Keeping the hole in our side to leeward, we sailed in a large arc to bring us up onto the wind (or as close as we could get to it in the square-rigged Sound of Freedom, anyway). I had to duck up the mainsail again, but the wind was still strong enough to get us close on the smaller jibs. I hove Freedom to (pointed her bows into wind to hold her steady) and gave the order to fill and cast off the two boats we towed.
Magdalena was nothing but wreckage. Men clung onto her flotsam in the heaving seas, desperately trying to gulp down air rather than salted water. I could just about make out who was who through the glass by their body shape and the way they moved, and they all looked well—Phillippe, Feliciano, Rafael and George—but I couldn’t see Frazer. There. I had him; he looked as if he was in trouble, bobbing up and sinking again. I knew he was a strong swimmer—a rarity amongst sailors too superstitious to learn—and tried to calm my heart which feared the worst. It was difficult to see through all the water in the air, both rain and spindrift, and they were only visible on the crests of the waves anyway, but I thought someone was with him; Carlos? Then I lost them again, both of them underwater. I was sure it was only Frazer who was in trouble; he must be caught up in a stray line, or injured in some way. I dropped Papá’s old glass, exasperated, and cursed Blake and Hornigold that I didn’t know what was happening. Whatever it was, it was their fault. We wouldn’t have been anywhere near this stretch of water had it not been for them.
I held the glass up again. I had to see. I let go the breath I was holding when I saw the longboat reach the struggling man, then gasped when I saw Gibson plunge into the sea rather than pull Frazer aboard. I thought I saw a glint of metal in his teeth before he dived under, although in that weather I may well have imagined it. Then Frazer was free—properly on the surface—but he still had to get into the boat. I saw rather than heard his roar as he tried to launch himself over the stern, and my fears were confirmed when I saw the boat tip over to roll him aboard amidships, along with a heavy load of brine. Carlos and Gibson wriggled in and they pulled toward Freedom, leaving the pinnace to help the others.
“Gaunt! Gaunt! Where are you, amigo? Get your tools, it looks like you have a patient!”
“Who?” he asked on his way down the hatch.
“Frazer. It’s his leg.”
Gaunt didn’t waste his words, but nodded and slid down through the scuttle to the decks below. He was not a surgeon, but as carpenter he was the closest we had. If Frazer’s leg was too badly injured, it would have to come off. Gaunt was the man with the saws.
*
The wind had dropped a little more, but still blew a fresh gale. I had two jibs on the foremast and the reefed main-topsail was backed to hold us head to wind. We had to stay where we were, hove-to, as best we could and let the longboat come to us. It was directly upwind of us, and I had no way of moving toward it. I threw a large canvas bag over the bows as a sea anchor to minimize the amount of drift to leeward and help keep us in position. The oarsmen would have to do all the work, which was made even harder by the heavy seas. The waves were so big that the longboat disappeared entirely from view in the troughs, but at least they were rowing downwind.
Gaunt was below, readying a table with his tools and straps, and I had Cheval and Lopez prepare a carrying plank by slinging a six-foot strake of wood with line at either end. Judging by Frazer’s inability to climb into the longboat, I knew he wouldn’t be able to climb Freedom’s hull; we’d have to sway him aboard.
When the longboat finally reached us, I bore off a touch to shelter the boat and make it a little easier to haul the Scot up the side. He screamed every time he bumped against the hull, which happened once or twice a wave. I’d never heard Frazer shriek or curse the way he did that day. His lower leg was a bloody mess with bone sticking out of it in at least two places. It was beyond salvage. Lopez and Cheval rushed him below decks to Gaunt.
*
I learned later that Magdalena had been knocked down, then dragged sideways into the waterspout before it broke. The wind had pulled them upright again, then knocked them over the other way. It was too much for Magdalena’s mast which had crushed Frazer’s left leg when it fell, tangling him in its mess of rigging. They’d cut away the sail when they’d realized they were being sucked in, rather than waste time furling it, and that had probably saved his life. He’d been caught in parts of the rigging that had floated, and his duckings had simply been due to the pain of swimming. Gibson had dived in off the longboat and helped Carlos cut him free.
