And so it had devolved into a stern chase and the Africans had closed the distance, slowly, slowly, by virtue of their ship being the faster. But their ship handling, their sail evolutions, were so awkward and slow, thanks to inexperience and language barriers, that they could not capitalize on their speed.
In the bow, their own chaser went off but James did not even look to see where the shot fell. The gun crew had only just been trained. It took them five minutes to load and fire the gun. It was the first time that any of them had actually put their hand on a piece of artillery.
James recalled some story from the white religion like that, where men were trying to build a tower and none could speak the same tongue. He understood now the impossibility of it. The Spaniard had smoked their weakness and forced them into a game of sharp maneuvers rather than a flat-out race. Wear ship, pound them, and then sail away; wear ship, pound them, and sail away.
Tempers were getting short. There had been a fight already between warriors of different tribes. Madshaka had pulled them apart, using his great strength to shove them each to opposite sides of the deck where their fellows could hold them at bay. It was the first time that had happened since they had sailed away from Virginia.
James heard Madshaka sing out the word that he recognized meant “belay!” and the braces were made fast. The bow chaser went off, the ball sent a waterspout aloft, not even close to the Spaniard. It was quiet again, settling into the chase.
It had been a long morning. James could feel the keen edge of his alertness growing dull. His mind began to wander and he let it go. Back, back to the Northumberland and the Chesapeake Bay and the simple pleasure of driving the sloop through blue-green water under flawless skies.
And then a shout forward and the Spaniard was wearing ship, turning her stern through the following wind, turning to bring her broadside to bear. One by one the guns went off, from forward aft, slowly. James guessed that each was being aimed by the gunner personally, who was walking aft from one to the other.
And a good shot he was. A ball smashed into the bow, sending a shudder through the ship. The next hit the fluke of the best bower with a thunderous clank like a bell dropped from a great height. Shrapnel screamed through the air and tore holes through the mainsail.
And just as the men on deck had recovered from the shock of it, breaking into raucous laughter with the ebbing of the sudden terror and pointing at the rents in the sail, just as they began joshing and shoving each other, a ball came straight through the forwardmost gun-port and plowed into a knot of men standing by the foremast fife rail.
It happened so fast that some men were still laughing as those in the way of the ball were torn apart, limbs flung through the air, hot viscera pouring out of rent bodies onto the deck, blood pooling fast, running in streams for the scuppers.
Someone vomited, another screamed. James leapt down, hurried forward, and he and Madshaka met each other at the scene of the carnage.
James paused for a second to look over the damage. Four dead, three wounded, and one of those would not live. And the fife rail was smashed, the lines in a great tangled mess. The pull of the topsail and topgallant sheets on the shattered wood threatened to wrench the last tenacious bits of the rail right out of the deck, and then the chase would be over.
He was more worried about that than he was about the dead men. There was nothing to be done for the dead men.
He grabbed up the severed legs on the deck at his feet and hurled them over the side, yelled, “Madshaka, tell them, clean up this!”
And then one of the Africans was shouting, pointing, waving a finger at James.
“He say, these Kru, his people,” Madshaka translated. “They have death ceremony, don’t throw in sea.”
James shook his head. “Tell him this is a battle. No time for that,” and as Madshaka spoke to the man James grabbed the shattered body of one of the dead men, slick with blood, clothes saturated and still warm. He looked into the dark and lifeless eyes, and then with two steps was at the rail and the body was over the side.
And then the Kru warrior was there, his cutlass in his hand, waving it at James, screaming, and James jerked a pistol from his shoulder belt and held it out, straight-armed.
A ball from the Spaniard struck the side, just aft of them, made them stagger. The man stopped his advance, but his shouting did not diminish.
“Madshaka! What you tell him?”
“I tell him what you say, this a battle, no time for ceremony. He say, ‘Later, don’t throw man in the sea!’ ”
James looked at the furious African over the length of his pistol and wanted nothing more than to squeeze the trigger. No time for damned barbaric ceremonies, not now.
He lowered the gun. Barbaric ceremonies? How had those words ever come to his mind? “Tell him to do what he wants.” He turned to Cato and Good Boy, who were behind him, and said, “Fetch up selvages and handy-billys and let us get these sheets squared away.”
And so it went on through the morning, with the big Spaniard wriggling further and further from their grasp. At noon the women, who had been taking shelter below with the children, poked their heads on deck, and seeing that there was no immediate danger of a fight, prepared dinner on the portable oven.
It was hopeless. James wondered if the others realized as much. He climbed down from the bulwark, stiffly, his joints protesting, and sat on one of the small guns aft.
One of the women brought him a plate of food and he was able to give a smile by way of thanks and then set it down on the deck and did not look at it.
They had to break off the chase. They would never catch this one, and there was always the chance of one of the Spaniard’s shots doing real damage.
But what to say? Giving up was never good for maintaining the aura of command. James was intimately familiar with the pride of the African warrior. It had been his pride, once. He knew that admitting defeat did not sit well with them.
If he could only explain the situation, then they would understand.
But he could not. He could only tell Madshaka and hope that Madshaka was accurately relaying his words.
His dinner grew cold and the turmoil in his mind grew more chaotic and the Spanish merchantman hit them again and again, but each impact was less devastating than the last as each was fired from a further distance.
Then he decided, he would just tell them. In a fight such as this he had the authority to break off the chase if he chose. No voting. That was the pirates’ way.
He stood and sought out Madshaka, and as he did, the lookout aloft cried out and all heads turned to the main topgallant.
A pause, and then Madshaka stepped aft and said, “He say there another ship, behind us, away off.”
James nodded. This would change things, in one way or another. “Keep the ship on this heading. I’m going to go up, look myself.”
He grabbed up his telescope, jumped into the main shrouds, and headed aloft, glad to be leaving the quarterdeck below him and all its problems and considerations. Over the maintop and up, his weapons slapping against him as he climbed. They had a good, solid feel. He liked the weapons. They did just what he wanted them to do. Gunpowder and lead and steel did not dissemble.
At last to the main topmast crosstrees. The lookout greeted him with a smile and a nod and pointed right astern and said something that James of course could not understand.
James put the glass to his eye, pointed it aft. He found the newcomer right off, she was nearly hull up. Against the hazy horizon it would have been tricky for the lookout to spot, and James imagined that he was not looking too carefully in any event, with the excitement going on below and ahead of them.
He looked for a long time at the sails, not speaking, not moving, just looking.
It did change everything, that much was certain.
Now they would not just be letting the Spaniard go, they would be running themselves. How to explain to the pirates below that they were no longer the hunters, that now they were the prey?