Chapter 317: A Gadfly at Sunset

The sea roared beneath the Fortune’s bow as she charged down on the King’s blockade, the wind square behind her and every stitch of black canvas beating hard. She had been Le Faucon once, the Falcon, before a pirate captain painted her as a moonless night, and now she flew like one, low over the water, faster than she had ever dared.

The sun hung two hands above the island, directly behind the navy, and threw its full glare across the sea. The pirates squinted into it as they approached, while the King’s ships stood black against the fire, every gunport open.

Aboard the nearest frigate, the gun crews stood ready with the lanyards wound around their fists. A bosun’s mate walked along the ranks, bellowing orders.

"Eyes front, your idle, pox-addled sons of bitches!"

The Fortune passed the spot where she had retreated on each of her four previous visits, but this time she kept forward.

A midshipman’s voice shot up the scale until it threatened to leave him altogether.

"S-sir! Sir! She’s past the mark, and she’s coming straight on, sir, straight at us!"

Bonnet held the wheel in both hands, his knuckles pale as candle wax, though his voice floated out airy over the roar of the wind. The helm answered before he had quite decided what to ask of it, and he glanced down at it distressed.

"Whitlock, my dear fellow, I do believe we’ll actually arrive this time. Do keep hold of your slate."

The gentleman pirate eased the helm over, and the Fortune bore away across the front of the blockade, close enough for her crew to tally the buttons on the lookouts’ coats. At that distance, there was little room for misunderstanding, though there was plenty of room for cannonballs.

Mary stood in the waist, her hat pulled low and one arm raised. "Right, ye randy old bastard! Yer ladies are unlaced, they’re warm, and they’ve been pantin’ for it since dawn! So give ’em what they’ve been dyin’ for! Fire as she bears, and may the devil take the hindmost!"

Her arm came down like an axe.

"Ooh, there ’ee be, me lovelies, there ’ee be! Old Dad’s got ’ee all laced an’ ready!"

The gun captain crooned, reaching for his lanyard with tenderness.

"Come on, me handsome, come on an’ meet the gennelmen! An’ mind ’ee give ’em a kiss, now!"

The first cannon fired, and the second went off before the first had finished recoiling. Then came the third, the fourth, and the rest, a rolling thunder that spread down the Fortune’s side from bow to stern as each enemy hull came into range.

Every gun jumped against its breeching, and the deck kicked beneath the sailors’ boots.

Flame spread across the black hull, gun after gun, while the sea ahead of the King’s ships broke into white water. Her smoke drifted west on the breeze and spread across the King’s blockade, the red sun burning through it.

The nearest frigate’s main topsail took a hole large enough for a man to walk through, and the rowboat hanging from her davits burst into kindling. The sloops got little more than a drenching, while a lucky shot entered the man o’ war’s bows, found its way into the galley, and carried off a copper kettle along with a cook’s entire afternoon.

An even luckier shot removed the nose from her gilded figurehead, and the far frigate lost a length of rail and a gunport lid, which skipped away across the water.

The damage was uneven, but the King’s fleet had at least received its share of attention.

The King’s bow guns answered, being the only ones that could bear on the Fortune, and fired straight into the wind, their smoke blowing back into their own faces.

Some redcoats stood in the thick of it with tears streaming through the black on their cheeks. They clawed at their eyes with a powder-stained hands while the smoke rolled back over the deck like a wet blanket.

"Howay, man, where is she? I cannot see her! I cannot see a bloody thing! Our smoke’s in me eyes, man, I’m blastin’ at nowt but our own bloody smoke!"

The shots splashed into the sea where the Fortune had been, but she was already beyond the last hull. Bonnet hauled her wind, and she leaned into the breeze and clawed her way out to windward without a scratch.

Behind her, two anchors splashed overboard as the frigates slipped their cables. Both frigates left their anchors riding on buoys, fell off, loosed their topsails, and came after her.

Unfortunately for them, the same breeze that had carried the pirates down the line now blew straight into their faces, forcing them to beat after the Fortune, tack by long tack, fighting the very wind she climbed as easily as a ladder.

Whitlock held up his thumb at arm’s length and measured the distance with one eye closed.

"The frigates have gained nothing, Captain. I enter it in the ledger with the deepest regret, on their behalf."

Their long guns fired, and the cannonballs struck the sea in two white pillars well short of the Fortune. It was much the same result as a boy throwing stones at a ship from the beach, except that the navy had spent considerably more money on its equipment.

Back in the line, the man o’ war’s capstan continued to clank around, her anchor remaining firmly on the bottom.