As soon as Frazer was on deck, I gave the order to heave-to again to wait for the other boat and the rest of my crew. I was not pleased. We’d survived the waterspout, but Hornigold had got away, Magdalena was in pieces, and Blake was forewarned that we were in the area. I suppose I should have been pleased there’d been no loss of life, but having my best man injured so badly destroyed any sense of relief I may have had. Instead I was angry. Enough was enough. Hornigold had got lucky, that was all. He was the weaker of the two anyway. Blake was the one I really wanted. Blake was the one we’d go after next. I did not intend to fail again.
Chapter 18
I desperately wanted to follow Frazer through the scuttle and ensure he lived. But I could not. I was the captain of this ship and Frazer wasn’t the only one crippled. The ship was injured too; she had a hole in her hull and the pumps were only just keeping up with the intake of water. We needed to make repairs before I could turn downwind again. I had to see to Freedom first, and my carpenter was busy.
The last of Magdalena’s men climbed aboard, and I instructed Cheval on the tiller to keep us hove-to until it was safe to set sail again. I went below to inspect the damage for myself.
The gundeck stank of brimstone, and it was hard to see and breathe—even with the extra ventilation. The gash in the side was about a foot wide and almost the same high, and the deck before it was thick with vicious splinters. The hole was not as bad as I’d feared, but was too close to the waterline to ignore in these seas; it could be enough to sink us. It was too large for a patch of lead sheeting, and Blackman and Smith struggled to cover it with tarred sailcloth, which they battened to the hull to keep the worst of the seas out. It was the best we could do until we could find a safe harbor.
“Let me know the second it’s safe to bear off, Bo’sun,” I said, ignoring Blackman’s grumbles, and went to see the huddle of men in the bows. They were comparing wounds, each claiming to have won the pieces of eight each gunner put into the pot to go to the man with the worst injury. Despite the hammocks rolled up against the wooden hull, the splintered hull had caught three or four of them and one, Jacques, was close to serious; he would not be hauling out the heavy cannon for a while. He was enjoying the attention, though—and the twenty-odd pieces of eight he finally claimed from the others. I supposed whatever kept them shooting was fine by me. I couldn’t imagine a worse place to be in a gunfight. As we’d just proved, the four-inch-thick wooden hull didn’t offer much in the way of protection from cannonball. They worked with the risk of fire or cannon exploding if just one man lacked the care required. Even without accidents, gunners wore their shoulders out at about the same rate they lost their hearing.
I climbed back up the main scuttle to my upper deck, and paused for a moment in the wind to enjoy its strength on my face, then looked up at the sails. We were safe enough hove-to like this, but I didn’t like being at the mercy of the wind gods. I could not steer. I could not command. We were drifting downwind, despite the sea anchor, vulnerable to the sea and anything on her, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“Keep her head to wind, Cheval,” I said, looking at the sails again. “Blackman’ll shout when it’s safe to set a course.”
I examined the decks and tried not to think about what was happening down on the dark, wet orlop deck in the bowels of the ship. I imagined Frazer screaming as Gaunt sliced and sawed; his blood streaming into the bilges. Then the smell of cooking flesh when Gaunt sealed the stump with the re
d-hot wide cauterizing iron.
I remembered Garcia—one of the topmen aboard Capitán Valdez’s ship—when I first went to sea. He’d fallen from the mainyard and shattered his arm. I’d been one of the men tasked with holding him down for the surgeon, Don Roberto. The things I saw that day came flooding back. The way Roberto had circled Garcia’s arm with his sharpest knife and peeled the skin back. Garcia’s piercing screams and frantic struggles, even with copious amounts of rum and poppy, plus six sailors holding him down. Then a larger knife carving muscle as calmly as if preparing a boar for the spit; except I’d never known a boar fight back. The horrendous grating of the bone saw.
By the time Garcia had succumbed to oblivion I’d thought it a blessing, but he never woke. Despite Roberto cauterizing the stump, pulling the flap of skin back down and sewing it up, Garcia had lost too much blood. It had taken months to scrub the last of the stains from the deck.
