William Dietrich - The Emerald Storm

Jubal rotated, looking around. No land was in sight, just a wall of clouds a few miles distant in every direction, rearing into the sky. “This is very odd.”

“It’s like being in a well.” Astiza looked thousands of feet up to that blue dome of sky.

“It’s salvation,” I tried. “The treasure isn’t cursed, it’s blessed. If ever there was a sign from God, this is it, don’t you think?”

Our ketch swayed like a crazed cradle, confused seas pitching it this way and that. Men crossed themselves.

“I’ve heard of this,” Brienne said fatalistically. “A false lull.”

“A miracle,” I insisted, with more spirit than I felt. “We need to answer this mercy with our own. When the waves subside, we’ll start a fire in the ship’s oven and make something hot for everyone, even Martel’s survivors. Jubal, divide the crew into three shifts and let some sleep. When the storm settles completely, the French sailors can take some sights and we’ll set a proper course. The stars tonight will be brilliant after such a wind; we can navigate. Let’s tie down what is loose, heave the dead overboard, and get ready to hoist a steadying sail again. Astiza, food into Harry.”

People began to do as I suggested. Four of Martel’s ruffians were dead, from wounds and exposure. These were rolled without ceremony into the sea, sinking in our wake.

I checked below. My archenemy was still breathing, and he opened his eyes to give me a weary, baleful stare. Crow and his companions had a gimlet eye as well.

“What happened to the wind?” Martel asked.

“It’s dropping.”

“What does that mean?”

“You lost, Martel.”

His head lolled, fatalistically. “Water.”

I gave him some, and the need for the kindness made me doubt my own instinct for revenge. Should I really give him to Dessalines? But he’d planned to send me a prisoner to France, hadn’t he?

I returned above, debating.

The ship had become even more ungainly without the stiff wind, so I asked Brienne which sail to risk. Canvas would steady our roll and begin to give us a feeling of command.

He glanced around. “None, monsieur.”

“Surely a staysail would help, would it not?”

He pointed. The clouds to our stern had drawn much closer, while those at our bow were drawing away. “It’s what I feared. We were simply in the storm’s eye.” The well of light was moving away from us, our ship drifting from one side of it to the other. The sky dimmed as if the Almighty were drawing a curtain. “It was not a miracle, monsieur, but cruelty. We’re not through the storm. We’re in its middle.”

And then, with doubled violence, the storm struck again.

Now the wind rose above comprehension, and visibility vanished with hope. Rain and spray combined into a kind of soup you could almost drown in, and the seas were cresting mountains. They broke with thunder that competed with the ceaseless trumpeting of the sky, and green water smashed down on Pelee as if to drive us to the bottom. The ship staggered, the mast tips cutting great arcs, and the weight of the mortar held the bow under for agonizingly long submergences. Then we’d slowly stagger to the surface again, water pouring off, each watery pummel stripping away parts of our vessel like a remorseless rasp. Boats, barrels, lines, and guns broke and disappeared. I feared the bomb supply below would break loose and roll like marbles until a strike and spark set them off, blowing us to pieces. I waited for ropes to snap, chains to break, anchors to carry away. We raced across the Caribbean with only sheds of flapping canvas, steering down swells like a sled before a force that was terrifyingly implacable.

I clutched the wheel with Captain Brienne and Jubal. “I thought the worst was over.”

“The hurricanes make a great wheel, and we’ve simply gone from one rim to another. Now it will get worse.” He pointed. “We’re too sluggish.”

I looked at the mortar. Its muzzle had become a pot, seawater slopping out. Pelee was dangerously unbalanced. The huge gun yanked against the deck every time we rolled, planks bulging and seams working. The ship wouldn’t point as intended, or ride as designed.

“What can we do?”

“Everything’s a risk. Wait, I think.”

So except for us at the wheel, everyone else retreated below. We lurched for an hour in the gloom, timbers groaning as the waves grew higher.

Then the decision was made for us. Jubal pointed. “Surf!”

I squinted. The compass was spinning so wildly as we bucked and plunged that I had no idea of our true heading, or what land we might be near. But through the miasma I could see a menacing line of white on some lee shore, marking a reef, cliff, or beach. We had to steer around it or we’d wreck, but the hurricane was pushing us remorselessly toward disaster.

I turned to Brienne. “Can we claw off the land by sailing into the wind?”

“A jib might do it, but only if we aren’t so bow heavy. We can’t sail as close to the wind as we need. The mortar is a millstone.”

“I thought you said it too dangerous to get rid of.”

“And too unwieldy not to, now. We need to chop or saw.”

“I’ll get the men!” Jubal had to shout it inches from my ear. Such was the fury of the storm.

“There’s a carpenter’s locker in my cabin,” Brienne instructed.

Jubal dropped to the main deck below. I staggered into the captain’s cabin and explained to Astiza why I was breaking out axes and saws. “We’re going to get rid of the mortar.”

She nodded, clutching a listless Harry with one arm and holding on to a ship’s rib with the other. She was seated with legs askance on the deck to brace herself as the vessel gyrated, my wife and son both physically ill. The floor was littered with smashed ceramics, flung captain’s hats, and a tin pot that rattled like a toy as it tumbled from one side to the other. Sheets of water obscured the stern windows. The roar of the waves in here was like the boom of surf in a sea cave.

“Throw away the treasure, Ethan. That will lighten us more than the mortar.”

“We can’t survive on superstition.” I wasn’t giving the loot up, not after what we’d all endured. I looked at my son, half unconscious. “We’re just having an elephant ride, Harry!”

He pressed his face to his mother’s breast in response.

Pushing aside the fear we were all doomed, I grabbed an armful of tools and went below. The hold was almost black, lit by one wildly swinging lamp. Water leaked from above and churned from the bilges below, with an ungodly stench of sewage and vomit. The noise was less catastrophic, but the blind motion was terrifying; the deck would drop as if were levitating and then lurch to slam like a bucking bull. I had to slap some of Jubal’s men to get them out of catatonic panic.

“We’re going to get rid of the mortar!” Stiffly, tentatively, holding on to the deck beams overhead, men began to rise.

I turned to a sailor. “Who’s the ship’s carpenter?”

He pointed to an older man crouched in the gloom.

“Stir yourself! Show us where to use these axes and saws, or we’re all going to drown.”

“That’s a big gun to move even in dry dock,” the carpenter muttered.

“If we chop out the pins, we can lever it overboard while timing the roll.”

“A sweet trick if you can manage it, and disaster if you can’t. If it gets away, it will crush the ship like a boot on a wedding cake.”

“And if it stays in place, it will take us down like an anchor on a balloon.”

We divided into two crews. Those in one group began hacking at the foundation of the mortar from the bottom, wielding their tools overhead as best they could. Others crawled to chop and saw at the gun base from the exposed deck above, tying themselves to a line that we stretched from mainmast to bowsprit to keep the men aboard as waves washed the deck.