Page 25

In a few minutes they were once more running with the wind in their teeth, heading straight at the San Pedro.

As a target the Egret would pose a nearly impossible challenge to the inept gunners on board the Spanish galleon; as a threat, she was at a temporary disadvantage herself, able to bring only her forward bow chasers into play until Spence gave the order to shear away and present a broadside.

Since it was almost the exact maneuver Dante himself had been thinking about, he clenched a fist in a show of support and cast a broad grin up at the captain.

Spence, in turn, executed a courtier’s bow to acknowledge the pirate wolf’s praise, and was still partly off balance when the iron ball screamed through the sails overhead and struck the after-deck.

A younger man with two good legs and several stone less weight around his girth might have been able to spring clear and come up laughing.

As it was, Spence jerked to one side, and instead of taking off his head, the ball struck the lower half of his leg. It tore away everything below his knee, and sent Jonas spinning sideways against the mast, with his hairless skull cracking as loud as a gunshot against the solid white pine.

Dante dropped the iron shot he had been holding and was in motion before Spence’s body sagged to the deck. He mounted the ladder in two bounding strides and caught the massive shoulders under the arms, propping him against the trunk of the mast even as Beau skidded onto her knees beside them.

“Father! Father!” she cried.

“God deliver me from the sin o’ fornication,” Spence gasped, clutching at the sheets of blood that poured from the deep gash in his head. “Have the bastards killed me?”

“No.” Beau wilted briefly under the weight of her relief. “But your head nearly killed the mast.”

She ripped the sleeve from her shirt and used it to bind her father’s wound. Dante, meanwhile, was gaping down at the shredded flaps of Spence’s breeches, at a wound that should have been spouting gouts of blood but was only leaking a few feeble drops where the leather leg brace had been torn away.

He looked up at Spence’s face, then over at the shattered remains of the wooden limb crushed against the rail.

“You didn’t know?” Beau asked with some surprise.

“I … merely thought he had a limp.”

Beau grinned. “How profoundly observant of you, Captain Dante.”

The impish smile produced a startling change on her face and Dante found himself completely unsettled by it.

Soft brown brows arched above eyes that had the luster of burnished gold; supple pink lips were gracefully curved, unexpectedly sensual.

She had shed the thickly padded doublet and her breasts pushed against the linen as if trying to burst through …

indeed, where she had ripped the seam of her sleeve, the whiteness of her flesh shone like a hidden pearl.

Billy Cuthbert shouted for their attention. His face was contorted with strain as he leaned against the tiller, trying to hold it steady. “Is the captain all right?”

“He has cracked his head hard enough to cross his eyes,” Beau said, tying off the makeshift bandage. “But otherwise he will probably live.”

“Good. Because we have a problem here that might require his attention.”

Beau cursed and sprang to her feet. Dante was a beat behind and did not need to see the sudden, appalling drain of color from her face to know that in the brief few minutes they had taken to tend Jonas Spence, the Egret had come well within the range of the San Pedro’s guns.

Within range and still streaking toward her like a hawk diving on its prey.

Dante looked at Beau, then swore his way through a quick decision as he whirled and strode to the rail. “Mister Pitt! Mister McCutcheon! Double-shot every gun and be prepared to fire on my signal! ”

The gnarled face of Spit McCutcheon turned hesitantly to Beau.

At the same time, several of the Spaniard’s shots found their range and smashed through the bow rails, spraying fragments of timber on the heads of the men in the waist of the ship.

More ripped through the canvas overhead, bringing down the skysail and sending lines hissing through the air like snakes.

“Do it, Spit,” Beau ordered. “Do as he says!”

“Aye, sir! Double up, lads!”

“I need five men up here on cables!” Dante shouted. “Now! Lucifer—!”

The Cimaroon emerged from the debris on the run and jumped up to the afterdeck without troubling himself to use the ladder.

A curt order from Dante put him on the tiller anchoring the heavy cables at intervals along the thick oak arm, passing the ends to the other men who had responded to Dante’s call.

“Beau—” Dante whirled again. “On my command, put everything you have on the rudder. She’ll fight you at this speed, but you have to hold her. Can you do it?”

“We’re moving too fast! You’ll tear her apart!”

