The Baltic War(285)

Rita chuckled. "Not exactly. It's just that I grew up with my brother, you know. We're talking about a guy who, for a stretch there in his teens, used to hot-wire cars in Fairmont or Clarksburg and go joy-riding about every month with his buddies. Never got caught once, even though every cop in Marion County knew damn good and well who the culprit was."



Wentworth frowned, obviously trying to extract the gist from the indecipherable terms. "A successful petty criminal, you're saying?"



"Well . . . technically. But since he always returned the cars in perfect condition, with a full tank of gas—sometimes, he'd even give them a wash in the process—nobody really cared that much."



"Ah." After a moment, the earl of Strafford smiled. That was the first smile she'd seen on his face all day. "I see. A successful politician, in the making."



"Yeah, you could put it that way. The point is, I really don't think he's likely to screw up."



A sudden shout came from the bow. From Sherrilyn, obviously. That feminine shriek of glee was quite unmistakable.



She turned her head to look. Sherrilyn was perched rather precariously, pointing at something ahead of them in the distance. "Eat your heart out, Harry! Now—any second now, they've already got the guns run out—you're going to hear a real pick-up line!"



Maybe two seconds later, Rita heard the distant sound of cannons being fired.





"Now you lads!" roared Baumgartner. "Smartly, y'hear!"



The captain was bringing the Achates around so that it would be able to fire a full broadside at the nearest of the three Royal Navy ships that were moving to intercept it, instead of just the lead carronade on a pivot mount. Even someone as nautically-challenged as Mike Stearns could see that the timberclad's paddle-wheel design that had made it such a tub on the open sea now gave it an enormous advantage over the three sailing vessels facing it. Where their captains had to maneuver in the estuary by contending with the complex cross-forces of tide and current and wind, Baumgartner simply had to give his helmsman an order.



Within seconds, the broadside was fired. Only one of the three English ships was in position to do the same—and it was out of range. The broadside of the Achates was fired at the lead enemy ship, which was still trying to come into position.



It helped, of course, that the disparity in ordnance was so tremendous. The biggest guns on those English ships would be culverins, firing eighteen-pound round shot. Most of the guns, and perhaps all of them, would be no bigger than twelve-pounders. And they were going up against the Achates, whose four-foot thick wooden walls would shrug off their fire, while it replied with explosive rounds fired from sixty-eight-pound carronades. There were just six of them, on a broadside—but six was plenty.



Indeed it was. Only two rounds from that first broadside struck the English warship, but they were enough to shatter its bow. Worse still—this was always the real threat that explosive rounds posed to wooden warships—they'd started fires in several places. Even given that warship crews of the time were trained and ready to deal with shipboard fires, at least one of those fires was already too big to be extinguished.



In fact, the captain of that ship—or whichever officer had succeeded him, if he'd been killed—was already giving the order to abandon it. Seeing the boats being lowered over the side, Baumgartner ignored that ship altogether and ordered the Achates to steam toward the other two.



One of those two seemed to be trying to head back to the docks, from what Mike could tell. The other one . . .



Either that captain couldn't make up his mind, or his ship had somehow gotten stalled in mid-water by incorrect or cross-purpose orders. Whatever that was called, in nautical terms. Mike could see its sails flapping uselessly in the wind. Caught up in stays, or something. It had been years since he'd read C. S. Forester's Hornblower novels, and he'd never paid much attention to the technical details anyway.



"Incompetent bastard," he heard Baumgartner murmur contemptuously. To the helmsman he said: "Come hard to port. Let's let the lads on the starboard guns get a bit of experience too."



He seemed utterly calm, cool and collected. Mike wasn't prepared to forgive the captain all his sins, yet. But he did allow to himself, privately, that his former thoughts of homicide had been a tad excessive.



Perhaps two minutes later, the starboard broadside went off. At what amounted to point-blank range, in this case; close enough that the English ship was able to fire a broadside of its own.



So far as Mike could tell, only two shots from that enemy broadside struck the Achates. One hit the paddle wheeler's hull and simply bounced off. Literally, bounced—like a pebble thrown against a tree. The other one smacked into one of the timberclad's tall funnels. Mike would have expected it to knock the funnel completely down, but it didn't. Instead, it simply punched straight through it, leaving a smoke-streaming hole in each side about eight feet above bridge height.