Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(223)
From beyond the headland, thunder rolled. In a clear sky.
“Cannon?” O’Mara wondered aloud.
“And not just one, so not a signal or a hail,” Hugh glanced back over his shoulder. Floriszoon’s own ship, the well-gunned Eendracht, was only one hundred yards off their port quarter. “Pieter,” muttered Hugh, “I’m not liking this.”
Floriszoon nodded. “None of the usual French ships in Basseterre Bay, no fishing boats out. But would the French really be bold enough to—?”
“If our fleet has left to take the fight to the Spanish, they might have drawn off quite a few of your Dutch soldiers, most of whom are scattered about the countryside anyhow, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but given a little time, they would be able to gather and—”
“There may not be any time, not if French mean to eliminate the leadership of the English colony first. Which they would do by attacking Bloody Point. Jeafferson lives around here as well, doesn’t he?”
Pieter Floriszoon nodded. “We should come about into the wind and into irons, wait for the Eendracht to lay to so I can transfer and—”
“Pieter, if the French are shelling Warner’s estate and the town”—another cannonade confirmed that—“then we don’t have the time to stop and put things in order. We must deal with the situation as we find it. Immediately.”
“Hugh, we don’t know what we’ll see when we come around Bloody Point.”
“No, but we know one thing: they won’t be expecting us. And we have almost one hundred twenty troops between our two ships, and forty-four guns of respectable size.”
“And they may have more. Of both.”
“Yes, but they don’t have the element of surprise. And if they’re shelling, they’ll be stopped, possibly at anchor.” Hugh turned another two points to port. The sails billowed out as the ship came into a broad reach. “And we have speed a-plenty.”
“Your man O’Mara is right,” Pieter grumbled as he motioned for the pilot to take the whipstaff and gestured for the captain of the deck battery to join him on the shallow poop deck.
“O’Mara is right? About what?”
“You are a bit of a pirate, aren’t you?”
The patache that Hugh and Pieter had named the Orthros—since, being jointly owned by Dutch Protestants and Irish Catholics, it seemed fitting to name it after a two-headed hell-hound—came round Bloody Point at seven knots. One mile ahead, and motionless in the water, was a French bark of approximately thirty-two guns. Another similar ship was largely obscured behind her, perhaps eight hundred yards farther north. The morning breeze was blowing westward and so was pushing the smoke of their bombardment back in their faces. Since the French were no longer firing concentrated broadsides, but allowing their pieces to speak at will, the noise was ragged but unrelenting.
“Fat, deaf, and looking the wrong way,” summarized Floriszoon as Eendracht came around the point behind the Orthros.
“For now, let’s leave them that way,” Hugh muttered as he finished giving orders to his boarders: almost all the Wild Geese and new recruits from Montserrat were aboard the patache.
“We’ll never reach them undetected, you know.”
“I know, Pieter. But tell me, when they see us, what will they do?”
Floriszoon considered. “Crowd canvas and turn to port. Try to get around so their unused battery is facing us. Give us a broadside.”
“Yes, but how much speed will they have?”
Floriszoon scoffed. “Given what little time they’ll have to react, not even half a knot. Probably not a quarter.”
“So once they commit to a portside turn—”
Pieter’s eyes studied the position of the closest French ship, and then went wide. “You’re not a pirate. You’re a madman, to even think of risking a last-second shift to—”
“But would it work, given our speed and maneuverability?”
“Damn, it might. But it will be a rough ride. And a hell of a stop.”
Hugh smiled. “Then let’s not scare ourselves by wondering about it. Make for her stern and get me in position.”
The Orthros was only four hundred yards astern of the Frenchman when the lookout in the bark’s main crow’s nest spotted the two fore-and-aft rigged vessels bearing down on them, the first one’s decks fairly bristling with troops. Panicked yells ran the length of the Frenchman, and, as expected, her sails unfurled in such haste that one end of her foremain tangled in its reef-points and had to be shaken out. With only its mizzen fore-and-aft rigged, and almost in irons at that, the ship struggled to bring its fresh, unfired batteries around to face south toward the approaching ships.