The frigates slowed, looked toward the Mistake and the Lemon waiting to windward, and hauled round to rejoin the blockade.

The Fortune slid up within hail of its allied ships.

Tom touched a finger to his hat, while Gil stood at the Lemon’s rail with his arms folded, watching the King’s ships. He looked entirely content to be there, which was more than could be said for the gentlemen on the other side of the water.

On the King’s decks, every shot fired that day had washed into the sea. The redcoats threw their rammers overboard, while lieutenants snapped their spyglasses shut so violently that the tube split.

A marine sergeant, whose voice had been reduced to gravel, shouted the only drill he seemed able to remember.

"Stand to! Nay, stand easy! Nay, stand to! God rot thee, stand to!"

The sun crept toward the island, and the Fortune lay hove to and let it. Flags went up the man o’ war’s mizzen, the frigates answered, and the sloops answered the frigates.

Whitlock read the signals as they appeared. "The navy has begun to argue in flags, Captain. I make out four oaths, a rather pointed reproach, and what I believe to be a prayer. Though that last may merely be the signal for assistance, and the two are scarcely distinguishable at this range."

Mary walked along the rows of guns with her thumbs hooked into her belt.

"Swab ’em out, ye lecherous lot, an’ sweet an’ gentle about it. The ladies’ll be wanted again."

Four sloops in the King’s blockade had been busy while the larger ships tried to make sense of the afternoon. Their anchors lay short, and their topsails hung loose.

Then four sets of canvas dropped and filled with wind together, and four small hulls came clawing out to windward, spreading wide like the fingers of a hand.

"Deeeck, ahoy! Sloops, sor! Four o’ them, so there is, an’ the lead pair are comin’ hard!"

"Oh, I say! Oh, how perfectly splendid! They’ve brought the little ones!"

Bonnet put the helm over, and the Fortune bore down on them with the breeze at her back. The sloops fired their bow guns first, shooting against the wind and taking their own powder haze in the face, but the shot still came through.

Some random cannonball ripped through the fore topsail as neatly as a sheet torn in two, while the lucky shots carried away a length of rail, a gunport lid, and the rowboat from its tackle.

Splinters flew through the deck, and one of them found Pike’s backside. He sat down hard and considered the matter with the sky.

"Why’s it allus me? Tell me that, Lord! What’ve I ever done to ye!"

Two of the sloops cut toward the Fortune at the same moment. Their bowsprits missed each other by a yard, but their booms clattered together and caught, leaving the two ships stuck in an argument neither could win by shouting louder.

"Bear up! Bear up, you blind lubber, you’re on my bowsprit!"

"Bear up yourself, boyo!"

The black ship went through the gap between them like a thread through a needle while the two tailors were still quarrelling over whose turn it was.

"Both sides, ye feckers!" Mary roared. "Fire as she bears, an’ don’t stop to be polite!"

Every gun on both sides fired at once. The flashes came so close they scorched the sloops’ paint, while the roar travelled through the pirates’ bones like a bell struck inside a barrel. The sea between the hulls boiled white, and the cloud of spray rolled away to the west.

When the smoke and spray cleared, a sloop’s topmast hung over her side, and her bowsprit was pulverized. The twin sloop had a hole above the waterline large enough to drive a handcart through, her mainsail lay in strips, and her crew was running to the pumps.

The King’s navy had taken a beating, but surrender was evidently a separate matter.

Bonnet hauled her wind, and the Fortune climbed out to the east. She had lost a little paint from her rail and picked up a few flapping ropes, but not a crewmember had been killed.

For a ship that had just passed through four enemy sloops, this was a satisfactory account of the business.

The sun touched the island behind the navy, and every mast in the King’s blockade glowed. The breeze faded by degrees, and the shadows of the three pirate ships stretched across the sea.

Whitlock took down the blue flag and folded it.

Bonnet released the wheel at last.

He flexed his stiff white fingers one by one, then flung his arms wide to the red sunset with flourish. "Whitlock, my dear, dear fellow, do put down an engagement, would you? Here, at dawn, tomorrow, and the morning after that, for as long as the navy cares to receive us."

"Entered, Captain. Dawn, and each dawn thereafter, until such time as the navy sees fit to terminate the acquaintance. I have underlined it thrice, that there be no ambiguity as to our enthusiasm."

Astern, the sloops limped home with their pumps clanking, while the frigates hauled their anchors off the buoys in the dusk. The three black ships headed east, their lanterns smaller as they went.

From the man o’ war came the last gun of the day, its shot sailing into the empty dark and finding no mark.