Eddie was still watching the men struggling in the chill gray waters, saw that some of them seemed to be weakening already. Those who had been clustered around the dinghy got it into the water, where it promptly foundered. Probably some splinter or shrapnel had punched a hole in it and they had not noticed that damage in their frenzied attempt to escape their ship. Which was a prudent course of action: the carrack, her stern savaged as if some kraken of the deep had taken a vicious bite out of it, was settling back upon her rudder, and listing slightly to starboard. At the rate she was going down, her decks would be awash within the hour. And her crew—
Gjedde put a hand on Eddie’s arm, drew it and the binoculars it held down slowly. “There is nothing to be done, Commander. If we stayed to rescue those men, the Spanish would see us before we could get away again. We must break off now, at best speed, to remain undetected. You must know this.”
Eddie didn’t want to know it, but he did. “Perhaps they’ll be picked up by the Spanish then.”
Gjedde didn’t blink. “You know better than that, too, Commander. They may see the smoke or they may not. If they do not, it is unlikely they would come close enough to see wreckage or hear cries for help. And even if they do, it will be fifteen hours from now. There will be no one for them to rescue and few enough bodies to see, should they chance to come so close to the site of our engagement.”
Eddie looked over the bow. Only three hundred yards away, now, the Spanish were struggling in the water, and the first were already losing the battle to stay above the cold gray swells of the North Sea. He nodded. “Aye, aye, sir. You’re the captain.”
Gjedde’s eyes fell from Eddie’s. Suddenly, he looked even older. Then he turned on his heel and began giving orders. “Mr. Bjelke, secure from general quarters and give orders to unload battery and personal weapons. I want no unnecessary or accidental discharges as we run from the Spanish. Pilot, set us north by northwest true. Mr. Svantner, pass it along to crowd all sail. There will be no rescue operations.”
As the crew of the Intrepid scrambled to set about their duties, Eddie noticed that the Tropic Surveyor, which had been traveling under full sail the whole time, was drawing abreast of them. Lining the starboard gunwales were more of the Irish mercenaries, who peered ahead at the wreckage and the ruined carrack.
The Spanish, seeing the ships approach, called out for quarter, for aid, for mercy for the love of god.
As the Intrepid passed them at two hundred yards off the portside, their cries were half swallowed by the sound of the wavelets against the ship’s hull.
But the Tropic Surveyor passed them at a distance of only one hundred yards to her starboard side. The Spanish cried out to the men lining her rail, perhaps seeing the facial features and even the tartans and equipage they associated with their traditional Irish allies.
But the Irish made no sound, and watched, without expression or, apparently, any pity, as more of the Spanish began to sink down deeper into the low rolling swells of the North Sea.
East of St. Christopher, Caribbean
Through the salt spray and dusty rose of early dawn, Hugh Albert O’Donnell compared Michael McCarthy, Jr.’s pinched, weather-seamed eyes with Aodh O’Rourke’s pale-lipped scowl. The latter, staring at the balloon as it swelled up and off the poop deck, muttered, “You’d not get me to swing ’neath that bag o’ gas.” Then Hugh’s lieutenant of eight years nodded to the up-timer beside him. “No offense to your handiwork, Don Michael.”
“Don” Michael—whom Hugh had convinced, at no small expense of effort, to accept the honorific—simply shrugged. “No offense taken. I’m not riding in it myself. That’s for young Mulryan, here.”
Mulryan, an apple-faced lad with an unruly shock of red hair, nodded. “An’ it’s not so bad, O’Rourke. After the fourth or fifth time, yeh forget the height. Seems natural, ’t does.”
“To you, maybe,” O’Rourke grumbled, and then moved aside as feet thumped up the stairs from the weather deck behind him.
Hugh swayed up from his easy seat on the taffrail as Captain Paul Morraine rose into view. He was followed by a taller, thinner man whose arrival resulted in an almost uniform hardening of expressions and veiling of eyes: Morraine’s immediate subordinate, First Mate George St. Georges, was not a favorite with the Irish, nor with his own crew. Only Michael’s expression remained unaltered. The two senior officers of the Fleur Sable joined the group just as McGillicuddy, chief of the balloon’s ground crew, set his legs firm and wide to help his men tug on the guidelines. Straining together, they drew more of the swelling envelope up toward them and away from the mizzenmast, the yard having been dropped to accommodate this process.