I can be ruthless, too.
In a sail locker I found Harry, rolled into a ball and terrified by the gyrations of the ship. I crawled in and hugged him. “Harry, it’s Papa! Are you all right?”
He was crying. “Where’s Mama?”
“Guiding our ship.” I reached out to touch him, and he shrank. His fear was wounding. “I’ll take you to her. You’ll stay in the captain’s cabin.” I bundled him in my arms. “It’s almost over, son.”
“I want to go home.”
“The cabin is like a home.”
I carried him up to Astiza. “I’ll guard Brienne!” I shouted against the wind. “You keep Harry in the captain’s quarters!” I handed her one of Martel’s flying models. “He’s betrayed us from the beginning, but this is what he came for.”
She looked. “This is what the Aztecs saw, not what they made,” she guessed. “They’re too crude. The Indians were copying something extraordinary.”
“Agreed, but I’ll show one to Fulton anyway. Keep Harry warm.”
She retreated to the compartment in the stern.
I turned to Captain Brienne, who looked more frightened of the sea than my pistol. “Can we hold this course?”
“It’s too late to jibe; the masts would break. So we run downwind. But feel for yourself.”
I was shocked at the pull of the wheel and feared the rudder would snap. The ship was trembling as we surfed down the seas. We needed to take down more sail; trying to manage the clumsy bomb ketch was like holding a halter on a drunken cow.
“It would be better now without the mortar, monsieur,” the captain said.
I looked at the gun. The ketch rolled as if an anvil was tied round its neck. “Agreed.”
“But it’s impossible in these seas,” he went on. “If we try to cast it overboard, the gun will break loose, go through the gunwale, and take half the hull with it. So we must make port instead.”
“Any bay we choose has to be downwind on an island that isn’t French.”
“We may not have that choice.”
“It’s not a choice to be recaptured, either. Jubal, you help reef sail, and I’ll fetch a chart. We just need to ride this out.” I said it with more confidence than I felt, remembering Astiza’s foreboding.
“I’ll get my men to help the sailors,” the black said.
“And pray to Agwe, Mary, Neptune, or Benjamin Franklin.”
His nod was grim. “Soon that’s all we’ll have strength for. I’ve never been so tired, Ethan. Not even in the cane fields. Pray to Ezili, too.”
Chapter 42
A ship under control is in balance between the push of the wind and the resistance of the sea, a rudder squirting it forward. But if overcanvassed and badly balanced, vessels can veer dangerously out of control. At Brienne’s direction, we lashed a rope to the wheel to ease the strain of holding it, got down our remaining shreds of canvas, and rode bare poles before the wind, but still had to steer carefully. The storm kept shifting in a great gyre of cyclonic fury, cranking to push us more and more to the north. For hour after hour in the night all I could see was the dirty gray of sea foam as breaking waves rushed past our stern quarter, a boil that bore all the malevolence of whatever gods we’d offended. Despite the latitude, I was numb with cold and dull with exhaustion. Astiza emerged from Brienne’s cabin and kept me alive with rum and sausage.
“Harry’s gone to sleep,” she told me. “So has Martel.”
“I envy them.”
“I think the Frenchman might die of his wounds.”
“Better for him than meeting Dessalines.”
Our bow was invisible in the dark, but I could hear seas breaking there, as if against a rock. Then a surge of water down the length of the deck that poured back off. The diving bell had been lashed to the mainmast, its window looking back at us like a Cyclops eye. The ship lifted itself from each swell as if old and weary. French sailors and black freemen got the sails off except for two that had ripped to shreds and flailed in the wind, and then hunched and clung like crustaceans, everyone praying to their favorite saint. The storm shrieked as I’d never heard anything before; it strummed the spars till they whistled and drummed, a moan that ate at me. I waited for the entire shaking ship finally to come apart, to dissolve into woody spray and be flung by the wind in a sleet of sawdust, until nothing marked where we’d ever been.
