by Eric Flint
Ten ships, four of which were small: jachts, almost certainly. Of the other six, four were decidedly modern hulls: a bark with French lines and three of the allies’ newest frigates. Álvarez studied them as best he could from the distance and whenever there was a sufficient gap between his smoke-making galleons. Two of the frigates were similar to his own fragata, but the third showed even longer, leaner lines, retaining less of a quarterdeck and with almost all her guns in a covered gundeck: clear evidence of up-time design influence. And the last two ships were . . .
Fadrique almost crushed the spyglass against his eye: two steamships? Had the allies not taken the bait after all? But as he continued to look, his understanding grew. And so did the realization that while his ruse had succeeded, there was a new and wholly unanticipated danger with which to contend. Specifically, the second steamship was of a new, slightly smaller class. Which meant that the USE had not two, but three steam-driven warships in the Caribbean. The cold horror which came with that knowledge quickly gave way to grim gratitude; learning that was almost worth the losses he expected—he knew—his fleet would take this day.
And it also meant that the second of the larger steamships had likely taken his bait as the allied officers swung between alarm over the failure of their ever-so-perfect maps and the hunger to destroy all the galleons before and in the now navigable lagoon.
As the smoke in front of him grew and his enemies became hazy silhouettes, his final glimpse was of the anticipated inevitability of seeing them turn to face his own formation. They were steering smartly through the wind, ensuring that they did not lose way as they tacked to engage him, even without the advantage of the weather gauge. Of course, if that new steamship had guns like the other did, they still had reason for confidence.
But, thanks to the growing smoke screen, so did he. Time to share that, and a little bit more, with the men of his flagship. He put out a hand for the speaking trumpet, held at the ready by de Orbea. Irarraga appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, at his side.
“Sons of Spain and children of our Blessed Savior! This is not merely a battle; it is a holy cause. We are not merely fighting men, we are facing heretics who have consorted with godless persons from what is now, by their own admission, a vanished future. They have already changed the world with their infernal machines, but here and now, we can fight to ensure that they change it no more! It is that for which we fight! It is for that reason that Philip IV’s devoted servant, the Duke of Olivares, has sent orders that no Dutchman is to be spared! And by extension, the same applies to any who serve under their flag. You can expect no different from them. They are desperate and will not ask nor show quarter any more than we shall! Now, for God and Spain, let us send them quickly back to the Hell from whence they came!” The cheering after his speech was as deafening as had been the silence during it.
As de Orbea leaned over to retrieve the speaking trumpet, he murmured, “Sir, is that truly known? That they are so determined as we to show no quarter? I have heard that their actions after taking La Flota demonstrated quite the opposite.”
Álvarez stared at his aide. “The truth of such matters may be reduced to this: if our men are now prepared to fight to the death, then what I have said is all the ‘truth’ they need to know.”
With that, Álvarez turned and went to inspect the readiness of the fragata, trying to quiet his own demons of doubt: would her lighter, faster pieces really make the difference he was hoping for? He stared in the smoke-obscured direction of his enemies. We’ll know soon enough.
Chapter 59
Simpson’s Lagoon, St. Maarten
“Cease fire!” Dirck Simonszoon ordered. “Engineer, I need more steam. Now.”
The pilot looked over, surprised. “Sir? Aren’t we staying to shoot these fish in a barrel?”
“No, we are reversing course and leaving this lagoon with all possible speed.”
The pilot met Simonszoon’s intense stare. “Reverse course, sir? All the way back?” Glancing away, he stammered, “I . . . I’m not sure, sir. Not a thing I’ve ever trained for. Docking maneuvers and backing off a reef, yes, but . . . ” He looked back along the four hundred yards to the inlet. “I can’t make it at anything like good speed, sir. If at all.”
Dirck nodded, started striding forward. At least the fellow was honest. Which was crucial, since he didn’t have the time to try to sort out what his men thought he wanted to hear, rather than the unadorned truth. “Leadsman!” he shouted as he neared Resolve’s waist.
“Sir?”
