The Spanish ship-of-the-line was effectively neutered, being on the far side of the flotilla, their starboard side, though if she were well-handled she could perhaps shoot the gap between her charges to engage Harp. Well, thought Fallon, we’ll soon see.
Here was the first treasure ship, massive and dull, deeply reefed and riding low in the water. Fallon ordered the helmsman to pass her at less than a cable’s length. Six gun ports flew open on the Spanish ship’s larboard side; Harp’s sixteen larboard side guns were run out, like black teeth in a snarl.
“Fire!” Again Fallon screamed into the wind, and Harp barked and tore at the enemy’s flesh, sending a hail of devastation across very few feet of water, balls joined by lengths of chain, balls joined by solid bar, cutting spars and rigging and shredding the delicate latticework structure that kept the sails aloft. The big ship’s mizzenmast was completely cut in two and her standing rigging hung over the side like a sea anchor. She fired a ragged salvo, but these were not trained gunners on a fighting ship and, though some of the balls undoubtedly hit home, Harp did not shudder. Fallon looked over his shoulder as the ships passed—Valiente was on the treasure ship’s stern.
Harp’s guns were being reloaded, again with chain, as onward the next ship came. Fallon stole a quick look over his shoulder; the rain drove needles into his eyes but he could just make out Avenger coming down the other side—the starboard side—of the line of ships and preparing to engage Valiente.
Spanish signals were flying, stiff as boards in the wind, as the capitán of the Spanish ship-of-the-line sought to recover a situation that was rapidly deteriorating. Avenger was almost down to Valiente, her guns run out on starboard. Suddenly the Spanish ship-of-the-line made a move to cut between Valiente and the next ship, in effect to cross Avenger’s bows and Harp’s stern. Fallon saw the strategy with admiration, brilliant really, if the big ship could pull it off.
Avenger opened fire on Valiente’s starboard side, chain and langridge, trying to cripple her and finish the job Harp began. When the wind blew the smoke away there was virtually nothing left of Valiente’s rigging—mainmast and foremast were just stumps on deck, and her sails draped over the side as she sluiced around, helpless to make steerage way in the wind and seas.
The Spanish ship-of-the-line was now cutting across Avenger’s bows and loosed a terrific broadside of some 40 guns into her. Avenger’s bow was horribly savaged, forestay parted and all hands at the forward carronades cut down. Avenger’s warrior figurehead was obliterated and in its place a gaping hole right at the heads of the ship.
Captain Kinis called for the hands to quickly cut away the rigging, which acted as a powerful drag. And as the flagship passed the stern of the big Spanish ship-of-the-line—Punta de la Concepción—Avenger gave her answer. All guns bore on Punta’s stern, many double shotted, and ball after ball drove into that most fragile part of the ship, mauling wood and men alike. Punta’s mizzen rigging snapped with a sound like musket fire and the mizzenmast lurched forward, the force of the wind astern sending it crashing onto the quarterdeck.
Fallon feared an impending onslaught to his own stern and hardened up so as to present Harp’s quarter to Punta’s expected broadside. It came, and hell came with it. Whump! Whump! Whump! Almost two dozen times into Harp’s larboard quarter. The helmsman went down in bloody gore, and his splatter coated his mate in scarlet gobs. Men were blown backward, some blown overboard—there was no thought of turning around to rescue them, of course. They were simply gone. Splinters flew in the wind, striking men and jamming into the sides of the ship like giant darts.
Fallon reeled and fell from the concussive blasts, and Aja rushed to his side, his own legs bleeding from tiny splinters. “Aja, thank God,” rasped Fallon. “Find Mr. Jones and ask him to have the carpenter sound the well. Quickly now.”
But first Aja helped Fallon to his feet, and the full devastation was laid bare. Men were dead in heaps where they had stood gallantly at their stations. Huge furrows were cut into the deck, which looked like a freshly plowed field. The mizzenmast was gone, along with the mizzen sail, and Jones was busy ordering the men to cut the rigging away. A quick look at the mainmast showed damage, how serious Fallon couldn’t tell. But damage.
