Here was Aja at Fallon’s side with his captain’s sword, anticipating that action could be around the corner, as it were. The little wolves held a special fascination for him, a dark kind of fascination, primarily owing to his last vision of the Holy One on the quarterdeck of Negro Sol, the silver cross around his neck, standing with his eyes closed and arms outstretched to the sky, praying. Praying— while he sailed away from the miserable wretches he’d sold into a life of unspeakable horror. Aja looked at Fallon, cool as always, and wondered if he, too, was secretly hoping the ships were waiting. But they were about to round Rojo Cabo, and all would become known very soon.
SOMERS WAS CALLED to come on deck immediately. Three ships were entering the bay, and the quiet anchorage he’d chosen was suddenly not quiet. Petite Bouton lay with her stern facing the sea, her guns useless against the advancing ships. The black brig and two sloops were coming from the southwest and, if they held course, would pass Petite rather too close to be friendly.
“Load the larboard guns, quickly!” he ordered, figuring the guns might bear if the oncoming ships chose not to pass between Petite and the shore. “Load and run out!” And then, as an afterthought, “Have the colors run up!”
If these ships were hostile, Somers at least wanted to make a fight of it, although they had no chance as it stood. The ships had no colors up as yet, but he could see them bearing down on Petite Bouton now, and it didn’t look good. Quickly, he went down below to tell Elinore to stay there.
And to get his pistols.
FORTY-TWO
LOOKOUT THERE, any sign of the ships?” yelled Fallon with growing anxiety.
“No, sir!” came the shout to the deck.
That meant they’d gone into one of the bays to the north, presumably for the night. It all seemed normal enough, Fallon thought, and he was about to call off the chase. Then he heard the cannons.
“What the devil?” blurted from his lips. Those were broadsides, by God!
“Mr. Brooks! Up with the colors, if you please,” he called. “And call all hands, all hands! And get the boats over the side quickly! Aja, get the freedmen below deck with Paloma, please!” He knew the former rebel slaves would be a nuisance on deck and likely to get hurt if it came to a fight.
Suddenly, all thoughts of a 3-1 disadvantage disappeared. The ship sprang into action, Barclay tweaking the sails to gain an extra half knot of speed. In very little time the gun crews were at the ready with pistols and cutlasses in their belts. The cannon fire thundered louder now, reverberating ominously across the water.
Slowly, Rascal rounded into Bahia Salinas and the war before them was beautifully bathed by late afternoon light. Fallon gasped, for there was Petite Bouton, the very same sloop he’d captured and sent to Bermuda, under fire from the little wolves! The smoke made it difficult to see but it was clear that Petite was all but overwhelmed, though the British ensign still flew. Fallon looked at the situation to try to see a tactical advantage where he could intervene, but Negro Sol was hove-to and Bella and Estrella were sailing back and forth firing into Petite at will. As he looked, Petite got off a ragged broadside, though Fallon couldn’t see any damage done. The smoke cleared, and through his telescope Fallon saw a white-haired man limping around behind Petite’s larboard battery, waving a pistol like a madman and urging his men on.
“Good God!” exclaimed Fallon out loud. Ezra Somers!
“Cully! The long nine for Negro Sol!” yelled Fallon, desperate to attract the Holy One’s attention. Rascal was still over a quarter of a mile away from the brig, in quiet water, for the breeze was noticeably less in the lee of the land. There was still some light—perhaps enough for Cully to get a lucky shot.
The one-eyed master gunner sighted the nine and yelled, “Fire!”
The ball was low and into Sol’s hull, but it quickly got the Holy One’s attention—and everyone else’s, for that matter. Somers leapt into the air as the sloops broke off their attack on the hapless Petite Bouton and turned on this new intruder, a remembered ship.
And now Negro Sol’s starboard battery fired a massive broadside, the shot erupting geysers around Rascal like large stones thrown into a pool of water. Only one ball came aboard, but it found the larboard bow and sent a chunk of railing into an unlucky crewman, his glistening guts splattering Cully and the rest of his gun crew.
But Cully calmly called for the man to be dragged below and urged his men to get on with reloading the nine. Within two minutes—a long two minutes—the gun was ready.
