He grimaced from the pain of his wounds. “It will go faster with more help, and four of my men are still fit enough to labor. Chain me like a dog if you must, but for heaven’s sake use stout backs to save your wife and son.”
I hesitated. I trusted Leon Martel about as much as an arthritic earl should trust the flexible filly of a wife he bought with ill-gotten inheritance, but time was of the essence. Every second we saved getting iron off our bow gave us a better chance to steer away from that lee shore. I had a pistol and a knife, and he and his scoundrels did not.
“Don’t leave us here to drown, American!” one of his men added.
Well, some of the bastards were dead, others wounded, and the starch had been beaten out of everyone.
So I unlocked the four healthiest ones, including Crow. They wept with gratitude. “You have chosen as a saint would,” Crow assured.
“Then work to save your life and ours. Rocks are near.”
The hammering and rasping had become more frantic. I turned to join the others on deck.
But I’d promised Martel a fatal meeting with Dessalines, hadn’t I? The last thing that bastard wanted was a successful conclusion to our voyage. And the only way his henchmen would get freedom and the treasure was by dooming the rest of us, they figured. All this I realized later. They’d plotted with the desperation of the condemned.
So I was clubbed from behind.
I fell and skidded, dazed, the shackle key ring leaving my fingers. Someone snatched it up, and I heard the rattle of more chains unlocking. I rolled and tried shooting, but my pistol was soaked and snapped uselessly. A wounded ruffian staggered at me, and an ax fell toward my head. I jerked to one side just in time. The weapon thunked into the deck, sticking, which gave me time to heave up and shove a knife into the bastard’s ribs. He was Buzzard, I think. He gasped, stiffened, and fell.
Everything was in awkward slow motion from the sickening heave of the deck. The other gang members were ignoring me, crawling forward to frantically knock open strongboxes and stuff their pockets with treasure.
Where was Martel? I yanked out the ax from the floorboards, the bloody knife in my other hand.
The Frenchman was crawling the opposite way, making for the stern. A length of chain was still hooked to one ankle and dragging like a lizard tail. Was he trying to hide?
No, he’d seized a hatchet. With horror, I realized what he meant to do.
“Leon, stop!”
He turned, eyes haunted, lips a crooked sneer. “Mercy is always stupid.”
“If you don’t work the ship, we’ll die!”
“And if I do, I’ll still die, but slowly and in a great deal of pain for the long, cruel pleasures of the Haitian rebels. Good-bye, Ethan Gage. I’ll take my chances with the sea.”
He wriggled into the compartment where the wheel’s cables led down to pulleys and the straining rudder.
“No!” I cried. “There’s a shoal…” I scrabbled desperately after him.
Perhaps his plan, if he had one, was to throw the vessel into such chaos that his own men could retake the ship.
More likely, he simply wanted to take us down with him.
“I won’t let you kill my family!”
“You killed them by defying me,” he called. “You killed them by letting your wife shoot me. Me, Martel, your only hope.”
I threw the knife, but he was too far away and wedged tightly amid the wheel ropes. The blade bounced harmlessly off a timber. I charged with the ax, but couldn’t reach him in time. He swung his hatchet, grunting against the pain, and chopped one of the rudder cables. “For Bonaparte!”
The rope was already tight as a harpsichord wire, strained against the relentless push of the ocean. Now it snapped like a whip, lashing him as it did so. He was flung like a toy, ribs audibly cracking, and smacked against the slack cables of the suddenly useless rudder, evil satisfied. Martel glanced up toward the deck where my wife and son waited.
Instantly we lost steerage. The ship spun and everyone tumbled, screaming as they realized we were lost.
If our orientation to the waves couldn’t be controlled, a loose mortar could be catastrophic.
“I’ll see you in hell, Gage!”
I grabbed the ladder to ascend to the quarterdeck to shout warning. The storm was catastrophic as we yawed. I dimly saw Jubal and his fellows in front of me, clinging for purchase, each wave that cascaded down the deck’s length washing wood chips with it. The mortar was rocking violently, its foundation loose. But instead of tipping it carefully, we’d created a one-ton peril. Now the ship was turning broadside, entirely out of control. Captain Brienne clung to the wheel, looking at me with horror.
“What have you done?”
“It was Martel.” And then, calling ahead, “Jubal! Don’t loosen the mortar! Get back!”
My friend heard his name. He pulled himself by line toward the mast, one ear cupped.
The entire ketch began to tilt. We were broaching, sideways to the seas. A monster comber rose, a cathedral of water, and because we were at the far edge of the storm now, a watery sun thrust beams of light on the chaotic sea. For just a moment, the crest of the wave glowed green as an emerald.
Then it broke, an explosion of foam, and rushed down like a mountain avalanche. Jubal grabbed the mast just in time. I braced myself in the hatchway.
The breaker hit.
We rolled completely sideways, masts parallel to the sea, and light vanished. We were underwater, or rather smothered in a mattress of foam, tons and tons of seawater slamming as if to drive our vessel to the bottom.
Even submerged I heard a snap as the mortar, its pins half chopped through, broke loose. It tore out of the deck and smashed overboard, plunging for the bottom like a stone. A ragged mouth in the deck marked where it had been.
Water surged through the sudden gap and poured into the hull. The gun had also broken the stays holding up the foremast so it went over, lines jerking like dancing snakes.
The ship’s rigging was broken, and all hope of controlling the vessel was gone.
Several of Jubal’s companions and French sailors vanished into the sea with the gun, pulled underwater by the rope they had tied to.
Miraculously, Pelee ’s ballast worked its leverage and we rolled upright again, staggering. Then another crack, like a tree falling in a forest, and the mainmast went over. A broadside wave, and the mast and my black friend were washed away like driftwood.
I looked back at the wheel. It had disappeared, too. So had Brienne.
With water pouring in, the loss of the mortar had the opposite effect we’d intended. The ship settled at the bow even more sluggishly than before, and pitched in the seas as aimlessly as a piece of driftwood. The angle of the deck was steepening as the vessel began to sink.
I crawled toward the captain’s cabin, fighting through surf.
All was lost, and there was only one thing left to accomplish now.
I had to save Astiza and Harry.
Chapter 44
It was an uphill climb to the cabin of the Pelee. We were at the complete mercy of the sea, being driven toward a reef, every man left now to God and glory. The strongboxes were broken, the glorious artifacts of Tenochtitlan clutched desperately like talismans by drowning men, or rattling loose like seashells in the surf. My own mind fogged with fury. That Napoleon Bonaparte himself had set this disaster in motion, as Martel claimed-that he’d used my family and me as puppets-was beyond ordinary political calculation. I’d spent nearly a year
