sky, up over her rail.
At last only the upper part of her quarterdeck and poop was still visible, and then that went, and a second later the masts and yards were dragged below the water, and then there was nothing left but bits of floating debris and bodies and the ever-widening circle of rippling water.
The Elizabeth Galleys lined the rail, stared silently at the spot where the ship had disappeared. Billy, too, stared; he could not take his eyes away.
What a waste, he thought, what a bloody waste. It was the only thing he could think, and he was not even certain of what he meant.
Chapter 29
THE LONGBOAT bearing Elephant, Lord Yancy and Captain Roger Press and what remained of their mutual commands, the longboat that was kept afloat through the tenuous use of jackets pushed into the gaping holes made by the round shot and half her men bailing furiously, ground up at last on the beach.
Yancy stood and pushed his way through the men and jumped down into the sand. He ignored everyone, stepped quickly up to the road and out along the dock. He stopped in time to see the poop deck and then the masts of his new flagship, the Queen’s Venture, disappearing below the water.
He did not know how much booty was still aboard her or if it was even possible to get to it. The answers to those questions, he imagined, were “not much” and “most likely not.”
Marlowe’s ship, the Elizabeth Galley-how that name mocked him!-was under way, fore and main topsails set to the steady morning breeze and the forecourse sheeting home even as he watched.
Yancy gritted his teeth. He felt his whole body shake. Not trembling hands or shivering such as he had had before and recognized. This was something else, a tremor like an earthquake starting from his feet and spreading up and out to his extremities until his entire body was vibrating. He was suddenly afraid that something inside might give out-his heart, his brain, his bowels-something might burst from the internal pressure. He was not furious. He was far, far beyond that.
Footsteps on the wooden planks behind him, and he spun around and tried to say something, but his jaw and his tongue and his brain all seemed to be locked up, frozen in a state of paralysis.
“Dear Lord, Yancy,” said Press, an amused note in his voice. He pulled the toothpick from his mouth, pointed it at Yancy. “You look as if you’re like to blow a blood vessel!”
That seemed to shake something loose, and Yancy found he could think again.
His first thought was to go after them. The brig was still at anchor, and the sloop Speedwell. But the sloop was pretty well battered-even from the dock he could see that-and the brig would never be able to run the Galley down. He could not risk letting them get away.
“Nagel, you send some son of a bitch to the battery on Quail Island, you tell those bastards up there to blow that damned ship to splinters, do you hear me? Blow it right out of the water, I don’t even want to see pieces of it, I want it blown apart, do you understand?”
Nagel looked around. “Send ’em in what boat?”
“Damn the boat! Send someone to swim over!”
“Aye. Stokes, you go. Get a move on.”
Stokes nodded, kicked off his shoes, unbuckled his sword belt, pulled off his shirt as he ran for the water’s edge.
Yancy turned his back on the others, folded his arms, watched the Elizabeth Galley standing across the harbor.
She would not make it. There was breeze enough, but the tide was against her. Stokes would be at the battery in twenty minutes, passing his order to fire, and five minutes after that the ship would be under their guns. There was no missing, not at that range. The gunners would blow the ship away.
Yancy wanted the ship, of course, and wanted the vast amounts of treasure that that bastard Marlowe had stolen from him. But if he could not have that, at least he could have them all dead. He could stand there and watch them as they were blasted to pieces by the battery’s big guns, not a cable length from the channel down which the ship must sail. He could picture the agony on the decks as their near escape was taken from them.
Perhaps they would abandon ship. Perhaps they would row ashore. Perhaps he would get his hands on Marlowe and Elizabeth after all. He felt some small sense of optimism, where before there had been only fury.
Arms aching, heaving for breath, stumbling, Barnaby Stokes, sixteen years of age, strongest swimmer among the pirates there on St. Mary’s, stood up in the shallow water near the jungle-covered shore of Quail Island and staggered for the beach.
He reached the sand, picked up his pace, jogged through the gate in the battery’s wall, across the flat, paved ground, past the furnace for heating shot, past the bored gun crew who sat in the shade and drank rum and watched him with idle curiosity. He fell against the low wall along which the five big thirty-two-pounders were arranged, looking out over the water. He stood for a moment, hands palms down on the top of the wall, catching his breath, looking out at the harbor to see if he was too late.
He was not. The ship had everything set and was catching a decent breeze, but the tide was against her. It would be a good five minutes before she passed in front of the battery’s guns.
Stokes stood, breathed steady, took in the scene. It was beautiful, almost too beautiful to be real. The light blue sky, the aqua blue water in the harbor, the deep blue of the open ocean beyond. The green jungle carpeting the hills, the ship a quarter mile off, like an intricate toy. It seemed too beautiful a morning to fill it with smoke and flying shot and death.
But there had been so much of that already that morning that Stokes reckoned a bit more would not hurt. Besides, it was going to be a great frolic, standing in the battery, blowing apart a ship whose six-pounder guns would be no match for the big thirty-twos.
“What’s acting?” The captain of the battery came strolling up, his long shirt untucked from stained breeches.
“Yancy says to blow yon ship out of the water. Really give it to her.”
The captain squinted over at the ship, spit on the ground, squinted again, and grinned. “Yeah, we can do that,” he said. “Come on, lads, we’ve business this morning!” he called, and the others, muttering, got to their feet. They shuffled over to the low wall, looked out at the harbor. “Yancy says we’re to blow them out of the water,” the captain told his crew.
That perked up their interest and their spirits, and they fell to loading one of the great guns. There were ten of them on the gun crew, but that was as many as were required to work the one big gun.
They moved slowly, deliberately, rolling back the gun, ramming home powder, shot. Stokes thought that, for men who had nothing to do but man the battery and be ready to fire the guns, they were not very organized or swift, but he held his tongue. They had time. The test would be how fast they could reload when the ship was within the arc of their fire.
“Run her out!” the gun captain called, and the men leaned into the train tackles, and the gun rumbled, squealed, moved under protest up to the rampart. The captain sighted down the barrel, ordered the gun trained around, fiddled with the elevation. “That’s good, lads. We’ll just let her sail into it.”
Four minutes they waited in silence, the only sound the song of the birds and the buzzing of insects, the breeze in the thick foliage. The captain leaned over the barrel, grinned. “Ah, here she comes, lads, right to us, the stupid bastard. Give us the match, here.”
One of the men handed the gun captain the match, and they all stepped back, making a circle of men two feet from the gun, safe from its recoil, ready to leap to and reload.
“Come on, come on…” the captain muttered, hunched over the barrel, the match hovering over the powder train.
Men craned their heads above the wall, eager to see the damage the first shot would do. It was the most amusement any of them had had in some time.
“Here we go…” the captain said, and he straightened, shoved the match down into the powder. It hissed, crackled and then in one huge roar of flame and screaming metal and burning powder the great gun fired its thirty-
