by Geoff Rodkey
“On the mark!”
I felt Quint’s thick arm swing around my right shoulder—slowly the first time, measuring his target, then so hard my hands tingled when the mallet struck the center of the plug.
My wrist was screaming.
Two more mallet strikes. I could feel the plug burrowing deep into the tight hole. The razor spray of water died.
Three more strikes, and the plug was flush with the hull.
“NEXT!”
As I straightened up, light began to bleed into the hold, and for the first time I could see the hull in front of me. Kira had finally gotten the lantern lit—it was swinging from a hook by the companionway, casting jittery shadows on the walls—and now she was wading through the water to help Guts, who was trying to stanch a gushing hole along the forward carpenter’s walk.
I turned to search for another hole. I didn’t have to look far. There was one just a few feet behind us, at the same level as my head.
I splashed through knee-deep water to get to it. This one was eighteen—the size of the Ripper’s cannon—and I had to stand on a crate to plug it.
That took precious time. When we finished and moved on to the next hole, the water was up to the middle of my thighs.
By the time Quint and I had plugged our third hole, I was nearly waist deep in seawater—and I had to press my ear to the hull and listen for the steady shhhhh that gave me a fix on the next one.
It was down low, a foot beneath the water level. I had to unhitch Quint, dive underwater, and fix the plug in place with my bare hands. It took forever to pound it in using my hands and feet.
Sputtering and soaked, with the water up over my waist, I put my ear to the hull again.
This time, there was nothing. Just the distant roar of cannon that promised more would come.
CHAPTER 11
Down in the Hold
“BUCKETS DOWN!” Ismail called out from the top of the steps. “Rations coming.”
We’d been running a bucket line—passing pails of water up the stairs and dumping them out an open portal—for so long that we were getting a second meal. For all its terrors, there was no fear of going hungry in combat. If you could keep food down, it was yours for the taking.
Early on, we’d had to stop twice to plug fresh cannonball holes, and even with the pump running full speed above us, the water level hardly seemed to budge. But a little after dawn, which had arrived so gray and bleak that we still had to burn a lantern in the hold, my uncle had appeared to survey the situation.
He took one glance at the water level and pulled two full gun crews off their weapons to join the line. Our pace picked up dramatically after that, and by now, the water was low enough that my bucket had started scraping the deck when I filled it.
I sank down on the companionway steps next to Guts and took two biscuits from a pail as it went by. It was quiet enough that I could hear the men above us chewing their food. The Grift’s guns hadn’t fired in hours, and it had been almost that long since we’d heard enemy fire.
Which wasn’t actually comforting, because I’d learned that the cannonballs traveled faster than the sound of their firing. It could be dead silent, and there still might be one speeding right at you. By the time you heard the boom, it was too late.
The battle wasn’t over. According to Quint, it had barely even started. Down in the hold, we couldn’t see anything, and no one had bothered to tell us what was happening. But once the cannon fire had stopped, Quint had explained to us what he thought was the situation, in breathless grunts between the buckets he was slinging.
“Cap’s runnin’ ’em out. . . . Short-Ear men-o’-war ain’t . . . so fast as the others . . . If he makes ’em chase us awhile . . . slow ones’ll fall behind . . . we can fight ’em two-three at a time . . . ’stead of all at once.
“Just hope the cap remembers,” Quint had wheezed, glowering at the patch he’d built on the port side of the hold, “ . . . she don’t run like she used to.”
“She’s holding up fine so far,” I said.
“’Cause there’s water in her belly . . . slowin’ her down . . . Once this lot’s bailed . . . top speed gonna be a sight faster . . . put a lot o’ stress on that patch . . . ’specially turnin’ to port.”
At the moment, though, the patch looked solid.
“How’s yer wrist?” Guts asked me.
“It’s okay.” There was a splint on it now, which didn’t make it hurt any less but at least gave me some use of the hand. The surgeon had tied it on me a few hours back, after he’d taken care of the most serious injuries and come around to check on us. By then, my wrist was so stiff and swollen I could barely bend it, and it was a relief to get a splint on it so I didn’t have to worry about it giving way in a tight spot.
I was still chewing my last biscuit when the order came.
“STATIONS!”
The gunners who’d been on the bucket line were gone in seconds, back to their cannon. I was wondering whether the four of us should keep bailing when Ismail yelled down an order.
“READY IN THE HOLD!”
Kira was closest to Quint, so he climbed into her harness as Guts and I rushed down into the hold. We collected our sacks of plugs and waited for the barrage to come.
Minutes passed. Nothing happened. The ankle-deep water sloshed gently against the hold near our feet. The shadowy lamplight cast moving lines across the faces of the others.
Kira looked as frightened as I felt. Guts’s face was twitching up a storm.
The minutes stretched out. The steady pitch of the ship as it cut through the waves might have made me drowsy if my heart hadn’t been beating so fast.
Not knowing was the worst part. How far away was the enemy? Were we still running from them? I wanted to clamber upstairs and poke my head out on the deck so I could figure out what was going on.
