PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE AFRICAN STAR
By ErinRua
CHAPTER 19
"She could be anybody, captain."
"But she's not, Mister Stone." Sir John Biltmore braced his heavy frame to the surge of the deck beneath him, his narrowed eyes fixed on a white triangle of sails that had been pacing between them and the coast for some time now.
Mister Stone looked also and scratched his ear. "Lot of sloops among these islands, sir. They're perfect for shallow water."
"But only one that just a day ago was keeping company with what I can only presume was a pirate ship."
"I don't think -."
"No, you don't, Mister Stone. It is my job to think, and your job to follow orders."
"Aye, sir."
A moment passed, the Royal Venture working sturdily to beat her way against the trade winds of the Windward Passage. Across bright water the sloop continued on, an agile, pretty thing that had no care for contrary winds. However, the captain of the Royal Venture had no aesthetic appreciation of any sailing vessel, let alone one that so thoroughly aroused his suspicion.
"Mister Fry!"
At that sharp summons the first mate appeared to face his captain. "Aye, sir!"
"That sloop troubles me."
"Aye, sir, he has been there a spell."
"Very well. Ease us off the wind a bit, and ready the starboard guns."
"Sir?"
"I want him sunk, Mister Fry."
"But sir, he could be anybody - he's most likely nobody."
Biltmore's heavy face hardened, hostility seeming to seethe like smoke just behind his eyes. "Whoever he is, he's a nuisance. If he is nobody, that makes it that much simpler. Bring us to an intercept course, and prepare to fire on my command."
"Aye, sir. And what of that other ship we just spotted away behind us?"
"We'll be finished and gone long before he draws near."
Thus First Mate Fry strode off briskly, and Biltmore returned to his brooding. Behind him, Mister Stone took several wary steps back and then slipped away. It did not pay to cross a man who would sink an unknown vessel on nothing more than an unfounded suspicion. And he certainly did not want to end up like the poor devil they had flogged bloody two days ago.
***
"Ahoy the deck! She's changin' course, cap'n!"
"I'm not a captain, Matty." Will peered up towards the red hair fluttering on the topmast. "And changing to what?"
"She's … she's sort of comin' this way."
Easing the tiller so as to peer past the great trapezoid mainsail, Will frowned in puzzlement. The Royal Venture as indeed bearing on a new tack, one which would before long converge directly into the Lady Elizabeth's line of travel. Why would the square-rigger waste the effort of coming in towards the coast, when clearly it needed to be out where it had sea-room to clear the cape?
"What's he doing?" Anamaria appeared at Will's side, her dark eyes squinting into the sun.
"Whoever's at the helm ain't the full shillin'," said Irish John. "Now 'e'll just have to take another tack to get around the cape."
Minutes passed as the Lady Elizabeth danced upon the waves and the slaver grew steadily closer on a long diagonal. Nor did the set of her sails alter in the least to suggest her master might be thinking of veering off.
Anamaria watched with the same growing trepidation they all felt. "I don't like the feelin' of this."
Soon they could see tiny figures moving on the ship's deck. Some seemed to be doing whatever it was needed to be done with the rigging. But others….
"Mary, mother of God," breathed Irish John.
"They're mannin' the guns," was Anamaria's bleak pronouncement. "They mean to fire on us."
Horror washed over Will like ice water and he twisted desperately for sight of the Black Pearl. She was still behind and gaining, but she might as well have been sailing on the face of the moon for all the good she could do now. Any evasion the Lady Elizabeth made would have to be towards the coast, which left limited room to manoeuvre and would soon see them trapped against the shoreline. Unless …
"Matty, get down from there!" Will shouted. "John - both Johns, load the cannons. Everyone, go load … whatever we've got! Muskets, pistols, cannons, just load them!"
"And what will you do, Will Turner?"
He turned his head to meet Anamaria's dark stare and wondered, not for the first time, what went on behind that pretty, formidable face. "I'm going to try to keep us alive."
***
They had finally been given food and water. Granted, food was cold rice and mashed yams which the silent black man delivered in a bucket with coconut shells for bowls, but Elizabeth ate anyhow. Beside her Bess dipped dark fingers into the pale grains of rice and every so often cast a glance at the white governor's daughter. Unperturbed, Elizabeth licked every grain from her own fingers and then scooped up more.
Glancing up, she saw Sarah sitting with her coconut shell in her lap, dipping at the mashed yam with two very dainty fingers, and grimacing as if it were repugnant.
