Chapter 173: Nearly Caught James Calloway
Belowdecks smelled of tar, old bilge water, and the sort of dampness a man could carry in his clothes for a week. The merry band crouched beside a gunport after its carriage had been shoved aside, with nothing beyond the black port but open water.
Milagros drew breath to ask what James had in mind, but his flat hand stopped the question before it was born.
Then the second galleon came the rest of the way in and occupied their vision like a house pushed through a doorway. Her timbers swallowed the sky, and voices came roaring through the port, along with a captain overhead who was making sure every sailor aboard heard him.
James pointed through the gunport.
Once.
That was all.
Sam grinned, which was hardly surprising. Jim checked the distance on the edge, already knowing what was coming, while Tomás gave a calm little nod.
Milagros understood a moment later. Her eyes widened.
"Ay, cabrón."
She breathed the curse, apparently blaming herself for not seeing it sooner.
"We’re boardin’ them."
There was scarcely enough distance between the ships to call it a hard jump. Sam went first, then Jim, then Tomás, and at last Milagros, each scrambling through the port and onto the enemy ship’s side, hauling themselves up without so much as a stumble.
It was a fine entrance, considering that none of them had bothered to ask permission.
Kit presented the one difficulty. A boy was still a boy, and dead weight was no friend to a man jumping between ships.
James hauled him onto his back, hooked one arm beneath the boy’s knees, and went through the port with Kit hanging there.
He hauled himself up the enemy ship’s side one-handed, every pull sending pain through his shoulder, while the boy’s weight dragged at him. When he finally got over the rail, his wound lit up like a pistol going off inside him, yet he clenched his teeth and kept the cry to himself.
The enemy deck was nearly empty. Most of the crew had already gone scrambling aboard the galleon after the noise, but a few men had remained belowdecks.
Sam and Tomás went through the hatch after them.
Meanwhile, Jim had already rushed over to the grapples. His cutlass hacked through rope one after another while Milagros tore loose the boarding timbers beside him and shoved them back across the widening gap.
Between them, they separated the ships with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for breaking furniture.
James set Kit down and went for the wheel.
A lone navigator stood there with one hand on the spokes. He managed one confused word before James cut his throat cleanly.
The man fell without another cry, and James caught the wheel as it turned beneath his hand. The ship was properly rigged and ready, her canvas already drawing, her lines neatly coiled by men who knew their work.
Behind them, the Spaniards stranded aboard the other galleon finally understood what had happened, which was rather less useful than understanding it a moment sooner.
Many of the soldiers rushed for the closing distance, and one even made the jump with all the confidence, came up short, and vanished into the water with a splash loud enough to be heard over the curses.
James brought the stolen galleon around and set her for the channel.
El Morro stood pale on one side of the water, La Punta from the other. Both had watched that passage long before any of the people presently causing trouble had ever set foot in the city.
Milagros came up beside the quarterdeck, breathing hard.
"The fort’s not just goin’ to blow us clean out of the water for this?"
James kept both hands steady on the wheel. "Nay, lass. A ship like this is worth too much timber and reales to throw away for some pirates. They’ll want her back, and they’ll want us hanged. That’ll do for now."
He was right, as it happened. Neither tower fired as they went through the channel.
Behind them, however, the docks had become a fine example of Spanish efficiency under pressure. Guarda Costa sloops were being prepared for the chase, officers shouted at their subordinates, and oars finally struck the water.
It all came too late.
The galleon had enough distance that every stroke only made the failure of the pursuit more obvious.
James watched the small boats and the rowers scattered beneath the fort’s walls and could not resist giving them some words to remember him by.
He bellowed. "Tell every soul in the whole Armada, that this here’s the day they will always remember as the day they very nearly caught James Calloway!"
Having started a thing like that, there was no respectable reason to stop halfway.
He but grinned. "And tell ’em the Azote sailed clean out from under a governor’s nose, in a ship stolen in one mornin’!"
It was an outright laugh now. "Oh, and somebody find that fat bastard Ambrosio and tell him his forty thousand reales just grew a pair of legs and swam clean across the harbor without him!"
Jim brought Kit to the foot of the mainmast and laid him there, where the boy would not be trampled beneath the ropes.
Tomás and Sam came up from belowdecks at nearly the same time, their blades still wet with the blood of the men they had found there.
Nobody had much to say about it. The ship was theirs, the harbor was behind them, and James was laughing at the Spanish as though he had just been handed the finest joke Havana had ever told.
The others could not help but catch his disease.
Jim slapped the mast with one hand, laughing, then spread his arms as though the whole harbor had just been made witness to an event of historical importance.
"I baptize myself now as Runaway Devil Jim, in tribute to my grand escape from Havana!"
That was enough to set Sam off. He raised his cutlass toward the fort as though to announce a legend to the entire harbor.
"Let this mark the birth of the legend of the Robin Hood of the Seas!"
Milagros looked from him to Jim, plainly offended that the crew had begun to give themselves grand names without her. She straightened at once, thought for half a heartbeat, and bellowed the first thing that came to her.
"And I shall henceforth be known as Milagros the Dreadful, terror of the Spanish Navy!"
Tomás only shook his head, though the small smile at the corner of his lips betrayed him.
⚓ [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
Quest Complete : Nobody Left Behind
Reward : 100 Fate
Reward : Ship Perk — [Coastal Giant] (Nuestra Señora Del Rosario)
🏴 [NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL ROSARIO — STATUS]
Hull Condition : Good
Armament : 46 Broadside Cannons
Gunpowder Supply : 12 Casks
Provisions : 4 Days
Crew : 6 / 280
Morale : Unbreakable
Loyalty : Unwavering
Perks : [Coastal Giant]
Despite the fact you have neither changed the vessel’s name nor formally accepted it as your own, I have made the official decision to register the galleon as your property.
This is based on the simple principle that her previous captain was too stupid to deserve a ship like this, and demonstrated as much by losing it to you in the manner just witnessed.
As for the [Coastal Giant] perk, the galleon now possesses a draught far shallower than a vessel of her size has any reasonable right to possess. She can pass through coastal waters, shoals, and shallow channels that should be inaccessible to a ship of this class, allowing her to approach shore and escape through waters where larger ships would run aground.
Take it as an incentive to actually keep the ship afloat.