TWENTY-EIGHT

THE MONA PASSAGE WAS A STRAIT CONCEIVED BY THE ATLANTIC Ocean and Caribbean currents and, some would say, the devil. It was an area of shallow banks over which two great seas exchanged their waters. The fisherman along the Porto Rican coast knew it could be docile, in which case fishing was good; or treacherous, in which case they refused to go out. It was not unusual to see twelve foot seas and thunderous surf colliding with the shoreline.

The wind blew solidly from the east as Rascal drove past the headland of Porto Rico. As they sailed further inside the wind pushed the sea against the unpredictable currents and the resulting maelstrom threw Rascal this way and that, which caused Beauty to put two men on the wheel and furl the topsails.

Mona Island was well out of sight ahead, and would be until tomorrow morning, being about two hundred miles down the passage. From what Fallon knew it was uninhabited, although Barclay’s rumor of a pirate haunt made him uneasy. He knew of pirate and privateer attacks in Mona Passage, of course, but the waters were so unpredictable and, to his knowledge, the islands so uninhabitable that he assumed no one would take up residence there. He had only ever seen Mona Island as a dot in his telescope, having always given it a wide berth. Now he wanted to sail closer, because now Micah Woodson was dead and whoever killed him might have some connection to the place.

The day proved uneventful after they entered the passage, but Beauty posted two lookouts against the possibility of action in the offing, for this was a major channel through which many merchant vessels and ships of several navies passed. But, today, nothing. It made the discovery of Micah Woodson stranger, and somehow sadder, for Fallon worried they would never find out why he died.

At one bell in the morning watch Fallon awoke with a start. It was still very dark outside his stern windows but his heart raced with expectation at what the day might bring. Worst case, today would see Rascal through the Mona Passage into the Caribbean Sea with English Harbor no more than three day’s sail away. Best case, well, what would best case be? Fallon had to admit he was itching for a fight. He looked at Elinore, still blissfully asleep. What was he thinking, bringing her along? And then he remembered he’d made his own bed in that regard.

Beauty had the watch on deck and all was well. Her black coat made her mostly invisible in the darkness, but her teeth showed a white smile as Fallon approached the binnacle.

“Wind has dropped some during the night, Nico,” she said. Indeed, the wind had moderated in the night but backed to the northeast, which would put Mona Island to windward when they got up to it. Fallon looked around the ship as the black shapes slowly greying in the coming light. In two hours’ time they might well be in battle, the great guns booming out and shot screaming at them. Or they might simply sail past a lonely island in the middle of a turbulent sea, the mystery of Micah Woodson forever in the past.

“I’ve been thinking, Nico” she said. “The chart shows only one possible anchorage on Mona Island, up in the northwest corner. It’s a poor anchorage and relatively shallow, looks like, but if a ship wanted to lay in wait in the Mona Passage that would be the place, in the lee of the island.”

Fallon peered into the darkness and pictured the island in his mind, the anchorage against the steep wall in quiet water, a ship just waiting.

“You’re right,” said Fallon. “But if a ship is in that anchorage she would likely be anchored fore and aft with her guns trained on the entrance. It wouldn’t be easy getting to her. Any ship that tried it would be a long time tacking against the wind and even poor gunners would have it easy.” And then a pause. “It would be better to make her come out.”

“I agree,” said Beauty. “Assuming she’s even there.”

Fallon considered the options. One thing he knew: pirates elected their captain to make them rich. So, assuming a pirate vessel was even there, the crew would look to the captain to challenge Rascal.

But would he? Pirates attacked ships they could overwhelm by boarding quickly. Rascal would look well-found, well-armed and fast through a telescope, Beauty and Barclay saw to that. But… here came an idea now, raising the hair on his arms and working its way into his brain.

Make it look easy.“

Beauty,” he said, trying to simultaneously give voice to the idea and interrogate it at the same time. “Let’s assume there’s a pirate anchored there. What if we scandalize Rascal? Hang laundry over the railing to hide some of the gun ports. Luff the sails. Let the ship wallow and drift about her course, like a yacht on holiday. And Beauty, we could make bunting out of signal flags to fly at the gaff. Something frivolous and merry!”

The bunting did it for her.

“If that doesn’t get his attention, he’s not much of a pirate,” she said with a laugh. “Now we just have to figure out what to do when he gets alongside, for I assume you don’t want to be too quick with the guns since he’ll have the weather gauge.”

“Right,” said Fallon. If Rascal revealed the trick too soon the pirate ship could easily bear off or wear ship and be away. In the scenario Fallon was envisioning Rascal would be at the very disadvantage he liked to put other ships at, unable to head up to close battle on his terms.

“Call Cully aft and let’s put our heads together,” he said. “We need to bring the pirates close.”