“Any idea as to the widest part of the navigable path?”
The leadsman was hurrying back toward him. “Can’t be sure, sir.”
“I’m not asking for ‘sure’; I need your best guess.”
The old salt frowned. “About halfway in, we had readings of twenty and twenty-one feet for almost a hundred yards. It might still be just a narrow trench there, but from the play in the line, I’d say it was broader than that.”
“Broad enough for us to turn around it?”
“Sir?”
“Backing engines is too risky. So I mean to turn the ship and make for the exit with better speed.”
The leadsman’s eyes were wide. “Sir, this ship is near on two hundred feet, prow to taffrail. Looking at the lagoon, sir, I can’t assure you that she has the room to turn as you wish.”
Simonszoon started as Rik Bjelke’s voice came over his shoulder. “Sir, if I may?”
“Quickly, man!”
“We put down one of our longboats with another leadsman. That boat parallels us at a constant seventy yards’ distance, taking soundings at the same interval. And if they discover a spot of sufficient depth—”
“—then they take soundings all the way back and prove a band of sufficient depth, perpendicular to the path back to the inlet. Yes, that will work.”
The leadsman frowned. “That boat can’t return to Resolve on a straight line, though, sir. They need cut back and forth, as if they were tacking wide. That’s the only way to be sure there aren’t spots that the keel might catch on while we’re turning her.”
“Not necessarily,” mused Rik. “Even if there’s just a fan of greater depth at a right angle along our path back out, we’d be able to turn. We back engines until our stern reaches the point where our boat found the useable depth. Then, once Resolve’s keel is perpendicular to the safe channel, we run ahead slowly, turning as our bow begins to come round toward the inlet and adjusting where we must.” He smiled wistfully. “Commodore Cantrell calls the maneuver a ‘K-turn.’ Nonregulation terminology, I believe.”
“Why not check the whole area first?” the leadsman asked with a frown. “Takes a bit more time, but there’ll be no guessing and then the turning will be a single easy maneuver.”
Dirck shook his head. “No. ‘More time’ is exactly what we don’t have. And the longer you or someone else is out in a boat, the longer that some Spaniard with a rifle just might find the range.”
The leadsman nodded. “I’ll get a man for the boat,” he said.
* * *
As Resolve finished reversing in the stretch of water that the leadsman had indicated as being deep enough for the maneuver, Dirck watched the ship’s troops readying the heavy weapons on each quarter: two mitrailleuses and two of the so-called Big Shots. Others ran along Resolve’s sides, securing the crew’s tightly wrapped sleeping rolls into the netting strung between the stanchions that held up the chain rails. Not as good as solid bulwarks against rifles and pistols, but they eliminated the spear-sized splinters that sprayed across a deck when wooden sides were hit by ball or shot.
As if summoned by his thoughts, a musket ball passed a few yards overhead with a dying whistle.
“From the barrier bank!” Michiel de Ruyter cried. “Stay low, men!”
Sage advice, Simonszoon thought, as Resolve started forward, holding true for the first twenty yards, but then slowly turning to port as she prepared to reenter to the safe passage bac
k to the inlet, bow first. “Runner!”
The lad appeared in a moment. “Sir?”
“Tell the master signalman to send this to Admiral Tromp aboard Intrepid. Have sunk two more galleons. Am breaking off.” Should he add that the galleons were decoys? No, that could wait. “Navigability of lagoon doubtful. Existence of inlet through western barrier bank cannot be ascertained.” He nodded at the boy. “Get that sent and return at the run.”
The boy shouted back an affirmative from halfway down the stairs to the main deck.