But it wasn’t my job to know. My job was to stand there and wait.
The first hint we got that the ship was turning came when the water began to run over our feet toward the starboard hull. Within a few seconds, the deck had tilted to starboard at such a steep angle that I had to reach a hand out to steady myself against the stack of water barrels.
If we’d been running from our enemies, we were turning back toward them now.
The ship slowly began to roll back to level. Then a sharp lurch jerked us to port.
“Mind the speed . . . ,” breathed Quint.
I looked over at the hammered planks of his patch. They seemed stable enough.
Then the Grift’s guns roared over our heads, rattling the whole ship and sending my heart leaping into my mouth.
We braced ourselves for the answering shot. But there was only a distant rumble. The enemy volley had missed us.
Over the next ten minutes, the Grift made several hairpin turns, its cannon thundering after each one. The turns came so close together that the water at our feet slapped against itself in confused, unruly waves.
I was starting to feel seasick. It might not have been a good idea to eat so much.
The enemy cannon were rumbling constantly, the sound rising with every volley. But at first, nothing hit us.
Then there was a crash and shudder far above us, and as the cannon thunder faded, a voice called out:
“CARPENTER ON THE WEATHER DECK!”
Kira ran to the companionway and disappeared up the steps with Quint on her back. Guts and I were left alone to man the hold.
The cannon kept roaring and the ship kept making its jerky, unpredictable turns, the enemy fire growing louder every second. By the time the next round struck the decks above us, the space between the impact and the thunder had disappeared. Our enemies were close now.
Another round slammed into the upper decks, this one followed by a series of urgent orders, not so much bellowed as screamed from somewhere above.
My stomach was queasy. I tried not to be sick.
Then my eye fell on one of the dozen plugs we’d hammered into the hold.
It wasn’t flush anymore.
I looked around. None of them were.
The plugs are coming loose.
“GUTS! THE PLUGS!”
I ran for the closest one, mallet in hand, and pounded it flat.
I turned toward the next closest plug. Guts was already there, banging it back into place.
I moved on to the next one.
And the next.
And the next.
The deck tilted up to meet me as the ship carved out another steep turn to port, rolling onto its side.
Gravity flattened me against the port hull. There was one last plug, far away at the aft end of the ship. I could see it coming loose under the pressure created by the ship’s leaning hard into the turn.
Guts saw it at the same moment I did. He was much closer.
“ON IT!”
I was starting toward him, praying the ship would come out of its turn and stop stressing the hull, when a spray of water erupted in front of me, right at the spot of Quint’s two-foot-wide patch.
At first, I thought a cannonball had hit us. But the spray was too thin and wide, and nothing had struck the water barrels opposite the breach.
Then I realized what it was.
Quint’s patch is failing. If it broke open, we’d sink in a matter of minutes.
I lurched over and began to hammer at it.
The hammering didn’t do any good. The spray kept coming. It was getting worse.
The patch was giving way.
“GUTS!”
I fell against the patch, throwing the whole weight of my body at it.
The seawater kept spraying out on either side of me. Through the curtain of water, I could see Guts at the far end of the hull. He’d just reached the last plug, his mallet raised to hammer it flush, and he was glancing back over his shoulder at me with a look of surprise.
Then there was an explosive pop as the plug rocketed out of its hole and struck Guts in the head, knocking him off his feet.
A fat column of water roared through the hole.
I started to move off the patch—and felt it bulge against my back, threatening to burst open.
“GUTS?!”
I blinked through the spray, waiting to see him get up.
But he didn’t.
“GUUUTS!”
He was on his back, the water pouring down on top of him.
He wasn’t moving.
I started to take my weight off the patch again. The spray of water accelerated in all directions. The whole thing was coming apart. I fell back against it and flailed away with the mallet.
As I opened my mouth to scream, the Grift’s cannon began to roar again, drowning out my voice and making the whole side of the hull shudder.
“FOUR IN THE HOLD! FOUR IN THE HOLD!” It was the emergency order. If anyone heard it, they’d come running.
I kept screaming it at the top of my lungs.
The cannon were still roaring. I could barely hear my own screams over the noise.
“FOUR IN THE HOLD!”
Guts was motionless on his back, the water cascading down on him, rising up over his ears.
“FOUR IN THE HOLD!” I pounded away at the patch as I screamed, but it was pushing back harder now. The water wanted in. It was stronger than I was.
And Guts was going to drown.
“FOUR IN THE HOLD!”
The cannon roared. I kept screaming for help.
I couldn’t let the water in. I had to keep pushing back.
Guts was drowning. Just a few feet from me. And I couldn’t move to help him.
“FOUR IN THE HOLD!”
There were pirates on the stairs. Running for me. The first one slammed into the patch with the full weight of his body. The second one squeezed past him and lowered a shoulder against the other side.
“Get on the breach!” the first one yelled at me.
