“Away carpenter’s party!” Lieutenant Lathyk shouted, and the carpenter and his mates bolted for the main hatchway, racing below to check for hull damage, but Yairley had other things on his mind. Whatever else had happened, it was obvious he’d just lost his rudder. He hoped it was only temporary, but in the meantime…
“Down jib! Haul out the spanker!”
The jib disappeared, settling down to be gathered in by the hands on the bowsprit. Without the thrust of the rudder, Yairley couldn’t maintain the heading he’d originally intended. He’d planned to sail parallel to the shore while he dropped both anchors for the widest purchase possible on the treacherous bottom, but the drag of the cable still thundering out of her starboard hawsehole was already forcing Destiny ’s head up to the wind. The pounding seas continued to thrust her bodily sideways to larboard, though, and he wanted to get as far away from whatever they’d struck-probably one of those Shan-wei-damned uncharted rocks-as possible before he released the second anchor.
Fifty fathoms of cable had run out to the first anchor, and the ship was slowing, turning all the way back through the wind under the braking effect of the cable’s drag. She wasn’t going to carry much farther, he decided.
“Let go the larboard anchor!”
The second anchor plunged, and the pounding vibration of heavy hemp hawsers hammered through the ship’s fabric as both cables ran out.
“Stream the larboard buoy!”
The larboard anchor buoy went over the side, and then the starboard cable came up against the riding bitt and the cable stoppers-a series of lines “nipped” to the anchor cable and then made fast to purchases on deck-came taut, preventing any more it from veering. The ship twitched, but enough slack had veered that she didn’t stop moving immediately, and the larboard cable continued running out for several more seconds. Then it, too, came up against its bitt and stoppers and Destiny came fully head to the wind and began drifting slowly to leeward until the tautening cables’ counter-balanced tension could stop her. It looked as if she’d come-to at least two hundred yards from shore, and they could use the capstans to equalize the amount of cable veered to each anchor once they were sure both were holding. In the meantime…
Yairley had already turned to the wheel. Frahnklyn Waigan was back on his feet, although one of his assistants was still on the deck with an unnaturally bent arm which was obviously broken. As Yairley looked, the petty officer turned the wheel easily with a single hand and grimaced.
“Nothin’, Sir.” He’d somehow retained a wad of chewleaf, and he spat a disgusted stream of brown juice into the spittoon fixed to the base of the binnacle. “Nothin’ at all.”
“I see.” Yairley nodded. He’d been afraid of that, and he wondered just how bad the damage actually was. If he’d simply lost the tiller or fractured the rudderhead, repair would be relatively straightforward… probably. That was the reason Destiny carried an entire spare tiller, after all. Even if the rudderhead had been entirely wrung off, leaving nothing to attach the tiller to, they could still rig chains to the rudder itself just above the waterline and steer with tackles. But he doubted they’d been that fortunate, and if the rudder was entirely gone…
He turned as Lathyk arrived on the quarterdeck.
“Both anchors seem to be holding, Sir,” the first lieutenant said, touching his chest in salute. “For now, at least.”
“Thank you, Master Lathyk,” Yairley said sincerely, although he really wished the lieutenant had been able to leave off his last four words. “I suppose the next order of business is-”
“Beg your pardon, Sir.” Yairley turned his head the other way to face Maikel Symmyns, Destiny ’s boatswain.
“Yes, Bosun?”
“’Fraid the entire rudder’s gone, Sir.” Symmyns grimaced. “Can’t be certain yet, but it looks to me as if the gudgeons’ve been stripped clean away, as well.”
“Better and better, Bosun.” Yairley sighed, and the weathered, salt-and-pepper-haired Symmyns smiled grimly. The boatswain was the ship’s senior noncommissioned officer, and he’d first gone to sea as a ship’s boy when he was only six years old. There was very little he hadn’t seen in the ensuing fifty years.
“Beg pardon, Captain.” Yet another voice spoke, and Yairley found one of the ship’s carpenter’s mates at his elbow.
“Yes?”
“Master Mahgail’s compliments, Sir, and we’re making water aft. Master Mahgail says as how it looks like we’ve started at least a couple of planks, but nothing the pumps can’t handle. Most likely stripped a lot of the copper, though, and the rudder post’s cracked clean through. And he asks if he can have a few more hands to help inspect the rest of the hull.”
“I see.” Yairley gazed at him for a moment, then nodded. “My compliments to Master Mahgail. Tell him I appreciate the report, and that I look forward to more complete information as it comes to him. Master Lathyk,” he looked at the first lieutenant, “see to it that Master Mahgail has all the hands he needs.”
“Aye, Sir.”
“Very well, then.” Yairley drew a deep breath, clasped his hands behind him once more, and squared his shoulders. “Let’s be about it,” he said. . IV.
HMS Destiny, 54, Off Scrabble Shoal, Grand Duchy of Silkiah
“Pull, you lazy bastards!” Stywyrt Mahlyk, Sir Dunkyn Yairley’s personal coxswain, shouted as the thirty-foot longboat porpoised its way through the confused waves and spray like a seasick kraken. Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk, crouching in the bow and hanging on for dear life while Destiny ’s starboard sheet anchor weighted down the longboat’s stern and accentuated the boat’s… lively movement, thought Mahlyk sounded appallingly cheerful under the circumstances.
“Think this is a blow?!” the coxswain demanded of the laboring oarsmen in scoffing tones as the boat’s forward third went briefly airborne across a wave crest, then slammed back down again. “Why, you sorry Delferahkan excuses for sailor men! I’ve farted worse weather than this!”
Despite their exertion and the spray soaking them to the skin, one or two of the oarsmen actually managed a laugh. Mahlyk was amazingly popular with Destiny ’s crew, despite his slavedriver mentality where Captain Yairley’s cutter was concerned. At the moment, he’d traded in the cutter for the larger and more seaworthy longboat, but he’d brought along the cutter’s crew, and there was no insult to which he could lay his tongue that didn’t make them smile. In point of fact, his crew took simple pride in his ability to outswear any other member of the ship’s company when the mood took him.
Which, alas, it did far more often than not, if the truth be known, especially when the captain wasn’t about.
He and Aplyn-Ahrmahk were old friends, and the ensign remembered an incendiary raid on an Emeraldian port in which he and Mahlyk had torched a half-dozen warehouses and at least two taverns. They’d tossed incendiaries into three galleons, as well, as he recalled, but they hadn’t been the only ones firing the ships, so they couldn’t claim solo credit for them. Their current expedition was somewhat less entertaining than that one had been, but it was certainly no less exciting.
The longboat swooped up another steep wave, leaving Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s stomach briefly behind, and the ensign turned to look back at the galleon. Destiny pitched and rolled to her bower anchors with all the elegance of a drunken pig, masts and yards spiraling crazily against the clouds. She looked truncated and incomplete with her upper masts struck, but she was still one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen. More importantly at the moment, Lieutenant Lathyk stood on the forecastle, a semaphore flag tucked under his arm, watching the boat from under a shading palm while Lieutenant Symkee used one of the new sextants the Royal College had recently introduced as a successor to the old back staff to measure the angle between the longboat and the buoys marking the positions of the bower anchors. As Aplyn-Ahrmahk watched, Lathyk took the flag from under his arm and raised it slowly over his head.