AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"We might have been able to run back to Grand Cayman," Skank told him. "Venner was for doing that. You said we had to go on."
"Did I ... say why?"
"You said the storm would get us anyway, and we may as well go on after the Orpheus. Venner said you wanted to because of that girl. You know, Hurwood's daughter."
"Ah!" He was beginning to see some hints of pattern in his concussion-shuffled memories. "What's the date today?"
"I don't know. It's Friday ... and, uh, Sunday's Christmas."
"I see," said Shandy tightly. "Keep reminding me of that, will you? And now that the storm is past, get up as much canvas as you can."
The next morning at dawn they spied the Ascending Orpheus - and there was no disagreement about what to do, for they'd spent all night bailing water out of the Jenny, and in spite of having pulled a tar-smeared sail around under the forward keel, and hammering rice-filled rolls of cloth into the gaps between the strakes, the water was coming in faster every hour, and Shandy doubted that the battered old sloop could hold together long enough to make another landfall. Maximum canvas was crowded on, and the Jenny lurched unevenly across the expanse of blue water toward the ship.
Crouched in the sloop's bow, Shandy peered through the telescope, squinting against the blinding glitter of the morning sun on the waves. "She's suffered," he remarked to the haggard, shivering men around him. "There's spars gone and rigging fouled on the foremast ... but she's still solid. If we do this next hour's work right, there'll be rum and food and dry clothes."
There was a general growl of approval, for most of his men had spent last night laboring over the bilge pumps in the rain, looking forward to the occasional brief break in which to swallow a handful or two of wet biscuit; and the rum cask had come unmoored and broken apart during the storm, filling the hold with the smell of unattainable liquor.
"Did any of our powder stay dry?" Shandy asked.
Skank shrugged. "Maybe."
"Hm. Well, we don't want to wreck the Orpheus anyway." He lowered the telescope. "Assuming our mast doesn't snap off, we ought to be able to cut south and head her off - and then I guess just try to board her."
"That or swim for Jamaica," agreed one ragged, red-eyed young pirate.
"Don't you think he'll try to run when he sees we're after him?" Skank asked.
"Maybe," said Shandy, "though I'll bet we can catch him, even busted up as we are - and anyway, we can't look too formidable." He raised the telescope again. "Well never mind," he said a moment later. "As a matter of fact, he's coming at us."
There was a moment of silence. Then, "Lost some men in that storm, I daresay," commented one of the older men grimly. "Be wantin' replacements."
Skank bit his lip and frowned at Shandy. "Last time you tangled with him he picked you up and dropped you into the ocean. You ... got some reason to think it won't happen that way again?"
Shandy had been pondering that question ever since they had set out from New Providence Island. Blood, he remembered Governor Sawney saying, obviously there's iron in it. Link your blood to the cold iron of the sword. Make the atoms of blood and iron line up the way a compass needle lines up to face north. Or vice versa. It's all relative ...
Shandy grinned, a little sickly in spite of his best efforts. "We'd all better hope so. I'll be at the bittacle - have somebody bring me a saber ... and a hammer and a narrow chisel."
The Orpheus had turned and was charging straight downwind west toward the Jenny, the morning sun behind her casting the shadows of her rigging and masts onto the luminous sails. Shandy kept an eye on her as he worked with the hammer and chisel over the grip of the saber Skank had brought him, and when she was still a hundred yards away he straightened and held the sword up by the blade.
He'd cut away the leather wrapping and half of the wood grip, exposing the iron tang that linked the blade to the pommel-weight, and, just where the heel of a swordsman's hand would press, he had chisel-punched a narrow crack into the metal.
Shandy stood up and leaned on the bittacle pillar, looking down through the glass. "If it should ... go against us here this morning," he said to Skank, who had been staring at him uncomprehendingly for the last several minutes, "get east of him - with the state the Carmichael's in he can no more tack than fly - and try for Jamaica.">Shandy glanced at the helmsman, who had the tiller all the way over to port, and he knew he should be there to help the man hold it when the full wind hit them at the crest, but then he saw Woefully Fat.
The big bocor had pulled himself away from the transom, and was now standing on the deck and grasping the wooden shaft that impaled him; and even as Shandy watched, Woefully Fat bent it in front of himself - the wind took all sounds, but splinters began to spring up between the two black hands. Shandy assumed the bocor was using magic to accomplish it, but Woefully Fat had to shuffle around as the spar was bent farther, and Shandy felt his arms prickle with awe, for he could see the bloody gaff-saddle protruding an inch or so from the broad back, and though the iron still steamed, it wasn't glowing - the bocor was breaking the spar with nothing but his own physical strength.
Finally it broke, and the bocor fell to his knees. Shandy rushed up to help him, but Woefully Fat one-handedly lifted the gaff-spar and shoved it toward him - an impressive feat in itself, for, even broken off, the thing was a good six feet long, and draped with rigging and the sopping head end of the mainsail.
"Sea anchor!" the bocor shouted. "Throw it over the starboard quarter!"
Shandy understood at once, and took the spar from Woefully Fat - he had to use both hands, and still his teeth ground together at the weight of it - and he turned and heaved it over the starboard rail into the sea.
In that moment they crested the next wave, and the Jenny heeled sharply as the wind hit them on the port beam, and then they were sliding down the weather side, the helmsman straining to keep the tiller over. Shandy hastily untied the mainsail halliard and let it play out over the rail to give the sea-anchor line some length.
The Jenny hit the trough only slightly straightened out, and again the sea surged entirely over the deck. Shandy clung to the rail underwater, wondering if they had been rolled over, if the Jenny was simply going to implode and sink without ever bobbing up again; but then the water became heavy on his hunched shoulders and sluiced away, freeing his head first, then his arms, and when it was still sloshing around his knees he resecured the halliard, for nearly all of the line had been played out.
The spar itself was somewhere behind the last crest, and even as they climbed the next one Shandy could feel the tug of it, could feel the old sloop pulled more straight, and then begin to respond to the sail and the rudder. The bow was coming up into the wind.
Through his fingertips he had been paying very close attention to the feel of the deck, and when he felt a faint scratch nearby he looked up - and then flung himself flat. Venner's cutlass split the rail instead of Shandy's head.
