Armada

boarders.’

‘Si, mi Comandante,’ the men spoke as one.

The approaching English warships being towed towards them had increased in number. Two ships were in the lead and were closing at a faster speed with the assistance of small oar-powered dispatch boats. One was a galleon that looked similar in size to the San Luis. The other was a smaller warship comparable to the Santa Clara.

Evardo felt a shiver of doubt run up his spine and angrily shook off the sense of foreboding. The San Luis and Santa Clara were going to be more heavily outnumbered than he had expected, certainly more than El Gran Grifon was the morning before. Evardo could not suppress the tentacles of fear that crept over his resolve. He thought of Abrahan and how, as a boy, his mentor had taught him that without fear there could be no courage. The memory steeled his nerve and he tried to recapture the impulse that had compelled him to volunteer, the desire to prove his mettle to all.

The boom of cannon split the still air and Evardo flinched as the round shot swept past his deck. The two leading English galleons were five hundred yards away. The second one fired her bow chasers. One of the shots struck the San Luis, the crack of timber followed an instant later by the scream of an injured sailor. The men of the Santa Clara began to shout defiantly at the oncoming English, single voices that quickly grew until the ship was awash with strident calls, an outburst that banished all fears and opened the floodgates of battle lust.

Evardo allowed the noise to feed his soul. He hoped the sound would carry to the ear of every Englishman, compelling them to answer the Spanish taunts and end their cowardly tactics of firing from a distance. The San Luis and Santa Clara were all alone. This was the enemy’s opportunity to close and board.

Robert climbed hand over hand, his grip firm on the ratlines as he ascended the shrouds through the heavy pall of gun smoke. Bullets zipped through the air, the near misses causing him to spin his head around while beneath him he could hear the heavier whoosh of small calibre round shot. With every step the smoke cleared further and he quickly reached the fighting top above the main course.

Two lookouts and musketeers were stationed there and they moved aside to allow their captain to climb atop the head of the main course. Robert took a grip on the main mast and felt a tremor run through it as the heavy guns of his ship were fired on the decks. He steadied his feet and looked to larboard, the clearer air affording him his first view of the Spanish galleons since the Retribution had fired its broadside.

The enemy ships were two hundred yards off the beam. With no wind their masthead banners hung limp, frustrating any attempt to identify them from such a distance. The smaller galleon was to the fore while behind her the heavier warship was engaged with the English ships that had attacked from the opposing flank. It was the closest that the Retribution had engaged any enemy ship so far and Robert could immediately see the effects the shorter range was having on the Spanish galleons. Their courses were shot through in dozens of places, with rigging and tackles hanging like gallows’ ropes from the stays. The upper decks were heavily damaged, with railings and superficial fittings shot away in several places. Robert counted a score of hits in the hull, although it seemed none had penetrated.

As the first ship to engage, along with the Victory, the Retribution had the most advantageous firing position. Sitting stationary in the water, she was still tethered to the ship’s longboat and two coasters, with Seeley and Miller in constant communication with the coxswain, ensuring that no trick of current turned the galleon’s hull off true. From the distinctive boom of the heaviest guns, Robert estimated Larkin’s men were averaging a rate of just under twenty minutes a shot from the larboard battery.

Despite the range and intensity of this fearsome barrage the gunwales of the Spanish galleons were heavily lined with soldiers. Their swords were drawn, their mouths open in grotesque masks of anger, their taunts and curses lost by language and the almost constant roar of cannon fire. Robert lifted his gaze to the men directly across from him on the fighting tops of the nearest Spanish galleon. Each one was crammed with musketeers, loading and firing as quickly as they could in the confined space of the tops.

Robert saw one of them turn his musket towards him, the sweep of the barrel changing to the black circle of a muzzle as the soldier took aim. The Spaniard fired, disappearing behind a puff of smoke. At two hundred yards he was well beyond effective range. In the continuous whine of passing shot he briefly wondered where the bullet meant for him had struck. The smoke around the Spaniard’s head cleared and he lowered his gun to see the result of his shot, his face twisting in fury as he discovered he had missed. He raised his fist and screamed some obscenity, his voice lost in the din of battle.