“Fall off,” Fallon yelled to the lone helmsman, and Harp bore away on a broad reach again, now on a parallel course to the next oncoming treasure ship. He ordered the topgallants taken in, the first reef in the topsails, and struck all the foresails except a small jib. The men obeyed without question and hurried aloft and forward. Now Fallon looked over his shoulder to see Avenger, sailing with a bone in her teeth, running out her starboard guns. The sight cheered him, if only for a moment. Then it was back to his own business.
“Mr. Jones! Mr. Jones!” he called, “Load and run out on larboard. Chain and bar only! Quickly!”
Jones appeared shaken and disoriented. Blood dripped off his hands from hidden wounds, but Fallon’s order snapped his mind back to his duty, and he rallied the gun crews on the larboard side. Quickly they loaded the guns and ran out. “Elevate for the rigging, men!” Jones called. “Fire on the up roll at my command!” The ship was heeling to starboard, and it was doubly hard to run out the guns, but easy to aim high for the rigging as the Harp was leaning over dramatically.
Jones held his mouth open, steady now, steady, up the ship rose—“Fire!”
Chain and bar flew like whirling scythes, cutting apart anything in their way, rigging and sails and men and spars all sliced apart and blown asunder. A single bar cut a Spaniard in half where he stood and his upper body seemed to simply lift away into the wind and overboard.
“Load again, Jones!” yelled Fallon, relentlessly pushing the battle forward.
Here is where the training paid dividends, and the men bent to their jobs, each task completed mechanically as if timed to metronomes.
Here was Aja tugging at Fallon’s sleeve. “Two feet in the well, sir. And rising. I told Mr. Jones,” he said. Fallon knew the hull had taken some shots, but the report could have been much worse. “Hands are at the pumps,” the boy continued. “But many men are dead at the guns.”
“Thank you, Aja,” said Fallon, fighting to get his dazed mind to think clearly. But there was no time. He quickly looked for Punta and saw her attempt to wear, to get onto the larboard tack so as to run down the far side of the ships on a course astern of Harp. It was a frightening decision, full of dire implications given the force of wind pushing her stern around. The timing had to be superb or…or, My God, thought Fallon as Punta wore around, her stern passing through the eye of the wind, her booms flying across the deck with tremendous power. Her booms snapped at the masts, rigging holding them over the side, the ship laying over so far Fallon could see her dirty copper, a massive hull struggling to right itself against wind and sea. Men would be overboard and forgotten already. Water poured in through her open gun ports on the starboard side.
Suddenly Sea Dog was back from oblivion, deeply reefed and heeled over as she bucked and plunged in the maelstrom. She disappeared completely in the heavy seas and then rose like a cork atop the next wave, Beauty at the helm, her peg leg stuck in a ring bolt, her face set hard. A signal broke out from her gaff: Lost frigate. Either Estrella had continued on for Spain or had foundered, Fallon thought. Either way, she was gone.
But here was the next treasure ship, Río de Oro—Fallon could barely read the name on her stern through his telescope—as she bore off westward toward Punta, breaking the line after seeing the wreckage that preceded her, sailing low toward the oncoming Sea Dog.
In the lull the air was rent by a single gun from Avenger to call attention to her signal: Save your ship.
Davies was calling off the action. By God! thought Fallon. Davies would not continue to force the fight in an untenable situation. Indeed, seas had grown truly mountainous. Spume filled the air, the foam painting the whole scene a streaked white. Fallon had been so engrossed in the tactics of fighting so many ships that he’d
lost track of Harp’s position.
“Mr. Colston,” he screamed to the man not two feet away at the binnacle, “where the hell are we now?”
Colston gathered his breath to scream back. “I believe we’re off St. Augustine, sir. But I can’t be sure.” That meant they had been set farther north by the current than Fallon had thought. Great Bahama was now well south of them.
Fallon watched Río de Oro, still bearing off westward, presumably toward St. Augustine. And here was another treasure ship in the distance to consider, plunging northward carrying little more than canvas scraps for sails. Fallon wanted to keep fighting the ship, but Sea Dog’s situation was becoming untenable, and he knew it.
