Shandy hadn't slept much during the last several days. "It's today because I say it is," he said, a little wildly. "What do you think of that?"
Woefully Fat stepped up beside Shandy, his huge shadow eclipsing Venner. "We goin' to Jamaica," he said.
For several long seconds, while the cloud ahead grew and Grand Cayman became still more distant, Venner stood motionless,, his eyes darting back and forth from Shandy and Woefully Fat to the rest of the crew, obviously wondering if he could provoke a mutiny.
Shandy, though he hoped he looked confident, was wondering the same thing. He had been an able enough captain during the month after Hurwood took the Carmichael, and he was still looked on with some awe because of the exaggerated part he'd played in the escape from that Navy man-of-war, and it helped to have the support of Davies' old bocor, even though his impending death seemed to be all the man could talk about these days; but Shandy could only guess, as Venner was obviously doing too, at how much the men's confidence in him had been eroded by his three months of drunken apathy in the New Providence settlement.
"Shandy knows what he's doin'," grumbled one toothless old wretch. Skank nodded with a fair show of conviction. "Sure," he said. "We couldn't get back to Grand Cayman before the storm overtook us."
Shandy was very grateful, for he knew Skank wasn't being sincere.
Venner's shoulders slumped, and his grin, which was beginning to look less like lines of cheer than wrinkles in a long-unchanged shirt, was hoisted back onto his face. "Well sure he does," he said hoarsely. "I just … wanted to make sure we were all in … agreement." He turned and, shoving a couple of men out of his way, lurched away toward the stern as Shandy ordered the removal of the jib and the reefing of the mainsail.
When the sloop was moving forward under minimum working canvas and Shandy paused to squint up at the cloud that now shadowed them, Skank tapped him on the shoulder and, with a jerk of his head, drew him aside.
"What's up?" Shandy asked, tension putting a tightness in his voice.
"Venner ain't near pleased," Skank said quietly. "Watch him. It'll be today, and probably from behind."
"Ah. Well, thanks. I'll keep an eye on him." Shandy started to turn away, but Skank stepped in front of him.
"Did you know," the young pirate went on hurriedly, "I don't think you know—he got Davies killed." Shandy's impatience was gone. "Tell me," he said. A few heavy drops of rain fell through the still air to thump on the deck and make long dark streaks on the canvas. Rain before wind, Shandy thought, remembering old Hodge's long ago warning. "Loosen the sheets a bit," he called, then turned back to Skank. "Tell me."
"Well," said Skank quickly, peering fearfully at the dark sky as he spoke, "the dead sailor that killed him was going to kill you, a minute before—you was runnin' toward the girl in the air, and you didn't see this dead fellow waitin' for you. So Phil ran up to nail the thing and save you, no trouble—but Venner saw what he was up to, and blocked him—Venner not bein' glad you was made quartermaster."
The rain was falling steadily now, and still there was no wind. "Reef the main a little more," Shandy called uneasily. "No—lower the gaff entirely. We'll meet her with bare spars—and be ready to heave to."
"It threw Davies off his stride," Skank went on, "when Venner bumped him, and it let you get two steps further; but Davies kept running anyway, and by then the only way he could hit the thing wasn't good enough to kill it outright. His second chop cut its head off, but by then it had got its cutlass into him."
Then the wind hit them, and even under bare spars the Jenny heeled sharply, losing headway and leaning over so far that men had to grab rails or rigging to keep from tumbling up against the port gunwales. The mast was nearly horizontal.
Close behind the wind came high waves, and Skank scrambled aft to help the helmsman drag the rudder through the strong sea and get the bow pointed more directly into the wind. Slowly, against resistance, the mast came back up.
As the little craft balanced at the top of one foam-streaked wave and then slid down the far side into the trough, the rudder swinging free in the air for a moment and then the long bowsprit stabbing into the next steep gray slope of water ahead, Shandy held his breath, expecting either the bowsprit to break off or the bow and the whole hull to follow it in, and not come up again—but after eight rapid heartbeats the bow did rise, bowsprit intact, throwing off the weight of solid water like a man flinging away a pack off murderous dogs that had almost got him down.
Shandy exhaled. Evidently whoever had built the Jenny had known his business. He yelled the order to heave to, and when they had crested the wave the wind was on the starboard bow and enough of the mainsail had been unreefed to keep the Jenny falling back onto the same tack and making no headway. In principle they could ride out the storm this way.
Shandy climbed and slid back to the stern and the men laboring at the helm. There were no further orders to give now, and the wind would have torn the words out of his mouth anyway and flung them away unheard, so he just leaned against the transom and tried to guess how long the Jenny could continue to take this without breaking up.
The warm wind was still somehow strengthening, and spray flew past in fast clouds like grapeshot, and stung his face and hands; he licked his lips and the salty taste let him know that it was sea-spray and not rain. The waves were as tall and solid-looking as cliffs, and every time the Jenny slid down the weather slope of one and crashed into the next, she was jolted and shaken so violently that the mast swung wildly back and forth overhead. The splash spray instantly blew away behind them, and solid water swirled around Shandy's thighs and tugged ever more strongly at him. He kept squinting against the lash of the wind to make sure they neither faced the wind too directly nor let it come around and hit them broadside, and for several minutes he was amazed at how perfectly the old sloop was riding; then he noticed wisps of steam fluttering away from the joint where the tiller bar was attached to the head of the rudder, and when he peered more closely he saw that the iron pin was glowing a dull red. Woefully Fat was standing braced on the other side of the helm, and Shandy cuffed water out of his eyes and squinted across the deck through narrowed, stinging eyes at the big magician. The bocor's eyes were closed and he was chewing the knuckles of one hand—and even though the rain and sea were scouring the brown hand, Shandy could see red blood springing from where the teeth were working—and he realized that the Jenny's progress was not entirely a result of the helmsman's skill.
Even so, each succeeding wave was taller, and when the little craft laboriously crested the next one, and Shandy blinked around at the sea, it looked to him as if the boat were attached to a vast shiny cloth that was being dragged over the Alps; and the shrieking of the wind was so furious that he had to keep reminding himself that there was no sentient wrath behind it.
They slid down the windward side of the wave and plunged into the next one—the old sloop heaved up, pouring solid water off to both sides—and when the Jenny climbed the lee face of it, Shandy could feel her forcibly shift around, and the gaff-saddle, lowered now to head height, glowed orange with the effort of it.
Then they were at the top, and the full force of the wind hit them again, and with a gunshot crack that was audible even over the wind the glowing gaff-saddle broke. The horizontal spar was now just a fire-headed spear laced to a big, fluttering flag—it slammed the deck under the mainsail boom, bounced up on the other side, spun all the way around like a crazy compass needle as the luff side of the sail tore, then flew aft. The boat shook as the spar thudded into the transom. Shandy had ducked in the second when the thing was so violently tearing around, and now he looked up, fearing that it might have killed the helmsman, or, worse, wrecked the tiller; but the helmsman was still braced against the tiller bar—only after sagging with relief did Shandy notice that the ironheaded spar had struck Woefully Fat squarely in the center of his massive torso, and had nailed him upright to the transom.