Our longboat and buoy had disappeared.
Martel shouted something. My ears were ringing.
“What?”
He swam closer, looked at one ear, and then turned me to shout in the other. “Powder keg!”
Ah, the English had dropped a fused one with enough air to let it float, and the mine had gone off next to our precious longboat. Our buoy rope marking the treasure had slithered to the bottom.
“Time to leave!” Jubal shouted.
We didn’t have to be persuaded. Another barrel came down, and we swam for our lives. It erupted with fury and a huge fountain of spray as we scrambled up the side of Pelee like squirrels. One black took a splinter and fell with a cry back into the sea; we fished him out, blood running.
Something thumped our side. It was the diving bell, kicked out of our boat by the explosion. With more sentiment than sense, I insisted we haul it aboard. The leaded rum barrel thumped down, its little glass porthole intact.
Then I collapsed on deck, dripping and exhausted. An ax swung, the anchor cable parted, and a jib unreeled to catch the wind. The ketch’s bow swung as sharply as a wayward compass needle, cannonballs still crashing, and then we were off, flying from Diamond Rock.
A shout went up from the British side as they saw us sail through the range of their guns, but by now rain was beginning to fall, obscuring us further. Their cannon boomed, and a lucky shot might still have sunk us, but we had only a couple balls scream harmlessly through our rigging. We’d snatched one of the most fabulous treasures in history out from under English noses, and chances were they didn’t even know what we’d taken. When the storm abated, they’d probably clamber down and scratch their heads, evidence of our expedition churned away by the storm’s surf.
They might signal an English frigate, however, to hunt us down. So we hoisted more canvas, the overload pushing a rail into the sea, and were off like a racehorse, men scrabbling to catch treasure sliding on deck and carry it to storage below. I’d no doubt more than a few trinkets disappeared into trousers or shoes, but we had no time for inspection. The ship raced, bucking and pitching in the building waves with the sickening swoops of Cayley’s glider. Pelee was badly balanced with the mortar and rolled more than was normal.
Still, we’d recovered what the conquistadors had lost. The Sad Night of Cortes had been reversed.
I wearily sat against a mast and looked for Astiza. There she was in the stern as planned, exactly as I’d told her to be. I waved again, our smiles a flash in the night. The signal confirmed that Harry was tucked safe in a sail locker.
And that payback could soon begin.
Chapter 41
We sailed from the artificial thunder-and-lightning storm coming from the British output on Diamond Rock, a blind bombardment of artillery like bolts from Olympus. The monolith was finally lost behind us in rain and mist, spray flying from wave tops, stars hidden. The nearby mountains of Martinique were invisible. Now the only sign of the isle was the white glow of warning surf.
Had Martinique been a lee shore, wind blowing toward it, we’d have been hard-pressed to keep off its reefs. But the wind was boiling out of the southeast, pushing us northwestward into the open Caribbean.
“Hurricane coming!” Jubal shouted in my ear.
“Not this season,” I protested.
“This one is from Agwe. Or perhaps the god of Montezuma?”
“God should favor us. We’re putting treasure to liberty’s use.” The wind snatched my words away like leaves in a tempest.
“Only if we win.” My friend was looking at Martel.
The renegade policeman was snapping orders like an admiral. Sailors ran to the lines, looking apprehensively up at our rigging.
“My God,” I said, “he’s going to try to jibe in this wind. He’ll risk snapping the boom.”
“He wants to sail into Fort-de-France.”
We’d expected as much. Once under French guns, any chance of our keeping some treasure would be gone, regardless of the promises Martel made. My family would still be at his mercy. My black companions would be reenslaved. The scoundrel would return to Paris, triumphant with triangular toys. I rose from the mast and put my hand on a sailor’s arm. “No.” The man hesitated, his muscle jumping under my palm. “For your own safety, get to the rail.”
But then a sword point pricked the back of my shoulder. “It’s time for you to go below out of the weather, Monsieur Gage.” Martel had put on a greatcoat over wet clothes, its hem stuttering in the wind. “We’ll make you warm in the dungeons of Fort-de-France.”
“I thought we were partners, Leon.”
“Indeed, we were. But all partnerships must end.”
It was the betrayal we’d been waiting for, counting on. Martel’s squad of scoundrels had pistols out pointing at Jubal’s men, and swords in case guns didn’t fire in the tropic rain. They meant to take it all, not just the flying toys but every necklace, every idol, every golden alligator. Even the emerald again, if he held me captive long enough for my body to expel it. Or he’d slit me from arse to throat to get at it, if he knew where I’d put the jewel.
“Jibe in this wind, and you’ll risk the mainmast,” I warned.
“It’s our only chance to make Martinique. And I don’t believe you’re a sailor, Gage. Leave it to experts who are.”
I glanced at Captain Brienne at the helm, eyeing the booms and yards of the sails as nervously as a groom his approaching bride. “To Haiti, Martel, downwind,” I tried. “For a fair division as promised.”
He smiled. “Come, Gage. You knew it had to be this way from the beginning. We’re all pirates here. It was either me imprisoned in Haiti, or you imprisoned in Martinique. And I’m not a man to share. So
… down the hatch. You can say good-bye to your son a final time while we run for the harbor. Your wife and boy can hire as domestics, or she can work as a whore; she’d make good money at it. You’ll win delivery back to France in chains to answer to Napoleon. It’s an honor, to merit such trouble.”
“I’m Napoleon’s agent, you idiot.”
“Are you really that naive? Maybe they’ll give you L’Ouverture’s old cell, which I’m told was very large. I’m not a cruel man. Just
… determined.”
“And arrogant.”
“Only around my inferiors.” He motioned with the sword tip. “Go, go. I don’t want to stab you in front of your wife. I hate the sobs of women.”
Which was as good a cue as any. I looked beyond him to the stern of our ship. “Astiza?”
“Ready, Ethan.” There was a squeal of metal, and she pivoted a swivel gun on the stern rail and aimed its muzzle down the deck. Captain Brienne’s eyes went wide, and he ducked down.
“Packed with musket balls and waiting for hours,” I told Martel.
He considered my wife. The calm captive of Martinique had disappeared. Now Astiza looked the avenging banshee, her dress and coat shuddering in the howl of wind, wet hair loose and flying like a flag. A glowing match was sheltered in her hand.
“You must be joking,” Martel tried. “She’s a woman. A mother. Tell her to get away from that gun before she hurts herself.”
“She is a mother, and you took her cub,” I warned. “I advise you put your sword down. Partners, you said. It’s still not too late.”
“She’s bluffing,” he called to his men. “Use Gage as a shield!”
They shoved Jubal’s blacks, whom they’d surprised, toward me, everyone swaying and stumbling to the ungodly roll of the ship, bunching into a target.
We had just an instant before ropes clasped around us, but Antoine had drilled the men ashore. Training and timing is everything.
“Now,” I said.