by Ted Bell
A few minutes later, as the evening shadows stretched across the quarterdeck, the captain barked, “Hoist the signal ‘Douse All Lights.’ ”
In the waning moments of sunlight, the signal went up. There was no moon and few stars. Providence was with them on this night. The cover of darkness was essential to Nick’s plan. In the dusky light of evening, lanterns everywhere in the fleet were being snuffed out.
The French fleet, twenty-eight towering silhouettes on the rolling black sea, sailed onward through the gathering darkness, northward into the pitch-black night. Soon, within hours, they would approach the unsuspecting enemy armada. And approach them from precisely where they were least expected. They would steal upon the Brethren of Blood from behind, ghosting toward them with every light aboard every ship, above deck or below, doused. Not a man in the fleet spoke above the faintest whisper.
Nick saw one sailor, standing atop the fo’c’sle, either rum-drunk or stupid, strike a match and put it to his pipe bowl. The pipe was ripped from his mouth by a passing officer, and the slaggard was marched under escort down to the ship’s brig, with a sentence of fifty lashes awaiting him.
The French were perhaps two hours away from the enemy position. The small group of officers on the quarterdeck, standing near the helm, had been discussing the last critical elements of the strategy as the battle plan unfolded.
“Precisely how many marines will you need for this delicate operation of yours, sir?” de Grasse asked Lafayette.
“As many as your swiftest jolly-boat can accommodate, Admiral. How many oarsmen does she carry?”
“Eight of my best,” de Grasse replied. “Strong, swift, and silent. You will not find better oars in La Royale.”
“Then ten stout, well-armed marines and four gun crews would not unduly overburden the craft?”
“Pas du tout,” the Admiral said. “Not at all.”
“It would mean almost thirty men aboard, myself included,” Lafayette said. “We can’t afford the risk of swamping.”
“It will mean exactly thirty, sir,” Nick piped up. “That is, if you would allow me to go aboard the enemy vessel with you.”
“This is the most dangerous work, Nick,” the Marquis said. “There may well be fierce hand-to-hand combat once we board the enemy vessel. I strongly urge you to remain aboard here, out of harm’s way. For the time being, at least.”
“But I am the only one aboard personally acquainted with William Blood, sir. I would like to face him. He has, over the years, brought much grief upon me and my family. My sister in particular. I assure you, I will be no bother. Besides, he’s slippery as an eel, that one is, but I know his ways. I truly believe I can be of help.”
“You will need arms.”
“I am armed, sir. I have this.”
Nick showed Lafayette the double-barreled flintlock pistol, and the Marquis grinned his approval.
“And I give you this,” he said, presenting Nick with a beautifully carved dagger. “King Louis XVI gave it to me, but as he now wants my head, I’m no longer fond of it.”
“Thank you very much indeed, sir, but I already have such a weapon,” the boy said, producing a fearsome-looking bone-handled blade.
“Where did you get that?”
“Why, from Billy Blood himself, sir. Old Bill once nailed my dog’s own ransom note to my front door with it. This will not be the first time I’ve used his own dagger against him. I once plunged it into his leg, ‘ere he’d kill my friend Lord Hawke.”
“I marvel at this child,” de Grasse said, laughing. “He never opens his mouth without something astounding issuing forth. Do not underestimate him, Monsieur le Marquis. Though young, he’s obviously experienced. With his knowledge of Blood, I think he might enhance your chances of success.”
“I agree. Young Nicholas will join the boarding party.”
Nick smiled, greatly relieved. He had not forgotten, nor would he ever, the smirk on Blood’s face when he had dropped Kate into the black hole of the oubliette.
“Thank you, sir.”
All looked aloft at the sound of snapping canvas. “Bit of a blow building out of the south,” de Grasse said, moistening his finger and holding it high. “We should reach the enemy’s position destination sooner than I thought. I suggest you all retire to your bunks for an hour’s sleep. I’ll awaken you in sufficient time to prepare for the preliminary attack.”
The French fleet ghosted into Swagman’s Bay and silently dropped anchor sometime around three o’clock in the morning. There was severe lightning to the east, but the Admiral was fairly certain they’d not been seen entering.