“Fire!” he yelled once again, and Fallon jerked his mind from the approaching sloops to see the fall of the shot. The long nine exploded Sol’s gig and two crewmen cartwheeled backward, speared with black splinters.
The sloops were both sailing toward Rascal now; one trailed the other so they effectively blocked another broadside from Negro Sol as the brig was still hove-to directly behind them. It was a pretty pickle, but not even a madman like the Holy One would fire on his own ships. Well, probably not.
“Mr. Brooks,” Fallon said, “I’m going to harden up. You fire into that starboard sloop first, then I’ll fall off toward the larboard sloop and you quickly run to the larboard guns! Tell Cully to make every shot count!”
But here was Bella, the starboard sloop, her black teeth showing, less than fifty yards ahead and closing fast. Fallon could see her men at the railing, and his last thought before Brooks opened fire with the starboard battery was how dirty they looked.
Rascal’s guns fired one at a time, in perfect order, and her 12-pound cannons hurled their iron into Bella’s hull and deck. Fallon could see some of her crew go down and her captain wave insolently before a ball tore his arm from his body. He looked at Fallon with surprise, his mouth open in a wordless scream before he whirled around and collapsed to the deck. When Bella’s broadside came in return, it was uneven, but Rascal’s forward-most gun was upended and two men near the foremast were killed with one ball. Then she was by!
Quickly, Brooks ran to the other side of the ship as Estrella Azul was almost to Rascal and running out her guns. Fallon ordered the helmsman to let Rascal fall off the wind and down toward the oncoming sloop. It was almost completely quiet now, and Fallon quickly looked for Negro Sol, fearing he had ignored her and she would be upon them in an instant. She was weighing, by God! Soon he would have a brig to fight besides the sloops, a fight Fallon knew he could not win.
“Fire!” came Brooks’s order, and Estrella seemed to rock back from the hail of 12-pound balls slamming into her side, killing the men at the tiller and exploding the binnacle. Estrella veered away with no one steering, and her own broadside carried almost a mile into the Caribbean Sea.
That helped the odds immeasurably in Fallon’s mind, but not enough to save them. For there was Negro Sol … what? … she was not sailing toward them! She was turning in a circle on her own axis, but why? The brig swung slightly and Fallon had his answer: Somers had managed to entangle Petite’s bowsprit in Sol’s foredeck rigging, by God! The old man must have cut his anchor cable and raised his mainsail and sailed right into the brig! He was pushing the black ship in a circle!
The ships were at least a thousand yards away and Sol’s crew was furiously hacking at Petite’s bowsprit, for such was the perpendicular angle of the two ships that the brig couldn’t fire into the sloop and the sloop couldn’t fire into the brig. But there was Somers, a crack shot with a pistol, picking off anyone who put their head up over the rail. All of his crew were hiding and firing, as well, and Petite Bouton’s mainsail was well out to starboard, capturing and holding the small land breeze and pushing the two ships around.
“Cully!” yelled Fallon, “back to the long nine for the brig!”
“Captain, sir!” called Aja. “Bella is coming back!”
Indeed, Bella was bearing down from the west demanding a second chance. At least, Estrella had drifted away—apparently when the men at the binnacle had been lost the helm itself had been blown apart. Her crew was fighti
ng to control the ship with sails alone.
“Cully! Fire when ready!” ordered Fallon. The words were barely out of his mouth when the long nine came to life with a single, thunderous roar and one of Negro Sol’s stern windows blew apart. The 9-pound ball would likely travel the length of the ship, exploding splinters up through the deck and killing anyone in its path. At the very least, Fallon thought ruefully, the Holy One would have nowhere to sleep tonight.
Fallon ordered the larboard guns run out and Rascal edged up to the west to meet Bella, which was very near now. But Brooks was ready, and patient. Bella’s forward gun barked early, and it took steely resolve for Brooks to hold fast until every shot could tell.
“Fire!” he yelled, and both broadsides fired at once, creating a combined explosion that nearly deafened anyone not killed. But Brooks was down with blood spurting from his neck, and crewmen were writhing around him, the life running out of them. Fallon could see Cully sprawled at the foot of the foremast; it was impossible to tell if he was alive.
