"They are fools, to try conclusions with us," Elijah Walton said. A little to the east, a pirate brig caught fire. Men scurried like mice, trying to douse the flames. William didn't think they'd be able to.
"They are fools, to turn corsair to begin with," he said. "Sometimes you have to beat a fool's folly out of him."
A roundshot slammed into the Royal Sovereign's oaken flank. Screams following the crash said the cannon ball or its splinters did their vicious work. The pirates were brave enough. They were almost madly brave, to challenge ships so much larger and stronger than their own.
As if echoing that thought, Walton said, "This unequal combat makes me wonder what possible hope of victory the brigands had."
"Sir!" A midshipman still too young to shave dashed up to Radcliff. "Sir! There's signals from out of the west! Fireships, sir!"
"Fireships!" William Radcliff said, and then something much more pungent than that. Fireships were every honest sailor's nightmare. You had to get away from them, regardless of what that did to your line. Let fire get hold of a ship full of men and it became an oven on the instant.
Fireships could do worse than that. He still remembered the Hellburner of Antwerp from the century before-as who did not? It had been loaded with tons of gunpowder and more tons of metal junk and stones-and it blew hundreds, maybe thousands, of Spaniards halfway to the moon. If Red Rodney Radcliffe remembered the Hellburner, too…
"Tell the signalman to raise each ship to act independently," William said.
"Each ship to act independently. Aye aye, sir!" The midshipman darted away.
Walton peered west, shading his eyes with the palm of his hand. "Damned setting sun makes them bloody hard to spy," he said.
"Yes." William nodded. And had his unloved and unloving cousin counted on that, too? William didn't know exactly how smart Red Rodney was. Tough and hard? Yes, no doubt. Smart? It wasn't so obvious. Or it hadn't been so obvious, not till now. The pirate chief knew what he was doing, all right.
Again, Elijah Walton thought along with him: "This must be why the bugger accepted battle with us to begin with. He wanted to hold us in place whilst launching his incendiaries at us."
"That seems much too likely," William said unhappily. He too peered west. Now the plumes of smoke from the burning vessels were plain to see, befouling a sky that should have been pristine. Also plain to see was his fleet's disorder. His ships steered every which way, trying to escape those flaming harbingers of doom.
The pirates had nerve. They hadn't just launched their fireships and then abandoned them to wind and wave. The weapons would have been much less dangerous if they had. Instead, men stayed on the burning vessels as long as they could, steering them toward ships in William's fleet. Only at the last possible moment did the skeleton crews dive into the Hesperian Gulf and swim toward boats the fireships towed.
And it worked, damn them. One of the Dutch ships of the line burst into flame, and a horrible beauty was born. The sails caught first, the sails and the rigging and then the yards and the mast. Flaming canvas and tarred rope fell to the upper deck, starting fresh fire there. The Dutchmen forgot their gunnery in the frantic quest to save themselves.
They might forget, but their foes didn't. Pirate ships, tenacious as terriers, went right on shooting at them. Before long, despairing sailors started jumping into the sea. Some struck out for the closest friendly ships. Others simply sank. Not all men who went to sea could swim-far from it. The ones who couldn't decided drowning made an easier, faster death than roasting. If that choice came to him, William Radcliff decided he would make it the same way.
Crash! Another cannon ball thudded into and through the Royal Sovereign's planking. The man-of-war's gunnery had fallen off, while the pirates fought harder than ever. And, with the ship of the line doing all she could to escape the freebooters' fireships, the enemy vessels could position themselves as they pleased and give her broadsides she couldn't answer.
"What do we do, Admiral?" Elijah Walton asked hoarsely. "What can we do?"
Before, he'd always sounded sardonic when he used William's title. No longer. Radcliff was the man who had the authority to save the fleet…if he could.
He opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, a thunderous blast staggered him. Sure as hell, one of the fireships had blown up alongside a British man-of-war. William was amazed the explosion didn't take the British ship straight to the bottom. It did take down two of the man-of-war's three masts, set her afire, and leave her helpless in the water. Maybe some men would get off her, but she was ruined.
"What do we do?" Walton asked again, desperation in his voice.
William Radcliff looked at the fight. He looked at the sun, which almost kissed the smoke-stained horizon. Whatever they did, they would have to do it soon. "We pull back," he said, and shouted for a midshipman to relay the message to the signal officer.
"Sail for Stuart?" Walton sounded as if that was exactly what he hoped to hear.
But William shook his head. "No, by God. They've slowed us up. They did something we didn't look for, and they caught us flatfooted. They hurt us. But we aren't beaten unless we own ourselves beaten. We'll fix ourselves up as best we can and get on with the fight."
"Upon my soul," Elijah Walton said.
Bodies wrapped in sailcloth slid into the sea, a round shot or two at the feet making sure they would sink. Fresh blood stained the Black Hand's deck and splashed the masts and rigging. Soon enough, it would go dark. The stains would seem inoffensive enough then…unless you knew the story behind them.
The corsairs aboard-those who lived-were in a festive mood. After the fireships did their fearsome work, the men had watched the fleet that seemed invincible turn away and say it had done all the fighting it cared to do. Some of the pirates even wanted to go after their retreating foes.
Red Rodney Radcliffe said, "No." Something in the way he said it persuaded even his crew of cutthroats not to press him any further. He wasn't sure whether he would have reached for his cutlass or for his pistol if the pirates had pushed, but he was ready to kill to keep from fighting any more today.
With a creak and a groan, the pumps started up again. A stream of water poured over the side. As far as he knew, the Black Hand had taken only one hit at the waterline, and that one was patched now…after a fashion. All the same, the leak continued. It didn't seem to be getting any worse. He was no praying man, but he thanked God for that.
"Well, we beat 'em back," Ben Jackson said. The mate had a new bandage on his left calf, and walked with a limp.
"Damned if we didn't." Red Rodney wished he didn't sound so surprised. He tried to hide it with gruff kindness: "How are you doing, Ben?"
"It's a fucking scratch, that's all. Nothing but a fucking scratch." Jackson spat scornfully. "I got tickled by a flying toothpick. Higgins cut it out of me. I would've taken care of it myself, but it always hurts worse when you do your own."
Rodney Radcliffe nodded; he'd seen that, too. Wounds were accidents. You were always startled when you got hurt. Repairing them sometimes required deliberate damage to your own precious flesh. He'd known many otherwise ferocious men who couldn't face that.
"What do we do now?" the mate asked.
"I think all the great captains had better hash that out." Red Rodney shouted to the signalman: "Send up repair aboard the admiral's ship while there's still light enough for the rest to read it."
"Repair aboard the admiral's ship," the Royal Navy renegade echoed. "Aye aye, skipper."