Barclay had come unsteadily on deck while Fallon and Beauty were conferring and he’d caught the gist of the conversation. In the dim light he could just see the familiar look on Fallon’s face when an idea came to him, unformed fully but wicked in its mischief.

“How close do you want to be to the island, Nico?” Barclay asked.

“Close enough, Mr. Barclay,” said Fallon, “for a ship to see my nightshirt.”

Rascal sailed brightly along for another hour until the outline of Mona Island could be seen from the north side. A spur of land jutted out to the west, and it would be behind that spur where the anchorage would be found. The island itself was a high plateau, virtually flat on top with no distinguishing features save its sheer cliffs. Before the island could be seen from the deck, Beauty began Rascal’s transformation.

Pieces of laundry were hung over the windward rail to flap in the breeze. Fallon, in fact, donated his nightshirt, much to the crew’s delight. The carpenter brought up a strand of bunting his mates had made that stretched along the backstay from the stern to the mainmast. Both main-sail and foresail were drawing poorly and the helmsman was under orders to steer large, over-compensating for wind and wave as he tried to keep course. It was as poor a showing as Rascal had ever made, and Fallon was a trifle embarrassed, but only a trifle.

“Beauty,” he said excitedly as the island came closer, “no telescopes from the deck. I want to appear like we haven’t a care in the world. But have the lookout shout down what he sees the moment he sees it.”

Fallon had considered ordering Elinore to stay below; well, an order was too strong for her. So he’d tried asking and, predictably, she’d only smiled and promised to stay out of the way.

The minutes crept by all the more slowly since Rascal was sailing so poorly. In fact, it was over an hour later that the ship came abreast of the spur of land protecting the anchorage. The crew was idling on deck on Beauty’s orders, and some were even dancing on the bow with a fiddle—Cully’s contribution.

“Deck there!” came the call that confirmed Fallon’s instincts. “Ship at the anchorage! Wait—two ships! A schooner and sloop!”

That was what Fallon was hoping for, and he knew without knowing that the sloop was Ceres, Woodson’s ship. The puzzle of his death was solved. It remained to be seen whether both ships would come out to fight, or just the schooner, or none. He asked Barclay to go below, much to the old sailing master’s displeasure. But the fighting might be thick and the chance of Barclay being hurt or even killed was too great. Besides, practically speaking, a man with a cane would only be in the way.

“Deck! Ships are weighing!”

That was the news Fallon was eager to hear. The pirates would be sailing out of the anchorage soon, the wind behind them, aiming to cut off Rascal before she could get away. Of course, Fallon had no intention of getting away.

He looked at Beauty and smiled a maniacal sort of smile. Then he looked the length of his ship. He could see the cutlasses and boarding pikes and pistols assembled along the base of the windward rail. He could see the powder and slow match at each gun. And he could see the gun crews laying on their sides so as not to be seen. And, finally, he could see Elinore at the windward railing, her blond hair blowing about her face, and he realized with a start that she was doing her part to add to the picture of a yachting holiday. Certainly, no self-respecting pirate or privateer could resist a beautiful woman who appeared so care-free and within reach.

Now he could see the pirate ships sailing out of the anchorage from the deck, the schooner in the lead as was to be expected. She was about Rascal’s size, but likely packed with almost twice as many men. Then came Ceres, a remembered ship, of course, and dangerous in a 2–1 fight if her captain was tactically minded. It was likely he was not, thought Fallon, having just been promoted less than a week ago when Ceres was taken. But, at any rate, Fallon would know soon as the ships were sailing free and getting closer with each second. Elinore casually gave him a glance, and a tight smile as well, and went below.

Barely two cables separated the pirate schooner from Rascal when she fired a shot across Rascal’s bow. Immediately, Beauty ordered the sheets let fly and Rascal all but stopped dead in the water. Beauty stood by the binnacle watching the pirates come closer, no doubt smelling blood. She looked at Cully standing quietly behind the guns as if he was totally unconcerned over the impending fight. The crew was attentive, ready for orders, their weapons at their feet and the vision of prizes in their heads.

Now the pirate schooner was up to them and Fallon could see her burly captain standing at the binnacle, his cutlass in the air and a naval officer’s hat on his head. Fallon assumed it was Woodson’s, and set his jaw before nodding to Cully.

Quickly, Rascal’s guns were run out, pushing aside the laundry hanging over the gun ports, and just as a mass of pirate humanity gathered to clamber aboard Rascal, Cully yelled “Fire!”