Rascal had her larboard guns intact but had lost more men than could be tended to just then. Yet here was Colquist helping drag the wounded below to try to save their lives. Fallon quickly checked to see if the helmsman still steered. He did, white knuckles on the wheel, his eyes forward. Barclay lay nearby, moaning but not moving.
Fallon was unsteady himself. He staggered to the binnacle, blood running into his eyes from a scalp wound. Most of his crew was alive but must be rallied. He saw Bella sailing westward, toward Estrella far away, her boom dragging in the sea and her battle seemingly over. Fallon wiped the blood away from his eyes and could see that Negro Sol and Petite Bouton were still in their strange dance, not six hundred yards away, spinning slowly. Now Sol had caught the breeze and was pushing Petite back around so that the brig’s shattered stern was facing Rascal again. Fallon could see the Holy One at the taffrail on the quarterdeck, facing the sinking sun, the last rays of daylight on his face. He stood with his arms outstretched to heaven as if asking for spiritual guidance from God. A madman!
Fallon knew he must act, and soon, but his mind could not focus. He wanted to close his eyes and rest, anything to escape a decision. He looked at Brooks’s lifeless body and started to go to him but there was no time. A yell from a crewman, and Fallon saw that Negro Sol was free at last, her crew having hacked Petite Bouton’s bowsprit in half. Somers’s crew was scrambling to get off a last broadside but the brig was drawing away, ignoring the little sloop and slowly turning to bring the land breeze on her larboard side as she crept toward Rascal bow-on. It was virtually dark now, the dusk breathing its last breath of day. But here was Aja, pleading with him for orders.
And then it was clear to him, the only path, an all-or-nothing chance.
“Aja!” Fallon said hoarsely. “Have the larboard guns loaded with chain-shot! Quickly, Aja! But don’t run out, do you hear?”
Aja called to the powder boys to run for chain-shot, balls joined with chain that could cut through rigging like a scythe. The ships were drawing closer even in the light air, and Aja quickly took charge of the larboard gun crew. The guns were swabbed as the ship’s boys brought the chain-shot on deck to each gun to be loaded and rammed home. It took precious minutes but at last they were ready.
“Aja,” yelled Fallon. “Now run out the starboard guns! Don’t bother loading them! Run out! Run out!”
Aja hesitated a moment, confused by the order, for he had just loaded the larboard guns. But trust in his captain trumped his confusion, and he ordered the starboard battery run out, unloaded.
Fallon then turned to the helmsman, who was as confused as Aja. “Listen now,” Fallon said, suddenly alive with the moment, “I want to fall off just enough to show the brig we intend to pass to leeward. He needs to see our sails and hopefully the starboard guns. Then on my order head up quickly and cross his bows, hard on the wind, do you see?”
Fallon watched the helmsman smile in the dim light and knew he understood and was ready. They would get this one chance to even the odds by a trick, but it had to be executed perfectly. Rascal could sail close to the wind because of her fore and aft rig, closer by far than the square-rigged brig. Fallon hoped that by crossing the brig’s bows he could surprise the Holy One and cause him to react without thought and head up too close to the wind, hopefully luffing and stopping his momentum. Then the main chance.
“Aja! Come quickly!” Fallon yelled. And when the boy was close he told him the plan. If it worked, there would be no return fire. If it worked …
ON THE SHIPS CAME, and Fallon ordered the helmsman to fall off to the west, showing her unloaded starboard guns to the Holy One. The ships were now on opposing and parallel courses, and the land breeze felt stronger on Fallon’s cheek. It was eerily quiet, this moment before action. Fallon thought he heard the order for Negro Sol’s starboard battery to run out and then the trucks creaking and groaning under the massive weight of their guns as black muzzles pierced the side of the ship. So far so good.
“Steady now,” Fallon said to the helmsman as the ships drew closer to passing. Closer, closer … “Now! Helmsman, head up! Head up! Aja, run out the larboard battery!”
