The Pirate Armada
DESPITE MY UNCLE’S orders, I kept darting up onto the deck to catch glimpses of what was going on. Tortuga Harbor was now a churning mass of ships and flame. When the Viper exploded, she had spread burning timbers and canvas over everything. Other ships had caught fire, and bits of the debris had landed on some of the ramshackle warehouses that lined the wharves. The first cherry-red flames were just now starting to lick up from their palmetto-thatched roofs.
“Run up more of the flags, Mr. Adams!” Captain Hunter roared, waving his cutlass in the air and looking every inch a pirate captain. Mr. Adams nodded and rushed to send up more signal flags. I was to learn later that they repeated the same message in different words: Treason. Treason. Beware. Beware. Trust no one.
Screams and cries of rage echoed around us, even louder than the crack and roar of the flames and the booms of cannons. Sloops and brigs were struggling to cast themselves off and set sail, to escape the harbor and the burning ships that multiplied even as we looked. The Aurora let loose another broadside into the billowing clouds of smoke that just moments before had been the Viper. Since that doughty little brig had all but disappeared beneath the water, the shot sailed right through the smoke and crashed into the already damaged Hornet and the warehouses beyond. Timbers and roofing blew up into the air like ugly fireworks. The Hornet, her sails burning to floating black ash, began to sink by the stern, her crew finally giving up their useless guns and scrambling to reach the wharf. I would have expected them to throw themselves into the harbor and escape that way, but I had learned in my time at sea that most sailors—pirate or otherwise—cannot swim.
We were coming about now to begin our run out of the harbor, bringing the wind on our starboard quarter. We were ready to make the dash for safety when out of the smoke and flames came the Fury, Captain John Barrel’s sloop with whom we had entered Tortuga Harbor five weeks past. That worthy himself stood on her railing, balanced on his good leg, his left arm wrapped securely around a line. He raised a speaking trumpet to his lips and called out, “Ahoy, the Aurora! Ahoy, Captain Hunter! What in all the black blazes is going on?”
Mr. Adams handed Captain Hunter his own speaking trumpet, and he called back. “Treachery, Captain Barrel! Treachery most foul!”
“Why did you fire into one of Steele’s vessels?” bawled Barrel.
The captain answered him in a voice that must have carried across the harbor: “Viper was sailing under false colors, Captain Barrel! She was nothing but a Judas-goat for the bloody Dons! Did you not see how she opened up on us with no warning?”
“Aye, we saw that!” returned Barrel with an oath. “Sam Dobbs always was a hound!”
“Beware traitors among us, Captain Barrel!” called Captain Hunter. “Who knows how many the Dons have bought! Follow us out and we may escape yet!”
“Lead on—we’ll follow!” Barrel leaped from the railing and landed with a thud on the Fury’s deck. “Stand fast, ye sea dogs, to yer stations, and follow the Aurora!”
We slipped past the heavily armed sloop, flags flying and guns blazing. I could almost hear the words racing from pirate ship to pirate ship. Treachery, treason, betrayal. In the confusion, ships were running foul of each other, some burning, some not. And ship after ship ran out her guns and opened fire on anything in her path. Captain Hunter had said that would happen. Let the suspicion loose and every man would remember the injuries he had suffered from every other man. They’d see it as a chance to settle old scores and destroy traitors at the same time.
The fires ashore were spreading. The warehouses we had hit while firing on the fire ship were filled with refitting supplies, cordage and timber and pitch and, heaven help us all, powder and shot. I could see scurrying figures raising up buckets of water from the harbor and hurling them on the flames. One of the warehouses erupted in a huge gout of boiling orange flame and black smoke.
“It’s working, Uncle Patch!” I cried, staring out at the wreckage and flames.
“’Tis working for the now, boy,” my uncle snarled, his head and shoulders sticking up through the hatch. “But now isn’t forever, and Lucifer laughs at the hopeful! Come below, now, and help me prepare!”
So I ran down again to help him. Still, even in the sick berth I could glimpse the battle, through the wind-port that my uncle had caused to be cut in the side during the frigate’s refitting. It was not much of a window, but it was enough to give me a prospect of what was happening outside. Suddenly a new booming thundered out over the lesser roars from the ships. Huge fountains of water leaped into the air. It took me a second to realize what had happened, and then I cried out, “Uncle! The great guns in the fort are firing!”
“And who do they think they’re firing at, I wonder?” Uncle Patch said with a snort. “As if the blessed fools could tell friend from foe down here!”
Almost at the moment he said that, a second warehouse exploded, sending a vast fireball up into the sky. Now ships were running afoul of one another, tangling their lines and spars together until they were hopelessly bound together. Still, a number of them had managed to get underway and fall in behind us and the Fury. Others continued to savage one another, paying off past injuries. My eyes began to ache from the horror of it all.
When my uncle’s instruments were laid out and ready, he grudgingly told me I might go on deck, until casualties began to come down. I got there just as we were passing the arms of the harbor, heading out to the open sea and what waited there for us.
And that was the Spanish war galleon Concepción.
The faster ships, the sloops and such like, had overtaken and passed us in their race to escape Tortuga. They were the first to come under the guns of the big Spaniard. How could they have missed her? She was there with all her sails set, coming down on us like a white stormcloud low on the sea. Her scarlet and gold banner caught the sunlight like silken flames and I shuddered at the sight of her.
“Lord, Uncle Patch!” I cried as my uncle came up the ladder onto the deck. “Look at her come!”
“Aye” he said, shading his eyes. “Even an elephant will move like a tiger if you give it enough of a start!”