Now, he thought, raising his spyglass as Resolve continued turning, was that musket ball meant for one of us, or was it ranging fire? He swept it slowly along the debris-choked inner shore of the barrier bank. No way to tell where a single rifleman—or even ten of them—might be hidden among that dense mix of genuine foliage and unburnt cuttings, some of which appeared to be whole tree branches. No cover large enough to conceal a cannon, but still—
He brought his spyglass to bear on the inlet; it warranted close study, as they would have to slow and steer two points to starboard to put their bow in alignment with it. But as he did so, he found himself distracted by the hill and barrier bank flanking it on either side. More and more, that was looking suspiciously like a gauntlet. But whereas the barrier bank had no features or foliage large enough to hide guns, Billy Folly Hill had plenty of both. As Resolve finished its turn into the safe path back toward the inlet, Simonszoon began scanning its slopes . . .
. . . and saw a figure dash across his narrow line of sight. He snatched the spyglass away from his eye, and felt his stomach harden and sink.
Now that he knew to look for them, and where, he saw men scrambling among the rocky slopes overlooking the inlet. Their movement was puzzling, as if they were playing some desperate game of hide-and-seek as they ran back and forth, then up into the less vegetated higher ground and back down into the forested and cutting-choked base.
“Bjelke!” he shouted. “Eyes on Billy Folly Hill!”
At the same moment that the Norwegian evidently saw the figures—judging from his sharp intake of breath—Simonszoon noticed that, although their dress was plain, the enemy troops were nonetheless wearing some kind of uniform: brown and tan in color, with more straps and belts than seemed necessary. They weren’t carrying any long arms or even pistols, at least none that Dirck could see. But still, they didn’t look like artillerists either, who tended to wear colors or armbands that helped officers pick them out from the other specialists in the army. And while some artillerists had tools, all of these men were carrying picks, shovels, and axes. Just like sappers.
Sappers . . .
Simonszoon shouted down the closest speaking tube. “Engineer, ahead three quarters! Now!”
Bjelke grabbed hold of the flying bridge’s railing just as Resolve leaped forward. Others on the main deck, taken by complete surprise, sprawled with cries of alarm, anger, and in one case, pain. “Captain, I see no guns on the hill.”
Simonszoon had turned to look west and what he saw there stretched his mouth into a bitter smile. “That’s because they don’t intend to fire on us. Look.”
Bjelke did.
There was a tremulous hint of movement at several points along the arc of undergrowth and piled cuttings that lined the lagoon side of the barrier bank. As they watched, a wide skiff emerged. A moment later, it was surrounded by half a dozen Spanish soldiers, weapons held well above the surface of the lagoon, their morions glinting in the sun. As they dragged the boat clear of the rubbish so that they could board it, coronets pealed all along that stretch of the barrier bank.
Bjelke stared back at his commander. “B-but how do they mean to catch us, sir? We must be making five knots, already.”
Simonszoon glanced back at Billy Folly Hill. “Oh, they won’t have to catch us. Not if they can trap us in here with them by sealing the inlet behind us with charges. Then they can swarm us at their leisure.” He saw confusion continuing to grow on Rik’s face “They want Resolve, Bjelke. To capture and turn against us, if they can, but to copy, for certain. Now, stand by the pilot and give him any help he needs.”
Dirck turned back to the speaking tube for the engine room. “Full steam, chief. Pilot, all ahead full for the channel! And don’t worry about scraping her new paint; just get us out of here, dammit!”
Billy Folly Hill, St. Maarten
Manrique Gallardo waved his sergeants further down the hill. Yes, the bastards on the demon ship were sure to see them, but that didn’t matter anymore. The immense ship was flying like a Bermudan cutter and whereas the engines had murmured low and cautious before, they now sounded like eager metal ogres, panting: CHUGGA! CHUGGA! CHUGGA! CHUGGA!
Two of Gallardo’s runners started back up the hill; he waved them back down. Somewhere, in one of the tubes they’d buried—and had forgotten to mark, the idiots!—the fuse had burned out. Unfortunately, the failure point was not high up, but somewhere toward the bottom of the only slope that ran straight down into the water. To the right and the left of it, the slope flattened into a wooded shelf.
He smiled: and a most convenient wooden shelf it had proven to be. That hadn’t made the job any easier, of course. It had been miserable work, first off-loading and readying all matériel, then moving all the rocks where they were needed, and then finally removing any sign that they had ever been there.
