Pirate Wolf Trilogy (91 page)

~~~

The
Christiana
barely cut her speed until she was through the channel.
There, she backed her sails to make a graceful, sweeping turn
behind the islands, but instead of ordering an anchor into the
water, Pitt dove over the side, swimming ashore with long, easy
strokes even as the
Christiana
ran
up sail and caught the wind again.

By then there
was quite a crowd gathered on the beach, including Simon, Isabeau,
and Juliet.

“I was anchored
off Running Rock when one of Captain Smith’s scouts came in,” Pitt
said, emerging from the water, shaking droplets from his hair. “The
fleet has left Havana. The vanguard should pass the southern end of
the cays some time tomorrow. I’ve sent Spit north to spread the
alert and give the other captains time to sober their crews.”

Simon Dante
nodded. The wait was over. There was still a question in his eyes,
however, one that Geoffrey Pitt could not answer.

“
There’s
no word. No one has seen or heard from either the
Tribute
or the
Valor
. Smith did say that his men ran down a French
merchantman for sport and heard there had been a battle fought off
Havana. They didn’t know who was involved, just that a couple of
privateers were in a skirmish, and at the end of the day, two ships
were sunk.”

“Were they
ours?” Isabeau asked softly, standing by her husband’s side.

Geoffrey shook
his head. “He didn’t know.”

~~~

No one
slept that night. The last of the powder barrels were taken ashore
and final preparations were made along both embankments. At first
light, the
Avenger
weighed
anchor and towed the almost useless hulk of the
Santo Domingo
to the western side of the cays. At
Geoffrey Pitt’s suggestion, they had decided to revise their
original plan slightly, using the galleon and the pirate wolf’s
ship as bait. Without the
Tribute
or the
Valor
contributing their firepower, they needed the Dutchman’s
guns on the other side of the channel. The Spaniards were not
entirely stupid. If they saw a pair of privateers drifting in
shallow water close to two islands, they might well see the trap
for what it was, especially if they had just come under attack
further south.

While her
father towed the galleon into position, Juliet walked the beach for
the tenth time, turning a critical eye to anything that might
betray the presence of men or guns on the shoreline. The tents had
all been struck, the barrels of powder were well back behind the
trees and covered with scrub. The cannons had sheets of canvas
draped over their snouts that had been painted with pitch and
covered with sand to look like part of the landscape. No fires of
any kind were permitted apart from the two covered pots of hot
coals that were kept smoldering behind each gun line to light the
fuses.

When there was
nothing more to be done, she climbed to the peak accompanied by
Varian and Geoffrey Pitt. Once they went on board their respective
ships, they would be blind until they received a signal from the
lookouts.

Juliet’s
first thought, when they reached the top, was that the
Avenger
had towed the
Santo
Domingo
surprisingly far out, well
beyond the strip of turquoise that marked the edge of the coral
bank. Her second thought was that if she hadn’t seen for her own
eyes that the tatters and ruins were a ruse, she would have
believed the
Avenger
was a
wreck. Torn sheets of canvas hung from skewed yards. Rigging lines
had been loosened, cables and spars hung over the rails dragging
sails in the water to make it look as if the
Avenger
was dead in the water. They had even
rubbed charcoal dust on the masts and rails to make it appear as
though a fire had raged out of control on the decks. On a signal
from the lookouts, buckets of oakum would be set alight on the
decks of both ships to send up clouds of thick black
smoke.

Beside her,
Varian looked up at the stunningly clear sky. There had been a haze
earlier in the morning, hanging like a pale shroud around the
islands but the sun had burned it away and the sky was clear in all
directions, which was why he frowned.

“What is that?
Thunder?”

Juliet tipped
her head, listen to the low, throbbing rumble that was barely
audible above the sway of the trees.

