Page 62 of Go, Rogue

Chapter

24

McGann paces the quarterdeck. The sails are unfurled and McNeil is at the helm, but Rogers never returned from the boiler room. McGann needs to find his first mate but he can’t leave his position, not now with the engines stilled and a strange sail bearing down on them.

Nor can he afford to send anyone else to search. There just aren’t enough men on a merchant crew for battle, and he needs every set of hands he has where they are, including his own.

He watches the black schooner close in on The Elphame and begin to turn, no doubt to bring its guns to bear.

Bloody hell.

“Word from the lookout?” he calls to McNeil.

“Nay,” McNeil answers. “No flags or markings.”

“All hands to quarters,” McGann orders. “Run out the port guns!”

“Aye, Captain.”

McNeil is doing double duty as the helmsman and the first mate until McGann can retrieve Rogers.

What in goddamned hell happened to him?

“She’s clearing for action, Captain!” McNeil calls out, seeing the other ship’s gun ports open.

“Aye. I know it.”

Elphame help us, he thinks as the schooner comes abeam. Their crew is made up of a few seasoned men but mostly of former farmers from Kent, handpicked by Crawford and trained to be sailors. Sailors, not soldiers. They aren’t ready for this, and McGann knows it, but there’s naught to be done about it now.

McGann reviewed the most basic of protocols with them should they be attacked at sea—preliminary evasive maneuvering and firing tactics—but they aren’t a fighting unit. Naval soldiers spend years in training to learn how to act as a team on a ship.

These men have been together for only a few short weeks before the launch; McNeil and Rogers the only ones aboard with any kind of experience. And Rogers is down or disappeared somewhere. If it comes to an actual battle, which it seems it might from the schooner’s maneuvering, they’re in well over their heads.

Damn it.

And what’s worse is that every member of the crew knows it. McGann shakes his head, but he has no better choices to make. If needs must, he’ll fight.

He hears The Elphame’s two cannons run out and knows they’re as ready as they’re going to be for whatever happens next.

“Fire when ready!” he yells, just as the schooner lets loose her cannonballs.

The smoke and smell of gunpowder fill the air, obscuring his view. McGann closes his eyes for just a moment as a mix of helplessness and hopefulness fills him. One good hit from either side will sink a ship. But one good hit takes luck and the right tilt of the vessel on a wave, such that the cannonball makes impact below the waterline.

He opens his eyes as soon as the air clears, only to watch the first of The Elphame’s cannonballs sink beneath the surface of the Atlantic before making contact. The second, released just a moment after, moves with greater speed and velocity. But so does the schooner’s.

“Steady!” he yells, as the schooner’s cannonball careens into The Elphame’s port side. He covers his head as debris flies and wood splinters.

When he lifts his head again, it’s to see the schooner roll up and then over a wave, just as their cannonball makes contact. It hits the starboard side right above the waterline. No real damage done. A few seconds earlier, and they would have had her.

Goddamnit.

“Reload and give her another!”

But the men on the schooner are faster, and a second salvo of cannonballs is already slamming into The Elphame. They hit and they hit hard, throwing him to the deck, the sound of disaster ringing in his ears.

“Fire when ready!” he yells, but it’s too late.

The bell indicating severe damage to The Elphame has already begun to clang.