The lead ships, finally sensing their danger, began to turn to leeward, but the war galleon blocked their escape. Then as she sailed between a brig and a sloop, her guns cut loose, both broadsides at the same time. Everywhere white smoke billowed across the water. Then the Concepción shouldered her way through, leaving behind her a shattered wreck on one side and mere debris on the other.
“Find the Captain,” my uncle shouted over the noise. “Tell that English madman that I’m ready for the wounded. Send ’em down as they fall!” And he dropped belowdecks again.
In a flash, I was up the ladder and onto the quarterdeck. Clouds of acrid gun smoke broke across us, and the Concepción let loose another deafening broadside. Our own gunners huddled around their guns, matches and swabs, powder and shot at the ready. Over the rumble and roar I heard my gunner friend, Mr. Jeffers, yell at one of his crew, “Now that’s what I call gunnery! Slow, but oh, how accurate!”
I scampered over to where Captain Hunter stood in his green coat and pirate hat. I stammered out my uncle’s message and got a distracted nod for my troubles. The captain had other things on his mind.
“Now we will see what a Spaniard’s word means,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Bring her about, Mr. Adams, if you please. Come sunset or sunrise, we’ll give them a show!”
The Aurora began to close on the Concepción. In the distance I fancied I could hear Captain Barrel roaring. This was going to be the trickiest part of the whole plan. The next moment was going to decide whether or not we joined the Viper and her burning sisters on the bottom of the sea.
“Steady, Mr. Jeffers, steady,” Captain Hunter said, slowly raising his cutlass up in the air. All eyes were on him as we closed on the great black war galleon, and I remembered the first time we had met her. The same tall black sides began to tower over us, the multiple gunports gaping wide. I could see the white-clad Spanish gunners crouched over their massive twenty-four-pounders, matches glowing in their hands. For the longest moment we all seemed to stare at one another. Then the signal came.
“Fire and drop!” the captain roared. Men fell to the deck as the gunners applied matches to touch holes. The Aurora shuddered as our starboard battery all fired at once. At the same time, the Concepción’s two decks opened up in a thunderous blast of flame and sulfuric smoke. Cannon shot whistled over our heads, ripping holes in the lower sails and parting lines. At the same time, I could hear the almost meaty thump of our own shot hitting those great walls.
“’Tis a waste, ’tis a terrible waste!” cried Mr. Jeffers. “Full charges o’ powder would hull her!”
“Aye,” cried the Captain back at him. “And full powder and shot from that behemoth would have sunk us! Half powder again, Mr. Jeffers, if you please!” As we play-acted with the Concepción, she was also engaging the pirate fleet that was trying to fight its way past us.
“Follow the Aurora, ya scurvy dogs! Hammer the Spaniard!” Even over the battle, I could hear John Barrel’s bull roar. The Fury closed in, firing her cannons as she came. Not playacting, she managed to blast some of the gilt off the war galleon’s high stern, and a cheer went up. Then the Concepción boomed back, and the Fury disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flying splinters.
“My eyes, but the old man is a brave one!” Hunter shouted. His cutlass came down, and once again we let loose a broadside, and once again the Concepción fired back. More holes appeared in our sails, and a section of the forecastle rail exploded into splinters. At that exact moment, the lower spar on the foremast came crashing down. It was impressive if you didn’t know two of our own sailors had cut it loose.
“Two broadsides! No more, lads—that’s all I bargained for in my note to the Don!” Hunter swung his cutlass, and we heeled away from our supposed foe. Behind us rolled the thunder of another ragged cannonade, and both the captain and I turned. There, limping out of the smoke and ruin, came the Fury, sails holed and hull splintered. But she still had a few guns that worked and she was firing them for all she was worth. And Captain John Barrel still stood on what was left of her deck, blackened by soot and gunpowder and roaring like a madman.
“Keep firing, ye lubbers! Follow the Aurora and to blazes with the bloody Dons!” Behind him, another brig was settling fast, but two other crippled sloops began to follow his lead.
We began to pull away to the northwest, faster and faster on a quartering wind, with our small fleet of stragglers behind us. The Concepción moved among the rest like an angry terrier among rats. Her guns boomed again and again, and the times between cannonades grew shorter and shorter. Mr. Jeffers nodded approval of Don Esteban’s broadsides now that they were no longer directed at us. I could see his opinion of Spanish gunners—or at least these Spanish gunners—improving by the minute.
But even the greatest terrier can be outnumbered by rats. Although ships were sinking all about the Concepción, the cannonballs that had pounded into her began to take their toll. A lucky or well-aimed shot brought down her foretopgallantmast. Seeing her crippled, the remaining pirate ships began to haul away to the west, leaving their shattered sisters to founder and burn around their destroyer. For his part, Don Esteban seemed to sense that the day was his and that he need seek no further glory. The Concepción turned slowly, delivering another broadside at the fleeing pirates, and then caught the breeze and stood away, south by southwest, with the wind almost on her stern, making for the Windward Passage. More cannon fire broke out. The pirate crews, still unsure of each other, tended to blaze away at any craft that ventured too close.
Mindless of the risk, I stood at the taffrail staring backward as the paths of the vessels diverged and the remnants of battle fell behind us. Of all of us aboard the Aurora, I was the only one to see the sleek red galley pull away, leading a string of survivors behind her. The oars flashed, and a red silk flag with a laughing skull fluttered from her mast. For just a second I thought I saw a flash of white that might have been a long white wig. Then she was hidden in the smoke, my view further blocked by the fleeing vessels around her.
But I could guess where she was going and what great crimson ship she was to meet up with out there on the darkening seas. I had met the king of the pirates. I had no wish to meet his Red Queen, for if she had arrived beforehand, even with the Concepción, the battle would have been in doubt.
And then my uncle was bawling for me. We had some injuries to attend to—nothing serious, but he needed my help. So I turned away from the rail.