Captain Reynald closed up his glass with a snap. “Belay! We run, gentlemen. We are foxes, but they are wolves. Make the sail!”
“What d’you mean?” John heard Anslow demanding. Captain Reynald held out his spyglass with an ironical expression. Anslow stepped into view from where he’d been obscured by the mainsail and took it to see for himself. John saw him peering out at the oncoming stranger. John turned round and looked hard. He was young then and his eyes were sharp; he could just make out the tricolored flag.
“Oh bugger,” he said. “It’s a bloody Dutchman.”
“Is it?” Mr. Tudeley had another drink of rum. “Have they anything we want?”
“A lot of guns, by the look of her,” said John unhappily. Men were scrambling up into the Harmony ’s rigging as fast as they could go to let out sail, and the little Fraternity had already changed course and was skipping away like a hare.
“One side!” shouted a topman, shoving past John to run out on the yard.
“Guns,” said Mr. Tudeley in a meditative voice. “That would be cannons, am I correct?”
“Aye.”
“Of which we have only that swivel gun on the rail?”
“Aye.”
“Seems rather an oversight on Captain Reynald’s part, doesn’t it?”
“I reckon he’s been counting on speed and the sharpshooters, like he done when he took us,” said John. The Dutchman still came on, bearing down on the Harmony ; who spread her full compliment of sail at last and, tacking, took off after the Fraternity . Mr. Tudeley clutched the mast, closed his eyes and swore under his breath as they came about. John gripped hard on the topmast shrouds as they swung through the full arc, too busy looking back at the Dutchman to mind the sway.
She seemed too orderly and clean for a pirate, but there was a lean hungry look to her that didn’t square with John’s notions of a Dutch West India ship. Clearly she meant to give chase, though; for she was unfurling more of her canvas and swinging her bow to follow the Harmony .
The Harmony raced ahead, not letting her close the distance. The wind was hot as though it blew out of Hell now, screaming in the shrouds and stays. John’s hair whipped his face like wire and he turned away, but not before he saw the puff of smoke from the Dutchman’s larboard bow gun. A moment later he heard the boom , and saw the white fountain leap up in the Harmony ’s wake.
“Damn,” said John. “She’s getting our range.”
“I expect we’re doomed, then,” said Mr. Tudeley in a dull voice. He still had his eyes screwed tight shut.
“Maybe not,” said John, “Maybe not. All them guns ain’t half heavy. We’re lighter and God knows we can run.”
Mr. Tudeley made no reply, but groped for his jug and drank more rum.
The Fraternity ran, and the Harmony ran, and the Dutchman pursued them hard, though she seemed unable to close within range for her shots to count for anything. She left off shooting after awhile and just came on, grim and silent as a mastiff. She never tried to hail them; she never ran up any other colors.
“What do you suppose they want?” asked Mr. Tudeley, finishing his rum.
“Could be hunting pirates,” said John. “Just to kill us. Could be scavenging for what they can get. No way to tell ’em we haven’t got anything worth taking just now, though, if that’s the case.” He glanced over his shoulder and saw, with a shock, that the discoloration on the sky was now overarching, as though they had sped backward across the curve of the world. The sea was greened copper. The air was hot as a furnace.
John looked down and saw Mrs. Waverly standing in the companionway, watching Captain Reynald as he paced to and fro. Sejanus was at the rail with three or four others staring back at the Dutchman. John blinked and stared, and rubbed his eyes and stared again. There was another black, or at least a mulatto, standing beside Sejanus. He wore the clothes of a common sailor, and was watching not the Dutchman but Sejanus himself, who seemed to be taking no notice of him.
Captain Reynald went to the companionway and crouched down, saying something to Mrs. Waverly. She smiled bravely and said something back. He looked over his shoulder and then kissed her. John felt a knot in his heart, but he turned away. Nothing to me, he told himself.
The sea was rising. They could look out on the long swell, mountains of water rolling skyward. The Fraternity disappeared and reappeared, behind one mountain and the next. The Dutchman kept on after them like a charging bull, but even she seemed to labor now in the troughs of the waves. White water broke, and ran over the deck; John looked down again and saw Sejanus standing alone at the rail.
Mr. Tudeley said something, lifting a feeble arm to point to larboard, and John realized he had gone quite deaf for the shrieking of the wind. He looked where Mr. Tudeley was pointing and saw a dark coastline. He filled his lungs and bawled “Land ho! Land to starboard! Lee shore!”
He could hear his own voice at least, and it carried to the deck below. Captain Reynald’s head went up; he glanced to larboard and began screaming orders out, just as the first hot rain hit John in the face like a pailful of shot. He gasped and wiped his face, but the rain kept coming, in sheets, and all was gleaming-wet on board the Harmony now. Fearful he’d slip, John got down beside Mr. Tudeley and grabbed hold of the shrouds.
“Oughtn’t we to put into land?” cried Mr. Tudeley.
“No!” John yelled back. “We’d run aground and wreck!”
“Well, at least we’d be on dry land—”
“In little pieces!” John looked around for the Fraternity , but couldn’t make her out anywhere. Color had been drained away: the sea was white, the sky and driving water were white, beaten foam flying and spattering. He glanced behind then, shielding his face with one hand, and thought he saw the Dutchman ploughing nose-down into a wave. Then he was blinded, as the world erupted in a blast of purple-white light, and deafened as thunder clapped down on them like a physical blow.
When he raised his face, black rain-glistening figures were swarming all around, topmen leaving the rigging, seeming to flow like snakes down the sheets and shrouds. Dazedly he pulled at Mr. Tudeley’s shoulder.
“We got to get down!”
“No!” Mr. Tudeley clung like a limpet to his perch. “No!”
“We’ll get struck!”
“No!”
“I’m not staying!”
“No!”
Giving up, John groped over the edge for the futtock-shrouds and swung himself down. In his descent he was tilted far over one way, so that for a second he lay prone on the shrouds, and then so far the other way he was swung out in the air hanging on by his hands only, as his feet kicked the clouds of flying water. He expected any moment for Mr. Tudeley’s body to come hurtling past him, but it never happened. When his feet found the chains at last he peered up and glimpsed Mr. Tudeley up there still, silhouetted by a flash of lightning, screaming curses at God or Fate or the sea.
Waves warm as bathwater were breaking over the deck now, sheets of foam pocked by the relentless rain, and the high squealing wind was no less loud down on deck. John groped his way down from the chains and hung on to the rail. Sodden figures clung to anything standing, gasping for air as each wave receded, putting their heads down to endure the next that swept over them; he saw three men at the tiller, straining with bared teeth to steer a course, but he knew the Harmony must be driven ashore now. He looked around to see it he could make out the coastline, but another flash of lightning came.
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