“Haul taut! Main tops’l haul!”
Men came running aft with the main braces, then stopped short as the braces took the full weight of the big yards. The sailors’ bare feet dug into the planks, and they threw themselves almost level with the deck as they dragged the yards around. Orders came fast.
“Right the helm! Shift over the spritsail sheets! Shift the mizzen sheets!”
Meteor turned neatly on its heel, and suddenly the main topsail lifted and filled. The lateen yard was run ’round the mast, and the sail filled with a sharp crack. The fore yards were braced around, and now we were on the starboard tack, the water hissing and gurgling beneath the counter. My heart lifted, and I wanted to cheer.
Kevin looked at me with a bright smile on his face, and I knew he felt the same joy and relief as I. “That was well done!” I told him.
“Oakeshott is brilliant at working up a crew,” he said.
“I know that we are enacting my own scheme,” I confessed, “but at this moment I’m feeling rather superfluous.”
“So am I,” said Kevin.
“But you are part owner of the vessel,” said I. “Were you to give a command, they would be obliged to hear you, if not perhaps to obey. Whereas I am of no use in this business whatever, except perhaps to take a bullet that might otherwise strike a more useful man.”
“Try to stay out of everyone’s way,” Kevin advised.
“There seems to be no safe corner on a ship of war,” I said. “For a perilous moment, I regretted my decision to forego Sir Basil’s armor.”
“Armor yourself with hope,” Kevin said, “for I think we’re going to make a great prize this day.”
Oakeshott’s decision to tack meant we were coming right at Royal Stilwell without losing way—if we had worn ship instead, we’d have had to fight our way into the wind to get close to our target, and lost time. The next broadside was a repetition of the first, Meteor crossing below Stilwell’s stern at point-blank range, and a thorough hammering to which the enemy could only reply with small arms. This time, as the murderers on the poop deck were loaded, I saw that the powder came premeasured in bags, not ladled into the mouth of the gun as the Cannoneers had with Roundsilver’s guns. It seemed a practical innovation, the more so because the dangers of using powder on a crowded deck, and with all the gun-captains and soldiers carrying lit slow-matches, seemed all too obvious.
As soon as the guns were loaded, Oakeshott tacked again, and then we repeated the exercise twice more, for a total of six broadsides delivered into Stilwell’s increasingly battered stern. Stilwell’s small arms fire grew increasingly feeble, but scored a few hits, and some wounded hands were sent below to the orlop, where the ship’s barber and the carpenter, between them, would do their best for them.
For myself, I became somewhat used to being shot at, and missed.
The tide was coming in strongly, a stir of white foam flooding up Stilwell’s sides, but there was not nearly enough water on the bar to tip the ship upright, let along refloat her. We had hours yet.
We came about for the sixth time, and as we gained way on the larboard tack, we heard from our pilot, Foster, who had gone into the foretop early in the voyage and not come down.
“I cannot see their boats!” he called. “I think they have manned their boats, and are hiding them on the starboard side, and mean to board us as we come by!”
Which seemed to me a desperate endeavor, though I suppose desperation was all the enemy had left. An inspection with our glasses showed that the boats, which had been bobbing about Stilwell like a pack of hounds about a huntsman, had indeed disappeared from sight. Oakeshott laughed and let Meteor fall slightly off the wind, and he passed word to the gun captains concerning what was afoot. So, we crossed Stilwell’s stern over a cable’s length away, and the boats were forced to charge across a gap of open water that our shot soon filled with leaping white feathers. Half the boats were destroyed, and we left the rest far astern.
While the crew busied themselves with reloading and getting ready to put the ship about, I had nothing to do, so I took a long glass from the wreck and studied the enemy. I watched as the surviving boats pulled as many of their comrades from the water as they could, then returned to Royal Stilwell. Crew climbed, or were carried, from the boats into the great galleon, and then the boats, with a few men still aboard, pulled away. I thought that perhaps they would try to board us again, but instead I saw masts rising on the boats, and sails blossoming.
“They’re in flight!” I cried, and everyone rushed to the taffrail to watch the boats as they scudded away to the south. Even from a quarter league away we could hear the groans and angry shouts of the crewmen who had been abandoned on the galleon, and through the glass I could see fists raised in anger.
I presumed it was the officers who were running, those who had sworn allegiance to the usurper and would face a hangman’s noose if caught. Sir Andrew knows only two sentences: death, and service in her majesty’s army. So the provost had told me, and I supposed the ordinary sailors would most likely be transformed into pikemen within the week.
We could not pursue the boats, as they could cross the sandbars and we could not; and in any case, Royal Stilwell was our prize. Meteor came about, sailed to within twenty-five yards of Stilwell’s stern and hove to, motionless in the water, our guns bearing on the enemy. We could hear angry voices on the enemy ship, and see people moving about on the stern. But no firearms were presented at us, and whatever threats were being made, they were not made at us.
“Stilwell,” called Oakeshott through his speaking trumpet. “Stilwell, do you strike your colors?”
For a moment, we heard nothing but angry voices raised in argument with one another, and then one voice overtopped the rest.
“Ay!” he called. “We surrender!” And a few moments later, Stilwell’s flags came down.
Kevin leaped to the poop rail, took off his hat, and waved it. “Three cheers for Captain Oakeshott!”
As the cheers rang out, I saw the soldiers of the garrison shoulder their weapons and prepare to march down to the main deck and the loading port, all in preparation to board the enemy ship, and alarm suddenly flew through all my senses. And then I went to the poop rail and took Kevin by the shoulder, and drew him to where the captain stood accepting the congratulations of his officers.
“Gentlemen,” said I, “I think you do not want to put any royal soldiers on that enemy vessel.”
Kevin and Oakeshott looked at me in surprise. “Why not, sir?” asked the captain.
“Remember that Stilwell was a royal ship before the rebellion,” I said. “If royal soldiers go aboard, they may retake the vessel for the Queen, and we may say adieu to our prize.”
“But the ship was in enemy hands,” Oakeshott said. “We have taken her as a fair prize of war.”
“The status of prizes is decided by the rulings of a prize court,” said I. “And courts are composed of judges—judges appointed by royal authority, and inclined (if they value their livelihood) to do as the Queen wills. If they rule the vessel was the Queen’s all along, there is nothing we can do.”
Kevin nodded. “We’ll put only privateersmen aboard,” he said.
Oakeshott looked at me for a long, thoughtful moment, and then he rushed to the entry port and began assigning our own men to the prize crew. The soldiers he sent back to the poop, to keep the enemy vessel under their guns.
In the meantime, railing voices continued to be heard from the great galleon, along with snatches of song and intimations of swift violence. When they were deserted by their captain and officers, Stilwell’s crew had broken into the ship’s spirit store, and now they were all ranting drunk. When the prize crew arrived, they found the ship in such disorder that they had to batten the crew into the forecastle. Lest the prize crew succumb to the same temptation, our officer ordered every cask aboard to be started, and every bottle broken.