"Sarah," said Elizabeth, "Please eat it. There is no ceremony to stand on, and while I agree it is dreadfully bland, it is food. You need your strength."
"For what?" the girl whispered.
"For whatever may come. If I can eat it, so can you."
The floor began leaning in a slow but inexorable tilt, and the women looked up and at each other in surprise. Apparently they were changing course, but it seemed uncharacteristically sudden.
Elizabeth tightened her grasp on her bowl and said, "Goodness, what is this all about?"
***
It seemed no time at all before they could see the white spume bursting at the Royal Venture's bow and could see the black muzzles of cannons crouched. Tiny heads bobbed above her rails, total strangers who waited for the orders designed to blow the Lady Elizabeth to match sticks. The lines of convergence tightened towards a deadly intersection, and now Will's crew waited. Nine men and one woman, not even enough to man all of their cannons at once, against that plunging beast of a ship.
Closer the two vessels grew and closer, jaunty little sloop and charging square rigger. Closer … now they could read the Royal Venture's name painted in crimson and gold on the escutcheons at her bow.
"Helm's a-lee!" Anamaria shouted, and Will threw his whole strength against the tiller.
The mainsail's boom fairly whistled over his head and canvas thudded as the Lady's bowsprit swung like a saber into the turn. Her rail nearly scooped water as she heeled before the wind and on that suddenly-tilting deck all aboard clung for dear life. Then thunder burst in a ragged torrent from a blue-sky day and splashes raked the water where the Lady Elizabeth would have been.
But they missed, for the sloop shot behind the Royal Venture like a hound dodging a bull. In passing one of her cannons spat a four pound ball right into the captain's cabin, exploding Sir John Biltmore's entire collection of fine French wine.
***
Elizabeth shrieked as explosions clubbed their hearing and something smashed outside their cell. Her bowl flew skidding as she clapped both hands over her ears, and Sarah's chubby form collapsed half into her lap.
"What's happening?" someone screamed, as the echoes faded and the floor tilted anew.
"Cannons," Elizabeth gasped, looking up with wide eyes.
"Cannons!" Bess' alto tones burst out.
"Yes - yes, we're fighting someone - or someone is fighting us."
Bess' eyes glinted in the gloom. "Your friends, you t'ink?"
"Yes - maybe - I hope."
"Bettah hope dey know where dey shootin', den. Else dey put a hole in us."
Sarah was shivering like a panicked mouse as she stared blindly at the walls, and Elizabeth hugged the girl's head against her shoulder. Despite Bess' warning she hoped, oh yes she hoped. But if that were Jack and Will out there, she dearly prayed that she and her companions would still be alive for rescue when it was all over.
***
"What the devil was that?" Gibbs squinted forward into the glare of sun and sea.
The Royal Venture was still before them, sails slowly growing taller as the Pearl drove on, but something had changed. The Royal Venture had veered strangely and now he could no longer see Will Turner's sloop. What caught his attention was the strange fog that suddenly puffed into being away out there.
Seconds later a sound struck his ears, a dull rippling thud that a veteran of sea battles knew even in his sleep.
"Blessed be - Jack! JACK!"
Sparrow sprang from seemingly nowhere and his next leap perched him atop the rail with a fist in the rigging. "What in blazes are those people doing?"
"Jack, they've fired on the Lady Elizabeth. She was just sailin' along, but they've turned and I think they mean to sink her!"
Now they glimpsed a much smaller sail, but again that distant thudding echoed on the wind. Down Jack leapt and his dark face was savage.
"I want every sail this ship has got! Gallants, stays'ls - run up your bleedin' trousers if they'll take a line! Gibbs, see to it. Tearlach! Get the guns loaded. Every man to his post or I'll flay every mother's son of you!"
Jack swarmed onto the quarterdeck like a one-man cyclone and nearly bowled Cotton away from the helm.
"We'll just see about this," he growled as he seized the wheel.
The pirate ship was suddenly a cauldron of furious motion as men scrambled to their duties. Faster than seemed possible more dark canvas blossomed high above and was sheeted home. Stays hummed and masts creaked as they took on the new weight of sail and wind, yet the ship found her stride with practiced ease and soon her bow lifted above a froth of racing waves. The wind sang in her rigging, the sea crooned beneath her hull and the Black Pearl bared her teeth for war.
***
"How far?" Will shouted, as he braced to keep from slipping on the slope of the deck.
"Jack's put on more sail!" Original John yelled.
