“You would be correct, Mister Razor. Your Captain does not appreciate seeing you so roughly handled.” My eyes flew open, and my head spun around so fast it took the rest of me a moment to catch it. “Your Captain also does not agree with your insubordinate behavior with one of his officers. Master Green, please excuse Mister Razor and I, and find Mister Robertson, please, and update me on our position. We’ll be losing the light soon. The full moon is waning. Thank goodness we’re keeping ahead of that storm.”
“Aye, Captain.” Master Green’s heavy breaths and furrowed brow conveyed his attitude towards me in this moment, but I didn’t care if he burst into flames. If he ever put his hands on me again, I’d slit his throat, even if I had to do it while he slept.
“Ivan,” Rasmus said as he motioned to me to step aside with him, away from any possible eyes and ears on deck. “Are ye planning to fight everyone you disagree with for the rest of yer bloody life? Orders are orders, and any complaints you might have over them are irrelevant.” He planted his knuckles into his hips and leaned in and over me as he spoke, like the leviathan he was.
“Well, I’ll not be yanked around like an unruly child by anyone. I’m shocked that you’d allow anyone to treat me so,” I folded my arms across my chest and glared into those blue eyes that didn’t even blink at my retort.
“Ye see that ship? She’s bigger and most likely has at least twenty more hands than we do. Granted, she’s only ten gun ports and a few swivels on the gunnels, but I’m guessing more than a few rolling guns on her main deck. Once I raise that black, what’s to stop her captain from exerting a bit of cocky pride and opening fire on us before we can take her down?”
My mouth moved, and my eyes wandered around in their sockets, but nothing of any substance escaped me.
“Nothing, that’s what. This shipping lane is full of pirates. Granted, he probably knows them all and does a good business for those acquaintances, but he hasn’t any idea who we are.”
“Well, isn’t our objective to make them surrender?”
“What we want them to do and what they’re planning to do are two different things. We can only prepare for the worst and hope for the best. They’ve been watching us for as long as we’ve been watching them. We’ve had plenty of time to put this plan together—the same amount of time that she’s had.”
“We’re gaining on her, and we’ve not even reached seven knots yet.”
“Little Razor, we’ll be upon her within the hour. She’s outgunned and ignorant as to why a ship is following her.”
“Do you believe she suspects us as pirates?”
“I can speculate until tomorrow, but I can only control what we do now. As the hunter, it’s our job to chase her. As the hunted, it’s her job to evade us and escape or throw up her hands and give up. Her burdens are many at the moment, but none of them are ours.”
“I’m through begging for what is rightfully mine. I never intended to come aboard and cause trouble, but unless you treat me with the respect and trust I’ve earned, I’ll have no other choice than to disobey your orders. Do I realize this can, and most likely will, place a heavy strain on our marriage? In this moment, Rasmus Bergman, so close to the first of what I pray to be many prizes to come, the only answer I have for you is that…I don’t care.”
“Now you just hold on a minute there, lass…” he said while reaching out for me as I spun around and began to run, catching me by my aching arm and causing me to wince in pain. I caught myself and took a deep breath as I looked up at him, and that safe and familiar numbness came back. In an instant, my body went rigid and my face was flat. Beneath it all, the fury of every rotten and vile deed that had ever been set upon me caught fire, and as Rasmus released me, I believed he’d soon discover his hand covered in the blisters of my burning soul.
Ten
RIGHT SIDE UP
I wasn’t getting away that easily. Rasmus took two steps to my four and was blocking my path before I could catch my breath from all my ranting. “What? Are you going to snatch me again and lock me up?” I threw my wrist out at him and cocked my hip when it at last occurred to me that I was, in fact, behaving like some spoiled child. I was, however, far too proud to admit it and stood there frozen in that ridiculous stance. Regardless of my anger at him, I couldn’t find the strength to look him in the eye and held my gaze over the water as I spoke.
“No, I’ve no intention of doing such a thing, and you know damn well I never would. Now stop this nonsense, please, before we draw attention. We’ve much larger fish to catch than the prying eyes of our crew.”