And now Frazer was in the same position, and it was my fault. All my fault. I shook myself out of my imaginings. We were still in danger. I was still responsible for more than forty lives. I couldn’t afford to dwell on Frazer’s sufferings.
*
At last, Blackman’s head appeared out of the main hatch, thumb up. The hull was seaworthy again, and we were masters of our own fates once more.
Hoping the cant of the ship as she came off the wind wouldn’t affect the steadiness of Gaunt’s hands, I gave the order to loose the main-topsail and set the maincourse and spanker.
“Keep the damage to leeward, Cheval. We’ll have to stay on larboard and pray we find land quickly. Any ideas?”
In any other circumstances, I wouldn’t take my ship even within sight of land in a blow this strong; it was usually the worst time to go ashore—there’d been many a ship wrecked whilst searching out shelter close to land. Today, we had no choice; we couldn’t stay out at sea with mere canvas to keep it out.
“Well?” I barked in impatience, trying to ignore the screaming just audible from below.
“Course sou’east, Capitaine, we could probably shake the reef out of that main, but I advise on the caution with our damage.”
“Muy bien, Cheval. Very well. Is there any land out there?”
“Sayba, Capitaine, right on our nose.”
“Sayba!” I spluttered. “You want to take us to Sayba?”
“Oui, mon Capitaine. We can sail sou’east, maybe east with this wind and this ’ull, but there’s nothing else out there. It’s either Sayba or St Eustatius, another three days’ sail away and with, no doubt, the even frostier welcome.”
I knew he was right, but I didn’t like it. Sayba was a nasty place for an injured ship in a gale. Most of her coastline was rocked and cliffed, and a lot of her rocks hid below the surface. Not to mention it being Blake and Hornigold’s lair.
“Trust me, Capitaine, I know the island. I know where we’ll ’ave the safety.”
I paused, then nodded, I would have to trust him, I had no other choice; nowhere else to go.
*
The island had been settled by the Dutch until Thomas Morgan—Henry’s uncle—had captured the island in 1665 and forced the Dutch settlers into servitude. Once the Anglo-Dutch war had been resolved, the Morgans recognized the mercantile potential of the Dutchmen, which was being wasted, and had allowed some of them to resettle the island. Now that Morgan had been suspended from the Council of Jamaica, Tarr, and then Blake and Hornigold, had taken over his interests here; although I was sure Morgan still took a slice of the profits.
“Land oh.”
Just as the call came, Gaunt appeared on deck, and I hurried over to him, desperate to hear his report.
“He’s breathing, but out cold. Best thing for him, Cap.”
“Will he live?”
“He likely will if he wakes. More than that I can’t say. It’d help him to be up in fresher air, though.”
“Yes, bring him up to the chartroom.” I noticed just how drawn Gaunt looked. I grasped his shoulder and nodded. “Gracias, Robert. Thank you.”
I returned to my place on the quarterdeck. If we could see the island in this weather we were close, and I did not entirely trust Cheval at the helm. The closer we got, the worse it looked—a square-rigger’s nightmare. The lee shore was a jagged, confused jumble of sharp, unforgiving rock. I wanted a boat to go ahead and make sure there was a passage large enough to accommodate Freedom, but Cheval swore there was a way through to a hidden anchorage. I could not risk heaving-to, to get the boats manned and away anyway. With the shallowing sea, the waves were getting up higher and were messy—coming from all directions—and Freedom would not last long here with no way on her. I had to trust the one man aboard in whom I had the least faith.
“If you sink my ship, I’ll cut your throat,” I promised Cheval, just to make sure he understood my position.
“Relax, Capitaine, I know what I’m doing, let me do it—and the threats to my life are not ’elpful.”
I grunted in reply. I was not happy, but could do little about it. I sent a double-lookout to the bows and aloft, and had two of my strongest men, Phillippe and Carlos, standing by with the leads. It was a beast of a job to swing the seven-pound pyramids of lead and haul them back in, but I wanted two men sounding over and over again. I needed to know exactly how deep the water was below my keel, and the soft tallow on the base of the lead would tell me whether we had sand or rock below. This would not be pleasant.