Yet the bomb ketch, while clumsy, was also stout. The ship wallowed like a sturdy toy, staggering up from every swell, and with each rise hope flickered. Maybe we could ride it out. We’d dive into a trough, water would pour across, and then we’d surface, a weary whale.
Without any clear announcement of dawn our surroundings eventually grew lighter, visibility slowly extending to the tip of the bowsprit and then beyond. Lead seas raced beside, and we staggered up slopes of great watery hills for a view of salt mist before sliding into darker valleys. I’d grabbed a chart, but there was no possibility of telling where we were. My vague plan was to return to Cap-Francois, deliver the treasure and prisoners, and then simply get away. No lingering in Paris, no playing the diplomat. I was done with great affairs and needed a thousand years to make up for the trauma I’d inflicted on my family.
I’d still find us a place where nothing ever happened.
“Will Harry come through?” I asked Astiza when I visited.
“He’s sick, but his stomach has emptied.” She looked as exhausted as me. “He doesn’t even know who he is, Ethan. Captivity, separation, war.”
“What a life I’ve given him. I’m sorry, Astiza.”
She looked doomed, seeing something I couldn’t. “We can’t take the treasure to Saint-Domingue.”
“I promised the blacks.”
She shook her head. “The treasure is cursed. Look at this storm. It will do them more harm than good. It was buried in that rock for a reason.”
“You say every treasure is cursed.”
“Hasn’t it been?”
“We’re not cursed to be poor. I don’t believe that.”
“What if the Maroons weren’t storing the treasure but getting rid of it? What if they’d found it wicked? What if they went into that cave knowing they couldn’t get out, simply to save their own people?”
“No. They were trapped by the current.”
“The treasure should go to Mexico.”
“Mexico! There are no more Aztecs, just Spanish overlords, crueler and greedier than French and British combined. It’s too late.”
“We’ve made a devil’s bargain. Ezili is a trickster, Ethan.” It was one woman’s suspicion of another.
“We’ll get to port, and it will feel so right.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. “We’ve been through worse, remember?”
“Not with a child.” She bit her lip.
“This storm will have to pass sometime.”
And miraculously, it did.
First there was a gap in the clouds and light flooded down, pushing back the boundaries of how far we could see.
We’d been sailing through an atmosphere in which the border between sea and air was indistinct, a fog of whipped spray and spume. We breathed mist. We tasted salt, heavy as we staggered up watery slopes and weightless as we plunged down. Our universe was the heaving ocean.
But as the light broadened and brightened, the wind began to drop precipitously. The change was eerie. The howl of the rigging subsided as if a discordant orchestra had taken an intermission. Pelee still lurched and dipped on chaotic seas, but now the sound was the slap of slack lines against wood, the creak of mortar against tackle, the groan of the hull, and the gush of sloppy water.
Blue sky appeared overhead.
The blacks and French sailors shakily stood and looked up in wonder. We’d been reprieved! In all directions was a dunescape of cresting seas, water streaked white. There was so much salt that even as wet wood gleamed, the ship looked dusty. Little streams ran up and down gunnels, and the air still smelled thick. Yet in minutes the tem
pest had turned into a weird calm.
Was this divine intervention? Had God answered the Catholics? Had Astiza found the correct prayer? Was Ezili present and helping?
Jubal rotated, looking around. No land was in sight, just a wall of clouds a few miles distant in every direction, rearing into the sky. “This is very odd.”
“It’s like being in a well.” Astiza looked thousands of feet up to that blue dome of sky.
“It’s salvation,” I tried. “The treasure isn’t cursed, it’s blessed. If ever there was a sign from God, this is it, don’t you think?”
Our ketch swayed like a crazed cradle, confused seas pitching it this way and that. Men crossed themselves.
“I’ve heard of this,” Brienne said fatalistically. “A false lull.”
