Page 65 of Blow Me Down
“Don’t you think someone will see me?” I asked, hesitant.
“Nay. At the time ye’re joinin‘ up to their rear, I’ll be at the head, firin’ off a few shots to keep their attention forward. Anyone who notices ye sailin‘ up behind ’em will see ye flyin‘ Corbin’s flag and think ye’re a straggler who just caught up. From there, ye can move up to the heart of the blockade—the flagship.”
I handed Pangloss back the glass, worrying my lower lip as I tried to make a decision about what I was going to do. Harming Corbin was out of the question. But if I blithely sailed into the blockade and didn’t do anything, it might gack the scenario up. The key, I decided as I made my way back to my ship, was to fire a lot but miss Corbin’s ships entirely. Bart would just put down my misses to bad aim, yet I would be doing my part to push the game play forward.
And there was the little matter of running supplies back to the town. I had yet to figure out a way to explain how I was able to bring in supplies, but I was confident I’d think of something when the time came.
“Weigh anchor,” I ordered when I returned to my ship, pleased to see that the supplies had been loaded and properly stowed. “We’re going to stay close to the shore, so everyone needs to keep an eye out for problems. Once we clear the harbor, we’ll join up with the blockade.”
Four sets of surprised eyes turned on me.
“We’ll be undercover. Like a nautical version of James Bond,” I told my men.
They didn’t even blink, just stared at me with identical blank looks. I sighed to myself and gestured them to their tasks. “Just get us going. We need to be in the blockade before it gets light enough for them to see us clearly. Douse those lanterns. We need to be running silent and dark, like a particularly clever and saucy sort of deadly shark.”
I hummed a bit of theJawstheme as my ship slipped away from the noise and mayhem of the dock. I climbed up to my favorite spot—the crow’s nest—to watch for trouble as we sailed as close to shore as possible without grounding.
Pangloss must have been watching for me, for when we started around the far arm of the harbor and I ordered the ship to turn toward the last silhouette in a long line of ships, Pangloss’s ship started firing its guns.
“There’s our distraction,” I said to Bas, who had joined me in the crow’s nest.
He had sharp eyes and seemed to see better in the dim light than I did. As we joined the tail of the blockade, I eyed the dark line of ships becoming more and more visible with each minute. “How many ships do you count?”
Bran squawked a protest as Bas scrambled up to the railing and leaned forward out of the crow’s nest, as if a few extra inches would help him see better. I grabbed the back of his shirt to make sure he didn’t tumble to the deck below, relieved when he hopped back down onto the circular platform with me.
“Eleven.”
I sighed. That’s the number I’d counted, as well, which meant Bart’s crew was outnumbered almost three to one.
“If I really wanted to end the blockade quickly, I could just fill Corbin’s ships full of lead, but that would be unforgivable of me. I’ll just give them a harmless show, instead,” I said to myself. Bas looked at me in surprise. “Yarr! I mean, I would if we weren’t bloodthirsty, gore-lovin‘ pirates! Kill! Maim! Destroy! And all that jazz.”
He smiled in utter delight.
The sky was turning to a slate gray now, indicating the sun’s imminent arrival.
As my sloop gained speed, it passed the hindmost ship, a blue and white sloop bearing the nameKatrin’s Loss. I watched nervously as we passed, braced and ready to order the ship to turn around if there was any outcry at our sudden arrival, but evidently my saucy ship’s distinctive—and well-known—
appearance coupled with Corbin’s flag was the passport I needed.
“What’s goin‘ to be happenin’ now?” Bas asked, scratching his head with the pointy tip of his hook.
“Don’t scratch with that thing—you don’t know where it’s been,” I said absently, watching carefully as we sailed past a huge war frigate, the sides of which positively bristled with guns. “What’s going to happen now is we’re going to mosey up to the flagship all casual-like, and once we get close enough to do some damage, Pangloss and the other officers are going to engage the ships so we can go in with all guns blazing. The first couple of ships should be caught in the cross fire.”
“Ah,” he said, looking as inscrutable as only an eight-year-old could.
As we passed ship after ship, no one gave us a second look. The foremost blockade warships were dropping anchor in a line-of-ship position that kept their broadsides toward the harbor, so they’d be able to fire on any ship approaching from the island. Pangloss and the others were going to have their work cut out for them—even though I’d been told that cannon fire was remarkably inaccurate at long range, they’d have to get in close enough to have their own guns do good, leaving themselves at risk.
Only three ships separated us from the flagship, which I could now see was painted red and black.
“Corbin has a thing for brightly painted ships, it seems,” I said. We were just passing a yellow-and-black sloop— which I was amused to see was namedBumblebee Tuna— when all hell broke out.
Bart’s officers, who had massed at the entrance of the harbor just out of the range of the blockade guns, suddenly all came to life and started to move toward the line of ships, directly at us.
“Hey!” I shouted, startled as the ships turned broadsides to us. I could hear the shouts of captains ordering their guns loaded as the blockade ships readied themselves for battle. “They’re not supposed to be doing that yet! I’m not in position!”
I jumped up and down and waved my hand at the foremost of Bart’s ships to try to get the captains’ attention, but either they didn’t notice me or they didn’t care that I was directly in the line of their fire. Their ships started turning so their guns were aimed right at the middle third of the blockade line.
And us.
