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Instead of answering, he parted his marble lips and called out. The shout rang out over the entire ship: ‘Prepare the guns!’
Oh-oh…
‘Load cartridge! Ram cartridge!’
‘Mr Ambrose, you can’t seriously be planning to go after them! Those are government troops!’
‘Not my government, Mr Linton. Load round! Ram round!’
With a resounding thunk the cannonballs hit the back of the barrels.
‘Run out!’
The cannons rolled forward again. On the Argentinian flagship, which was now pointed completely the wrong way to even get one shot in, panicked activity broke out - but too late.
‘Fire!’
The next round of cannonballs erupted into the sky. We weren’t the only ones who had fired this time: the Midas and the Croesus had followed suit. The barrage of cannonballs hit one enemy ship so hard it nearly capsized. Splinters of wood flew in all directions, water gushed into the ships, and it seemed a miracle to me that, somehow, both managed to stay above water.
‘Why don’t they sink?’
‘Watertight bulkheads,’ Mr Ambrose said, without taking his eyes off the distant ships. ‘Vertical walls separate the ship into compartments and keep the water from spreading, even if the hull is breached. But we’ll soon smash those into splinters.’
‘Oh, um…good.’
Though not so good for the Argentinians, maybe.
Mr Ambrose raised his hand. ‘Prepare the guns!’
As if they had heard him over the distance, the Argeninians fell into frantic motion. Someone on their ship shouted a command, and slowly, it began to turn. Not towards us, though - no. Away.
‘They’re running away!’ I watched, in horrified fascination. ‘You’re chasing away the navy of a sovereign nation!’
‘Yes. And?’
He sounded as if he did things like this every other day.
But then, maybe he did. What did I know? I hadn’t been in his service that long. Yet, already the things I had seen were enough to send shivers down my back - both the pleasant and the unpleasant kind.
‘Load cartridge!’ Mr Ambrose’s command rang out over the deck of the Mammon. ‘Ram cartridge!’
The enemy was definitely running now. Their sails were flapping helplessly, only half-filled with wind. I almost pitied them. Almost. After all, they had shot at my knots.
‘Run out, and…fire!’
The cannonballs flew higher, this time. I thought for a moment that Mr Ambrose had made some kind of navigation mistake - but I should have known better. He was Mr Rikkard Ambrose, after all. The crack of the mast told me that he hadn’t made a mistake. Not at all.
My eyes focused on the leftmost of the ships just in time to see the huge mast splinter and break off near the deck. Slowly, it began to keel over, gathering speed - and then suddenly everything went very quickly. Screams rose up from the Argentinian vessel, and the mast smashed not just into the deck of this ship, but into the rigging of the one beside it. Both vessels shuddered, nearly capsizing. They clung to each other, connected by the mast, swaying through the waves like drunken lovers.
Well, maybe not exactly like drunken lovers. They didn’t try to snog each other or recite A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns, for example.
Karim stepped up beside Mr Ambrose. The wind grabbed his beard, flinging it up into his face, and he snatched it, holding it in one hand with a growl.
‘Shall we pursue them, Sahib?’ he enquired. ‘Do you wish us to continue to fire?’
‘Are you mad, Karim? Do you know how much one round of cannon ammunition costs?’
‘No, Sahib.’
