Just then the side of the first Tartessian ship vanished in a cloud of smoke; a perceptible fraction of a second later came the rolling sound of huge doors slamming echoing over the water. Marian's brows went up; wasting powder, with the guns they had available. Then she frowned. The sound wasn't quite right, too deep.
Everyone was looking northward with alert curiosity, a few faces pale and drawn. The first ball struck the water two hundred yards short of the Chamberlain's bow and skipped twice like a giant's flung stone. Alston felt her teeth clench. That's too far and too hard.
The next two went right into a wave and vanished; the fourth skipped and struck forward, hitting the flukes of the portside anchor with a discordant metallic clungggg that sent shivers into the back teeth of every jaw on board as it ran up from the deck through feet to head. Numbers five and six came aboard, one with a deep wet thunk into the hull timbers, the last after two skips into the hammock-netting not far from where she stood. It was nearly spent, its energy wasted on the water it had grazed, but it still sent splinters and ripped canvas flying, thudded into the mizzenmast and went trundling across the deck with crewfolk hopping and cursing to avoid it.
Clunng. It struck the barricade around the wheel and compass and finally came to a halt, rolling with the pitch of the deck rather than walking itself with the gyroscopic force of rapid spin. Alston looked down at it wide-eyed as it rolled not two feet from the toes of her boots.
An expert's eye judged size and weight effortlessly. Eight-inch diameter, sixty-eight pounder. Almost identical to those the Republic's frigates used for the main armament, save that the surface was slightly pebbled rather than machined smooth. No ship of the Tartessians' size could carry a conventional gun large enough to fire that shot; it had to come from something cold-core-cast and carefully shaped by a knowledge of internal pressures. Almost certainly cast in steel, not stiff brittle cast iron.
Like the Dahlgrens on the Chamberlain's gun deck, Civil War models improved by Leaton's superior steels.
Walker shipped them in, she realized. Recently enough that our agents didn't pick it up.
How and why didn't matter now. What did matter was that their range advantage was gone or mostly gone-that would depend on how well worked-up their crews were with their new weapons-and that their edge in weight of metal had just been cut in half. She could feel her brain working the numbers, as if she were watching some machine in Leaton's shops whirring and stretching, steel sliding on oiled steel.
"Belay firing," she said calmly. "Left to two-seven-zero. Fleet to conform. Inform all captains that the enemy mounts eight-inch Dahlgrens and repeat it. Advise schooners to employ caution."
Because at anything like close range those guns will throw a ball in one side of you and out the other, she thought, as Swindapa dashed to the radio shack.
Jenkins gave her a single startled glance, but he was already barking orders. Chamberlain had been sailing east on a reach, with the wind broad on the starboard quarter. Now she turned on her heel to run before the wind a little east of north, the sailors spinning the wheel and deck crews running to heave sails around from their port brace, putting the yards more nearly horizontal to the hull.
A chorus of heave-hoi ran across the deck, line teams bending to it with a will, sweat running down their naked backs or plastering T-shirts to skin. The change in course turned the bow toward the enemy, cutting off the gun crews' view; she could hear a muted chorus of groans from sailors who'd been ready for the crash of their first broadside. A glance behind showed the whole string of frigates turning as if they were attached to the flagship with invisible rods, heeling over to starboard as momentum pressed them down, then steadying on the new course.
The whole Tartessian line disappeared in smoke as the Islander fleet turned toward them-and therefore turned their own deadly broadsides away, cannon pointed impotently at each other or empty sea, while every gun on the enemy decks still bore right down their throats. Alston gripped her hands together behind her back; they'd have to take two broadsides without being able to reply, maybe three…
Iron lashed the water ahead of them; the enemy were firing at a narrower target now, perhaps a little slow to correct their aim. There was a rending crash forward, and the sound of screaming. Blocks and lines fell on the splinter netting overhead, and something came all along the deck and whirred past her close enough to whip her around like a top with the wind of its passage. That let her see Jenkins staring down incredulously at the stump where his left hand had been, and a body beyond him falling-one of the lieutenants, beheaded as neatly as a giant guillotine could have done.
She stepped forward, whipping off the lanyard from the breast pocket of her uniform jacket and throwing the loop around his arm just above the ragged stump, pulling it taut with a hard jerk. He was going gray with shock, eyes wandering.
"You, you, get him below," she said, and they lifted the captain of the Chamberlain between them and dashed for the companionway. " 'Dapa, pass the word for Mr. Oxton. Ensign, give me a hand."
She was standing in a spreading pool of blood; smashing the head off lets everything out very quickly, and there are many gallons of blood in a human body. This one was that of a fairly slight woman, and they heaved it over the rail with a single convulsive movement.
"Ma'am?" Oxton said, his face set, a little pale, lips compressed, green eyes steady and level.
Good, she thought. Aloud: "Mr. Oxton, you're in command of this ship; Captain Jenkins is disabled," she said. "Keep her so."
"One minute fifty seconds," Swindapa said at her side, looking at her watch. "Two minutes… and ten…"
"Keep her so… dyce, do you hear?" from Oxton near the helm.
A middy came panting up from the gun deck, looked for Jenkins, ran to Oxton's side, and reported in a slightly shrill voice that number-one starboard had been dismounted, was secured, two crew dead and four wounded. There was blood spattered across the chalk-white freckled face, clotted in the short dark-red hair, and a little running from a cut over one eye.
"Very well," Oxton said. "Steady there, Mr. Telukelo."
"Yessir." He visibly took a deep breath. "The master gunner says the gun can be remounted but it'll take twenty minutes. Have to mount new ringbolts."
"Leave it secured," Oxton said. "Carry on."
"Sir!"
"Two minutes twenty seconds…" Swindapa said.
This time the lead Tartessian ship's guns went off in a rippling volley rather than a simultaneous broadside, firing from forward to aft with the long jets of flame raking through the fogbank of powder smoke streaming back northward across her decks.
A sailor fell out of the rigging with a long scream, one of the bosun's crew crawling aloft repairing cut lines and stays. The shriek was cut short as the man bounced off a shroud and hit the deck hard and unevenly. The Chamberlain shuddered and started to fall away to port as the foretopsail yard sagged, smashed clean through near the partners. More crew swarmed aloft and others went to the lines; the ship steadied as the hands at the helm wrestled with the wheel.
"Sir," someone panted. "Sir, Chips says we're hulled three places on the port bow near the waterline. He's working to plug it, two feet in the hold."
"Acknowledge. Hands to the pumps, there."
"One minute thirty seconds…"
Alston nodded, feeling for the right moment, eyes slitted. "Fleet to conform," she said. "Message to the transports-execute contingency C. Mr. Oxton, bring her right to three-two-zero; guns to fire as they bear."