Blue Sea Burning (10 page)

Then he snarled, “Get back on the line, ye —
porsamora
!” and I figured he was going to be okay after all.

I filled him in on what had happened, and on Healy's plan to go through the Fangs. He nodded.

“Be up in a minute,” he said. “Help out.”

“It's okay,” I said. “Just rest. It's going to be fine.”

“Nuts to that. Gotta pull my weight. Earn a crew share.”

He scowled and twitched, but then he closed his eyes. I slipped out, then went down to the hold.

There was a flurry of activity around the leaking patch. Kira and Quint were in the thick of it, but I managed to catch Kira's eye and give her a thumbs-up. She nodded and smiled, and I knew she'd understood.

When I got back to my uncle's cabin, he was snoring on the bed. Not sure what to do with myself, I took a seat at the table and waited for him to wake up.

Every few minutes, the enemy cannon thundered, making my heart jump into my throat.

Healy snored through it all.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, Spiggs poked his head in the door.

“Sssst,”
he whispered.

My uncle sat up in an instant.

“Five minutes,” said Spiggs. Then he left. My uncle yawned and let his head settle back into the pillow.

“Fetch a handful of coffee beans from the galley,” he told me. “I'm going to grab another five.”

BY THE TIME
my uncle came out of his cabin, the
Grift
was well into the Fangs. There were so many sharp rocks poking up out of the sea you could practically jump from one to the next, and steering the ship through them took constant, jaw-droppingly complex adjustments to the sails. Those were made by a few dozen pirates manning ropes on the deck and monkey-climbing in the rigging, all under orders from Pike. He had one hand on the wheel and the other on a sheet of parchment with a detailed list of movements scribbled across it. Every few seconds, he either turned the wheel a few degrees or yelled a fresh order to the men.

Healy appeared at his side, watched in silence for a moment, then turned and strode to the poop deck ladder. I climbed it after him, and when I reached the top, he was at the stern rail, surveying the Cartager men-of-war with a spyglass.

Li Homaya
's two massive ships were still in the open water, a mile or two behind us on the starboard side. They were moving toward the coast at a right angle to the
Grift,
their triple decks of cannon unloading a fearsome barrage every few minutes. But the ammunition was wasted—they were out of range, and their cannonballs plunked harmlessly into our wake.

Which was why it was such a surprise when the ship suddenly shuddered like it had been hit.

At first, I thought we'd struck a rock. But when Healy turned and ran to the front of the poop, it wasn't Pike he stared down at for an explanation—it was Spiggs, who was amidships at the starboard deck rail. Next to Spiggs, a pirate was lowering a rope over the side of the ship.

Healy, Spiggs, and Pike all stared at the pirate with the rope like he was the most important person on the ship. I spent a few seconds staring stupidly at him before I realized he was using the rope to check the depth of the water.

He was pulling up the rope when the lookout called down from the crow's nest.

“She's following!”

I followed Healy's gaze back behind us. The first of the Cartager men-of-war was turning her bow in our direction.
Li Homaya
had taken the bait and was headed into the Fangs after us.

Healy didn't spend more than half a second taking it in before he turned back to Spiggs and the pirate with the rope. It was lying limp across the pirate's hands, and Spiggs was staring at it like it was a corpse.

He looked up at Healy.

“Thirteen,” he called out.

My uncle sucked in his breath, making a hissing sound through his teeth.

“Thirteen's bad?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “It's quite a bit worse than bad.”

Low Tide

MY UNCLE WAS SHOUTING
orders even before he'd reached the bottom of the quarterdeck ladder.

“Four crews to the deck! Run a kedge! Nonessentials overboard! EGBERT!”

“Right here.”

He turned and grabbed me by both shoulders. “Find the third mate. Tell him to ax the barrels. Then—”

“‘Ask the barrels?'”

“Ax!” He made a chopping motion with the flat of his hand. “Ax the barrels! Then tell the carpenter I need a hole in the gun deck, starboard at the fore, wide enough to pass a cannon! GO!”

I ran to find Ismail, repeating the orders to myself as I went and trying not to worry over what they meant.

I found him on the companionway, helping two pirates haul a replacement sail up from the hold.

“Captain says to ax the barrels!”

Ismail's eyes widened with concern. He left the sail to the others and ran back down into the hold. I followed him.

