Cannon fire!
Disabling a sailing ship is really very simple if a person knows what he's doing. Jack made his way back to the rudder.
Two chains were wrapped around the vertical shank, one was wound clockwise and the other counterclockwise. Each "chain" was a well tarred rope, and each ran above to the great steering wheel. When the great wheel was turned one way, it unwound one of the chains and the rudder shifted left. When the great wheel was turned the other way, the other chain was unwound, and the rudder shifted right. Jack used the knife to saw through both chains, detaching the rudder completely from the great wheel. After that, there was no practicable way to steer the ship.
Jack slipped the knife into his boot and made his way topside.
Pandemonium reigned on deck. In the pre-dawn twilight, men scurried to load the few small cannon and to wrestle them into position as the ship drifted helplessly.
Jack peered through the rising fog and saw was he was expecting to. The Black Pearl was coming about, her batteries of cannon were rolled out, and she was preparing to fire a merciless broadside into the flimsy clipper ship. Jack almost pitied the slender ship. It would be such a lopsided duel.
"Fire!" roared the Captain Beckett, and that cry was repeated by the ship's officers overseeing the cannons.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. The sound of the Queen's Quail's punycannons was almost comical.
The Black Pearl shuttered as shot ripped into it. Cannons were overturned; the hull was repeated holed and splinters flew everywhere; spars shattered, dumping canvas and lines down onto the men below; kegs of powder exploded; flames billowed up.
Jack was agog. This was impossible! The Quail's tiny collection of popguns could not have possibly caused this devastation. Yet there the Black Pearl was, broken, on fire and already beginning to list to one side.
Her crew struggled desperately to get her guns back into action, but suddenly more shot ripped into her. Whole sections of her sides collapsed. The raging flames leaped up into her rigging and blazed as if the Devil himself were coming.
The fog lifted some more, revealing the Phobos and the Deimos off to the Black Pearl's starboard, raking her with cannon fire. To the Black Pearl's port, the Jaguar swept in, loosing another broadside into her.
"Not good," mumbled Jack. "Not good."
The Queen's Quail fired off another one of her ragged broadsides. Four ships against the Pearl.
"Not good. Not good."
The Black Pearl began to sink.
A heavy hand fell upon Jack's shoulder. He turned to find Captain Beckett regarding him with eyes as cold as a blizzard in the Northwest Passage. "Time for this pirate to go for a little swim."
His bully boys manhandled Jack up into the air. They carried him over to the railing, and unceremoniously heaved him overboard.