“Adriaen,” Tromp shouted, “do we have grape loaded?”
“In three of the starboard guns.”
“Excellent. Fire at that barca-longa. We need to protect our tugs.” Tromp started counting down the seconds he had left to make up his mind about Amelia’s next course change, which was largely based upon how long it would take for his gun deck to send a load of moaning grapeshot at the privateer. From what he could make of the swirling hulls in front of him, two of his jachts—the Zuidsterre and the Pinas—had drawn at least six of the enemy ships to them. Too eager to wait to distribute themselves more evenly among the approaching Dutch ships, the raiders had pounced with the blood-eagerness of their kind. In consequence, they had weakened this part of the net they were trying to cast before the Dutch van.
Amelia’s three starboard guns spoke, most of the grape falling short, kicking up a fuming lane across the swells. But the end of that lane rode right up over the low-gunwaled side of the barca-longa and mauled men, mast, and canvas alike. The stricken boat swerved away from Amelia and the steam pinnace.
But Tromp hardly noticed that. Only three hundred yards ahead, the Zuidsterre had managed to slip out between a pair of small pataches and was no longer enmeshed with the enemy. But Pinas was pinned in the middle of a triangle of their hulls, taking what modest pounding their batteries could deliver.
Tromp saw her crew falling aside among the smoke and splinters and resolved that her sacrifice should prove to be the means of their escape. “Adriaen!”
“Sir?”
“Do you see the gap between the sloop and patache hemming in Pinas?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Crowd sail and make for it, best speed. And double-charge both batteries. We are going to open a wide hole for the rest of our fleet.”
“Sir, Captain Gerritsz signals from Gelderland that he is making for the western edge of that melee. We might come under his guns, if we follow the course you order.”
“Then signal Hans to either hold his fire or be damned careful with it. We’ve got to break these ships. The wind is failing us, so we can’t wait on a careful duel while their fore-and-aft riggers dance around us. This group has been greedy for our blood and has trapped themselves. We must capitalize on that. So, when you’re done warning Gerritsz, signal the rest of the warships to converge here. This is where we are going to break through.”
Or die trying, Tromp amended.
At eighty yards, the heavily modified ex-Dutch jacht pulled hard over to starboard, bringing her portside battery to bear on Intrepid.
“Mount Two has a firing solution,” cried Svantner.
“Fire!” yelled Eddie over his shoulder, not bothering with the intraship relays.
The two ships traded shots simultaneously. The eight guns of the privateer made a broad, throaty blast, but the gunners had waited a moment too long as the jacht recovered from her turn, rolling slightly above level. Their balls whizzed overhead, one putting a hole in the foremain sail, the other clipping the mainmast’s spencer mast clean off. The spencer’s foldable sail tumbled, fluttering, into the dark like a half-spined pterodactyl with one shattered wing.
The eight-inch naval rifle repaid the privateer by driving an explosive shell into her, amidships. The shell didn’t go off until it was well inside the light-hulled vessel, blowing out a wide spray of wood, cannons, bodies, and dunnage into the failing light. As the smoke cleared, a strange, guttural growling rose up. It was the water rushing into the savage bite that had been taken out of the jacht’s side, and which stretched slightly below the waterline. The ship began to roll in that direction as the risers lapped into her greedily.
“Commander,” snapped Gjedde, “patache coming up from the port quarter. At sixty yards.”
Damn it. The ones who had swept wide around Intrepid were now coming out of the near-darkness to her east, easily finding and steering for the big USE ship’s silhouette against the increasingly cloudy western horizon. “Anything else closing?”
“Not at the moment.” Gjedde’s tone put a discernibly dark emphasis on “at the moment.”
“Then Captain, if you would be so kind, send the order to fire all, portside battery, when she’s abeam.”
Gjedde nodded, leaned toward the intraship comms tube.
For the first time in twenty minutes, no one was asking for orders, which allowed Eddie to take in the bigger picture. Up on the starboard bow position, the mitrailleuse was firing athwart the rays of the setting sun, its rounds chasing after a piragua that had ventured inside one hundred yards range and was now hurriedly rowing back out. Just behind the mitrailleuse, near the forward companionway, a junior lieutenant of the Wild Geese was hunched down on weather deck, alert-eyed and waiting for orders to bring up the forty or so of his men whom Eddie had put in reserve as an anti-boarding fire-brigade. Their training, experience, and armament—double-barreled musketoons and pepperbox revolvers—were a final insurance against what the pirates-turned-privateers obviously wanted to achieve: a run in under the effective lower arc of Intrepid’s guns, and then, to board. Normally unthinkable, the dying light, massed and maneuverable opponents, and isolation had combined to make it a distressingly reasonable possibility.