning stood over the row, white and long, and showed them the Eel.

She was deep in the row, with a torrent moving across her bow. The Eel heeled over until her lee rail went under, her mainsail tore into strips, and her boom swung across the deck. She spun on her keel like a top and her lamp went out.

Farther astern, the waterspout pulled the Marianne’s bow toward it. Her jib boom tore away, a sea swept across her waist, and her lamp tipped flat and disappeared.

A hush spread the length of the Rose’s deck.

"The Eel’s gone dark! An’ the Marianne! Marianne’s gone, lads, her lamp’s gone!"

Then a small light fought its way up through the spray ahead, followed by her twin astern, both thin and swinging.

"THERE! By all the saints, THERE! Eel’s lit again! An’ Marianne’s up wi’ her!"

"God love her wicked little heart!"

A thin cheer went up, only to be cut short by the thunder.

Back into the wheel, Cudjoe sighed. "Keep her up, Cap’n. Nae lookin’ astern, what’s behind us is God’s business, and our hands are full."

The storm swallowed half the words, so James flung the rest after them.

"Aye! Up she stays!"

He let out a breath through his teeth and drove both hands down on the spokes to keep her on course.

The Rose held.

Orange light bloomed across the water ahead when a bolt struck the mainmast of a King’s sloop on the lee side of the row. Her rigging and canvas caught fire at once, and tar and pitch burned even in the rain until, within the time it took to draw a breath, she had become a towering mass of flame.

Her crew jumped into the sea with their coats alight, while the whole row stood out in orange against the clouds.

Then a waterspout drifted to leeward and crossed the next sloop, lifting her stern, swinging her broadside to the sea, and pulling her mast out like a tooth. She lay in the torrent’s wake with her sailors in the water.

The voice spread out of the waist, hoarse and low, and all along the rail hands moved from forehead to chest to shoulder.

"Christ have mercy on the poor bleedin’ souls. Mother o’ God, take ’em quick an’ kind."

By the light of the burning sloop, James could see the end of the strip and the King’s three ships toward the lee end of the row, their hulls lit orange by the flames.

The strip narrowed until the shoal’s breakers on one side and the last torrent’s boiling base on the other left them half a cable of black water to work with.

"Spill the foresail!"

Cudjoe called, each order short and in its proper place.

"Yards sharp, brace ’em hard! Ease the main!"

The canvas answered, and the Rose gathered speed in an instant.

"Easy, my bonny. Easy now. Just a wee taste of the wild, and we’ll be done flirtin’ with it."

James said under his breath, letting her bear away a little toward the waterspout to gain speed. The pull caught her at once and hauled her bow toward the boiling water until her lee rail was overrun by sheets of water.

"UP, me beauty! UP! Hold her up! Hold her UP, stubborn darlin’, or we’re all for Davy Jones!"

He hauled the helm up hard with his whole back, and the Rose fought free of the pull with a groan that cracked from stem to stern.

The torrent’s edge threw a wall of sea across the waist and swept the sailors off their feet. The rowboat’s lashings parted, and it spun away into the dark as a shower of small silver fish came down after the water.

Pete came up out of the scuppers spluttering, holding a limp silver thing out by the tail. "Oi! This shite just slapped me! A fish! A bleedin’ FISH, right acrost the chops, with its tail an’ all! Strike me blind, ye’d think the sea’d knock first!"

James laughed, a great raw bark of it, and flung the words down the deck over the wind. "Pocket the supper, lads! The sea’s payin’ our wages in cod! Now hold the rail, you daft gulls, hold the rail!"

He took one hand off the spoke to wipe the water from his eyes. When he tried to close it around the wet wood again, his fingers were slow to obey, so he flexed them twice and grinned into the darkness.

The Whydah swung through behind him, water washing across her waist, and the last waterspout fell astern.

The rain changed its note. The Rose climbed out of the land’s lee and onto the hills of the open sea, where the whole storm came down on her at once.

Mountains of water rushed with the wind as far as the lightning could show them, and spray swept over the quarterdeck in sheets. Behind her, the waterspouts stood out in the flashes, with the burning sloop’s glow beneath it.

The Whydah emerged astern, followed by the Eel and the Marianne, both limping along with their lamps swinging.

Ahead, a cable or two off the lee bow, HMS Dragon, Adventure, and Scarborough emerged from the other end of the waterspouts into the same hills of water. Their lamps were lit, their guns were flashing, and the sea heaved between them.

James threw back his head and bellowed it at the whole storm, drenched and delighted, a man shaking hands with a rival he rather admires. "THERE’S a sea, lass! And would you look who’s come to the door to wave us off, His Majesty’s finest, bless their wee sodden hearts!"