Pirate Latitudes

He returned to the deck, coming up on the aft castle, near the tiller. He again heard the faint sounds of singing. It was still no more possible to locate the sound than before. He paused and listened, and then the singing stopped, and a concerned voice said, “Que pasa? Que esta vous?”

Sanson looked up. Of course! There, in the perch above the mainmast spars, a man stood looking down at him.

“Que esta vous?” he demanded.

Sanson knew the man could not see him well. He stepped back into shadows.

“Que?” the man said, confused.

In the darkness, Sanson unsheathed his crossbow, bent the steel spring, fitted the arrow, and raised it to his eye. He looked at the Spaniard coming down the rigging, swearing irritably.

Sanson shot him.

The impact of the arrow knocked him free of the rigging; his body flew a dozen yards out into dark space, and he hit the water with a soft splash. There was no other sound.

Sanson prowled the empty aft deck, and finally, satisfied that he was alone, he gripped the tiller in his hands. A moment later, he saw Lazue and the Moor come abovedecks near the bow. They looked back and waved to him; they were grinning.

The ship was theirs.

…

HUNTER AND DON DIEGO had returned to the magazine, and were setting a long fuse to the powder kegs. They worked swiftly now, for when they had left the cannon, the sky above them was already beginning to lighten to a paler blue.

Don Diego stacked the kegs in small clusters around the room. “It must be this way,” he whispered. “Otherwise there will be one explosion, which we do not desire.”

He broke two kegs and sprinkled the black grain over the floor. Finally, satisfied, he lit the fuse.

At that moment, there was a shout from outside in the fortress yard, and then another.

“What is that?” Diego said.

Hunter frowned. “Perhaps they have found the dead watch,” he said.

A moment later, there was more shouting in the yard, and the sound of running feet. Now they heard one word repeated over and over: “Pirata! Pirata!”

“The ship must be in the channel,” Hunter said. He glanced over at the fuse, which sputtered and sizzled in the corner of the room.

“Shall I put it out?” Diego said.

“No. Leave it.”

“We cannot stay here.”

“In a few minutes, there will be panic in the yard. Then we will escape.”

“It had better be a very few minutes,” Diego said.

The shouting in the courtyard was louder. They heard literally hundreds of running feet, as the garrison was mobilized.

“They will check the magazine,” Diego said nervously.

“Eventually,” Hunter agreed.

And at that moment, the door was flung open, and Cazalla came into the room, with a sword in his hand. He saw them.

Hunter plucked a sword from the dozens that hung in racks along the wall. “Go, Diego,” he whispered. Diego dashed out the door as Cazalla’s blade struck Hunter’s own. Hunter and Cazalla circled the room.

Hunter was backing away.

“Englishman,” Cazalla said, laughing. “I will feed the pieces of your body to my dogs.”

Hunter did not reply. He balanced the sword in his hand, feeling the unfamiliar weight, testing the whip of the blade.

“And my mistress,” Cazalla said, “shall dine on your testicles.”

They circled the room warily. Hunter was leading Cazalla out of the magazine, away from the sputtering fuse, which the Spaniard had not noticed.

“Are you afraid, Englishman?”

Hunter backed away, almost to the door. Cazalla lunged. Hunter parried, still backing. Cazalla lunged again. The movement took him into the yard.

“You are a stinking coward, Englishman.”

Now they were both in the yard. Hunter engaged Cazalla fully, and Cazalla laughed with pleasure. For some moments they fought in silence, Hunter always moving farther from the magazine.

All around them, the garrison troops ran and shouted. Any of them could kill Hunter from behind in an instant. His danger was extreme, and Cazalla suddenly realized the reason. He broke, stepped back, and looked at the magazine.

“You son of an English buggered swine…”

Cazalla ran toward the magazine, just as the first of the explosions engulfed it in rolling white flame and blasting heat.

The crew aboard the Cassandra, now moving up the narrow channel, saw the magazine explode and cheered. But Enders, at the helm, was frowning. The guns of Matanceros were still there; he could see the long barrels protruding through the notchings in the stone wall. In the red light of the magazine fires, the gun crews preparing to fire the cannon were clearly visible.

“God help us,” Enders said. The Cassandra was now directly off the shore batteries. “Stand by, mates,” he shouted. “We’re going to eat Donnish shot today.”

Lazue and the Moor, on the foredeck of the galleon, also saw the explosion. They saw the Cassandra beating up the channel past the fortress.

“Mother of God,” Lazue said. “They didn’t get the guns. They didn’t get the guns.”

…