Rascal’s crew hauled the big booms to the centerline, the ship picking up speed, her sails coming in to point the ship’s bows as close to the wind as possible. Now she was crossing in front of the brig, which momentarily held course until Fallon heard a cry from her lookout and saw the brig head up herself, trying to cut off Rascal before she got to windward.
Rascal’s larboard guns trundled out, sticking their noses into the coming fight, the gun crews edgy with excitement, their fear at bay for these next minutes. Each gun was elevated, each gunner clear on his orders.
Negro Sol’s foresail shivered as she came up too far, her momentum slowed, and orders were shouted the length of the ship to let her fall off. But it was no good. She was in stays, dead in the water. Rascal was by, sailing at an angle toward the shore, away from the brig, which was now attempting to get her larboard guns loaded and run out even as she tried to fall off and gain speed. Fallon judged it was time.
“Let her head fall off now,” he said calmly to the helmsman, and the schooner came parallel to the brig, but now to windward.
“Fire as you bear!” he yelled. “Maximum elevation!” And Aja went gun to gun, as he had seen Cully do so many times, and Rascal’s 12-pounders roared in measured explosions, each gun sending its deadly charge upward into Negro Sol’s rigging. The chain-shot snapped ropes so long under tension that the spars shook reflexively.
But two guns found a softer mark.
The whirling black bolas spun across the water, up toward the Holy One, who stood stoically on the quarterdeck. The first chain-shot cut his body cleanly in half at the waist, and his eyes opened briefly in astonishment in the instant before the second bola severed his head from his shoulders. Fallon thought he saw the glint of sunset’s last light on the Holy One’s silver cross as it flew across the stern of the brig into the sea.
Fallon stared stupefied; they all did. The Holy One, that personification of evil, that impersonator of Godliness, was simply removed from life.
The head of the snake had been cut off, and now Negro Sol began to drift downwind, partially crippled, away from Bahia Salinas and westward. Aja led a cheer and Fallon was about to call for Rascal to wear ship and give chase when he heard a single gun farther inshore. He turned and saw a distant blue light burning, presumably on the stern of Petite Bouton, which Fallon had quite forgotten about in the heat of battle.
“AJA!” FALLON YELLED, making an instant decision. “We’ll sail down to the sloop! Prepare to come alongside!”
Rascal sailed across the bay and the outline of Petite Bouton gradually revealed itself. As they approached the sloop a voice suddenly called out across the water.
“Nico, Nico! Come quickly!” Somers called through cupped hands, and something in his voice alarmed Fallon and put every nerve on edge.
Now they were up to the sloop and even in the darkness Fallon could see the little ship was horribly mangled and might well be sinking, for she was low in the water. He ordered the sails furled to take way off as Rascal drifted down to Petite Bouton.
“Clap on, Ezra!” Fallon yelled anxiously. “Aja! Prepare to anchor!”
“Hurry, Nico! It’s Elinore!” yelled Somers.
Elinore! The ships came together and clapped on to one another, and Aja ordered the anchor dropped. Without asking why, or how, or anything at all in the way of explanation, Fallon jumped down to Petite’s decks as they drifted backward to set the anchor. Somers led the way below and threw open the door of the captain’s cabin. There was Elinore lying on the stern cushions. Her eyes were open, but her face was wan and her body was almost translucent—except for the stain of blood that soaked her linens and even now was dripping onto the cabin floor.
FORTY-THREE
PETITE BOUTON’S surviving crew helped move their wounded aboard Rascal, with Elinore carried below by Fallon to a busy and bloody Colquist. Paloma was there as well, helping the surgeon with the wounded and dying. As soon as she saw the woman in Fallon’s arms she knew who she was. When she saw the blood on Elinore’s lower garments she also knew instinctively what had happened and immediately took charge. Elinore was sobbing now, her breath coming in gasps. Fallon moved to comfort her, unsure what had happened and wanting to be with the woman he loved, but Paloma’s look said: you are for later.
Backing away, bewildered, Fallon stumbled up the companionway with Ezra behind. With Somers’s blessing, he ordered the crew to get personal items like clothing off Petite, including Elinore’s chest, and then he threw off the grappling hooks holding the ships together and let the sloop drift away. She was battered and sinking, and he had no use for her anymore.
The Black Ring Page 20