I slipped past the second man and started for Guts. Two other pirates were headed for him at the same time, coming around from the other side of the barrels. The first one got there ahead of me and scooped up Guts, throwing him over his shoulder. I got a glimpse of my friend’s face—eyes shut, skin ghostly white, red and pink smears of blood mixed with seawater running down his face from a fat gash over his eyebrow—and the pirate was turning to run him upstairs and I was about to follow them off when the other pirate yelled, “On the breach!” and I realized the hole was still gushing water and it was my job to plug it.
The mallet was in my hand. The plug that had struck Guts in the head was near my feet, bobbing in the water. I handed the mallet to the pirate, picked up the plug, and attacked the flood of water that had hurt my friend.
I got it over the breach, and the pirate hammered it home. Then we hammered in a second plug behind the first one, just to be safe.
By now, there were four pirates holding the weakened patch in place, and a new bucket line was forming to bail the hold. Quint and Kira had arrived, and Quint was shouting orders at the pirates on the patch. When he saw me, he pointed to the ceiling and yelled, “Find the cap! Tell ’im the patch is bust! Take her down to six and no turns to port!”
As I turned to run for the companionway, my eyes met Kira’s for an instant, and I saw the worry in them. I knew it was for Guts, and I wanted to tell her he was okay.
But I didn’t know if it was true.
And there was no time. I had to find the captain.
CHAPTER 12
The Fangs
I TOOK THE COMPANIONWAY STEPS two at a time. When I reached the gun deck, the floor was gritty with sand, and there was so much smoke in the air I could barely see through the haze. I was halfway up the next flight when the Grift’s guns erupted again.
The recoil nearly knocked me off the steps.
As I stumbled out into the open air of the weather deck, a cloud of smoke from the guns was rising like a curtain on the port side. Before the smoke choked off my view, I glimpsed a familiar-looking frigate half a mile off port. Its foremast was leaning at a crooked angle, one huge sail cut loose from its spar and billowing uselessly across the ship’s deck.
It was Ripper Jones’s ship, the Red Throat. As it disappeared behind the veil of smoke, half a dozen muzzle flashes blinked from its gun ports.
I hit the deck as cannonballs ripped through the sails over my head. A moment later, a hundred pounds of rigging crashed to the deck behind me.
Right away, I realized I’d been wrong. As bad as it was down in the hold, not knowing what was happening above, this was worse.
I got up and ran for the quarterdeck. Burn Healy was standing at the wheel next to his pilot, Pike. When I got a look at my uncle, I gasped. A bloodstained bandage covered the upper half of his head, including one full eye, and streaks of crusted blood ran down his face and neck to his shirt, which was stained a copper red down to the chest.
In spite of the wound, he was grinning from ear to ear—until he saw me, and then the grin vanished.
“The patch in the hull is bust!” I yelled. “Carpenter says, ‘Take her down to six and no turns to port!’”
Healy’s good eye widened at the news. He turned to Pike.
“Reef the tops. When the next round’s off, bring her to starboard.”
Then he ran past me, headed for the companionway. Not knowing what else to do, I followed.
Healy moved fast. By the time I caught up, he was on the steps of the hold, yelling past the bucket line at Quint. Three burly pirates had their full weight pressed against the failing patch, which was still squirting water around its edges. Two more crewmen were pulling lumber from the carpenter’s room on the far side of the water barrels.
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br /> “Not even reinforced?” Healy was yelling.
“Not at speed!” Quint yelled back.
“Then how fast?”
Quint’s face twisted in a pained grimace. “Eight . . . ?”
“Oh, —!”
I’d never heard my uncle curse before. He turned and pushed past me, back up the steps, bellowing as he went.
“THIRD MATE!”
Ismail came running. As he approached, Healy barked orders at him. “Pull a crew from the port side to back up the carpenter!”
“Roger that,” replied Ismail as he leaped up the steps for the gun deck.
Healy turned to me. “You’re off carpenter duty and running messages for me. Find the gunner, tell him I need cannon at the aft gun ports. Aft! Understand?”
“Cannon at the aft gun ports,” I repeated.
“Then find me in my cabin. Go!”
THE SHIP’S CANNON UNLEASHED another round just as I was repeating Healy’s message to the soot-blackened gunner. The noise was so deafening that as I ran back up to Healy’s cabin, my ears rang like someone was hammering sheet metal inside my head.
Healy was standing over the table with Pike and Spiggs. Pike was gesturing at a chart that was unscrolled in front of them.
“Anything more than two hours from high tide, we’ll run aground at the far end,” Pike was telling my uncle.
Healy looked at Spiggs. The first mate shook his head. “It’s too big a risk. Unless we know what the tide’s—”
“We’re doing it,” said Healy, cutting him off. “Chart the course and brief the sailors.”
Pike and Spiggs both winced. Whatever was about to happen, they didn’t like it.
Healy opened the door to his cabin and nodded in my direction. “Tell the gunner all hands starboard and aft. We’re running the Fangs.”
WHEN I RETURNED from delivering Healy’s message, he was back at the ship’s wheel, and the Grift was in a turn so tight I had to grip a rail with both hands to stay on my feet next to him.