Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(224)

But at three hundred yards, the faster of the two—the Dutch yacht—turned another point to port, catching the breeze full a-beam. Accelerating, she heeled over, angling off to the northwest, and away from her partner. On that new course, she’d enter the Frenchman’s field of fire that much sooner. The Spanish-made patache held course, but with barely half as many guns as the jacht, was certainly the lesser of the two evils bearing down upon the Frenchman.

When they were at two hundred yards, the bark had begun to catch the wind. Her mizzen started filling slowly, allowing her rate of turn to accelerate. Gunners began muscling their pieces into position. Below decks and above, the crews from the landside pieces left off their shore bombardment and crewed the half-manned portside guns. By that time, the jacht had straightened out again, soon to pass almost directly parallel to the Frenchman, whereas the patache showed an almost dull-witted obstinacy, maintaining a course that now had her prow aimed at the bark’s port quarter. Had she had a ram, it might have made some kind of sense.

At one hundred yards, three guns of the Frenchman’s portside battery spoke, seeking the range. Two white geysers erupted behind the flying jacht and one hundred fifty yards beyond it. The bark slowed its turn, preparing to unleash a broadside at the Dutchman when she closed another thirty or forty yards, which would be in less than twenty seconds.

That was the same moment that the patache cut dramatically to starboard. That maneuver spilled some wind out of her sails—she came into a close reach—but she had barely lost momentum by the time she crossed behind the bark. As she did so, she swung hard back to port—putting her on a course to sideswipe the French ship.

Shouted warnings about a collision were lost in the roar of the bark’s port side broadside, which discharged just as the jacht heeled harder to port once again, catching the breeze full a-beam and speeding directly away from the Frenchman, showing the enemy battery her narrow stern. Bracketed by geysers, one ball crashed into her deck, mauling a gun and its crew.

But on the starboard side of the Frenchman, the patache closed rapidly, only eight yards separating the two craft. One cannon from the Frenchman’s shore-aimed battery discharged at the speeding craft but soared over the heads of the cold-eyed boarders waiting beneath its gunwale.

A Dutch-accented voice shouted from the patache’s stern—“brace yourselves”—just before the ship turned one more point to port and put her bow into the side of the Frenchman’s hull.

Wood screamed, flew up as stripped off strakes and splinters. The lighter Spanish-designed ship rebounded slightly, but her angle of impact had been shallow, so she came back easily with her remaining momentum. The second impact was lighter, so light that the men on her decks were able to remain standing and fling grappling hooks over the Frenchman’s shattered gunwale.

Not expecting to fight another ship, the bark had no marksmen in her rigging when the other ships were spotted. The first ones to respond were just climbing up, and so were blown down by massed musketry from the patache’s deck. Similarly, as the French deckhands leapt to swing their swivel guns about, they found the Spanish ship’s patereroes already trained upon them and firing. The would-be counterattackers were blasted away from their pieces, trailing spatters of blood.

The boarders swarmed onto the bark’s deck, where the hastily organizing resistance met with a terrible surprise: their attackers were armed with pistols that fired repeatedly. A vanguard of ten Wild Geese led the rest of the troops over the Frenchman’s gunwale, their pepperbox revolvers killing a few of the defenders, wounding many. More significantly, that sudden wave of fire surprised and quickly broke the morale of most of the survivors. Fleeing to the poop and the fo’c’sle respectively, the French had given up the midship weather deck before any officers had been able to organize a stand. The rest of the Wild Geese poured over, sniping at any defenders who raised a musket in opposition to the more indifferently armed Montserrat recruits who spread like a tide across the deck, wielding everything from daggers to cutlasses to old Spanish matchlocks. A few went down, but each one who fell was hastily replaced by three others, and more Wild Geese came on along with them, carrying musketoons, fresh pistols, and competent orders for the new recruits.

Meanwhile, the jacht had moved well out of range, and made swiftly for the farther French ship. Seeing the fate of her sister, and unsure of how many more enemy hulls might appear, that ship was crowding sail and making for open water. There, she could take advantage of putting the wind behind her square-rigged mainmast even as she put her stern to a following sea.