I dropped my arms at my sides and let out a sigh and then stroked my throbbing arm. “Now what?”
“You’re right. If I was going to treat ye like a helpless girl, I should have sailed without ye and dealt with your wrath upon my return. I do trust ye, and ye absolutely deserve all of my respect, but if you’ll allow me the respect I, too, deserve and contain that inferno in your belly, I give you my word I’ll not stifle any further attempts on your part to act as a true member of this crew.”
I didn’t know what to say. What I did know was, once this was all over, and this day was done, I’d have to lay down my shield and face myself and the ugliness I’d shown this man. His words were like cool water poured on molten steel, and yet the level of my anger evaporated it instantly. Although my mood had changed from red to orange, my expression and squared shoulders never wavered. I couldn’t let him in.
“So, do we have an understanding, Razor?” he asked quietly, slipping his hand into the deep front pockets of his gray surcoat and retrieving his watch.
“Aye, Captain. May I ask permission to assist Mister Robertson unless, or until, my service is required in the sick berth?” I asked, looking up at him at last. The sun was setting, and when I glanced past his shoulder, the arse end of the Belle appeared so close I could reach out and slap it.
“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” I felt the tone in his voice shift from that cool water into a warm and welcoming bath and knew instinctively he was smiling. I could not bear to look.
“I’ll report immediately to Mister Robertson, Captain.” I nodded at him without raising my head and stepped around him to take my leave and set off to find James.
“Oh, one more thing, Razor; when this is over, and we’ve claimed what we came looking for, when we make port I’ll need to have more than a few words with you…privately.”
“Please, don’t do this now. Just be my Captain, and I give you my word, I’ll not cause any more trouble.” I didn’t look back.
“Mister Robertson…I mean James…what is our position?” I found him on the port side of the forecastle, reading his charts by the moonlight and shaking his head. The Belle was still at least a half mile ahead of us in the channel, but knowing what Rasmus planned to do, I assumed we weren’t quite in position yet to follow through.
“Excuse me? We’re not cooking or doctoring anymore?” he asked, slipping his charts under his arm and leaning back against the gunnel.
“Not until we’ve succeeded in boarding the Belle and taking what we came for,” I answered, leaning back next to him.
James turned facing out and over the sea and said, “We’ll continue like this a bit longer, and then, out there…we’ll move in.” He pointed in the southwest direction of the port side. The channel was flanked by two islands, each approximately a mile in length. We’d begun our course to pass between them, staying directly behind and in line with the Belle, as the depths were precarious. Fifty yards port or starboard could mean the difference between running aground or smooth sailing.
“Out there in the dark? Are you mad?” I asked. The most I could discern in the moonlight was the gentle swaying of palm trees in the distance on either island aside us.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I just may be, but if I succeed, every ship on the sea will know my name.” He grinned.
I leaned back against the gunnel, looking over at his face as the wind whipped at us. The on
ly sounds we heard were of the Jade’s keel slicing the Belle’s wake in two. “Do you have to stay out here until this is all over?”
“If I take my eyes off the water for more than a minute and miss my mark, this mission is finished. I suppose the answer to your question is yes.”
“May I ask what you’re looking for? Perhaps I can help. I have the eyesight of an eagle.”
He pulled his spyglass to his eye and pointed it at the Belle. “Oh, you’d need more than your eagle eyes to find what I’m looking for. Shit! Oh, shit, Razor, get down!” he shouted and threw himself on top of me as together we fell to the deck. The captain of the Belle must have found his cocky pride in the moonlight, as a warning shot hissed by our heads, just barely missing the Jade.
“Rasmus was right,” I said aloud to myself.
“What are you talking about?” he asked in my ear as he remained pressed heavily atop me.
“Rasmus said they might fire on us.”
The crew sprang to life immediately, and James leapt to his feet and pulled me up to join him. “It isn’t safe here, my lady. You should go below.” He backed a few feet away from me and gathered his charts, which had scattered in our fall.
