James Nelson - The Pirate Round

She looked up at him, her face waxy in the light of the lantern, which also swung in wild arcs, throwing crazy shadows around the small sleeping compartment. Her long hair was tangled and matted, and it looked as if she had not been entirely successful in keeping it clear while she vomited.

For a moment her expression was pleading, vulnerable, and Marlowe thought she was going to express her unfailing love for him, there on what she might believe to be her deathbed. But she did not. Instead she flopped onto her back and closed her eyes as the ship rolled and the bunk swung so hard that it thumped on the overhead.

When the Galley had come upright again, she said simply “Go to hell, Thomas,” so soft Marlowe could scarcely hear.

Well, damn you, then. You shall be sorry, you ungrateful wench, if we all die this night, Marlowe thought, and without another word he turned and left her there.

Back down the alleyway and into the waist, past groups of men huddled in what shelter they could find. Nothing to do at the moment, no sail to trim, and the ship seemed to be standing up to the storm’s onslaught. Only the helm to man and the pumps to work, and beyond that there was only to stay awake and alert, because their happy stasis could be torn away by a single rogue wave or gust of wind.

For all that black night Marlowe prowled the quarterdeck, standing sometimes in the lee of the cloth lashed up in the mizzen shrouds, sometimes talking with the helmsmen or with Dinwiddie or Honey-man to see how the vessel fared, sometimes making his way down into the waist to give the men some encouragement and to see that nothing had been overlooked. But the Galley was strong and well set up, and the crew he had managed to piece together was competent and able, if not so numerous as he might have wished, and all was well.

Two bells in the morning watch, five A.M., and Marlowe realized that the pumps were sounding louder. It took his fatigue-shrouded brain a moment to realize that this was due to a lessening in the wind, a diminishing in the omnipresent howl that had tormented them all the dark hours.

With that realization came the awareness that the sea was settling down a bit. It was still a mad, pitching, rolling, yawing ride through the big swells, but Marlowe realized it was not as bad as it had been an hour before, and an hour hence, he had reason to hope, it would be better yet.

Dawn came around four bells, no more than a gray version of the night, with the sun entirely hidden behind the impenetrable cloud. The sea was the color of lead, rising up all around, row after row of watery hillocks that obscured everything beyond as the Elizabeth Galley sank down in the space between them and then gave a brief glimpse of the horizon as she rose up again. But the menace of the night was gone, the tension that came with not knowing when the next wave would be on them or how big it might be.

Dinwiddie sent lookouts forward and to either beam, there now being some hope that they might see something, if there was anything to see. Marlowe doubted there would be. They had been running fast away from the English coast all night. Nothing was under their bow now but open water, clear to the Americas.

He sat wearily down on a quarter bitt. His legs ached, and his skin was chafed raw in several places from his salt-water-soaked clothing. He was thinking about breakfast.

Then the forward lookout shouted, “Son of a bitch!” his voice edged in panic.

Marlowe shot to his feet, leaped up on the bitt, hand on the mizzen shrouds, looking forward. Water, nothing but water.

“What is it, you poxed whoreson?” Dinwiddie shouted.

“Ship! Damn me! A wreck!” was all the lookout could splutter. The Elizabeth Galley came up again as the sea passed under. There, below her now, unseen in the trough of the waves until that moment, was a ship, or what was left of one.

Dismasted, half sunk, lying almost on her beam ends, her bottom toward the Galley, her deck on the far side. Glistening in the dull light, water breaking over her. A ship, lying at a right angle to the Galley, like something that had risen up from the grave, her stern under the Galley’s bow, directly in their path.

“Starboard your helm! Starboard!” Marlowe shouted. The helmsmen shoved the tiller over. The Galley began to turn as the wave passed under and the wreck rose up above them. And then the next roller had the Galley, driving her forward, and the two ships struck.

THE GALLEY ’S spritsail yard hit first, dragging across the quarterdeck of the drifting hulk, then catching in the shattered taffrail, tangling inextricably in the jagged wood, as if the dying ship were reaching out, one last desperate grasp for help.

Honeyman was at the bow, casting off the spritsail lifts and braces, but Marlowe could already feel the Elizabeth Galley pause as the wreck held her in its grip.

“Shift your helm!” The tiller went over again, and the Galley turned, just a bit. The wind and sea were driving the Galley fast, and now the waterlogged wreck was trying to hold her back.

He could see the bowsprit flexing under the enormous pressure, could see the spritsail yard bending, wondered what would give first.

And then the spritsail yard was torn clean away, pulling free from the bowsprit with a cracking of wood and snapping of lines. Bits of rigging whipped through the air as the big yard was wrenched off. The Elizabeth Galley leaped forward, out of the wreck’s grip.

“Midships!” Marlowe shouted, and then the Elizabeth Galley’s starboard bow slammed into the wreck’s transom. The ship shuddered, the waterlogged hulk as unyielding as solid rock. The cathead crumpled under the impact, and the bulwark stove in. Men ran aft as the ship dragged along the wreck, tearing itself up.

Marlowe stared, transfixed by the sight of the great round white bottom of the ship. The deck was still lost to his view, the ship listing away from the Elizabeth Galley.

The starboard fore channel hit next, tangled up in the battered stern section of the hulk. Marlowe could see the three forward shrouds grow taut and tauter under the strain, and then something snapped, and the shrouds went slack again, ripped apart like old twine. If even one more shroud was torn free, they would loose the mast.

The next sea lifted the Galley’s stern and began to shove it around. She turned sideways to the sea, pivoting on the forward section that was locked to the wreck. Broadside to the waves, a bigger sea might have rolled them over, but the waves were smaller now, choppier, and Marlowe did not see a watery end coming.

The channel wrenched free from the hulk, and the sea drove the Galley past, and they were downwind of the drifting menace, safe, beyond the threat.

The deck of the dead ship came into view, and Marlowe was able to see something of her in the imperfect light of that early morning. A big vessel, an Indiaman perhaps. The lee bulwarks were underwater-her hull must have been half filled. She had an hour to live, perhaps a bit more, and then she would be gone.

On the stump of her mainmast, rising fifteen feet above the deck, a British merchantman’s ensign, torn to rags, set upside down. A pathetic signal of distress, as if anyone would see it or would have been able to render any help if they had.

Marlowe did not like to think of the horrible death that had attended the crew, thrashing in the bitter-cold water at night, the nightmare of every sailor.

Then, just as the big ship was disappearing from sight behind the next steep wave, one that would leave her farther beyond the Galley’s reach, he saw motion, color, something moving along the deck. He leaped into the main shrouds, raced aloft, eyes locked on the wreck, trying to gain some height, to see before she was lost behind the wall of water.