alongside. The men there were working the stay tackle as well, emptying the Elizabeth Galley’s hold of whatever they could- food, water, supplies-to make more room for the treasure.
Across the deck of the Queen’s Venture went the boxes, across the deck of the Elizabeth Galley and down through that ship’s main hatch and down into her hold. Then, fast as could be done, the tackle was retrieved, and then the next chest of treasure or bundle of silk or barrel of spice was hove up from below and swayed across, Queen’s Venture to Elizabeth Galley.
Marlowe paced back and forth on the Queen’s Venture foredeck. There was little for him to do but wait. Wait until they had secured all the treasure that they could, wait until the moment when he had to order the men to leave the rest, to set sail and slip the cable and cut away the ropes that bound the Galley to the Venture.
Just as he was thinking about that very thing, the Queen’s Venture gave a little lurch, tilted away from the Elizabeth Galley. The ropes groaned, made tiny popping sounds of fibers snapping. She was listing already, lying at an odd angle, a few degrees off an even keel.
“She’s filling. Fast,” Marlowe said to Billy Bird, and Billy nodded.
“We’ve a bit more time, I should think,” Billy said.
Then, across the water, from the deck of the Speedwell, clear even over the commotion of emptying the Queen’s Venture’s hold, the order “Fire!” and the gray dawn was torn apart as the tender fired her full broadside into the Elizabeth Galley.
On the top of the hill, below the big house, in the back of the cell formerly occupied by Roger Press and his men, entirely forgotten by everyone save for the jailer who brought him his twice-daily food and water, Peleg Dinwiddie stared at the open iron-bar door.
For week upon week he had sat alone in the cell, alone with his own thoughts, the worst torture of all. The rack, it seemed to him, would have been welcome, the thumbscrews, branding, flogging-anything. Any of it would have meant human contact and pain to blot out the thoughts, the constant, unchecked thoughts.
Weeks of nothing, and then the most extraordinary series of events. First Roger Press and Thomas Marlowe, both marched down as prisoners. Dinwiddie recognized most of the men who were put in the cell with Marlowe. They were his former shipmates, men under his command. Some he did not recognize, such as the foppish fellow whom Marlowe called Billy.
But they were put in the other cell, and Press and his men were put in the cell that Dinwiddie occupied. Peleg had kept to the back, to the shadows, did not wish to be noticed. He was noticed, of course, not by Press but by others, and those men who did see him did not say anything to him. They just looked him over, turned away.
He was filthy, his once-fine clothes nearly rags, almost two months’ growth of beard on his face. He reckoned he looked like some madman, locked away, and he was not certain he wasn’t.
Dinwiddie had sat as silent and unseen witness to the fast-changing situation, as first Marlowe had been released by Elizabeth and then Press by Yancy. The cells had been emptied, the door left open, and still Dinwiddie sat there, unmoving, staring.
But now his thoughts were off on a new tangent. Marlowe was there, free, on St. Mary’s. It could mean only that he was heading for the Elizabeth Galley, making sail for home.
Home. In his dark madness Dinwiddie was not even certain what that meant. Some mythical place, some land where there was something besides a stone cell and the endless self-flagellation.
Marlowe, Elizabeth Galley, home. It took him two hours to stand up and take a step toward the door. He paused, listened. The guard with the broken arm had not made a sound in over an hour. Nothing happened, nothing moved. Dinwiddie took another step toward the door.
Whoever was in command of the tender Speedwell had smoked what they were about. Marlowe did not know how.
Perhaps one of Press’s men had swum over there. Perhaps they had sent a boat, unseen in the dark, to reconnoiter. Perhaps they were just guessing. It hardly mattered. They were loyal to Press, and they had figured out that his booty was being carried off, and now they were trying to prevent it.
Iron slammed into the Elizabeth Galley’s side, and Marlowe could feel the impact even on the Queen’s Venture’s deck. It screamed through the air, and the stay tackle was shot through. The iron-bound box that hung from the end of the tackle plunged to the deck, fifteen feet, hit with the impact of a cannonball. The box burst open, and a cascade of gold coin spilled along the deck, but no one paid it any attention. There were more important things at the moment.