But still his men roved down the hill, looking for the section of protective tubing in which the fuse had burned out. It would hardly have been an urgent matter, if the heathen captain hadn’t turned back, not even halfway to the shallows from which he would never have extricated himself. But now, in order to entrap the ship, they had to cut off her only route of escape quickly. And at the rate his men were going, they might not find the useable end of the fuse until they got within a few yards of the charges themselves.
Well, he sighed philosophically, there are two bright sides if that’s the case. First: Spain is made strong by the blood of just such martyr-heroes as they will be. And second:
Better them than me.
Simpson’s Lagoon, St. Maarten
At the last second, Simonszoon put his own hand on the wheel; the pilot was competent, but had been assigned more because of machine competence, rather than long years of sailing. And this would require a lifetime’s worth of pure instinct and reflexes.
Rather than a smooth, slow turn to address the channel directly, Simonszoon called for only one-eighth less speed, counter-steered, and let the resistance of the side-slipping hull brake them. Two hundred feet of steam cruiser listed to port as her stern came around, screws churning the water. But even as the men on her flying bridge felt like they might be slung sideways into the water, that same slide brought her bow into alignment with the channel—without having to slow her engines. “Flank speed!” Dirck yelled into the speaking tube.
Which was the precise instant that chaos erupted everywhere, all at once.
Better than halfway up Billy Folly Hill’s forward-leaning slope, a ragged roar of at least half a dozen cannons birthed a sound like a descending swarm of giant bees.
“Cover!” screamed de Ruyter just before the grapeshot began peppering the deck, the spars, the sails, and the water beyond the shadow of their starboard side. The crew manning the portside bow’s Big Shot were riddled and slumped in the mount’s “pulpit.” Several deckhands went down either shrieking or without uttering a final sound. The spencer sail was clipped clean off the mainmast and the three balls that cut through the top of the funnel made a hollow metal sound: thrunk-thrunk-thrunk.
“Boats at two hundred yards!” yelled the spotter/loader of the rear mitrailleuse.
But Dirck was only partially aware of that or anything else as he grabbed the speaking trumpet and yelled, “Forward mitrailleuse! Target: two points port. On the slope. Sappers with charges!” The Spanish sappers weren’t actually carrying charges, but the gunners got the basic idea. They brought their weapon to bear, checked elevation, hunched
behind it, and set it to chattering. The slope erupted as if dozens of dust demons were breaking free of the ground, interspersed between writhing, tumbling bodies. Those who had not fallen dove for cover.
For the second time that day, Dirck Simonszoon both cursed and blessed Eddie Cantrell, whose obsession with drills—endless, repetitive drills that the crew hated—paid off. The weather deck was a sudden maze of men moving to ready guns, protectively reefing sails, scanning predetermined sectors for enemies, and checking damage. Others appeared on deck with the replacement splinter shields for the naval rifles, but in this case, propped them up as makeshift gabions.
“All stop!” Simonszoon shouted down to engineering, then flipped over the five-minute glass. The sands started measuring out the minutes they had until the Spanish guns on the heights were reloaded. And if there were others, well, they’d surely speak soon enough. “Marksmen, shoot at anything that moves on those slopes!” Dirck yelled. “Section heads, report!” He got answers as various masters ran up or replied through the speaking tubes.
“Leadsman reporting less than nineteen feet! We need to exit slowly!”
“Sails reefed, in good shape.”
“Main mounts cannot take enemy guns under fire, sir. Elevation is too acute.”
“Marksmen reporting same, Captain. Their pieces are at approximately two-five-zero yards, but we see no targets.”
“Enemy boats aft have slowed, sir. Seem to be waiting.”
I’ll just bet they are, Dirck thought. But when the surgeon said, “Casualties are—” Simonszoon stopped him with a raised hand. “You’ll tell me when it is over. Orders!” he announced. “Master signalman?”
“Sir?”
“Update Admiral Tromp on our situation. Send until you get acknowledgment. Leadsman, how many knots can I have?”
