With most of the first Frenchman’s surviving crew trapped on the gun deck and unable to move up the companionways for fear of the revolvers and cutlasses covering the stairs, the remaining officers and sail handlers huddled behind what cover they could find at either end of the ship. And in their silent, collective consternation of wondering how best to fight back, one of the tallest boarders stepped forward, raised a sword toward the captain on the poop deck and shouted:
“I am Hugh O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, and on my word, I promise you this: I will have your honorable parole or I will have your heads. The choice is yours.”
In the profound quiet that was the immediate answer to his ultimatum, a single man stood on the poop deck. “Monsieur, that choice is no choice. You have our parole.”
Hugh watched the second French ship fade into the distance and counted the dead being laid out on the deck. Six of the new recruits from Montserrat had already earned the bitter coin of service to their homeland’s last earl, along with two of the Wild Geese. A dozen more of his men were wounded, but only one so severely that he was in any immediate danger. “What now?” asked Pieter Floriszoon who was still flushed and seemed eager to find yet another ship to fight. Hugh wondered who, truly, was the pirate at heart. “I go to St. Eustatia. At once.”
“What? But they put troops ashore here, and Warner could be—”
“You will take care of that, and protect this place. We cannot be sure the other ship will not return, and we have no way of knowing if others might not be on the way. You will stay here, with this ship as a prize and with yourself on Eendracht.”
“And you? You’re going to St. Eustatia alone?”
Hugh smiled as he looked back over his shoulder at the men on the Orthros. The recruits from Montserrat lofted the French muskets and cutlasses with which they had re-armed themselves. “I think I have company enough. But I’ll want your second pilot for the helm. We don’t want a ham-handed beginner like myself at the whipstaff, or it will be all of us who’ll need rescuing.”
“Truly spoken,” grinned Pieter. “You can leave the wounded here—”
Hugh shook his head. “Your Dutch doctors are best, and you’ve told me you have a Jewish surgeon in Oranjestad. If we succeed, they’ll want to be close to that care. If we don’t succeed—” He shrugged. “There won’t be much hope for any of us, perhaps.”
“Yes, perhaps. Which is the why you should not go alone. If these French officers are telling us the truth, that there is an attack under way on St. Eustatia, it could be twice as large as they’re claiming.”
Hugh stopped and held Pieter’s gaze. “True, but if the French return here and overwhelm the defense we leave behind, then the English are defeated. And that means you’ll all starve on St. Eustatia. So, either way, we must have a force in both places. And this is where ships are needed most, not at Oranjestad where your defense fleet is at anchor.”
Floriszoon chewed his lower lip slightly and looked away. “Well, when you put it that way—”
Hugh put his hand on the Dutchman’s shoulder. “Lend me some of your ship’s troops, now. You should be able to scrape together some of your Dutch plantation guards once you put a skiff ashore. But I’ll have more want of foot soldiers, I suspect.”
Floriszoon nodded. “How many do you think you’ll need.”
“Thirty more?”
“Take fifty. And then get going. If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s watching a lazy Irishman loiter about.”
Off Vieques, Caribbean Sea
Eddie Cantrell lowered his binoculars and frowned.
Ove Gjedde’s soft-voiced observation was annoying, mostly because it was perfectly accurate. “It is unlikely anything will change so dramatically that you need to examine the enemy every two minutes. They continue to run. We continue to chase. It has been thus since dawn. And the range is closing steadily.”
“Yes, steadily. But not fast enough.”
Gjedde shrugged at the receding Spanish sails that dominated the western horizon. “Like us, they have fair winds and following seas. Nothing could be better for their galleons. With the exception of our steam-ships, none of our hulls are much faster than theirs.”
Eddie nodded, turned about and raised his binoculars to better see the allied fleet behind. Led by the steam-tugged Amelia and Gelderland, eight more Dutch warships had crowded sail to keep up with the USE steamships: Hollandsche Tuijn, Zeeland, Neptunus, Utrecht, Prins Hendrik, Eenhoorn, Omlandia, Wappen von Rotterdam. They were among the lighter and swifter Dutch hulls, none carrying more than thirty-eight pieces, but even so, their speed was not much greater than that of the Spanish galleons. Van Galen had loudly protested the decision to send almost all the bigger ships south with Peg Leg Jol to Trinidad, or to be kept as a home guard at Oranjestad, but now, Eddie’s foresight was making itself felt as a lived reality. Once the Spanish saw the smoke from the steamships, he’d predicted they might not come straight to grips but do everything they could to maneuver for advantage. However, while the Intrepid and Resolve would be able to quite literally run rings around the Spanish heavies, it would be unwise to fully break formation to do so, not until the enemy was firmly engaged.