Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(63)

Didn’t happen this time. Anne Cathrine seemed to remember her surroundings, looked away, readjusted her kerchief—that damned kerchief! what the hell?—and stared out to sea. She pointed at the Courser, now nearly two miles ahead of the Intrepid and widening the gap rapidly. “That is the smaller of your steamships, yes?”

Huh? She knows perfectly well that it is. But all he said was, “Yes, Anne Cathrine. That’s our destroyer.”

“A fierce name,” she said with a tight, approving nod. “And that one gun in the middle of its deck, sitting in its own little castle, is the most dangerous of them all?”

He smiled. “That little castle is what we call a ‘tub mount.’ The round, rib-high wall protects the gun crew from enemy fire, shrapnel, fragments. As does the sloped gun shield. The rifle can bear through two hundred seventy degrees and fire several different kinds of shells to very great ranges.”

“It is the same as these guns on your ship?” She pointed to the two naval rifles on the centerline of the Intrepid’s weather deck.

“Yes, but, umm . . . this isn’t my ship, sweetheart. It’s—”

“Yes, I know. It’s Gjeddes’. But he has let you run it, with the exception of the sail-handling, since we left the dock.”

Eddie shrugged. There was no arguing with the truth.

Anne Cathrine was pointing over the bow. “And that sail up ahead, that is the Dutch-built yacht?”

“Yes, the Crown of Waves. A good ship. She’s out ahead of us as a picket.”

“I thought you have provided us with balloons to look far ahead, so that pickets were no longer needed?”

He smiled. “Pickets are always needed, Anne Cathrine. Besides, we don’t want to use the balloons if we don’t need them, and if the winds get any stronger, an observer could get pretty roughed up, to say nothing of damage to the balloon itself.”

“I see. And the other ship like your Intrepid—the Resolve—that’s her, falling to the rear?”

“Yes.”

She was silent for a long time. “Your ships are so big compared to ours. Even compared to the Patentia, the Resolve is easily half again as long and half again as high, except at the very rear. And still—”

“Yes?”

“Eddie, should your warships have so few guns? I know up-time-designed weapons are terribly powerful, but if they should fail to operate, or the enemy gets lucky shots into the gun deck—” She stopped, seeing his small smile.

“Trust me, Anne Cathrine, we have enough guns. More than enough. It’s more important that our magazine is big enough to carry plenty of excellent ammunition to keep our excellent guns well supplied. Which is the case.”

She nodded and turned her eyes to the ship lumbering along beside the Patentia. “Not a very handsome ship, the Serendipity.”

Eddie let a little laugh slip out. “No, she’s not much to look at.” The Serendipity was a pot-bellied bulk hauler, with the lines of a bloated pink or fluyt. “But she’s steady in a storm, and seven hundred fifty tons burthen. And we need that cargo capacity. So ugly or not, we’re lucky to have her.”

“Not as lucky as to have the Tropic Surveyor,” countered Anne Cathrine with an appreciative smile and a chin raised in the direction of the last ship of the flotilla.

And Eddie had to admit that Tropic Surveyor was a handsome ship, her square-rigged fore- and mainmasts running with their sheets full. The large, three-masted bark had a fore-and-aft rigged mizzen and twelve almost uniform guns in each broadside battery. Her lines were unusually clean, reflecting the first influence of frigate-built designs upon traditional barks. Her master, a Swede by the name of Stiernsköld, was known to be a highly capable captain who, if he had any failing, tended toward quiet but determined boldness.

Anne Cathrine’s attention had drifted back to the Patentia, however. “What are all those men doing on deck, and who are they?”

Eddie glanced over; he saw a growing number of men at the portside gunwales of the Patentia, many pointing at the island peaks to the south, some nodding, some shaking their heads. Eddie smiled. “Those are the Irish soldiers who came up from the Infanta Isabella of the Lowlands.”

Anne Cathrine frowned. “I still do not understand how mercenaries who have been in Spanish service for generations—”

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t understand it either. Not entirely.” And what little I do understand I can’t share, honey. Sorry.

“Do you at least know why they are on deck there—and look, more of them are gathering at the rail of the Serendipity! What are they looking at?”