Chapter 63: The Blockade of Mobile
James left Farrow with the mortar and returned to the wheel.
Cudjoe had kept the Bloody Rose steady through the entire affair without needing a single instruction, and stepped aside the instant James’s hand settled on the spokes.
Neither of them spoke, they understood each other well enough that words would only have slowed things down.
The Rose carried just enough sail to hold herself against the current, close enough for the mortar to hit the bastards, far enough to keep the shoals from claiming the hull.
Mobile’s waterfront stretched straight ahead. The two French corvettes lay even closer, near enough that James could make out shadows racing across their decks without straining his eyes.
The depots could wait. The building wasn’t about to loose a broadside while no one watched it, and a French warship whose crew was still sorting out her anchor might very well manage exactly that before long.
Two ships still scrambling to prepare. One fort that had never truly been tested.
Then, as naturally as breathing, familiar words assembled themselves behind his eyes.
⚔ [BATTLE OVERVIEW]
ALLIED — PIRATE FLOTILLA
Bloody Rose — Engaged, Combat Ready
ENEMY — MOBILE GARRISON
La Vigilante — Anchored, Scrambling
Le Faucon — Anchored, Preparing
Fort Louis — Static, Combat Ready (6 Guns)
I have adjusted my expectations for this engagement accordingly. They were already low, so there was not far left to fall.
James looked down at the deck with a grin, as though the insult was praise worth keeping.
"Aye. You and me both."
Farrow crouched beside the mortar with the glowing match held an inch from the vent. He waited with patience, as if he was watching dough rise. The gun crew had already flattened themselves against the deck, hands clamped over their ears before anyone bothered ordering them to do it.
Ned had somehow gone even paler than usual. He pressed both fists against the sides of his head hard enough to leave marks.
"Is it meant to sound like that before it fires, or after?"
His eyes were squeezed shut so tightly his face wrinkled.
No one answered. No one seemed cruel enough to try.
"Right then."
James kept his attention on the nearest corvette, where men still struggled with her ropes.
"Send it, Farrow."
The mortar fired with a thunderous crack, as though the Rose herself had drawn one enormous breath and expelled it all at once.
The deck lurched beneath James’s boots. Smoke rolled over the gun crew in a thick wall that swallowed them from sight. The blast snapped the canvas overhead tight, and somewhere aft a gull foolish enough to be perched on the rail launched itself into the air, shrieking louder than anyone aboard.
The shell climbed into the sky, a dark shadow against the blue. It rose more slowly than James expected, hanging for a heartbeat at the top of its arc before beginning its descent, much like the gull had hung before diving away.
No one spoke. No one dared breathe too loudly for fear of spoiling the shot. Every eye aboard the Rose followed the single black shell as it dropped toward Mobile.
It struck La Vigilante just behind her mainmast.
The shell punched straight through the deck before exploding.
For half a heartbeat nothing happened.
Then the center of the corvette erupted from within. Deck planks blasted skyward with splinters, shattered rigging, and at least one sailor who never had the chance to understand what had happened.
Fire seized the furled canvas almost immediately, racing up the rigging in hungry orange tongues. Men spilled over the rails in pairs and trios, some jumped intentionally while others were hurled clear by the blast. They struck the water in a broken row of splashes while the half-raised anchor cable stretched tight against a ship that would never finish freeing herself.
She wasn’t sinking. Not yet, and perhaps not at all. But she would not fight again that day, and she would not be going anywhere until someone repaired what the Rose had just done to her.
For a long, silent breath, the crew simply stared. They had crippled one of the King’s ships from four hundred yards away with a mortar that had never fired a shot before today.
⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — True Shot
That shell had no business finding her deck.
I am revising my confidence in this mechanism upward, against my own better judgment, and I would ask that you not enjoy that nearly as much as you are clearly about to.
James grinned. He made no effort to hide it from the crew.
The Rose erupted in cheers.
Men who had been crouched against the deck a moment earlier were suddenly on their feet, shouting and pounding each other across the back hard enough to leave bruises. Some had already begun inventing the version they would tell in Nassau, and judging by the noise, that tale had already grown beyond a single mortar shot.
Farrow rose from beside the gun, wiped his hands on his breeches, and allowed himself one brief look of satisfaction before his scowl returned.
"Fair shot."
Coming from Farrow, it might as well have been a triumphal parade.
Ned thrust both fists into the air, every trace of fear burned away.
"Did ye SEE that? I want the next one! Cap’n, let me light the next one!"
"Ye’ll light nothin’."
Farrow didn’t even look his way.
"Certainly," Wesley agreed from somewhere behind them, though nobody present could have explained exactly what he was agreeing with.
Cudjoe allowed himself the faintest smile.
"Well. Suppose that answers whether the gun works."
"Suppose it does."
The celebration died sooner than anyone wanted.
"The other corvette cut her cable, Captain!"
The lookout’s shout sliced through the cheering.
"She’s runnin’ for us, not from us!"
James spotted it a heartbeat later. Someone aboard the Le Faucon’s had taken an axe to the anchor cable and left it for the sea, quicker than waiting on the windlass.
Her sails climbed quickly, rough but effective, while sailors hauled ropes that were barely secured. She was moving now, and that meant she intended to close the range before the Rose could reload and use the mortar again.
Behind James, Farrow’s crew attacked the reload like sailors bailing a sinking boat. Powder was set aside, another shell came wrestling up from below and was forced into the barrel. Farrow cranked the elevation screw back down while muttering a steady stream of curses that would have earned him a flogging in the Royal Navy.
Fort Louis finally remembered it possessed guns of its own.
Pale smoke blossomed along the palisade long before the report reached the Rose. The sound arrived well before either shot accomplished anything, one cannonball splashing harmlessly into the water short of the ship. The other went so high and wide that no one aboard even bothered to duck.
"Save yer powder for the fish, ye cross-eyed bastards!" someone shouted toward shore, drawing laughter from every side. "Ye’ll hit the moon before ye hit us!"
James watched Le Faucon carve through the water toward them. Experience told him what was coming, one side would run out of time before the other ran out of distance, and he had no intention of letting that side be his gun crew.
"Hard over!"
James hauled the wheel around before the thought had fully formed.
"Bring her round, Cudjoe! I want that bow pointed at his nose before he’s worked out what we’re about!"
Cudjoe already moved. Orders rang out to the hands on the braces instantly.
Grey appeared beside him with the chart still clenched in one fist. He jabbed a finger at a line he had drawn that morning.
"Swing wide of that and ye’re clear. Come any tighter and we’re arguin’ with the bottom again. Ye’ve got room. Not much, mind, but enough."
"That’ll do me."
The Rose answered the helm. Canvas cracked overhead as she came onto her new heading. Her timbers groaned through the turn like an old sailor complaining on a cold morning.
Along the starboard side, gun crews hauled the cannons forward. Wheels rumbled across the deck, and one black muzzle after another emerged through the ports until the length of the hull bristled with waiting guns.
Le Faucon continued straight toward them, her bow turning neatly into the same maneuver. Her captain still had no idea what that decision was about to cost.
Every cannon crew waited.
James held the wheel steady. He said nothing, trusting the last stretch of water between the ships to close by itself.