“My name is Ivan, sir. Please, I assure you, none of this is foreign to me.”
“Robertson!” I heard Rasmus shout as he came towards us at the stride of a trotting horse. “How much further?” he asked, not taking notice of my presence.
“It’s difficult to say, Captain. In this light, as well as with the clouds that are beginning to move in from the approaching storm, I’m concerned that we’ll miss my mark.”
“Concern be damned, Robertson. Listen to your gut, boy.” Rasmus turned to me and said, “You’re going to be his runner. When he gives the order, take it to the helm, and don’t waste a second. Understood?”
“Yes, Captain. Upon his order,” I answered. He nodded.
“All right men, let’s look alive! Quit your nappin’ now! Master Green, get your men on those guns, and tell them not to fire at any cost, unless I give the order.” His arms waved about in the air as he bellowed. He stripped off his coat and hat and handed them to a young lad around the age of fifteen that I noticed following behind him. As the lad received what he was handed, he passed Rasmus his sword and baldric, which he quickly assembled across his body. I heard him call the young lad Jonathan.
“Do not forget what I told you, Ivan. If we don’t pull alongside in time, this will not end well.”
“I understand, Captain,” I said again.
“Captain, take a look,” James said as he handed Rasmus the spyglass.
“This would be a lot easier, Robertson, if I knew what I was looking for.”
“There, just southeast of the Belle.”
“Is that a patch of land?” Rasmus asked. The surprised upturn of his voice amused me. I hadn’t heard that tone in days.
“Yes, Captain. That’s actually a sandbar. It’s uncharted, except for my maps. I found it and marked it several months ago when the ship I was working on nearly ran aground on her. I was worried about the tides because of the full moon. When I originally logged it, the moon was barely at the crescent phase and it was a mid-afternoon low tide. As you can see, she’s barely one hundred yards long and half as wide tonight.”
“One hundred yards? That isn’t much of a target, lad!”Rasmus exclaimed, handing James his spyglass back.
“Captain, at low tide, she’s over twice that. The tide has not yet reached its peak height, and if my maps are accurate, which, based on my experience in this channel, I have no reason to believe that they are not, we have approximately thirty minutes before that sandbar disappears underwater. Not to mention, with that storm chasing us, the tide could come in even quicker.”
“Full canvas, Master Green! We’ll block her and cut off her wind. That oughtta slow her down,” Rasmus cried out. “Let’s embrace her starboard side, Master Green, and don’t hoist the colors until the bowsprit crosses her stern.”
“What about the warning shot, Captain?” James asked. “She’ll most likely fire on us again.”
“What’s your point, Robertson?” Rasmus asked.
“Well, sir, I’m familiar with navigating merchant ships. I’m not accustomed to being shot at.”
Rasmus reached into his baldric and pulled one of his loaded pistols. “Not that this will do a heap of good, but it might keep ye from feeling helpless,” he said, placing the pistol in James’s hand.
“Captain, I’m afraid I’ve never fired a weapon like this before. I’m a swordsman, sir,” James said, awkwardly holding the pistol by the barrel.
“Give it to Razor. He knows how to fire it.” My eyes, which had been locked on the position of the barely visible sandbar in the darkness, snapped open like clamshells, and I spun my head around. When I met Rasmus’s gaze, a restrained smile covered my lips, and I pressed them tightly together. I could not, however, control the pleasure in my eyes; nor could he, as I removed the dangling weapon from James’s hand, stuffed it in my belt, and spun back to the gunnel. There was no way I was losing sight of that lump of sand.
We gained on her fast. The closer we came to her, the difficulty of holding the spyglass and my balance as we crossed over the swells from her wake caused my straining leg muscles to tremble. I was alive, and I believed I could feel every drop of blood in my body racing through my veins as my heart thumped and pushed it out. Then, when the first of a barrage of musket fire began whizzing over my head, I was afraid I wouldn’t be alive much longer.