"Aye," Matty shouted back. "But it'll still take 'em at least thirty minutes to get here!"
If Will were a man given to oaths he would have cursed like the very devil, if it would only bring the Black Pearl faster. But it would not. So he and Anamaria clung to the tiller, watched their sails and prayed as the slave ship leaned into pursuit.
Glancing at Anamaria he said, "We can't out-run them, can we?"
"Not in a straight race," she replied. "She's got more sail, more hull - in other words, she can catch and hold a lot more wind than we can."
As Will watched, the slave ship's bow swung slowly about to meet them, on a tack that would put the wind strongly on its starboard quarter, a square-rigger's best wind, and also put it broadside to the Lady. Yet beneath his feet he felt the life leaping in the Lady Elizabeth, impatient and keen as she sliced the waves. In sudden determination he clenched his teeth.
"Then it won't be a straight race."
Anamaria's sharp voice seemed to echo his sentiments. "Load all the cannons!"
"But we can't shoot all the cannons!" one of the men cried. "We need at least four men to a gun and there's only eleven of us for guns and sails, both!"
"We just can't shoot them all at once," Anamaria retorted. "Now load!"
She spun to face Will and demanded, "You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"
For a split-second he could only stare, but then he grinned. "Aye! We'll sting him coming and going!"
Blacksmith and lady pirate together trimmed the sloop for the assault. Canvas boomed as the Lady Elizabeth caught her wind, leaping to meet her attacker. Her long bowsprit thrust like a lance as she raced at near right-angles towards the slave ship's oncoming bow.
"If you are Erzulie," Will whispered to the wind, "then we need Ogun now."
Royal Venture's guns thundered again, vomiting great gouts of smoke which rolled in acrid fogbanks. But though something caromed wickedly over Will's head, the other shots skipped and plunged harmlessly astern. Wind and tiller heeled the Lady sharply as the two vessels plunged towards each other. The angle of the sloop's deck elevated the cannons on one rail, and Will counted the seconds while the Royal Venture came on like a wooden avalanche. The slaver would ram the much-smaller sloop if they could, but -.
"Starboard guns!" he shouted. "Fire!"
A heave of the sea and the deck shuddered to twin booms. As the Lady flashed in front the slave ship's bow something smashed above and a man screamed.
Then they were in the open again, the Royal Venture astern, and the Lady Elizabeth seemed to lift into the wind like a falcon rising from her strike. Her crew cheered and Anamaria shook a fist towards the slave ship's hulking form.
But they were not done, and blue water swung beneath their bow as the Lady came about once more. Even now the Royal Venture turned to meet them. Nor would the Lady leave her wanting.
Again they flew with every sail full and one rail awash. But this time the Royal Venture knew the ruse and began turning ponderously broadside in preparedness, black gun muzzles gaping ready to belch death and terror. Directly towards her the Lady Elizabeth raced, her bowsprit aimed at the slaver's midships. Still the Royal Venture turned, the full bank of her guns coming to bear, but their prey plunged straight at them, too slim to make a good target and yet the thunder of cannon fire buried the blue water in smoke.
The Lady Elizabeth disappeared in white vapor - and then a gunner shrieked as the tip of the Lady's mast swung out of the murk, so close he thought it would take some of the Royal Venture's rigging with it. But she was not as close as that, only close enough to sweep under the slave ship's beam and slow broadside as she lost her wind. The sloop needed little wind, however, as the Royal Venture careened past. The ship's empty guns could not reply as two four-pound cannon, four muskets and a boarding pistol bellowed in anger.
"Where is Jack now?" Will shouted, as Anamaria helped him steady the tiller.
"Still comin'," Matty replied.
As the ship's tall stern slid away, they were behind the Royal Venture, between her and the cape before Môle St. Nicholas. However, Will had little hope the slave ship would simply flee down the wind and give the Black Pearl time and lots of open water in which to catch her. No, Sir John Biltmore was not a man to concede defeat - a swift vision flashed of the man shooting a fleeing slave in the face. Even as the Lady Elizabeth regained her speed the Royal Venture was coming about once more, bearing across the wind until she was beating straight for them again.
"Reload!" Anamaria shouted. "Damn your eyes, if you want to live, reload!"
Aye, the Royal Venture was coming again, and as Will watched his guts clenched into a hard, aching knot. God forgive him, Elizabeth was on that ship and they were shooting at it.
***
TBC …
A/N: Someone wanted a battle - you got battle. *G* All hands stand by, we're not done yet …