Chapter 176: Outnumbered, Not Outgunned
James kept one hand on the wheel and let the ship take the swell in her own slow fashion. She rose heavy and came down heavier, this fat old lady, and after two days of it his arms had finally stopped arguing with the motion and learned to trust it.
Two days of that rocking had done more for Kit than any tonic Hobbs had ever poured down a man’s throat. He was up and hobbling around the deck now, with one eye still swollen black as an overripe plum and his ribs stinging with sharp pain whenever he laughed too hard at his own jokes.
Every hand that reached to steady him got waved away. Kit was determined to prove that the beating at the fort had been nothing worth mentioning.
That was a fine thing to believe if you were the man who had taken it.
Kit caught Jim by the sleeve before the man could wander off toward the deck. "Hold up, heard ye told this crew every tale twice over already and left me out of the finest one. What happened after I went under? And more to the point, has anybody’s count even touched mine while I was sleepin’?"
Jim’s grin opened wide enough to show the gap in his teeth.
"Aye, lad, since ye ask so nice."
He put one boot on the nearest cask and drew himself up like a preacher who had just been handed a particularly profitable sermon. "There we were, boardin’ a Spanish galleon under fire, cannon smoke thick as a Sunday fog. Meself cuttin’ down six men single-handed while yer own captain carried ye across the jump on his back like a sack of flour that wouldn’t stop bleedin’."
Sam added, without lifting his eyes from the rope he was splicing. "One man, and he was already half drowned tryin’ to swim for it. As for the captain, he near dropped the boy twice gettin’ him over the rail."
James called from the wheel. "Once! The second time was just duckin’."
Milagros snorted from near the mast, a coil of rope hanging over one shoulder.
"I watched the whole thing, cabrón, how you nearly put him in the sea."
Jim said, waving that objection away. "Details or not, the point stands, Kit. We took her clean and sailed her right out from under the Spaniards’ noses. Yer captain even gave a speech to the whole harbor that’ll be sung in taverns from here to Tortuga before the year’s out."
Kit’s face brightened despite the bruises.
"And me count? Did anybody put a blade in anybody while I was out?"
Milagros nodded, raising three fingers. "Three, by my own hand alone. Sam and Tomás cleared a whole ship’s worth between them and your captain took more men out than he can remember."
"Bloody hell."
Kit’s grin slipped into something much nearer grief.
"And here I was asleep for the finest fight of the whole venture."
James called, unable to keep his own grin from showing. "Aye, there’ll be others, lad. Though I’ll warn you, three’s a fine number to catch up if you aren’t asleep through the next fight."
Tomás didn’t join the conversion, his focus remaining on the work and the rope that needed to be coiled.
The laughter spread across the deck, then gradually spent itself out. One by one, the crew turned back to their tasks as the tedious business of the voyage reclaimed them. For a few gentle moments, there was nothing but the ship’s creaking and the steady work of them.
Then Kit’s shout broke across the deck.
"Sail! Sail off the stern, two points to larboard!"
Everyone on the deck turned at once.
James handed the wheel to Sam and went for the rail, pulling the spyglass from his coat as he moved. It took a moment to find them through the glare.
Then it became clear, two low ships driving hard ahead of a third, broader ship following behind. James braced the glass against the ship’s roll.
They were still too far off to count a single gunport on any of the three, but close enough for him to see the colors snapping from their masts.
Spanish. All three of them.
And they were making straight for the old lady, which was the sort of coincidence that required a man to be a great deal stupider than James felt like being.
He lowered the glass.
For a moment nobody said a word.
Then he said at last, "Right, we’re not handin’ ourselves over easy and lettin’ them march us back to a noose already fitted in Havana."
His eyes went across the deck and took in the faces that had somehow followed him this far. "She’s a fat lass, aye, but she’s got guns aboard her, and enough hands to serve one proper."
James smiled, fearlessly, "Run out the carriages and prepare the cannons. There’s no crew to spare loadin’ a second shot, so we make it count."
The crew spread at once, each to one separate task. Kit winced with every step but hauled at a rope before anyone could tell him to sit down.
There was not much force behind it, yet nobody stopped him.
James checked the sails against the wind and felt the first thin thread of hope.
No smart man in his situation fought a frigate square and lived long enough to boast about it afterward. No galleon could outrun three ships forever, either.
But this old tub had a long keel, and the wind was sitting kindly on this heading. She could hold her speed on a fair point of sail, while the smaller, quicker sloops would have to claw for every yard.
Distance was the best thing they could buy.
If they bought enough of it, and their fortune smiled even half as well as it had at Havana, they might find the Marianne beyond these waters before the wind changed its mind.
The space in front of him thickened before he had finished the thought.
⚔ [QUEST ISSUED]
Outnumbered, Not Outgunned
Three Spanish ships have been kind enough to present themselves for your immediate destruction. Unfortunately, they appear to have brought considerably more sailors than you have available.
The Rosario possesses forty-six guns and favorable wind.
The enemy has provided an excellent opportunity to determine which of these factors is most important.
Reward : 50 Fate
Reward : ???
Do let me know which epithet ends up carved into the headstone.