Quint was still on Kira's back, supervising a group of pirates who were hammering planks into the hull to shore up the still-leaking patch. When I relayed Healy's order about the hole in the gun deck, Quint's eyes grew even wider than Ismail's.

As he opened his mouth, I heard a loud
shhhunk!
behind me. I turned to see Ismail and a second pirate swinging axes at a pair of water barrels atop the stack. One barrel was already busted open, and a second broke apart as I watched, sending a flood of water to the deck.

I must have looked stunned, because I heard Quint behind me.

“Fastest way to dump the weight,” he explained. “Bust the barrels, draw the water out with the pump and the buckets. Now quit gapin' and fetch two saws to the gun deck.”

As Kira ran Quint upstairs, I grabbed the saws from the carpenter's room. By the time I left the hole, half its barrels had been split open, and the water level was a foot higher.

Five minutes later, two pirates had sawed halfway through a four-foot-wide hole in the forward gun deck, Kira was ferrying Quint back down to the hold, and I was on my way up to Healy for more instructions.

When I reached the deck, a lifeboat was being lowered over the side, with five men and a massive six-foot anchor inside it. My uncle was leaning over the deck rail, calling orders to the men turning the crank of the davit that lowered the boat.

“Hold . . . hold . . . wider . . . away!”

The lifeboat touched the water, and the men in it unhooked themselves from the davit ropes and began to row furiously, moving parallel to the
Grift
and dodging the sharp outcroppings of the Fangs as they went.

There was a fat rope running from the giant anchor back into the
Grift
's bow. I couldn't understand the point of rowing away with our anchor, but there was no time to stop someone and ask.

Healy headed back toward Pike, who was still at the wheel. As I followed him, I passed a line of pirates staggering up the companionway steps, loaded down with heavy chests and kegs to throw over the deck rails and into the sea.

Nonessentials overboard . . .
They were tossing out everything that wasn't tied down.

“Short-Ears' struck! Taking on water!”
bellowed a lookout from the crow's nest.

Healy sprang up the ladder to the poop deck.

The two men-of-war were a mile behind us, weaving in single file through the Fangs. The gray sky was beginning to mist, shrouding them both in a haze. But even without the spyglass my uncle held to his good eye, I could tell the second ship was listing badly.

It wasn't going to be above water for much longer. The jagged rocks of the Fangs had done their job on at least one of our enemies.

But the nearer one was still upright and coming at us. I saw muzzle flashes blink from two of her forward ports, and I hit the deck before I could remind myself not to do that.

A moment later, I heard the
boom,
followed by my uncle's voice.

“No need—they're a hundred yards out of range. Is the hole cut in the gun deck?”

“Should be,” I said.

“Tell the gunner to ready his oars. And have the third mate move six cannon forward and stand by.”

I ran off again and delivered both messages to the gun deck. Instantly, half the men on the deck began to pull the long, unwieldy oars from their ceiling racks and maneuver them out the gun ports, while the other half started hauling five-thousand-pound cannon on ropes from the middle of the ship to the freshly cut hole in the forward hull.

Either job alone would have been complicated enough. Trying to do both at once was near madness. As I watched, one pirate caught an oar in the face, shattering his jaw, and two more got knocked head over heels when the back of an oar swung around and hit them from behind. When they fell, they lost their grip on the ropes, and their cannon careened out of control, skidding across the deck and crushing a man's leg.

The only men on the whole deck who weren't tripping over each other were the four sweat-drenched pirates at the chain pump, furiously cranking water up and out of the hold.

But by the time my uncle descended the steps, his men had somehow managed to get both jobs done. The oars were in position, six on each side sticking out the middle gun ports, with four men manning each oar. And half a dozen cannon were lined up at the forward hole.

“Ready!”
the gunner called out.

“When the time comes,” my uncle told him, “dig in and punt.”

Just then, the ship gave a terrible lurch, hurling everyone forward. I lost my footing and fell to the deck.

The moment of ominous silence that followed told me exactly what had happened.

We'd run aground.

“SEND THE CANNON OVER!” Healy yelled to Ismail's crews, and the six men closest to the hole rolled their giant weapon over the edge and into the open air, where it vanished in an instant.

“PREP ANOTHER SIX!” Healy yelled as the second cannon rolled forward.

“PUNT THE OARS!” the gunner was yelling at his men, who were raising their oar handles at such a sharp angle that several of them struck the ceiling.

