Chapter 307: Northward, Against the Grave

HMS Dragon replied to the challenge with her whole upper deck, a line of flashes lighting the rain from end to end.

The Rose climbed a swell taller than Dragon’s mainmast, its peak torn white and thrown sideways by the wind. At the top, the whole fight lay below her for one breath, three sets of lamps off the lee bow, rising and falling between the waves like corks in a tub.

Then the swell brought her down, and every light disappeared.

A few shots skipped over the water, most falling short in the hills of water. The lucky one tore through the foresail with a crack like a whip, and the Rose’s open-deck guns fought back as her bow came down, ragged and late.

Farrow flung a fist toward the mortar crews, his voice rasping across the deck. "Hold yer fire, range is too short for the arc, and she’s rollin’ too bleedin’ hard for the angle! Touch one off now and she’ll sail clean over the King’s line and land slap on the Whydah’s poop!"

Across the mortars, Anne kept her eyes on the dark where Dragon’s lamps had been, and one eyebrow climbed slowly toward her wet copper hair. "Grand, mortars the size of bull calves and not a lick of use between ’em. Shall I fetch a cloth and give ’em a polish, sure, they’d make a lovely ornament."

Despite the rain, sweat dripped down inside James’s collar. Wet wool and hard work could make a sailor sweat even in weather like this, and he dragged a sleeve across his face before taking the lass up the next climb.

The Rose dropped into the trough, her gun crews wet to the waist at their pieces, slow matches tucked under hats and coats. On the windward side, a gun tore its breeching as the ship rolled, and its carriage ran loose across the deck.

The crew scattered, which was the reasonable thing to do when several tons of iron figured to move without permission.

Kwaku walked toward it. "Do not run, gentlemen. A thing that is fled from will only follow, run, and she will chase you all the way to the grave. Stand aside, and let me speak with the lady."

The chain slipped from his shoulder in one loop, passed around the carriage and a ring-bolt, and snapped taut. The gun dragged him a step like a hooked fish before coming to a stop.

He snorted. "There now. She and I have come to an understanding. It is a courtesy the sea has never once troubled to offer me."

"Gawd’s teeth! Would ye look at that! He’s gone an’ trussed ’er up like a bleedin’ goose!"

The crew hauled the gun back to its port, and multiple cannons fired together. The nearest roared close enough to leave a ringing in James’s ears, and he shook his head against it while keeping the Rose’s head up for the next climb.

A shot from the Rose blew Scarborough’s stern boat apart in a burst of planks, and the frigate’s answer tore through the lee bulwark, sending splinters flying as long as oars. Sailors dropped flat against the planking with wood in their palms and curses in their mouths, while the worst of the wounded were carried below.

In the next flash, a black wall rose ahead.

Grey clamped one hand to the binnacle and flung the other toward the water. "Four! Five! Six! Hold her up, Cap’n, hold her up! The seventh’s the muckle one! It’s the oldest rule at sea, as sure as the Sabbath!"

The sea hadn’t heard of such rule and showed no interest in obeying it. It rose out of the darkness as high as a church tower, white along its top, and James, waiting for the seventh, put the wheel down one beat too late.

"That’s not the seventh! That’s not even in the tally, black-hearted midden o’ a sea!"

Cudjoe’s bellow rolled aft from the waist, deep enough to pry a man loose from his own fear.

"Ease the main! Ease it, ease it! Haul the foresheet, haul, before the sea bury we all!"

The watch caught it and flung it fore and aft, each man adding his piety to the orders.

"EASE THE MAIN! HAUL THE FORESHEET, YE LAZY SONS O’ SIN, HAUL!"

The canvas answered, and the Rose climbed. At the top, the sea came over her bow, green and solid, sweeping the forecastle as water ran aft along both sides of the deck in white rivers before bursting against the quarterdeck ladder hard enough to throw spray over the wheel.

James took it full in the chest and laughed.

"Och, she’s thirsty the day, lass! Drink yer fill!"

The swell dropped the Rose into a pit of black water, lanterns burning along the waves, with Scarborough’s stern to one side and Adventure’s bow to the other, barely a ship’s length apart and closing fast.

"Bring her up one point, James! Now!" Cudjoe roared.

James hauled the wheel over, and the Rose went through the gap with a yard to spare on either side. Sailors ducked, rigging sang, and no hull touched her.

Every ship in that black water had lost her course, crossing and recrossing the same swells while every cannon that could bear fired.

The lightning came hard enough to hurt James’s eyes. He pulled his hat brim lower and held the Rose through the glare, the Whydah’s broadside roaring loudest of the lot and lighting her gilded gallery.

