The prize crew, in their forced sobriety, found Royal Stilwell sound enough. She had run softly aground on the sand, and her bottom was but little damaged. Some guns and other gear had broken free when the ship fell onto her side, but these had already been secured by Stilwell’s own crew some time during the night.
Meteor anchored in deep water nearby, the guns were secured, and the fires were lit to prepare dinner. The tide continued to come in with great speed, and after two hours, we made an attempt to right Royal Stilwell, by shifting the kedge anchor out to larboard of her, and hauling on it with the ship’s capstan. At first, the ship moved not at all, but as the tide came racing in, the ship’s timbers gave out a series of groans, the capstan pawls clacked, at first with agonizing slowness, and then with speed as the ship began to come upright.
Stilwell did not completely right itself while it remained on the sand, but it was level enough that the prize crew could begin lightening her, first by starting all the water casks so the water ran into the hold, where it could be pumped out. While this was being done, some of the heavier guns were taken out, dropped into boats by slings, and then carried to Meteor, where they were hoisted aboard.
As the tide reached its height, boiling along Stilwell’s sides, the kedge anchor was moved aft again, and Sea-Holly came out to help us. Hawsers were passed between the ships, and Stilwell’s capstan manned again. Between the kedge anchor and the two ships hauling, Stilwell came off the sand—“Easy as mittens,” as Captain Oakeshott put it. Afloat, the ship retained only a slight starboard list, a result of the items shifting in the hold.
The prize crew got some sail aloft, and under the guidance of Pilot Foster we came to the mouth of the Brood, and up the river to Longfirth. There we were met by the entire city thronging the wharves, flags waving from every ship in the harbor, a military band playing, and a salute of cannon-fire from the citadel.
Kevin, Oakeshott, and I had in the meantime taken counsel, and managed a plan to retain possession of our prize. We would first appeal to Sir Andrew de Berardinis, in hopes that he would use his powers martial to appoint himself, or a friend, judge of a prize court—and if the Lord Governor declined, I would take Sea-Holly to Selford and there recruit Lord Roundsilver and any other friends I could, to support me when I brought the matter before the prize court established to rule on Lady Tern.
But first there was the celebration, while the town reveled on the quay, the band played, and the prisoners were let out of Stilwell’s forecastle and marched to prison. After which the officers of Meteor were treated to a torchlight procession to the citadel, where the Lord Governor treated us to a carousal in our honor, with food and wine and music, all to celebrate our courage and enterprise.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Four days later I was at sea again, on Sea-Holly carrying the last two hundred of the Trained Bands back to Selford. Sir Andrew had proved himself a great host, but was reluctant to establish a prize court in Longfirth, and so I set sail again, to play politician in the capital, while Kevin remained behind to see to Stilwell’s repairs, and Captain Oakeshott took Meteor a-privateering.
The voyage to Longfirth had taken but two days, but the return would take four or five, for we set out in the teeth of the wind, which meant we could not run down to the line of Selford’s longitude, but were obliged to take a zigzag course, close-hauled at first upon the larboard tack, then upon the starboard. Close-hauled, and with a high sea and a stiff breeze, Sea-Holly’s sterncastle was subject to a corkscrew motion, first swooping up as a wave passed beneath it, then descending in a serious of sharp, angry judders that left loose objects bouncing on their shelves, and stomachs bouncing likewise. For the first time in my life I was lightly touched with seasickness, though by evening I was well enough to eat supper. Not so our cargo of soldiers, who were so ill that the main deck was filled with their vile reek, and many rolled uncaring in their own spew.
Accordingly, I took the air on deck after supper, and securely wrapped in my old cheviot overcoat and my boat cloak over it, with the brim of my old apprentice cap pulled down about my ears, I enjoyed the bracing chill wind that had crossed the entire ocean to fill our sails, the spray that came in a fine briny mist from the bows, and the stars that seemed to whirl overhead in a drunken saraband as the ship pitched and rolled beneath my feet. I was alone on the poop deck, for the watch was forward, and the ship was directed by officers and helmsmen sheltering under the break of the poop.
“Wouldn’t it have been too easy,” Orlanda said, “for Sir Andrew to have agreed to your proposal, and simply given you the ship?”
Possibly I disappointed her by not shrieking and leaping like a startled hind. I had drunk enough at dinner to face the nymph with something like an equable disposition, and so I blinked spray from my eyes and turned to where she stood beneath the great triangular shadow of the lateen sail. Orlanda was wreathed in a cloak of deep forest green, with a hood over her flaming hair. Starlight glittered in her emerald eyes, and drops of spray stood like jewels on her shoulders.
“Was it not difficult enough,” I asked, “to have captured the ship in the first place, a vessel five times the size of our own?”
“Was that difficult?” she asked. “It seemed simple enough to bombard a helpless wreck until it surrendered. And your own part did not seem particularly courageous, or expert.”
“I make no claim to extraordinary bravery, or any expertise in war.”
Her lips turned up in a wry smile. “How fortunate for you, since you failed to so much as cut a bandit’s throat when you had him by stealth from behind.”
“Yet he died.”
She reached out a gloved hand and touched me on the breast, right over Sir Basil’s parchment from Oberlin Fraters Bank. “And you plundered him. Maybe you are naught but a bandit yourself, and deserve the same fate.”
My blood ran cold at her touch, for now I knew that document might doom me, if Orlanda inspired anyone to question it. I decided to stay away from that ominous subject.
“Am I to understand,” said I, “that you convinced Sir Andrew to refuse to empanel a prize court?”
“Why, yes,” she said, her face all wide-eyed innocence. “And I may inspire others to thwart you, once you reach Selford. For the virtuous and tedious Queen has lost all her friends, thanks to you, but still must depend on others for advice, and a whisper in her ear is as good as a shout from the heavens.”
“If you wished to harm me,” I said, “you needn’t have bothered with the Lord Governor, but merely inspired a lead ball to pierce my breast during the fight with Royal Stilwell. Or to strike an arm or leg, and leave me a cripple.”