“You there!” Honeyman pointed to the gang of men holding the now-useless fall of the stay tackle. “Reeve off a new tackle, quickly! You”-he pointed to another gang by the main hatch-“get the girt-line down there. We can use that for the lighter stuff.”
Billy Bird stepped up beside him, and Marlowe said, “This fellow has loyalty and courage, if not so much sense, firing on us.”
“Perhaps not so much loyalty or courage either,” said Billy. “I perceive two boats pulling for us, and it takes no art to guess who is in ’em.”
Billy pointed forward, and Marlowe followed the gesture. Far off, up the harbor, two big boats coming bow on, their oars like flickering shadows moving in the odd mechanical way oars do. They were just visible in the dawn’s light. If they had not been painted white, they would not have been noticed.
“Damn it,” Marlowe said, and he ran around the gangplank and over to the Elizabeth Galley, then down into the Galley’s waist. Flanders was directing the men who were emptying her holds, and there was Bickerstaff, hauling with the men on the Galley’s stay tackle. “Flanders, belay that for now!” Marlowe shouted, and the Speedwell fired again. The Galley shuddered, a section of bulwark ripped apart, the men inboard of it tossed aside. The clang of round shot hitting one of the Galley’s great guns, from the Queen’s Venture a prolonged shriek, and then nothing.
“We’ll have to man the guns, give these bastards something in return. Francis, will you set some men to handing out powder?”
“I will.” This was not piracy, this was defense of their own ship, and Marlowe knew that Bickerstaff would have no qualms about joining in.
Flanders dispatched men to the guns, Bickerstaff took a half dozen below to the powder magazine. Overhead, more booty came swinging across, a great bundle of ivory tusks hanging from the Venture’s girtline, over the deck and down into the Galley’s hold.
On the Venture’s foredeck men swarmed around the stay tackle like ants on a pile of sugar, reeving off a new line, getting it back into action, eager to get every last groat they could out of the hold of the sinking ship.
The Queen’s Venture shifted, rolled another foot away from the Galley, the bar-taut ropes binding the vessels together groaning, the wood creaking, and Marlowe could picture the water rising higher and higher. It would be almost waist deep by now, to the men working in her hold. If the ropes holding the two vessels together were to let go, then the Venture would roll right over and take them down with her.
They had to realize that. And no doubt they did, but greed was stronger even than their sense of self- preservation.
Up and down the Galley’s waist the guns’ lashings were cast off, the guns rolled back, the match lit and ready to touch off powder. Up from below came the men, dispatched by Bickerstaff, bearing cartridges of powder in long leather tubes. Powder, shot, wadding-it was all rammed home and the guns trundled out again.
Marlowe sighted down the barrel of the closest gun. The Speedwell was growing more distinct as the dawn spread across the sky, her upper rails no longer shades of gray and black but dull red, dull green. One hundred feet away, half a cable length, point-blank range, the muzzle of the gun seemed to rest on the side of the tender. No wonder their fire had been so devastating.
“Don’t wait on me!” Marlowe shouted. “Fire fast as you can!”
Crews stepped back, gun captains took one last sight, match came down on powder train, and all along the Galley’s waist the six-pounders fired their devastating blast of iron. The guns were just coming to rest at the end of their breeches when the Speedwell fired. The hull shook, two shrouds parted and hung limp, a spray of splinters exploded from the mainmast. But the tender’s guns sounded smaller now, less impressive, after the Elizabeth Galley’s larger battery. Marlowe could see at least two of the Speedwell’s guns that did not fire, and he hoped the Galley’s broadside had managed to knock them out.
“All slack! Ease away, handsomely, handsomely!” came the shout from behind, and Marlowe turned to see a big chest, bound with iron strapping, easing from the Queen’s Venture’s newly rove stay tackle to the Elizabeth
