At four Hodge gave him a cup of rum warmed over the bittacle lamp, told him who to rouse and send up for a replacement, and then sent him below to sleep for as long as he could. It was at about noon of the next day, Tuesday the twenty-sixth of June, just as the two vessels encountered the north-flowing Gulf Stream between the Bimini Islands and Florida, that the Royal Navy man-of-war found them.
When it was first sighted, a white fleck on the southern horizon, it had seemed to be a merchant ship of about the Carmichael's size, and several of the pirates half-heartedly proposed taking it instead of going to Florida; then a few minutes later the man in the bow with the telescope shouted, excitedly, the news that it was a British Navy vessel.
In the first few minutes after this discovery there was tension but no panic, for the Carmichael had been altered for maximum speed and the Jenny could easily tack back to the Bimini shoals, where the water in many areas was twelve feet deep or less—the Jenny only drew eight feet of water, and could skate safely over shoals the man-of-war wouldn't dare approach.
But the Carmichael surged steadily along on her southwest course, her sails bright and unshifting in the tropical sunlight, and Hodge didn't call to have the Jenny come about.
"Why do we wait, cap'n?" queried one bare-chested, white-bearded giant. "We might not be able to lose 'em if they get too close."
Shandy was crouched on the starboard rail beside the horizontal bar—which was called, for some reason, the cathead—that supported the hoisted anchor, and he looked expectantly at Hodge. Shandy thought he saw a new pallor under the man's tan, but the captain swore foully and shook his head.
"We'd lose a day, at least, outrunning them and sneaking around back onto course, and with Saturday's rain and that damn layover Sunday night we'll already have to work her thefty to get to the rendezvous in Florida by Lammas Eve. No, lads, this is one time the Navy can run. But hell, the Carmichael is at least as well armed as yonder man-o'-war, and we're no fishing boat ourselves, and we've still got Mate Care-For and Legba and Bosu up our sleeves."
The burly old man stared at Hodge in disbelief; then as if explaining something to a child, he pointed at the no longer distant sails and said distinctly, "Henry—it's the bleeding Royal Navy." Hodge turned on him angrily. "And we're in action, Isaac, and I'm the captain here today, and Davies'
quartermaster besides. God's blood, man, do you think . I like these orders? The hunsi kanzo will have us all for zombies if we back off now—but in going on all we risk is death." To Shandy's uneasy surprise the crew found this logic unfortunate but unassailable, and they set hastily about preparing for combat. The lighter sails were reefed and a couple of men were sent aloft with buckets of alum solution to splash onto the sails to keep them from burning, the shrouds were replaced with lengths of chain, the cannons were trundled forward so that their muzzles poked out of the ports, the bocor went to the bow and began chanting and flinging shards of carefully broken mirror toward the British ship, and Shandy was ordered to fill all available buckets with sea water and soak a spare sail and then clump all of it around the powder kegs.
During the last three weeks Shandy had been taking some satisfaction in how well he'd behaved when the Carmichael was originally taken, but now, watching his own hands tremble while dragging another bucket of sea water up over the high gunwale, he realized that his relative coolness on that day had been a result of shock, and, even more than that, of ignorance: for he had hardly grasped the fact that he was truly in trouble before he was out of it. This time, though, the trouble was approaching with torturing slowness, and this time he knew in advance exactly how a man died of a gunshot wound in the head, or a saber chop in the abdomen. This time he was so terrified that he felt drunk—all colors were too vivid, all sounds too loud, he felt suspended halfway between weeping and vomiting, and he had to keep thinking about not wetting his pants.
When he'd got the powder kegs surrounded with full buckets and draped over with wet canvas, he hurried back up to the deck, where he was grabbed, handed a smoldering match-cord, and hustled to the starboard bow swivel gun. "Don't shoot till Hodge says, Jack," snapped the man who'd shoved him at the gun, "and then make it count."
Looking out ahead over the pitted muzzle of his gun, Shandy saw that all three vessels were slanting east, into the wind, the Carmichael and the Jenny more sharply than the man-of-war—which was in three-quarter profile to him now, the beige-and-black checkerboard pattern of her gunports visible along her port side.
I can't fire on a Royal Navy vessel, he thought. But if I refuse to shoot, these men will kill me … as a matter of fact, if I don't do a good job here, the Royal Navy may very well kill me, along with everyone else on the Jenny. My God, there simply isn't an acceptable course of action for me. A white plume of smoke jetted from the Navy ship's side, and a moment later the cannon's hollow drumbeat rolled across the half mile of blue water that separated the vessels, and a moment after that a towering splash bloomed on the sea face to Shandy's left, stood for an instant, and then fell back like an upflung shovelful of diamonds.
"That's past us," called the tension-shrill voice of Hodge. "She's in range—fire!" And, as many soldiers have been surprised to discover, the intensive, exhaustingly repetitive training he had received made obeying the order automatic; he had aimed, touched the match-end to the vent, and stepped back to the next gun before he'd even made up his mind whether or not to obey the order. Well you're in it now, he thought despairingly as he aimed the second gun; you may as well work hard for the side you've cast your lot with.
As he touched the match-cord to the second gun's vent, the csloop's seven starboard cannons all went off at more or less the same instant, and the boat, which he hadn't realized until now was heeled over to starboard, was kicked almost back up to level by the recoil.
Then the Vociferous Carmichael, moving awesomely fast for the bulk of her, swept into the smokeveiled gap between the man-of-war and the Jenny, close enough so that Shandy could clearly recognize the men in her rigging and hear Davies shout, "Fire!" an instant before the Carmichael's starboard guns went off with a sound like close thunder, rendering the man-of-war's sails quite invisible for a moment behind a churning mountain range of white smoke. The Jenny was maintaining her sharp turn to windward, following the Carmichael, and when the cannon smoke was left behind, Shandy was horrified to see the man-of-war, apparently unhurt, pacing the Jenny only a hundred yards away, but when Skank had grabbed him again and flung him onto another swivel gun, and he automatically sighted along the barrel at the bigger vessel, he realized that the man-of-war was not undamaged after all—the safety net over her waist was bouncing and angular with fallen spars, and the checkerboard pattern of the gunports was marred by a half-dozen fresh, ragged holes—and he realized too that the Jenny was moving faster than the Navy ship and would in a minute or so be safely out in front of her. Almost certainly against orders, Davies had driven through and punched the man-of-war to buy the Jenny time to get away.