De Grasse and Valois had searched charts of the whole eastern seaboard of New Providence Island for just such a location as this. Protected by a curving point of high land on its northern extremity, the bay was completely out of sight of the enemy. It required deep water (it was over ten fathoms) and must be within striking distance of the pirate armada. Everything would depend upon surprise. The sudden appearance just before dawn of twenty-eight French warships bearing down. Cannons blazing, shocking, unsuspected, and brutally terrifying to a hopefully confused and disorganized, but far greater, enemy force.
All, in fact, depended upon the genius of Lafayette and this strange and mysteriously wise English boy, Nicholas McIver, de Grasse thought.
De Grasse stood resting his elbows on the starboard rail by the bow. His fleet captains had all reported for a final meeting in the ship’s wardroom. The final battle plan had been endorsed by all. The fleet was in full readiness for the pre-dawn attack on the one hundred ships of the pirate armada.
De Grasse was watching the longboat leave the relative safety of the hidden bay. It was carrying the Marquis de Layafette, his young aide, ten highly trained French Marines, and four gun crews, off into the pitch-black darkness. Every man aboard the launch was dressed in black-dyed sail canvas, their faces and hands smeared with burnt cork. A second boat, smaller, with only Valois and only five hand-picked men aboard, also clothed wholly in black canvas, was trailing a few hundred yards behind, in the longboat’s wake.
This smaller, secondary gig had been one of Lafayette’s last ideas. It was, he’d said, one he’d learned from Washing-ton’s Continental artillerymen that cruel winter at Valley Forge. To kill time during the long cold hours, the troops would make small bombs: a small sack, filled with black powder and wrapped into an oil-soaked linen ball, then dipped in boiling pitch and allowed to harden before being plunged into molten wax to waterproof them. They’d been used by saboteurs against enemy vessels large and small to great success.
But now, attached to each bomb was a long-burning fuse cord that would give Valois’s men time to get away long before the explosion. The longer the fuse, the more time you had. And, Lafayette and his brave boarding party would need all the time they could get if they were to succeed this night.
Nicholas McIver and the Marquis de Lafayette had together conceived a brilliant but bold and extraordinarily dangerous plan. It was now under way. Only time would tell if victory or death awaited them.
43
THE GREATEST PIRATE ARMADA EVER
Gently now, gently,” Valois whispered as the smaller of the two advance boats slipped almost soundlessly through the tropic darkness. A thin, wispy fog had rolled in and now lay atop the water, providing additional cover. The two oarsmen shipped oars and let the small craft glide up under the stern overhang of the first pirate ship they’d come to. When they reached the giant ship’s rudder, the bowman reached out and grabbed it, stopping all forward motion.
So far, so good.
The narrow little fireboat had not been spotted approaching the enemy fleet. Nor, as far as Valois could tell, had the larger advance boat commanded by the Marquis de Lafayette aroused any untoward suspicion. That vessel had the far more dangerous task. Slipping quietly through the endless maze of the sleeping fleet until they located Captain Blood’s infamous flagship Revenge. And then boarding her.
“
Are you ready, mon ami?” Valois asked a crewman standing in the bow. “Avec le pamplemousse?”
The man held his grapefruit-sized bomb aloft, and you could see the white teeth of his smile in the midst of his cork-blackened face.
“C’est bon,” Valois said. “Commencez.”
The crewman stowed the bomb in a burlap sling designed specifically for the purpose. Then he began his rapid climb upward on the rudder, using his hands, knees, and feet, just like a monkey.
Valois held his breath, musket at the ready, watching the man scramble all the way to the very top of the massive stern. There, affixed just aft of the stern rail, he would locate the pintle, a massive rudder bolt inserted into a gudgeon, a large circular iron fitting attached to the transom. The pintle and gudgeon created a hinge so that the rudder might swing freely. It was this gudgeon and pintle arrangement that also held the giant wooden and iron rudder fast to the vessel’s stern.