A shot cut Dragon’s main topsail yard in half, leaving the sail streaming like a torn flag. Then one from the Rose tore Adventure’s side near the waterline, while one more struck a gun crew and flung its redcoats across their deck, blood washing from the scuppers with the rain.

Scarborough’s topmast leaned, hung there for a moment, and went over the side with all its canvas.

The King’s frigates gave as good as they got. A shot tore the Whydah’s stern gallery to splinters, sending the gilt spinning into the rain.

The Marianne took a shot low in her quarter, just above the waterline, and her sailors could be seen at the pumps whenever the lightning flashed. The Eel’s foretopmast went over her side, leaving her wallowing around on top of it.

The next flash showed the edge of the rain ahead, with stars behind it.

At the cloud’s edge, the rain fell away like a curtain being pulled back. The wind lost its teeth and dropped a few points while the thunder moved astern, leaving what remained of the drizzle to fall cold on hats and shoulders.

The big waves stayed, long and slow, but the storm now stood behind the pirate armada over the coast, a wall lit from within. In the north, the stars appeared one at a time.

Dragon fired a few last shots, and the Rose replied, the cannonballs disappearing into the darkness. The Rose’s fell short of the King’s ship and threw up a white fan of water, visible in the lightning for half a breath.

"The rain’s gone! Where’s the bleedin’ rain gone, lads?"

"Wot, did Gawd go an’ take ’is bucket back?"

Dragon hoisted a signal, its lights arranged in a line up her mizzen. The King’s three ships put their wheels over one after another and fell away east, slow and battered.

Astern, the Whydah’s lantern swung into view, followed by the Marianne and the Eel, limping along.

Cudjoe’s voice came again, scraped hoarse now but still carrying the weight of the whole ship behind it.

"Shorten sail! Take in the topsails an’ let the cripples find us!"

James held the helm toward the fading lanterns a heartbeat longer than was wise. Then he spun the spokes north and flung his voice after like a challenge. "Next time, laddies! Next time, and we’ll finish what the sea began! North, Cudjoe, north! Pass the word fore and aft!"

"There!" Grey cried. "The pole star, Cap’n! Low over the water and bonnie as a lost shilling!"

Cheers spread the length of the deck.

"Ha-HA! Look at ’em go! Look at the lobster-backed bastards run! RUN, bleedin’ sea-slugs, RUN!"

"Me ’ands... Gawd above, me poor bleedin’ ’ands... I’ll never ’old a pint again..."

Kwaku coiled his chain over his shoulder. "The gentlemen have departed before the entertainment was concluded, Captain. I am told this is the mark of very poor breeding, and I confess I had hoped for better from the navy."

After all that mess, the spokes had grown heavy in James’s hands, and a thin ringing filled his ears. He reckoned it was the last of the guns and grinned up at the stars.

Boots struck the quarterdeck ladder.

Cudjoe came up first, with Anne at his shoulder as they stopped at the wheel.

The quartermaster reported flatly. "Marianne’s pumpin’, but she’s floatin’. The Eel’s lost her foretopmast, and the Whydah says she can keep up."

Anne had stopped at his shoulder with her eyes on his face.

"James, you’re sweatin’. In this cold, mind. Look at me. Look at me, I said."

He turned his grin on her.

"Och, it’s only the hard work of a long night, lass. I’ve been..."

A note rose in his ears and swelled until it drowned out the rest, Anne’s lips moving as her voice reached him in pieces.

"... James? ... your hands, your hands... you’ve let go of the..."

"... Captain... Cap..."

Then nothing.

His fingers wouldn’t close around the spokes. His knees went cold, then numb, and the darkness crept in from the edges like a tide over sand.

The deck rose toward him, but before it could reach him, hands caught the front of his coat.

Anne’s hands, hard and quick. The grin remained on his face.

The shimmer gathered in the dark.

?? [QUEST PROGRESS — A DEBT OF CONSIDERABLE AGE]

Milestone Reached : Key Recovered

Reward : 100 Fate

?? [TITLE ACTIVATED] — Against All Reasonable Odds

The third key has been in your coat for some time, and I held the payment until you were lying down, the only position in which you reliably listen. Your balance now stands at two hundred and fifty.

Your luck has finally run out, though only in part, as I imagine is the cruelest way for luck to leave. You have yellow fever. By every figure in my data, you should be dead, and I had begun composing the entry.

You have days at sea ahead of you, with plenty of time to suffer and fight for your life. I urge you to enjoy every one of them, since the experiment will be watching.

I hear the sea breeze does wonders for the dying.