#3 - Page 191 (1/2)
“Not pirates,” he said. “It’s the slaves. Look!”
Unskilled in the seamans.h.i.+p of large vessels, the escaped slaves of the Yallahs River plantations had evidently made a slow and blundering pa.s.sage toward Hispaniola, and having somehow arrived at that island, had promptly run the s.h.i.+p aground. The Bruja lay canted on her side in the shallows, her keel sunk deep in the sandy mud. A very agitated group of slaves surrounded her, some rus.h.i.+ng up and down the beach shouting, others das.h.i.+ng off toward the refuge of the jungle, a few remaining to help the last of their number off the beached hulk.
A quick glance out to sea showed the cause of their agitation. A patch of white showed on the horizon, growing in size even as we watched.
“A man-of-war,” Lawrence said, sounding interested.
Jamie said something under his breath in Gaelic, and Ian glanced at him, shocked.
“Out of here,” Jamie said tersely. He pulled Ian about and gave him a shove up the defile, then grabbed my hand.
“Wait!” said Lawrence, shading his eyes. “There’s another s.h.i.+p coming. A little one.”
The Governor of Jamaica’s private pinnace, to be exact, leaning at a perilous angle as she shot round the curve of the bay, her canvas bellied by the wind on her quarter.
Jamie stood for a split second, weighing the possibilities, then grabbed my hand again.
“Let’s go!” he said.
By the time we reached the edge of the beach, the pinnace’s small boat was plowing through the shallows, Raeburn and MacLeod pulling hard at the oars. I was wheezing and gulping air, my knees rubbery from the run. Jamie s.n.a.t.c.hed me up bodily into his arms and ran into the surf, followed by Lawrence and Ian, gasping like whales.
I saw Gordon, a hundred yards out in the pinnace’s bow, aim a gun at the sh.o.r.e, and knew we were followed. The musket discharged with a puff of smoke, and Meldrum, behind him, promptly raised his own weapon and fired. Taking it in turns, the two of them covered our splas.h.i.+ng advance, until friendly hands could pull us over the side and raise the boat.
“Come about!” Innes, manning the wheel, barked the order, and the boom swung across, the sails filling at once. Jamie hauled me to my feet and deposited me on a bench, then flung himself down beside me, panting.
“Holy G.o.d,” he wheezed. “Did I no—tell ye to—stay away—Duncan?”
“Save your breath, Mac Dubh,” Innes said, a wide grin spreading under his mustache. “Ye havena enough to be wasting it.” He shouted something to MacLeod, who nodded and did something to the lines. The pinnace heeled over, changed her course, and came about, headed straight out of the tiny cove—and straight toward the man-of-war, now close enough for me to see the fat-lipped porpoise grinning beneath its bowsprit.
MacLeod bellowed something in Gaelic, accompanied by a gesture that left the meaning of what he had said in no doubt. To a triumphant yodel from Innes, we shot past the Porpoise, directly under her bow and close enough to see surprised-looking heads poking out from the rail above.
I looked back as we left the cove, to see the Porpoise still heading in, ma.s.sive under her three great masts. The pinnace could never outrace her on the open sea, but in close quarters, the little sloop was light and maneuverable as a feather by comparison to the leviathan man-of-war.
“It’s the slave s.h.i.+p they’ll be after,” Meldrum said, turning to look alongside me. “We saw the man-o’-war pick her up, three miles off the island. We thought whilst they were otherwise occupied, we might as well nip in and pick ye all off the beach.”
“Good enough,” Jamie said with a smile. His chest was still heaving, but he had recovered his breath. “I hope the Porpoise will be sufficiently occupied for the time being.”
A warning shout from Raeburn indicated that this was not to be, however. Looking back, I could see the gleam of bra.s.s on the Porpoise’s deck as the pair of long guns called stern chasers were uncovered and began their process of aiming.
Now it was us at gunpoint, and I found the sensation very objectionable. Still, we were moving, and fast, at that. Innes put the wheel hard over, then hard again, tacking a zigzag path past the headland.
The stern chasers boomed together. There was a splash off the port bow, twenty yards away, but a good deal too close for comfort, given the fact that a twenty-four pound ball through the floor of the pinnace would sink us like a rock.
Innes cursed and hunched his shoulders over the wheel, his missing arm giving him an odd, lopsided appearance. Our course became still more erratic, and the next three tries came nowhere near. Then came a louder boom, and I looked back to see the side of the canted Bruja erupt in splinters, as the Porpoise came in range and trained her forward guns on the grounded s.h.i.+p.
A rain of grapeshot hit the beach, striking dead in the center of a group of fleeing slaves. Bodies—and parts of bodies—flew into the air like black stick-figures and fell to the sand, staining it with red blotches. Severed limbs were scattered over the beach like driftwood.
“Holy Mary, Mother of G.o.d.” Ian, white to the lips, crossed himself, staring in horror at the beach as the sh.e.l.ling went on. Two more shots struck the Bruja, opening up a great hole in her side. Several landed harmlessly in the sand, and two more found their mark among the fleeing people. Then we were round the edge of the headland, and heading into the open sea, the beach and its carnage lost to view.
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Ian finished his prayer in a whisper, and crossed himself again.