In a sea battle, a ship without a rudder was something akin to a sitting duck—dead in the water. Without benefit of her rudder, any ship was rendered useless, nearly uncontrollable in battle.
The bomber went about his work quickly and deftly. Once his bomb was tightly secured to the gudgeon with tarred rope, the crewman let fall the slow-burning fuse cord. It fell, stopping two feet short of the water. And there all the fuses would remain, unlit.
Until it was time.
The man descended the thirty-foot-high rudder far more quickly than he’d risen. He loosened his grip on the rudder’s trailing edge and slid down the wet surface as easily as you would a greased pole. A moment later, he was safely back aboard the gig.
“Pas de problème?” Valois asked him softly.
“No problem at all, sir.” Again, the white teeth in the middle of the blackened face. Valois was much encourgaged by this first success.
“Alors, where away our next victim?” he said.
“Three hundred yards just off our port beam, sir,” replied one of the two oarsmen. “A big one, 74 guns, I think. Lanterns fore and aft. All quiet on deck, though.”
“Allons vite,” Lieutenant Valois whispered. “Let us go quickly. So many boats, so many bombs, so little time.”
A few hundred yards away, Valois could make out Lafayette’s vessel, winding its way through the pirate fleet, searching for Revenge.
“There she lies, I believe,” Lafayette said to Nick, who sat beside him in the bow. In a low voice, he added, “Blood’s Revenge.” The great ship was lying to under a close-reefed top mainsail, and Nick knew there must have been a great blow earlier in the day, for this was storm-rigging.
“It is indeed,” Nick whispered at his side. “I saw her with my own eyes, riding at anchor in Port Royal.”
Lafayette looked at him. “Port Royal? I forgot to ask. What the devil were you doing in the most dangerous port in all the Caribbean! Du monde!”
“I was only there for a brief time, sir.”
“And when might this have been?”
“Some time ago, sir. You see, Blood had kidnapped my young sister, Kate. So I went down there to bring her safe home.”
“She is safe now?”
“She is indeed, sir.”
“Where?”
“In England, sir. With my parents . . . in the year 1940.”
“Where you belong, too, eh?”
Lafayette smiled, tousled the boy’s hair, and said, “Fantastique, Nicholas! Now listen to me very, very carefully. Once we slip aboard the enemy vessel, I must insist you stay close by my side. No matter what happens. Do you understand?”
“I do, sir.”
“C’est bon. Tell me something. I’ve heard tell Blood likes his grog dulcified with cane juice, and he likes it frequent and strong.”
“True. Courage in a bottle, my friend Lord Hawke calls it, sir. The demon rum. I once saw Lord Hawke and Old Bill in a swordfight to the death. There was Blood with a sword in one hand and a jug of sugar rum in the other.”
“Our cowardly captain is likely now abed in his stern cabin at this hour? Stewed to a turn and dead to the world, perhaps?”
“I’d wager that’s correct, sir.”
“We shall find out soon enough,” Lafayette said, and putting spyglass to eye, he scanned the main deck of the mammoth warship from stem to stern two or three times. They were rapidly closing on the darkened Revenge. Being spotted by a lookout now would prove disastrous. They’d be blown out of the water by short-range cannon before they’d crossed another hundred yards.
“Lookouts fore and aft,” Lafayette said quietly. “None up in the rigging. No sharpshooters. One fellow with a lantern headed aft, making his graveyard-shift rounds. He is paused on the quarterdeck now, having a smoke at the stern rail. Let’s hope he stays there until we heave a grapnel hook up amidships and climb safely aboard.”
The men rowed ever so quietly now. Nick could barely hear the whisper of the blades in the water. This would be the most dangerous part. Should one of the watchmen see them, everyone aboard knew, death was certain.
Lafayette, speaking barely above a whisper, turned to face his oarsmen. “Ship oars. Coast up and lay along her starboard side. Fend us off gently when we have her dead abeam. No noise.”
