Chapter 231: Overboard with the Booty
Couple days later, the blockade still kept its formation around Havana’s harbor.
Every ship inside it was riding considerably lower in the water. That was the trouble with a successful blockade, as sooner or later, the prizes piled up faster than sailors could find room for them.
The next merchantman came in slow and unsuspecting. She was the Nuestra Señora de Regla, which was perhaps a fine name for a ship, if the Virgin Mary had bothered to watch over their voyage.
The instant the black flag broke over the Rose’s mast, however, she struck surrender.
Kwaku jumped over the decks, chain hanging loose at his hip, looking outright bored.
Briggs came together, and even his grunts had an apathy undertone to them. He sorted the merchant crew into a huddle amidships, with their cutlasses stacked safely out of reach behind him.
Doyle followed with his mates, wearing a grin so broad that he nearly lost his hat.
"Smells like wine down there, lads. Whole hold of the stuff, I’ll wager me last shillin’ on it."
"Ye could be dead drunk, blind in both eyes, an’ sunk three fathom under, an’ I’d still trust that bloody nose o’ yours tae sniff out a barrel o’ grog, Doyle."
Doyle laughed and went below, apparently determined to prove himself right whether anybody trusted him or not.
James came over the ship last, making the slow one-armed climb the sling required of him.
He found the Spanish crew standing in a tight knot on the deck, pale, sweating, and doing their best not to look at the pirates who had just taken their ship. The wind off the water was cool, but it had done nothing to help with their anxiety.
Word of exactly who had come aboard moved through the huddle like a storm through a harbor.
The front of some pairs of breeches had gone wet, and nobody seemed inclined to discuss the matter, as if the whole crew had got past embarrassment and arrived at that stage of fear where a man is too frightened to care what anybody thinks of him.
They crossed themselves in bunches and crowded together until they were nearly standing on each other’s feet. It was as if every sailor had decided that, by squeezing themselves into one miserable knot, they might somehow become too small for the pirates to notice.
🏴 [TITLE ACTIVATED] — El Azote de las Antillas
James took it all in, amused by the sight.
"Bloody hell." he said to Briggs with a grin. "I don’t even need to introduce myself."
Briggs grunted. Coming from him, that was nearly a speech of hearty agreement.
She was the fourth prize they’d taken since the battle.
The blockade had never lifted, not even while the smoke from the battle was still climbing. Every merchant fool enough to sail blindly for Havana struck her colors as soon as she understood what was waiting for her.
The cargo went to whoever reached the prize first. Today, that happened to be the Rose.
James walked toward the captain to give the same courtesy he’d given three merchant crews that week, simply as they would be kept safe so long as nobody acted foolish.
He had barely taken a step before Milagros and Tomás planted themselves at either shoulder, both of them plainly ready for the part they had been waiting to play.
For two days the pair had been circling one another over which of them actually translated for the captain. Neither was willing to surrender the position now.
James let it be and started. "Tell him nobody’s throat wants troublin’, long as he keeps his crew calm and his hands where I can see ’em."
Milagros managed to speak first.
Tomás spoke over her without raising his voice even a little, calm as reading from a prayer book.
Milagros rounded on him.
Tomás merely turned his palms upward, entirely unbothered. He could talk drunks out of a fight without drawing steel, and apparently didn’t think this was any worse.
She was, in fact, shouting. The merchant crew flinched harder at her than they had at the entire boarding.
Capitán Eusebio Palomares, heavyset and pale as ship’s biscuit, looked from one to the other like he watched a duel of who would have the honors to kill him. He desperately nodded with whichever voice happened to be louder.
James watched them go at it, waiting to see which one of them would give up first.
"Right then."
He raised his good hand, palm out toward the captain, then swept it slowly toward the huddled crew and on toward the open water.
No tongue on earth needed translating it.
Palomares seized upon it like a drowning man grabbing a rope thrown overboard, nodding so hard his hat nearly went over the side with him.
"You see," Tomás folded his hands together, serene once more. "He understood me."
Milagros lips parted open to dispute this, but James beat her to it.
"Ye both did somethin’."
He turned away with a laugh.
"Sort between yerselves who gets the credit. I’ve a cargo wants hearin’ about."
Cudjoe met him at the hatch with his tally already finished, a scrap of paper folded in one hand. "Wine, casks of it, more than we’ve room tae stow, and oil tae go with it. Bolts of cloth, crates of ironware and tools, and tucked away at the back like they hoped nobody would look twice, a fair store o’ quicksilver."
James gave a low whistle. "That’s worth more than the whole rest of the cargo put together, and they hid it like rum from his own wife."
"Aye, and it’s addin’ tae what we’ve already got sittin’ in our belly from the last three prizes."
Cudjoe rubbed the back of his neck.
"We’re packed near full, Captain."
"How much?"
He snorted. "Hammocks are below decks now, every one o’ them, just tae make room. Spare powder wedged wherever a cask wouldnae fit, and I found three lads sleepin’ between crates last night. There’s nowhere left tae sling a hammock in the whole bloody ship."
Cudjoe pointed toward the merchantman below their feet.
"And that’s before we’ve touched what she’s carryin’."
"And the rest of my lasses?"
He shrugged. "Same trouble, some worse. The Dame’s fatter than we are, and she started that way tae begin with. As for the fortune, I’d wager Bonnet’s crew is sleepin’ standin’ up by now, crammed in the way that lass is."
Cudjoe shot him the familiar look. "We cannae keep takin’ prizes we’ve nowhere tae put, Captain. Might be time tae think on breakin’ this blockade, before there’s nae room left aboard for another flask o’ wine, let alone a man tae drink it."
James smiled through the ache still lodged deep in his shoulder.
"Not yet, Cudjoe. I’ve got a plan for all of it."
Cudjoe knew better than to expect a straight answer and had long since stopped wasting his breath asking for one.
James only grinned wider and left him to it.