*
The wind was still dropping, but too slowly for Freedom. We approached the rocky shoreline much too quickly, and I shouted to have the smaller jib and the mainsail furled. The force of the waves and the reefed main-topsail would give us enough speed, and the last jib would help us keep the necessary course, but I was still nervous and joined Cheval on the helm once more.
“Do you see Lookout’s Rock just off the starboard bow—the one with the split like a seat?”
I nodded to Cheval as Phillippe called the depth, “No bottom’. We had sixty fathoms of line attached to the lead, three hundred and sixty feet, and it did not reach the seabed. Good news.
“I’m lining that up with the clump of the trees on the cliff face behind it.”
I looked carefully and could just make them out, three trees clinging on precariously and leaning over the gray teeth below.
“If I get it right we’ll clear the passage through—”
“If you get it right?” I thundered, angry again.
He looked at me. “I haven’t been here in a while,” he admitted. “But with a fortuitous wave we’ll clear the rocks and be well hidden while we make the repairs. There are the defensive works on the cliff, but only the one gun may give us cause for the concern ’ere, if it is manned. It isn’t usually, only when they expect the trouble, and we’re not showing any lights. It’s the best chance we’ve got, Capitaine. Around that headland to the sou’west is Eckerstad, the Dutch town, and if Blake’s here that’s where he’ll be.”
“Fifty by the mark, shell and coral,” Phillippe shouted. Fifty fathoms of water.
“Is that likely? How much time does he spend ashore?”
“Not a lot, he hates the landlubbers almost as much as he hates Spain, excusez-moi.” I nodded to hurry him along. “I doubt ’e is ’ere or we’d likely ’ave seen him, but there’s no way to be sure. ’Ornigold though, if ’e survives, ’e will be ’ere.”
I nodded again, then thought of something else. “Assuming we get in safely and the wind turns fair, how’s the passage out?”
“Forty, shell. Looks like conch,” Phillippe called, as if he could tell.
“Tricky,” Cheval answered eventually. “It’s rare for the wind to be blowing like this. Sayba normally ’as the easterlies, but as you can see, the coast is ’igh and the ’eadland an odd shape—it can be unpredictable. As long as we wait for a fresh offshore breeze we’ll make an offing, no problem, but it may take a little of the patience.”
I kept nodding. I’d expected his answer and ha
d only asked to calm my nerves, I hated having to rely on somebody else for the safety of my crew and ship, especially him, but he knew these waters better than I did.
“Twenty by the mark, shell.” One hundred and twenty feet; there were no jokes now.
I could see the extent of the reef by this time, but was encouraged by Cheval’s demeanor—he did sound as if he knew what he was talking about. But I still couldn’t see the passage through the rocks myself.
“You can’t see it until we’re right on it, Capitaine. When you can see the beach, you’ll see the gap to it. There! ’Elp me, we’re a little too far to the larboard.”
I grabbed the tiller and pushed it to larboard away from me as Cheval pulled, both of us muttering to Freedom, asking her to respond.
“Five, shell and sand.”
“Loose the mainsheets! Haul the main buntlines!” Cheval shouted. The wind shook out of the mainsail, and our speed dropped.
The crew lined Freedom’s rails, holding their breath as we slipped between the rocks. Then she shuddered as her keel scratched the reef below, but only for a moment. The next wave lifted her just enough and we carried on. Touch and go—we were through; jib flogging now as well. She beached onto the sand and I looked astern at the reef we had bested.
I shook Cheval’s hand. “Your throat’s safe for the time being, Second!” I laughed. “Well done. If anyone’s looking for us, they’ll find it difficult to spot us here. Good work, marin, I’m impressed.”
I was a little taken aback by the width of his smile, but thought he was probably just as relieved as I was to get through. He wore a smug grin on his face all the way forward as the crew took their turns to clap him on the back and congratulate his navigational skills. I could almost see his vanity growing, but felt much more indulgent toward him. My opinion of him had definitely improved; maybe I’d judged him too harshly.
The Valkyrie Series: The First Fleet - (Books 1-3) Look Sharpe!, Ill Wind & Dead Reckoning: Caribbean Pirate Adventure Page 26
