Chapter 130: How to Not Go Fishing for Cannons
Three days out of Nassau, James had already made the acquaintance of every inch of the Gilded Herring. It hadn’t taken long, mostly because there weren’t many inches to make acquaintance with.
She was a little brigantine, picked for that very reason since anything larger would have left its keel behind on the reefs they meant to cross.
Whoever named her had been an optimist of uncommon nerve. There wasn’t a speck of gilt aboard, and if she resembled a herring at all, it was mostly because of her silhouette and the rotten scent that drifted up from below after the sun had baked her all afternoon.
Eight souls stuffed into quarters meant for four had already worked a few peculiar miracles.
Coombes snored hard enough to shake the ship and Mary had taken to sleeping with rags in both ears, seeing as Anne proved no quieter in close quarters than she’d ever been in a captain’s cabin. Bucket, for his part, had discovered all sorts of urgent business on deck after midnight rather than lie two feet from the racket.
On that morning, Coombes stood at the wheel with one ear tilted toward the sea, as though he expected the water to announce a sandbar before it came into sight.
James, who lingered nearby, reckoned it just might, the man had spent enough years on these shallows to read the swell the way other men read a chart.
Not far from them, Mary stood against the rail, close enough to catch anything worth hearing.
Grey was present too, press-ganged into the voyage for one simple reason, how nobody else aboard could tell them where the old duchess had gone down. He’d spread his sea charts beside the mainmast and was already muttering at them like a priest trying to bully sense out of stubborn scripture.
Down by the waist, Anne had her hands buried inside the rim of the diving bell, working a brass fitting back and forth.
Bucket hovered close enough to stop her, though not nearly brave enough to try.
"Missus, I’d not go pokin’ at that if I were..."
"It’s brass, Bucket. It won’t bite me."
"Aye, but it’s my brass."
"Then come explain it instead of hoverin’ like a nervous gull."
Coombes heard just enough to shout across the small deck. "That fittin’, missus, is the whole trick to stayin’ alive down there. Fiddle with it the wrong way and ye’ll learn the hard lesson, which is to say ye’ll drown."
"Then teach me the easy lesson."
The man lit up like a preacher handed a willing congregation. "See, we lower her upside down, open end first, same as pushin’ a cup mouth-down into a basin. The water can’t chase all the air out, so it stays trapped up inside and gives a man enough to breathe for a fair spell, long as he don’t get greedy."
Anne snickered, "Sounds like every mornin’ after the Rat."
James scratched at his jaw.
"Aye, except the Rat don’t drown you for greed, just takes every coin you’ve got."
Despite the tone, the explanation felt important enough that Mary’s attention drifted to their antics.
"And when the air runs out?"
Coombes shrugged. "Then it’s time to leave. First sign’s the candle, she’ll burn weak, like she’s as desperate as you are. Wait too long, and no amount o’ prayin’ will buy ye another breath."
"Unless you’ve got the casks."
Bucket cut in before Coombes could wander into another lecture.
He nodded toward a few lashed against the mast. "We send ’em down after the bell, sealed up full o’ fresh air. Just crack one open underneath and ye get a little longer before there’s no choice but to come back up."
James grinned.
"That way it even seems safe enough."
"It’s about as safe as drownin’ slow, Captain. I wouldn’t advise it."
"Aye, well." James rubbed at his jaw. "I’ll put it beside the other ways I expect to die."
"Mind ye, the sea ain’t that kind either."
He tapped one thick ear. "It’s why I hear thunder on a calm day and miss a woman hollerin’ right in me face. Me ears paid for every dive I ever made."
"Small price for what we used to bring up." Bucket added.
James didn’t doubt that for a second.
He looked to the bell again and asked, "And once we find her guns, how in Christ’s name d’ye plan on gettin’ one from the bottom onto this deck?"
Coombes’s whole face brightened at once, "Now there’s a question worth askin’. We put rope under the barrel and breech both, slung true. Miss yer hold and she’ll roll crooked, and then ye’ll have a gun swingin’ in the water like a shark on a line."
Bucket took up the thread before Coombes could go wandering too far. "And lash empty casks alongside as well. They help with the weight since the tackle ain’t meant to drag the whole sea at once."
Even then, Coombes picked up the explanation a beat after, "Little by little, one gun, then another. No haste to it, haste is how men break tackle, lose fingers, or let the prize slip back into the mud."
James gave a laugh. "A cheerful business."
"Rome weren’t drowned in a day."
Coombes replied with a solemn nod. "She won’t be raised in one either."
By then, Anne was finally done checking, or rather playing with the bell. She wiped her hands on her breeches and stood.
"What’s it feel like, sittin’ under there with the whole sea leanin’ on top of ye?"
Coombes considered it for a long moment. "Feels like bein’ born again, missus, if that involves a powerful lot more terror and a fair chance of drownin’ before the business was done."
"Sounds worth seein’ for myself."
"I mean to go down too."
James looked from Anne to Coombes.
"Once we’ve found her."
"So do I."
Mary didn’t took her eyes off the water.
The cheer drained straight out of Coombes and pride and alarm wrestled across his face.
He continued carefully, "Beggin’ all yer pardons, but this ain’t work for folks that’s never tried it. I’ve years beneath that bell, and both these ears paid for every one. A green man goes down, he comes back deaf, or dead, or singin’ hymns nobody ever taught him."
"He means well."
Bucket shrugged. "He just don’t fancy fishin’ all o’ ye out from under a bell instead of a cannon."
"Then teach us right," James said. "None of us’ll drown for lack of knowin’ better."
Coombes looked from one stubborn face to the next, searching for some way to refuse without losing the job he’d nearly cried to get.
He couldn’t find one.
"...Suppose some families breed more stubbornness than sense."
Bucket grunted once. That seemed enough to settle the matter.
Mary finally turned, her lips curled upward. "Don’t fret yerself sick, Coombes. If one of us drowns, ye’ll get paid just the same. Might even leave ye with a finer story."
Coombes opened his mouth, thought better of it, and shut it again.
Over by the mainmast, Grey had been quarreling with his chart for the better part of an hour. From the sound of things, the chart had put up a stout defense.
"Six fathom here. Plain as day."
He scratched out a note with the stub of his pencil, wrote it again, frowned at it, then scratched it away once more.
"But that ain’t what I marked the first time. No... I had it right, then I spoiled it, which means the fool that corrected me was me."
He glared at the paper as though it had planned the whole affair.
James blinked, then looked over the others.
"It’s fine, he does that."
Coombes shrugged, entirely unbothered. "Strange, aye, but I’ve seen crazier navigators."
Grey finally looked up and tapped the chart twice with two fingers.
"That’s her."
His eyes dropped straight back to the paper. "Or close enough. If the man o’ war went down anywhere near where I marked her durin’ the fight, she’s lyin’ somewhere beneath this very patch o’ water."
Nobody spoke for a spell.
Then Coombes, still holding the wheel, turned his good ear toward the sea as though the old wreck might answer if a man only listened hard enough.