The oarsmen withdrew their oars, and the longboat, gliding silently now, approached the hull of the Revenge. Nick could reach out and touch the black hull now, and he did. One of the French Marines in the bow suddenly stood, rocking the little boat slightly. He had an iron grapnel hook, sheathed in hemp, and large coil of line in his hand, while another marine reached for a handhold on the hull and brought them swiftly to a stop.
“Now!” Lafayette hissed.
The marine swung the hook in a great arc and flung the grapnel arrow straight up the side of the Revenge. Nick was astounded at the accuracy of the throw. It caught on the rail, with little noise, and Lafayette expelled a sigh of relief.
“Not a word, now, you men,” Lafayette whispered. “Cinq minutes.”
The men sat still as stones for a good five minutes, barely breathing, waiting to see if someone aboard Revenge had heard or seen the grapnel hook catch the ship’s rail. Nick held his breath. The only sound was the gentle slap of water against the great warship’s hull. And the thudding of his heart.
“C’est bien,” the Marquis finally said. “Allons!”
He stood up nimbly, and grabbed the dangling boarding line with both hands. “I will go first,” he whispered, “then the boy, followed by you marines. Oarsmen, when the last man has left the boat, shove off. Lay off about fifty meters. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Follow this ship at all costs, wherever the battle takes us. At my signal—this white handkerchief from the larboard rail—return to this boarding line at once. We will need to escape in a great hurry.”
And so the twelve began the long climb to the uppermost deck. Lafayette, Nicholas McIver, and ten very professional, battle-tested French marines, muskets slung over their shoulders. Nick could tell by their attitude and ease of movement that boarding an enemy ship in the middle of the night was something they’d done many times before.
Lafayette reached the main deck, grabbed the rail, and hauled himself up and over. He stretched his hand down to Nick and helped him board. They moved away from the rail as the marines appeared one by one, easily mounting the rail and dropping silently to the deck. After them, the gun crews ascended.
“Affix bayonets,” Lafayette said, and the ten soldiers quickly attached razor-sharp, dagger-shaped blades to the muzzles of their muskets. In the longboat, Lafayette had ordered that not a single shot was to be fired onboard until they had the captain, Billy Blood, in chains.
The odds were not in their favor. Eleven men and one boy against a ship manned by four hundred some-odd hardened pirates. But Nick was not overly concerned. He had surprise and the Marquis de Lafayette on his side in the coming battle.
Nick shuddered at the thought of marines using bayonets on the two lookouts. It might not be pretty, but it wo
uld be effective. At the Marquis’s signal, five of the marines headed forward quickly but silently to kill the unsuspecting lookout at the bowsprit.
The other five headed aft to offer the same treatment to the stern lookout. Only one more threat remained above decks, the graveyard shift, and he was still standing at the stern, smoking his pipe.
Lafayette and Nick, moving in a low crouch, quickly made their way aft past the mizzenmast to one of the two sets of steps on either side of the ship. Each led up the quarterdeck and the helm. The doomed man on the graveyard watch was still standing at the rail, smoking and gazing out to sea. Surrounded by the great fleet of the Brethren, he was no doubt dreaming of the untold treasure that would soon be his.
They mounted the portside staircase, taking care to use the leading edge of each step to lessen the chance of creaking wood. When they arrived at the top, Nick saw that the man remained at the rail, his broad back to them, peacefully enjoying his last bowl of tobacco.
Lafayette withdrew his gleaming dagger and held one finger to his lips. “Attendez ici,” Lafayette whispered. “You must wait here.”
Nick waited as told, watching the Marquis steal up behind the daydreaming lookout. As soon as Lafayette was within arm’s-length of the man, his left hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of greasy black hair, yanking the lookout’s head backward. Then he drew the dagger deeply across his exposed throat. Vocal cords instantly severed, the man made not a sound. The gush of blood spattering the deck was black in the moonlight. Nick shivered, thinking, This is war.
Lafayette carefully lowered the dead man by the hank of hair still clutched in his hand. He plucked the corpse’s pipe, still lit, from his clenched teeth and hurled it overboard. After pulling a white silken handkerchief from his sleeve and wiping clean his blade, the Marquis de Lafayette turned to Nick and summoned him with a wave of the hand.