Robert did not respond, glancing instead at the two musketeers beside him. They too were taking pot shots at the enemy galleons but it was obvious from their frustrated expressions that they were not hitting any targets. Robert looked down at the eerie cloud of gun smoke that enveloped his ship. At two hundred yards his cannon were firing at half the distance they had engaged at on the first day. But it was not close enough. The Spanish crew of the nearest warship was being badly mauled by the larboard broadsides. There were wounded and dying on every open deck, but the galleon itself had suffered no heavy damage. Robert let go of the mainmast and readied himself to climb down. If they were going to destroy the enemy galleon they were going to have to get a lot closer.

The noise on the Santa Clara was like the opened gates of hell, a terrible clamour of tormented screams and war cries, of shouted orders amidst the boom and whine of gun fire. Shot, dice and bullets saturated the air, giving little sanctuary to those on the weather decks. Underfoot the timbers ran with fresh blood. Smoke filled every throat, searing the eyes and flooding the nostrils with a scorched smell that barely masked the odour of torn flesh and rank sweat. Battle lust filled every heart, suppressing the instinct to yield, creating a trance-like courage that kept every man at his post through the endless hail of fire.

Evardo thought his heart would burst. Frustration and anger consumed him. The God-cursed motherless English were not closing to board. The enemy had overwhelming numbers, the San Luis and Santa Clara were isolated. If the tables were reversed a Spaniard would not hesitate to grapple on and take the prize. Yet the English were persisting with their infernal tactics, firing their cannon at a rate that beggared belief.

Nearly a dozen English ships were targeting the Santa Clara alone. The firestorm was all but continuous and Evardo looked in anguish across the decks of his galleon. His crew were paying a terrible price for a failed plan, a trap that could not be sprung because the enemy had not the courage to advance and press for a decisive encounter.

At least a score of his men were dead. The wounded lay where they fell, their cries unheard, their horrific injuries untended. Evardo’s jerkin was soaked in blood, much of it his own from a deep gash in his cheek caused by a wooden splinter. More was from a sailor who had taken a round shot to the chest, his torso disintegrating under the hammer blow, his flesh and viscera spraying across the quarterdeck, staining everything it touched.

The sound of English cannon fire reached a deafening crescendo, a crash of unnatural thunder that for a moment stunned every crewman of the Santa Clara into fleeting submission. Evardo looked to his own cannon. The crew were rapidly servicing the small man-killing guns on the upper decks but Evardo could pick up no telltale trace of vibrations from the main guns below. Despite his standing order to the gunners’ captain to match the English cannonade the heavy cannon of the Santa Clara had yet to fire a second round after their opening salvo.

Evardo went forward to go below to the gun deck. Through the smoke he could see Padre Garcia issuing the last rites to a crewman on the main deck, the priest reciting a prayer before God amidst the anarchy of battle. The gun deck was another, but equally chaotic world after the upper decks. The thunder of cannon fire was muted below decks but a more terrifying sound pervaded the cramped low-ceilinged carapace. Round shot pounded off the hull, each percussive strike shuddering the weatherbeaten timbers.

Peering through the suffocating smoke and press of men, Evardo searched for Suarez, his calls unheard over the piercing noise of battle. He moved forward along the deck. Men shouldered past him, rushing in all directions. The nearest gun-port was drenched in blood and Evardo watched as a gunner straddled the barrel and sidled out through the opening to service his muzzle-loading cannon outboard. The upper part of his body was outside the hull, his hand reaching in for each proffered tool and ingredient. It was bravery that touched on madness and Evardo gasped in horror as the gunner suddenly disappeared, struck through by an unseen round. Another crewman immediately rushed to take his place, continuing the suicidal reloading of the cannon.