“Not thunder,”
she murmured. “Those are Captain Smith’s guns. It has begun.”

~~~

The
vanguard of the Spanish treasure fleet came into view less than an
hour later. Pitt, Juliet, and the two lookouts crouched down
instinctively when the first sails appeared on the horizon, and
while Varian knew it was quite impossible for anyone to detect
their silhouettes from such a distance, he ducked as well. Two,
three, five, eight majestic towers of sail and timber came into
view, their sheets white against the blue sky, easily identifiable
by the large red crosses painted on the canvas. The galleons in
front were massive, equally as big if not bigger than the
Santo
Domingo
and normally would have been
sailing in an open vee formation behind the
almirante
like migrating geese, with the smaller
treasure-bearing ships inside the protective shield of warships.
But as the convoy drew closer, they could see something had
staggered them.

“They look to
be shy a few guards on their right flank,” Geoffrey muttered. “God
bless Captains Smith and Wilbury. And look there, well in the
rear... ”

He stabbed the
air excitedly with a finger, training his glass on the far southern
limit of their view. Juliet followed suit and smiled, though Varian
could only squint and wonder what had caught their attention.

“Here.” Pitt
laughed as he passed over his spyglass. “Look just past the point
of Spaniard’s Cay.”

Varian put the
leather-bound glass to his eye and brought the horizon into sharper
focus. The ships were still small and he doubted if he could have
distinguished a galleon from a longboat at this distance, but there
was no mistaking the thin plume of smoke he could see tailing out
in the wake of one of the ships that was separated from the pack
and obviously struggling to rejoin the convoy.

“We’d best get
down to the ships,” Pitt advised, standing and brushing the sand
off his knees. But Juliet was already running ahead, her long legs
scything through the long grasses, her hair streaming out in dark
ribbons behind.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

It was
almost too easy. The lead ship in the convoy—the
almirante
—ran up
a series of flags signalling for the fleet to slow, for two of the
warships to pull within hailing distance. After receiving their
orders, the pair peeled away and, undoubtedly stinging from the
first surprise attack on the fleet, came to investigate the two
smoldering ships adrift along the banks. The Spaniards knew these
deceptively tranquil ribbons of azure and cerulean well, marking
the area Baja Mas—shallow waters—on their charts. They had lost
enough vessels to know it was not outside the realm of possibility
that a privateer could have become trapped by his own arrogance and
not been able to escape the superior firepower of the galleon. Both
ships looked badly crippled, and when they drew closer, they could
see Spanish officers, their helmets winking in the sunlight, waving
them on from the deck of the tall aftercastle.

On board
the
Avenger
, Dante
could almost pinpoint the moment when the
capitán
of the first galleon realized the wounded vessel
belonged to the
pirata lobo
. The
gun ports swung open prematurely on all decks. Sailors and soldiers
alike crowded the rails, and clambered into the yards, some even
leaping in the air and cheering at the thought of the ten thousand
doubloons in reward that would now be theirs to share.

Dante
ordered sails unfurled in the tops, only as many as were needed to
swing the
Avenger
gently
away and make it appear as though they were attempting to limp to
sanctuary behind the two islands. When he was through the
channel—impressed that he could not see a single gun beneath its
camouflage— and clear on the other side, he ordered the rigging
lashed tight and the tattered sails replaced with taut new sheets.
He tacked hard and swift to starboard, taking the
Avenger
in a tight circle that would
bring her back around in position to meet the warships when they
emerged from the channel. Isabeau had relinquished command of
the
Dove
to Pitt and
he already had her in position on the leeward side of Frenchman’s
Cay; together with Simon Dante, they would sandwich the galleons in
a deadly crossfire.

Juliet,
meanwhile, was set to bring the
Iron Rose
out from behind the island, sealing off any
possible retreat by aiming her guns down the throat of the channel.
Since ships did not move at the flip of a pence, the entire process
took the better part of two hours, but by the time the galleons
noticed the
Rose
bearing
down on them, the first warship was already in the channel and the
second one, encouraged by the waving, shouting crew on board
the
Santo
Domingo
—most of whom
removed their helmets and lowered the backsides of their breeches
as the galleon passed—was committed to follow.

The men on the
shore batteries waited until both warships were caught between the
islands. The pitch- and sand-coated tarps were removed, the fuses
lit, and the first rounds of chain shot were blasting through the
air before the Spaniards even realized they were trapped. Grape and
sangrenel cut the men out of the tops, while the chain shot tore
the rigging and ripped holes through the sails and decking. Not one
in five guns on the galleons responded. Crews on the lower decks,
shielded behind the bulkheads, managed to fire sporadically, but
because the ships were built so high out of the water, every single
shot flew well over the heads of the men on shore, kicking up
explosive founts of sand, stone, and palm fronds hundreds of yards
behind.

Conversely, once the galleons’ sails and rigging were
obliterated, the guns on shore were adjusted and trained point
blank on the hulls. The resulting damage from the thirty-two-pound
culverins and eighty-pound mortars was terrible. With no where to
turn and no effective means of fighting back, the Spaniards were
forced to run the length of the deadly gauntlet only to emerge at
the other end and find themselves facing the guns of the
majestically resurrected
Avenger
and the
Dove
.

Dante’s gunners
fired but one broadside before the first galleon ran up half a
dozen white flags. One desperate officer who crawled up out of the
smoking shambles of the high quarterdeck, stripped off his shirt
and waved it frantically over his head to gain the privateer’s
attention before another round tore them to shreds. The second
galleon ran into Pitt’s guns and suffered the same fate,
surrendering to the cheers and hoots of the men leaping out from
behind the shore batteries.

The
Iron Rose
,
gliding past the western end of the channel saw that her guns were
not needed but fired a single round into the trees by way of a
salute. Juliet ordered the ship to come about, keeping one wary eye
on the rest of the flota, another on the lookouts who had a better
vantage from their height and would signal if any other ships broke
away from the pack. From a purely avaricious standpoint, she hoped
they did. Her men were eager and willing, her cannon were fully
primed and hungry for action.

For a
time she blockaded the mouth of the channel, assuming there were
likely scores of steel-helmeted Spaniards making imprints of
spyglasses around their eye sockets. They had seen the entire
ambush unfold. They would know by the pillars of smoke rising
behind the islands that their sister ships were lost. They would
also have identified the
Avenger
and probably the
Iron
Rose
;
what they had no way of knowing was how many other privateers
lurked out of sight behind the islands hoping to lure them into a
trap.

“What do you
suppose they’re going to do?” Varian asked quietly.

Juliet
shook her head. “They may be predictable, but they are not cowards.
They won’t be quick to run. See there, the
almirante
is already slowing, signalling the other guards to
form a strong line.”

“Lovely sight,
ain’t it?” Crisp remarked, standing on her other side. “How many do
ye count?”

“Eight guards,
twenty-three merchantmen,” Juliet said absently. “They’ll be trying
to decide now if it is better to pile on speed and get the treasure
ships to safer water above the banks, or delay and wait until the
rest of the fleet closes the gap.”

She trained the
glass further south, but there were only four or five stragglers on
the horizon hastening to catch up to the first group. There was no
doubt more would be coming, it just depended on how many ships had
departed Havana in the first wave, how far they had become strung
out, how quickly the slowest ship moved within the convoy.