He shook his head. “She’s strong, she’ll hold! If we try to slow her down, we’ll only stay under the Spaniard’s guns longer and if we shear away now—” he ducked as another barrage of exploding wood splinters and rubble narrowly missed him— “they’ll be able to hit us with everything they have.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We … are going to surprise the hell out of them,” he said with a predator’s grin.

They were coming up fast on the San Pedro , close enough now to clearly see the Spanish officers in their shiny breastplates and feathered helmets moving along the decks, ordering their gunners to bear down on the approaching ship.

Their efforts were finding some success as a burning spar crashed onto the Egret’s gundeck, crushing one man and sweeping another, screaming, through a new gap in the rail.

McCutcheon and Pitt encouraged their gunners with a calmness that might have been applied to a training drill, not the fiery maelstrom erupting around them. When both batteries were loaded and ready, the men looked up at Simon Dante, their faces white and streaming sweat, and nodded.

Dante repeated the gesture and raised his hand in Beau’s direction, watching her, watching the fast-approaching galleon, watching the shocked reaction on board the Spaniard as the crew scattered in panic, expecting the Egret to ram them bow-on.

Dante waited to the last possible second, judging the tack with the likeliest amount of clearance before he brought his arm slashing down.

“Now!” He shouted savagely. “Bring her hard to starboard, now!”

At a distance of barely fifty yards the Egret started to carve a deep blue swath in the sea as she turned into a parallel course with the galleon.

Because of her comparative size she looked more like a mongrel running into the shadow of a stallion, but Dante had gauged her speed, her roll, the swell of the sea, and when his arm came down a second time to release his gunners, the bite she took out of the monstrous ship was both devastating and crippling in its effect.

The thunderous volley was delivered almost as a single shot and exploded with such a vengeance on the enemy deck, there was a corresponding explosion of planking, timbers, and bodies on board the galleon.

Screams and smaller blasts followed as stores of powder were struck and ignited.

McCutcheon’s crews were able to fire a second murderous barrage, then a third and a fourth, before the Egret started to peel away.

By then the galleon was enveloped in a thick black boil of smoke that left scrolling plumes in the sky behind her.

“Captain!”

Beau’s scream did not allow Dante time to celebrate the success of his maneuver.

She was sprawled on her backside, as were Lucifer, Billy Cuthbert, and the other four men who had been putting their backs into holding the rudder.

The arm of the tiller had snapped under the incalculable strain and sent them all into a crushed heap against the rail.

Suddenly free of tension, the rudder swung loose, guided by momentum and motion, breaking out of the tight turn and plunging instead toward a sure collision with the wide stern end of the galleon.

Lucifer staggered to his feet, shaking a spray of blood droplets off his hand.

Beau was struggling to her knees as Dante ran past and snatched her upright by the scruff of her shirt.

Her lip was split and the palms of both hands were raw from rope burns, but she gathered up the cables and ran after the two men to the broken stub of the tiller.

Lucifer twined the rope around the oak, then coiled it once around his body and pulled, while Dante and Beau plied every last ounce of their strength to pushing on the opposite side.

The rope gouged deeply into the Cimaroon’s flesh and he let loose a bloodcurdling roar, one that had the veins popping in his neck and his eyes rolling back so that only the whites showed.

Dante’s every muscle and sinew bulged across his back and arms. His long legs were braced back on the deck and his head was dropped between his shoulders; he did not have to look to see if their exertions were having any effect, they would all know well enough in the next few seconds.

The sound of cold, rushing water filled their ears.

An ominous black shadow swept over their heads as the Egret passed so close to the Spaniard, they could feel the heat of her fires belching out the broken gallery windows, so close the end of an English yard snagged on the tangle of Spanish rigging overhead and was brought screaming around in its fittings, ripping cables and cleats free as it twisted around the mast. A massive, almost human groan rose from the Egret’s belly as she squeezed past the galleon, her planks and boards shuddering with the friction as she cut through the turbulence of the San Pedro’s wake.

When she was clear, and bursting into sunlight again, the groaning was deafened by the cheers of the men as they threw their arms in the air and whooped in triumph.

While Lucifer eased some slack into the cable, Beau collapsed in disbelief against the broken spar.

“Did we do it?” she gasped. “Did we really do it?”

Dante, grinning, did not answer her with words. Instead, he reached down and took her face between his hands, kissing her hard and full on the lips.