Quickly, he looked toward Punta drifting toward the shoals of the Cape; the ship had rolled back upright, low in the water either from bullion or flooding below decks, or both. Now Sea Dog was running out her starboard guns: This small dog can bite! remembered Fallon. Beauty had Punta at point-blank range, and all the schooner’s guns sent their deadly charges into the Spanish ship-of-the-line’s hull, low and deep into her bowels. There was no chance to salvage the treasure, so better to sink the ship. It was all mad, horribly, maniacally mad to fight such a battle on such a sea in such a wind.
Colston was saying something, but Fallon couldn’t hear him in the rising wind. “Sir, another ship!” Fallon raised his telescope and looked to where Colston pointed off the larboard bow. There was a frigate, all right, less than a mile to the south. She must have been guarding the rear of the flota, thought Fallon.
But something about the ship sent a chill through him, though he was already soaked and shivering. The frigate seemed to fly toward the last treasure ship, which was even now bearing off away from it—What the hell? On the quarterdeck of the frigate was a giant of a man, black hair streaming around his face, the cutlass in his hand pointed directly toward Fallon’s heart.
Clayton!
FORTY-FOUR
IT WAS NOW a hurricane with no upper limits in sight. The waves were deep valleys, momentarily blanketing Harp and much of the rigging from the wind, causing ropes and sails to go slack before the next wave lifted the ship up and the full force of the wind caught the sails again.
Fallon had just opened his mouth to call for yet another reef when a loud crack! shot through the air, and he knew instantly it was too little too late. The big courses had already ripped apart and fluttered like giant flapping shreds. The small jib was gone, as well, effectively reducing Harp’s sail plan to…nothing.
Harp was sailing under bare poles.
“Mr. Jones, quickly, sir!” yelled Fallon to his First. “There’s not a moment to lose. We are going in! Get some hands to lay aft with what’s left of the fore sail. Hurry, man!”
Jones hesitated just a moment, casting a longing gaze toward the next treasure ship as it plunged toward them, but orders were orders and years of service said obey. There was still cannon fire around them but their first duty was to survive, and his captain had made a decision, a life or death decision, to take them into shore. No captain would willingly go to shore in a storm, but they had no choice. Having lost the ability to sail a course and facing scant sea room, they were going ashore somewhere whether they wanted to or not.
“Mr. Colston, steer a course for St. Augustine inlet as best you can tell!” yelled Fallon. “Helmsman, get the wind behind us!” There was no mistaking the calm urgency in Fallon’s voice. Scared but weighing options, in command.
Slowly, Harp came off the wind and ran more or less before it toward an uncertain coast. Men came hurrying aft carrying the sail and Fallon gave instructions to tie it off the stern, a makeshift drogue, to slow their speed through the water and to provide some control to the helm. Fallon looked over his shoulder to see the next treasure ship sail northward past his wake—Nuevo Año. Well, there was nothing for it, he told himself.
“Sir, Río de Oro!” screamed a frantic Colston, and Fallon’s attention was jerked back forward to see Río lurching for the inlet ahead of them, reefed down to nothing, on a broad reach, and making twice Harp’s speed.
“Watch where she goes, Mr. Jones!” Fallon screamed over the wind. “Mr. Colston, be prepared to alter course if she strikes. Otherwise we’ll follow her in!”
“Aja!” yelled Fallon, his orders coming rapidly as they closed the coast. “Run to the surgeon and tell him to get the wounded down on the deck. Hurry, lad!” He certainly didn’t want wounded men thrown about if they struck. No, when they struck. And Ajani was off, lurching with the roll of the ship, as fast as his legs could work.
Fallon judged the distance to the inlet, which he could just see now, to be less than a mile. Río de Oro was perhaps half that distance ahead. Harp’s speed had slowed to almost ten knots thanks to the makeshift sea anchor. But more had to be done, and quickly.
“Mr. Jones, tell the men to lay aft!” Fallon ordered. “Quickly, get them aft!
All of the surviving hands struggled aft, bringing with them a sense of dread, for they knew running aground usually brought death to the crew of any ship caught on a lee shore.
Harp was rapidly closing the coast, pushed forward by the howling hurricane wind and wall-sized waves and spume that obliterated land. Fallon steadied the helmsman, who was struggling with all his might to keep some semblance of a course. Colston stood beside him for guidance. Jones had mustered the remaining men aft, and Fallon yelled for them to lie down so they would not be thrown about when the ship struck. And, too, when the spars came down, and they would, the men would be aft of the tree-sized lumber and attendant rigging falling forward.