“Razor, give me the spyglass and get to the helm. There’s no more time. We have to push her hard to port now or change our plan immediately!” James took the spyglass and I flew from the forecastle to the helm in a matter of seconds and gave the order to come around tightly starboard and push Belle, if necessary, to force her hard to port.
The risk of doing this in the dark, with the added danger of the damage we may incur due to coming so close to ramming her, was now an afterthought. The rush of coming alongside so close we could almost touch her, and watching her crew scrambling as our gun ports opened and every swivel gun on our deck was manned and turned, aiming right at them, was palpable. The smell of gunpowder still lingered in the air from her fruitless musket blasts, and then, the eeriest and most miraculous thing happened. That wind was back.
I looked up, and one by one, every sail on every mast filled until the rattle of the lines ceased and they were pulled so tight I feared they’d snap. That marvelous exhale from God himself gave the Jade just enough of a shove to nose into the bow of the Belle, and like a rutting horse, she brushed firmly against it, and the Belle began to turn portside.
The crew of the Jade erupted in cheers and howls of victory as the Belle came about so sharply she began listing to port. I gasped at the thought she might topple over, but that bloody bastard wind caught her and pushed her upright. Fortunately, that gust also gave her a hard shove headlong and due west. With the next gust, like a bow releasing an arrow, she shot forward, aiming dead on for the sand bar.
As we veered off, and the helmsman struggled to hold our course, Rasmus blew by me as if shot from a cannon and took the wheel. “Hold her tight, man! We have to slow her down before we come about, or we’ll go belly up!” he wailed as he pulled to keep her bow pointing south and parallel to the now almost invisible stretch of land. “Green, get those sails reefed and tie ‘em off! Where’s Robertson? What’s our speed? We can’t come about until we get her down to four knots!”
Rasmus’s cries began to fade as I ran back to the quarterdeck and up the gangway, when I heard the screams and shouts being carried across the black water from the Belle. She was a good two hundred yards away now and seconds from grounding herself on the sandbar, and if she didn’t lodge herself there, she would on the island. In what was left of the moonlight, I made out the figures of men leaping from the decks into the water as she closed in on the mound of sand. Then, she slammed forward, and her bow rose out o
f the water.
We were turning smoothly starboard, and as I lost my view of the Belle in the darkness, I felt a hand resting on my shoulder as Robertson handed me his spyglass again. “Here, Eagle Eyes. Tell me what you see.”
I pushed the glass to my right eye and said, “She’s aground. She’s all in one piece, but her nose is up quite a bit and she’s tilting about twenty degrees port. How long before we’re able to board her?”
“First, we have to disappear. Here,” he said, pulling the cork from what appeared to be a bottle of fine rum and handed it to me. “Well done, Razor. Well done.”
After a good swig, I scrunched up my face and handed it back. “I didn’t do anything, James.”
“Oh, but you did. You most certainly did. So how does it feel to have yet another feather to add to your cap?”
“Ha,” I scoffed at him as I took his bottle again and swung it towards the Belle. “My only concern is boarding that ship.”
“That is, if she can stay right side up long enough before the tide goes out again.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, cocking my right eyebrow.
“In about two hours, if she’s lucky, the tide will reach its peak and lift her belly out of the sand. Of course, that depends on how deeply she’s wedged in there.”
“But…I know there has to be more,” I said, taking another swig.
“The point is, Ivan, look at her. You’re right, she’s leaning at least twenty degrees to port, but as the tide comes all the way in, it will assist her in righting herself. So, we need to get our boats in the water as soon as possible, if we’re to make her ours.”
“Oh, she’s already ours. We’ve only but to inform her of that fact.” I winked and took another drink. “So, how do you propose we make this ship disappear?”
“Easy on that, now; you’ll need your wits about you if you plan to be on that boarding party. Oh, and trust me, Ivan. I’m very good at making ships disappear.” He snatched the bottle from me and handed me the spyglass again. “Starboard, just around that ridge. Go on, runner. Get that order to the helm.”
Jaded Tides (The Razor's Adventures Pirate Tales) Page 8