“FIRE THE AFT CANNON!” Healy yelled. A moment later, a pair of cannon thundered from the rear of the ship.

There was an answering
boom
as the Cartager cannon returned fire.

I felt the deck rumble as a third cannon rolled through the forward hole, plummeting out of sight.

The rowers had gotten their oars dug into the sea bottom and were straining against them, trying to prod the ship forward.

The chain pump was cranking so fast it was a blur, the faces of the men on it bright red and glistening.

A fourth cannon went out the side.

The pirates on the oars were putting all their weight against them, grunting from the effort. There was a loud
crack
as one oar snapped, sending its rowers sprawling.

“ALL SPARES ON DECK!” my uncle yelled. Then he grabbed my arm. “Go below and spread the word:
all spares on deck for the kedge!
”

He ran up. I ran down.

I had no idea what a kedge was, but as I spread the word through the lower decks, every man who wasn't trying to keep seawater out of the hold ran for the weather deck.

A gray drizzle was falling when I reached it myself, and it didn't take more than a few seconds for me to understand what
kedge
meant.

The lifeboat that had launched a while back was a few hundred yards ahead of us, at a point where the Fangs gave way to the open water of a bay. The ship's anchor she was carrying had been sunk to the seafloor, the anchor cable rising from the water on a taut line that threaded a hawsehole into the
Grift
's bow.

Amidships on the weather deck was the upper end of the capstan—the giant, five-foot-high spool that winched the anchor cable in and out. A dozen long, thick poles had been inserted into her slots, and every spare man on the ship was pushing against them, trying to reel in the anchor line and physically drag the
Grift
over the shallows that had beached us.

That was a kedge: a hundred men trying to heave a ship forward through brute force.

My uncle was in the middle of the group, a fat vein on his neck throbbing as he threw his whole weight against the pole in front of him. The men were inching forward, barely making any progress.

I was on my way to join them when the first cannonball struck the poop, throwing up a shower of splinters as it crashed through the ceiling of my uncle's cabin.

The man-of-war was in range. If she'd been sideways to us and able to fire a broadside, we'd have already been dead.

I took my place between two pirates on one of the capstan poles and pushed with everything I had. My wrist, which had settled into a dull throb when I was running messages, woke up and started screaming again.

There was a loud crash from somewhere below, and at first I thought we'd been hit again. Then I realized it was the sound of a cannon falling into the sea. A moment later, six more men vaulted up the companionway steps and joined the kedge.

The capstan was turning, but only by inches. Every few seconds, I took a stutter-step forward.

The next round hit. Two cannonballs shot through the sails overhead, and a third crashed into the quarterdeck next to the wheel.

We kept pushing, inching our way forward. The rain was getting worse, turning the deck slick under our feet. Someone scattered a bucket of sand to sop it up.

There were grunts and groans and roars of fury from the men around me, straining against the capstan poles.

Another cannon crashed into the sea. Six more men came up from below to join the line.

We were at a slow walk now. The rain came down harder. My feet kept slipping. The pain in my wrist was awful.

But not as awful as dying would be.

Another round hammered the ship, blasting away a section of deck rail so close that splinters hit my face. One of the mainsails broke loose from its spars and billowed to the deck. It was on fire.

There was a second fire burning on the side of the deck near the capstan.

The Cartagers were firing incendiaries, the rounds flaming as they came in.

The fires flickered in the rain, then fizzled out.

Thank the Savior for the rain.

Another cannon went overboard. Six more men joined us.

We were at a fast walk now.

A round hit the forecastle. Something was on fire, but I was turning away with the capstan and couldn't see what.

I prayed the rain would put it out like the others.

Then something broke loose, and the capstan lurched forward so suddenly I almost fell. A cheer went up from the pirates, and we were moving at a trot . . . and then faster still, all one hundred of us running in mad frantic circles around the capstan.

The next round of Cartager incendiaries fizzled into the sea behind us.

The ship was free.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER,
I was standing in the rain on the poop deck next to Healy, watching the Fangs recede in our wake. The Cartager man-of-war had run aground itself, stuck helpless a mile and a half behind us, its massive bulk nearly out of sight in the downpour.

The smile was back on my uncle's face.

“You know the difference between us and them?” he asked me.

“What's that?”

“Li Homaya
's too fat to kedge.”