“Gentlemen,” Bullfinch shouted, trying to be heard above the whistling of the wind, which cried with a demented moan as it cut through the cupola, “we’ll head in line abreast till dark. That will sweep us ten miles out beyond the Shoals. We’ll rig for night running, hooded lanterns fore and aft. Then we turn, still maintaining line abreast, and cut speed to four knots. Once night falls, half the crew can stand down from battle stations to get some food and rest. We then alternate battle stations watch till an hour before dawn.”
“The heading, east or west?” Nagama asked.
“Which way is the wind bearing?”
“South, southwest. It’s beginning to back around to westerly.”
Running slowly with a following sea would be deadly, water crashing over the stems, driving the ships, pushing them in toward the shoals. If the Kazan were out here, he reasoned, they would be running into the storm as well.
“West.”
Nagama nodded in agreement.
He looked past Nagama and could see the Spotsylvania coming up at flank speed, maneuvering to take position.
Then several things seemed to happen at once. One of the lookouts on the bridge, the boy along the starboard railing, turned, glasses dangling around his neck. With his hands cupped, he screamed something unintelligible. A speaking tube shrieked, the one from the foretop lookout. The communications officer uncapped it, leaning over to listen, eyes suddenly going wide…and a geyser of spray erupted a hundred yards off the Spotsylvania’s port bow. It almost seemed like an illusion, a column of water shooting up nearly a hundred feet, then gone an instant later, whipped away by the wind.
Everyone seemed frozen in a tableau as the words of the forward lookout drifted over them.
“Ship off starboard bow. Range one mile!”
Bullfinch pushed his way past Nagama, ducking through the hatchway and out onto the open bridge. The lookout was pointing directly forward. “See ’em, see ’em” he was screaming.
With one eye gone, his vision was not the best. Bullfinch squinted until he saw them. Three ships, starting to turn to the west, bow wakes planing up. They seemed to have simply materialized out of the mist. He could see smoke boiling away from the first ship to fire. There was another flash, a brilliant hot light, then another.
Bullfinch turned back to the cupola. “Signal hold course! Close for action!”
He felt the engines going up to flank speed. The forward turret with its massive fourteen-inch gun fired with a thunderous report, and smoke completely blanketed his view for several seconds.
A high whistling shriek cut overhead, went astern, and detonated two hundred yards aft in the foaming wake of the Spotsylvania. The two forward below-deck guns, one of them a five-inch breechloader, went off, creating more smoke.
He could see other ships emerging from the mist. Frightfully, the ones appearing now were bigger, vaster than anything he had ever seen afloat, with a huge tower perched forward rather than a mast. The forward guns of the monster fired. Scant seconds later he heard their thunderous roar and actually caught a brief glimpse of a streak of darkness, one of the shells, clipping a wave crest off his port side, tumbled end over end, howling like a banshee.
Looking past the shell, he saw where another of his cruisers was maneuvering in alongside, the Atlanta, its forward gun firing.
His charge pressed in. The enemy’s forward cruisers were making ninety-degree turns, and for the next few minutes he was at a disadvantage. The enemy was crossing his T, able to bring all guns to bear, fore and aft, while only his forward guns could fire.
He turned back, facing the cupola, and cupped his hands.
“Signal all ships. Fire on largest target!”
As he turned back, he instinctively flinched at another howl. A huge plume of water surged up less than fifty yards off the port side amidships.
Another shell passed, this one high, disappearing. His own ship was frustratingly silent. The crews were still reloading. Even in the best conditions it would take the massive muzzle loader another five minutes. Finally, the breechloader fired again. He looked forward and roared with delight when the shot slammed into the side of one of their cruisers, at a range of less than fifteen hundred yards. Seconds later great gouts of smoke cascaded out of the cruiser’s aft smoke stack.
The great ships, screened by the cruisers, were turning as well. He counted four of them now, two thousand yards farther back than the cruisers. If not for their bulk they would be all but invisible in the rain and deepening twilight.
One of his own frigates, running at flank speed, sailed between him and the Spotsylvania, inching forward, its rapid-fire three-inch gun pumping out a round every twenty seconds.
As more shells came in, the battle spread out. His own cruisers were maneuvering, trying to form a line, but looked instead like an inverted V, with the flagship in the fore, while to the south two great lines were forming. Between the lines frigates were coming forward as if charging.
Shot was flying in both directions. Already he could tell that they were at a severe disadvantage. Not only were they completely outgunned, but the rate of fire of the Kazan’s heavier weapons was superior as well. The only thing that seemed to be saving them so far was the violence of the sea. The fifteen-foot swells made it all but impossible to fire at an even keel.
So instead everyone just seemed to be madly firing, trying to let off their individual guns as best they could, and the air was alive with fire.
At eight hundred yards he saw another shot hit an enemy cruiser. Cursing, he looked back again at the command cupola, shouting for them to repeat the order to concentrate on the largest ships.
There was a brilliant flash to his right. It was the Spotsylvania. A heavy shell had detonated just forward of its bridge, directly into the topside turret. The shell had penetrated the armor and blown inside the narrow confines of the five-inch armor surrounding the heavy gun. It burst asunder, the massive bulk of the fourteen-inch barrel half lifting out of its mount, fragments of armor hurdling a hundred feet into the air. He ducked as another shell came in, clipping through the masts overhead, severing the mainmast just above the maintop. The impact caused the shell to explode with a thunderclap, and fragments slashed outward in every direction, causing sparks to fly off the cupola directly behind him.
A different sound erupted. Looking back forward, he saw that the two forward gatlings had opened up. Their tracers arced out across the stormy sea. The stream of fire rose and fell as the gunners tried to compensate for the roll of the ship, walking the stream of fire across the water and straight into the nearest enemy cruiser, which was now less than a quarter mile away.
The range was insanely close, what he had hoped for, but now that it was here he struggled to control his terror. As admiral there was little more that he could do. He had brought the fleet, and he had given the final orders to close. Now it was up to the individual captains to fight their ships.
The battle had not played out as he hoped. If luck had held, they might have culled one or two of the enemy’s capital ships in the darkness and smashed them at close range. It was obvious now that they had been anticipated and spotted first as well. As they steamed southward at flank speed, more and yet more enemy ships were coming into view. Flashes of light rippled across the sea from the dozens of guns firing. The roar commingled into a maelstrom of sound that nearly rivaled that of the storm’s.