Grapeshot ripped through the boarders like iron spray as their blood spurted in all directions and they fell back on their mates to writhe their lives away. The pirates were stunned senseless as the ships came together, only it was the Rascals who threw out the grappling hooks and leapt over the railings. They screamed like Fallon had never heard them scream, like bloodthirsty wild things unleashed. Fallon was quickly over the side and began hacking with his sword, screaming like a madman himself, and turned towards the binnacle to find the captain. The pirate crew had recovered their wits and were fighting as if their lives depend on it, which was true, the Rascals giving no quarter and accepting no surrender. Fallon trampled bodies and slipped in blood until he reached the captain, who was swinging his cutlass in a wide arc to counter Cully’s boarding pike. Fallon pushed past Cully just as the captain’s cutlass clanged off the tip of the pike. Now Fallon’s sword began an arc of its own but his arm was bumped by Cully and the slash went harmlessly high towards Woodson’s hat. Suddenly, the captain raised up to bellow a primal roar of defiance and those few inches of new height meant Fallon’s sword cut inevitably lower. Cut, in fact, the top of the captain’s head off, his scalp flying with Woodson’s hat to the deck. The captain looked stunned at the blow, and the blood had not even begun flowing down his face before Cully drove his boarding pike through his chest and out his back.

Beauty saw the captain fall and saw Cully pick up the dead man’s cutlass and stagger to continue the fight, followed by Fallon. She also saw Ceres coming up on the windward side of the pirate schooner and clap on to join the battle. It was a natural instinct, perhaps, but a tactical mistake, for it failed to take advantage of Rascal’s exposed starboard side. Beauty had held back part of Rascal’s crew for just such an event, and now ordered them to leap to the schooner and cross the bloody deck to attack this new threat. They crashed into the fight and screamed the louder for being left impotent for so long. The other Rascals took heart from the infusion of manpower and surged against the pirates, who were dying in heaps, their pitiful moans unheard in the storm of shouting.

At last, the remaining pirates who weren’t dead or dying gathered at the bow of the schooner for one last stand. But here was Fallon calling for them to surrender, surrender or die, and slowly they gave up and threw down their weapons. Fallon knew, however, that they were merely putting off death for a later time because they would inevitably be hung. Pirates always were.

The prisoners were locked below decks, with guards posted to be sure they stayed there. Already, wounded Rascals were being taken back aboard their own ship and down to Colquist, who would soon be up to his armpits in blood. Elinore was with him, as well, to help bandage the wounded under his direction.

Fallon slumped against the railing, exhausted. His men had fought like demons and surprise had been on their side, the pirate captain’s greed overcoming his suspicion.

“Are you all right, Nico?” asked Beauty, who had joined him at the railing. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt,” said Fallon. “I was glad to see the last wave of Rascals come over the side, I can tell you that. It was even odds until then.”

“Deck there!” came the shout from the lookout. “Men on shore waving their shirts!”

And so they were. The remaining crew of Ceres were taken off the island just before evening, hungry and dehydrated after being put ashore to fend for themselves once their ship was captured. They had existed on iguana and rainwater for over a week. Fallon was looking forward to interviewing them to learn what had happened and how. But that was for later.

First, he searched the pirate captain’s cabin but found nothing of significance. The schooner was Céleste, but there were no records and no log of her activities. It was the typical pirate way. He had the ship searched thoroughly but nothing was found—at first.

Then, in the deepest part of the hold, a chest. It was brought on deck and the Rascals gathered around as the carpenter took an iron bar and forced the lock off along with the hasp. Inside was a mound of silver specie that must have come off an earlier prize. It was not a fortune, but it was half a fortune, and the Rascals would be wealthier than they’d ever been as a result. Fallon resolved to give the families of his dead crewmen a fair share, and Ceres’ crew a share, as well, for they deserved to have something for their ordeal.

Now there was a general buzz of excitement as Beauty allocated prize crews to the two captured ships. They each had enough stores in their holds to reach St. Kitts, for Fallon intended to call on Commodore Truxton to report Woodson’s death and drop off Ceres’ crew before sailing for English Harbor. He was taking a chance on missing Caleb Visser if the American got lucky and quickly caught an outbound ship, but St. Kitts was on the way and he didn’t plan to stay long.

And, indeed, as the waves rolled into a blue evening the three ships were uncoupled at last and caught the freshening east wind to make their way south out of the Mona Passage. Colquist labored under a swinging lantern and against a heeling ship to save the lives he could. Elinore worked beside him, bandaging wounds and talking softly to the wounded. There were two Rascals dead and over twenty wounded, but the pirates had lost almost sixty men, most falling to the surprise broadside of grapeshot. Many more would die before Colquist could save them, and for now they were lying about Rascal’s deck crying in pain or mercifully unconscious.

It was deep in the middle watch when Fallon went below at last, only to find Elinore dozing on the stern cushions, her dress a bloody rag. He called for soap and water and she sleepily allowed him to bathe her before she collapsed in his cot. His last sight before falling into a deep sleep on the stern cushions was his nightshirt that had been returned to the back of his cabin door, blackened by gunpowder and shredded by grapeshot.