“A miracle,” I insisted, with more spirit than I felt. “We need to answer this mercy with our own. When the waves subside, we’ll start a fire in the ship’s oven and make something hot for everyone, even Martel’s survivors. Jubal, divide the crew into three shifts and let some sleep. When the storm settles completely, the French sailors can take some sights and we’ll set a proper course. The stars tonight will be brilliant after such a wind; we can navigate. Let’s tie down what is loose, heave the dead overboard, and get ready to hoist a steadying sail again. Astiza, food into Harry.”
People began to do as I suggested. Four of Martel’s ruffians were dead, from wounds and exposure. These were rolled without ceremony into the sea, sinking in our wake.
I checked below. My archenemy was still breathing, and he opened his eyes to give me a weary, baleful stare. Crow and his companions had a gimlet eye as well.
“What happened to the wind?” Martel asked.
“It’s dropping.”
“What does that mean?”
“You lost, Martel.”
His head lolled, fatalistically. “Water.”
I gave him some, and the need for the kindness made me doubt my own instinct for revenge. Should I really give him to Dessalines? But he’d planned to send me a prisoner to France, hadn’t he?
I returned above, debating.
The ship had become even more ungainly without the stiff wind, so I asked Brienne which sail to risk. Canvas would steady our roll and begin to give us a feeling of command.
He glanced around. “None, monsieur.”
“Surely a staysail would help, would it not?”
He pointed. The clouds to our stern had drawn much closer, while those at our bow were drawing away. “It’s what I feared. We were simply in the storm’s eye.” The well of light was moving away from us, our ship drifting from one side of it to the other. The sky dimmed as if the Almighty were drawing a curtain. “It was not a miracle, monsieur, but cruelty. We’re not through the storm. We’re in its middle.”
And then, with doubled violence, the storm struck again.
Chapter 43
Now the wind rose above comprehension, and visibility vanished with hope. Rain and spray combined into a kind of soup you could almost drown in, and the seas were cresting mountains. They broke with thunder that competed with the ceaseless trumpeting of the sky, and green water smashed down on Pelee as if to drive us to the bottom. The ship staggered, the mast tips cutting great arcs, and the weight of the mortar held the bow under for agonizingly long submergences. Then we’d slowly stagger to the surface again, water pouring off, each watery pummel stripping away parts of our vessel like a remorseless rasp. Boats, barrels, lines, and guns broke and disappeared. I feared the bomb supply below would break loose and roll like marbles until a strike and spark set them off, blowing us to pieces. I waited for ropes to snap, chains to break, anchors to carry away. We raced across the Caribbean with only sheds of flapping canvas, steering down swells like a sled before a force that was terrifyingly implacable.
I clutched the wheel with Captain Brienne and Jubal. “I thought the worst was over.”
“The hurricanes make a great wheel, and we’ve simply gone from one rim to another. Now it will get worse.” He pointed. “We’re too sluggish.”
I looked at the mortar. Its muzzle had become a pot, seawater slopping out. Pelee was dangerously unbalanced. The huge gun yanked against the deck every time we rolled, planks bulging and seams working. The ship wouldn’t point as intended, or ride as designed.
“What can we do?”
“Everything’s a risk. Wait, I think.”
So except for us at the wheel, everyone else retreated below. We lurched for an hour in the gloom, timbers groaning as the waves grew higher.
Then the decision was made for us. Jubal pointed. “Surf!”
I squinted. The compass was spinning so wildly as we bucked and plunged that I had no idea of our true heading, or what land we might be near. But through the miasma I could see a menacing line of white on some lee shore, marking a reef, cliff, or beach. We had to steer around it or we’d wreck, but the hurricane was pushing us remorselessly toward disaster.
I turned to Brienne. “Can we claw off the land by sailing into the wind?”
“A jib might do it, but only if we aren’t so bow heavy. We can’t sail as close to the wind as we need. The mortar is a millstone.”
“I thought you said it too dangerous to get rid of.”
“And too unwieldy not to, now. We need to chop or saw.”
