Chapter 180: Point-Blank and Unforgiving

James’s boots found nothing but air, which was a poor place when a man’s life depended on standing somewhere solid.

The arm around his throat tightened with every kick he wasted against it, and then even the sound had gone thick and far away, as if the whole fight was happening underwater. The smoke, the cannon, and the two sailors began crowding in, darkness appearing at the edges of his sight.

He drove his elbow backward into the man behind him, hard enough to make the fellow wince. Then again for certainty.

That bought him half a breath, enough for him to throw his weight forward against the sailor holding his arm, tore it free, and shove him staggering into the rail.

Then James kicked backward into the knee behind him, hard enough to make it fold, and at last there was enough air for him to consider that an useful improvement.

The man recovered from the stagger and drew his cutlass.

He never got the chance to swing it.

Milagros came charging out of the smoke and drove her blade into him from behind. The steel punched through his back and burst red through the front of his coat, ripping the cloth open as the point tore free beneath his ribs.

He jerked once while blood dripped down the blade.

Then his knees faltered, and he folded over the sword while she wrenched the blade free.

"Dios, what an ugly way to die."

She was not even breathing hard, which James found impressive under the circumstances.

Regardless, the favor wasn’t put to nothing.

James wheeled on the first sailor as the fellow dragged himself upright and drove his boot square into his chest. The Spaniard gave a sharp, startled cry as the kick crushed the breath out of him and sent him stumbling backward.

His shoulders struck the rail hard enough to rattle it. He clawed for it, fingers scraping uselessly over the timber, but the next heavy roll of the ship caught him before he could find a grip.

He went over backward with a strangled shout, boots kicking once above before the swell took him and dragged him out of sight.

There was little time to appreciate the sight. James hauled himself to the gun, match still guttered low between his fingers as if it, too, had grown tired of waiting.

Across the starboard rail, Tomás fought a battle he could not win, doing a respectable job of it.

He raised his cutlass and planted himself squarely at the boarding timber, ready to meet every Spaniard who put a boot upon it. He deflected their slashes aside without quite finishing any of them, taking from each man a half heartbeat of hesitation before the next came crowding after him.

His blade drew blood here and there, a slash across a forearm, a cut across a shoulder, but it had not ended anybody yet. Tomás started to be overwhelmed.

The truth on that plank was simple enough. However well one man fought, a great many men were still a great many men.

"San Miguel no me dejes solo todavía."¹

James set the gun in any improvised way he could do in a hurry.

"Clear off!"

Tomás threw himself sideways from the timber at the very instant James put the match to the vent.

What followed was outright slaughter.

The cannonball smashed into the boarding timber and the knot of men packed across it, hard enough to burst it apart under the impact, throwing splinters through flesh and tearing the whole mass of sailors into a bloody confusion of bodies and broken limbs.

Blood sprayed across the deck while men were ripped open where they stood, their coats shredded, their bodies broken against the timber as iron and oak tore through the crowd.

What had been a packed line of boarders was suddenly nothing but screaming men, wreckage, and the crash down into the sea in a tangle of bodies, broken limbs, and torn flesh. Their screams washed across the water in one long, ugly howl before the swell swallowed most of them.

Part of the Rosario’s own rail went with the blast, and the smoke rolling back over the wreck had so much blood that James could taste it.

For one loud, glorious moment, the three of them stood over the wreckage and laughed. It was sharp, ugly laughter, the sort that comes after death has been miserably dodged.

Nobody had to pretend it was funny, they had earned it.

Milagros planted one hand on her hips. "I expect payment in full, señor. Let’s see if that tongue of yours is good for anything besides talking."

"Aye, lass. Last I heard, my tongue was good enough to make ye forget your own name."

Tomás ignored them both and wiped his blade clean.

Then three fresh cracks came up through their boots before the banter had quite finished. The guns below fired, and La Golondrina’s side erupted under the point-blank barrage.

Her planking blew outward in great splinters, smoke and dust boiling across her deck as the three shots smashed into her broadside and tore through the men packed behind it. More blood sprayed through the smoke, bodies went down in a heap, and pieces of shattered timber came spinning across the distance between the ships.

Jim, Sam, and Kit were finally at their positions in the gundeck.

"Fire as she bears!" James bellowed.

The crew rushed over for the next guns. At this distance, anything fired from either deck was bound to hit.

The guns began to cry out in a ragged rhythm, each firing as soon as they were ready. At that distance the smoke from one gun had barely rolled across the water before the next muzzle flashed, and La Golondrina’s side seemed to vanish beneath the pounding of cannon fire.

The volley tore through the hull, punching through the planking with such force that splinters, iron, and pieces of men came flying together. The blood sprayed across the deck and went down the side of the ship while the Spaniards stumbled through the smoke, tripping over the dead and trying to find somewhere to stand that had not yet been blown to pieces.

There was nowhere safe.

Another gun fired. Then another. The broadside bucked and roared, and La Golondrina disappeared again beneath smoke and flying wreckage. The rail collapsed in sections, her deck disappeared beneath torn bodies and shattered timber, and every fresh impact opened another bloody wound in the crowded ship.

Eighteen guns had been fired between the two decks in a few minutes, though nobody could have kept count. Her mainmast came down as Santa Bárbara’s had, crashing across a ship already ruined beyond saving.

The whole hull began sinking lower, slowly and heavily, into water she would never climb out of again.

Jim came through the hatch, black with powder to the elbows and with a grin wide enough as though he had personally sunk the ship with his bare hands. "Lads, yer may call me Gunner Jim from here on. Worked the whole damned piece meself and sank her with three shots."

Behind him, Sam grinned through the powder black on his face. "An’ what does that make me, then? Black-Powder Sam? I reckon my shots did more harm than yours, Jim."

Kit came last, apparently more troubled by the matter of his tally than by the victory they’d just won. "Every shot I fired went through a port I couldn’t see past, and not one of ye’ll count it toward me tally!"

Then the canvas overhead cracked hard enough to settle that argument at once.

And from the quarterdeck came a worse sound.

The wheel’s lashing had finally given way, and now the wheel spun free and useless, with nothing left to answer it.

James rushed over immediately.

"Hands on the rigging!"

He ran across the deck while the wind started to punish them for forgetting the wheel, just in time to catch the spokes and feel the old lady bleeding speed beneath him. The canvas overhead luffed loose because there was no crew to answer in time.

He looked up to see how badly that mistake had cost them.

The frigate, San Cristóbal, was there.

Closer than any sensible ship had a right to be. Beside her, the two sloops looked like they had wandered into a fight meant for much larger men.

"Well," James said, mostly to himself. "That’s considerably more ship than I ordered."