It was all a wretched guess. Harp could sluice around in an instant, pushed by wind or wave or current or just fate, and they would all meet at the bottom of the sea. Fallon shuddered, cold to his core with fear, but his jaw jutted out in something like defiance. He had to save his men. He could not spare a moment for anything else, not for Sea Dog or Avenger or treasure ships or even Clayton. Fucking Clayton!
Río de Oro was approaching the bar at the inlet entrance at an angle; she would need to fall off quickly. Fallon could see the breakers clearly now; there seemed to be an entrance of sorts more northward but Harp had no chance to get there. The wind pressure was coming more from the north as the outer bands of the hurricane’s winds rotated counterclockwise. No, it was over the bar or nothing, and even then bad odds. Fallon knew it, even if he did not show it to the men.
There! Río de Oro was falling off! Fallon stared, mesmerized as time suddenly seemed to speed up. The treasure ship struck the bar and her masts snapped out of her, so abrupt was the collision, the force of the wind still in the top hamper. She lurched forward as a wave lifted her stern and drove her bow down. Fallon could see her rudder grabbing air, but then she settled again, sluiced to one side, was lifted by a gigantic mountain of a wave and was over the bar. She hurtled into the inlet, yawing this way and that as her helmsman fought to regain control, but it was hopeless with so much top hamper and rigging over the side.
“Steady,” yelled Fallon to his own helmsman. “Straight in for the inlet, a Sunday sail, eh?” The helmsman laughed through clenched teeth, a bitter laugh but something.
And then it was upon them. Harp rose on the crest of a wave breaking over the bar and then fell off abruptly, the wave passing under, the ship landing hard on her stern. Fallon could sense the rudder snap, breaking free of its pintles, and a quick look to the helmsman confirmed it. Now they were lifted again, even higher, up and up and then, like falling off a cliff, they came down, an avalanche of wood and cannon and human beings so violent that the masts and all rigging crashed forward on impact, sparing the men but rendering the ship helpless.
But Harp was over!
St. Augustine harbor was roiling, barely better conditions than outside the bar, and Río de Oro was pushed stern-first toward land, trailing her spars and rigging behind her off the bow. In a half mile she would strike the far shore, which appeared to be deserted except for a small se
ttlement of buildings barely hanging on against the force of the hurricane.
On the two ships drove in a surreal parade, one leading the other, both out of control. Fallon was back on his feet now after the crash on the bar had thrown him down. Around him, other men struggled to stand. Most of Harp’s rigging was still aboard, unbelievably, and she roared bow-first toward the far shore. Harp’s helmsman still held the wheel, ironically, still moved it back and forth, accomplishing nothing but giving him a sense of duty.
As Fallon watched spellbound, Río de Oro backed onto the beach at an angle; immediately sliding around to present her beam to the onrushing seas. She went over on her side, lifted twice more and lay over permanently, the seas breaking over her with great slabs of water. In an instant Fallon saw how it would go and yelled to the helmsman to get down. Then he threw himself on top of the startled man.
Harp rose and plunged forward, spearing Río de Oro with her bowsprit, driving her bow into the upturned Spaniard’s hull with the momentum of three hundred tons momentarily free of gravity. The impact was cataclysmic. Harp rode up over and through Río’s hull at the waist, her men rolling over the deck. Aja slid by quickly and Fallon just grabbed his ankle before the boy’s head could strike the mast stump. Others weren’t so lucky, with many knocked senseless against the railings or bulwark or sent tumbling into the sea.
“Up, you men, get off the ship!” Fallon yelled at the top of his lungs just as another wave lifted Harp’s stern farther. She would not last long before the seas dismantled her piece by piece.
Now Jones was on his feet, his face bloodied from a chance meeting with the binnacle. “Throw lines over the side,” he shouted. “Quickly, men! Down you go! You men there, get below and get the wounded up. Hurry, there’s not a moment to lose!”
Fallon wondered at Jones’s composure and thanked God for it then and there. Indeed, there was not a moment to lose as Harp was shifting with each wave, her stern grinding into the shore, opening up seams and flooding the holds.
The Bermuda Privateer Page 18