“I’ll get the men!” Jubal had to shout it inches from my ear. Such was the fury of the storm.
“There’s a carpenter’s locker in my cabin,” Brienne instructed.
Jubal dropped to the main deck below. I staggered into the captain’s cabin and explained to Astiza why I was breaking out axes and saws. “We’re going to get rid of the mortar.”
She nodded, clutching a listless Harry with one arm and holding on to a ship’s rib with the other. She was seated with legs askance on the deck to brace herself as the vessel gyrated, my wife and son both physically ill. The floor was littered with smashed ceramics, flung captain’s hats, and a tin pot that rattled like a toy as it tumbled from one side to the other. Sheets of water obscured the stern windows. The roar of the waves in here was like the boom of surf in a sea cave.
“Throw away the treasure, Ethan. That will lighten us more than the mortar.”
“We can’t survive on superstition.” I wasn’t giving the loot up, not after what we’d all endured. I looked at my son, half unconscious. “We’re just having an elephant ride, Harry!”
He pressed his face to his mother’s breast in response.
Pushing aside the fear we were all doomed, I grabbed an armful of tools and went below. The hold was almost black, lit by one wildly swinging lamp. Water leaked from above and churned from the bilges below, with an ungodly stench of sewage and vomit. The noise was less catastrophic, but the blind motion was terrifying; the deck would drop as if were levitating and then lurch to slam like a bucking bull. I had to slap some of Jubal’s men to get them out of catatonic panic.
“We’re going to get rid of the mortar!” Stiffly, tentatively, holding on to the deck beams overhead, men began to rise.
I turned to a sailor. “Who’s the ship’s carpenter?”
He pointed to an older man crouched in the gloom.
“Stir yourself! Show us where to use these axes and saws, or we’re all going to drown.”
“That’s a big gun to move even in dry dock,” the carpenter muttered.
“If we chop out the pins, we can lever it overboard while timing the roll.”
“A sweet trick if you can manage it, and disaster if you can’t. If it gets away, it will crush the ship like a boot on a wedding cake.”
“And if it stays in place, it will take us down like an anchor on a balloon.”
We divided into two crews. Those in one group began hacking at the foundation of the mortar from the bottom, wielding their tools overhead as best they could. Others crawled to chop and saw at the gun base from the exposed deck above, tying themselves to a line that we stretched from mainmast to bowsprit to
keep the men aboard as waves washed the deck.
“Hurry, hurry!” I shouted to them as they climbed up the ladder to the outside. “We’re nearing a reef! But time the final release to a wave when we can safely roll the monster.”
“Monsieur Gage, what about us?”
It was Martel, sitting in the hold in chains where the former slaves had locked him. He seemed more alert now and pointed to his fellows.
“Just stay out of our way.”
He grimaced from the pain of his wounds. “It will go faster with more help, and four of my men are still fit enough to labor. Chain me like a dog if you must, but for heaven’s sake use stout backs to save your wife and son.”
I hesitated. I trusted Leon Martel about as much as an arthritic earl should trust the flexible filly of a wife he bought with ill-gotten inheritance, but time was of the essence. Every second we saved getting iron off our bow gave us a better chance to steer away from that lee shore. I had a pistol and a knife, and he and his scoundrels did not.
“Don’t leave us here to drown, American!” one of his men added.
Well, some of the bastards were dead, others wounded, and the starch had been beaten out of everyone.
So I unlocked the four healthiest ones, including Crow. They wept with gratitude. “You have chosen as a saint would,” Crow assured.
“Then work to save your life and ours. Rocks are near.”
The hammering and rasping had become more frantic. I turned to join the others on deck.
But I’d promised Martel a fatal meeting with Dessalines, hadn’t I? The last thing that bastard wanted was a successful conclusion to our voyage. And the only way his henchmen would get freedom and the treasure was by dooming the rest of us, they figured. All this I realized later. They’d plotted with the desperation of the condemned.
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