Ship Running Aground Ploy

“Don’t forget, I know these waters, Robby. I’m wagering I know them better than Borya does. I’ve got an idea how to get him. You’re a praying man. Pray it works. Pray hard.”

“I will, Jack.”

Jack smiled and clapped Robby on the shoulder. “I believe I gave you an order, Mr. Greene?”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Robby said. He tried to smile, then turned away.

Jack heard him giving orders, and felt the W*nch turn again, swinging back to starboard, heading due north. He headed down the ladder, then turned and went into his cabin. All his charts had been put away to make room for the little gathering earlier, but a quick search produced the right one. Jack lifted it, and with an expert snap of his wrist, sent it unrolling across his table. He bent over it, studying it. He’d ordered the course change based on memory; now it was time to check and double-check what lay to the north.

After looking again at the chart, Jack went back to the quarterdeck, moving fast, to examine the traverse board, where all the W*nch’s positions, as determined by the chip log, were recorded, using pegs to mark their progress. Quickly he checked them, then, holding the figures in his mind, he ran back down the ladder, back to the chart. Muttering the numbers, he hastily grabbed a quill and some ink, then scratched them onto a scrap of parchment. Then he went back over the chart again.

Finally Jack sagged into his chair, and absently capped his bottle of ink. He was sure of their position now. The Wicked W*nch was not quite twenty miles from an uncharted deepwater inlet, a trough in the coral reef about one mile wide and three miles long. The inlet dead-ended just east of the northernmost tip of a little island called Gorda Cay. If the Wicked W*nch continued due north on her current course, all Jack had to do was turn just little bit to the northeast, and his ship would sail right into the inlet—and Borya would follow him.

Jack knew where the trough began. He also knew where it abruptly dead-ended. He was betting Borya didn’t.

He knew his plan was risky. If he didn’t time this maneuver just right, he and his crew would wind up trapped, sitting ducks. On the other hand, if he were successful, the pirate sloop would run aground, and the W*nch would be free to come about and blast her to flinders with her twelve-pounders. A ship that couldn’t move couldn’t aim her cannons properly.

Jack took a deep breath and crossed his fingers. *All I need is good timing and a bit of luck.*

(...)


Without waiting for any more arguments from her, Jack headed back to give his orders. Behind him, he could hear Ayisha protesting, then she let out an indignant squawk. Jack suspected that the giant eunuch had picked her up bodily, to carry her below.

Jack spent the next few minutes ordering Robby and Frank Connery to “anchor by the stern” on the Wicked W*nch’s starboard side—the side away from Borya. Jack didn’t want the rogue captain to see what they were doing.

Anchoring by the stern was a messy, arduous task, requiring the cooperation and strength of all available hands, but it would bring Jack the results he wanted—if all went according to plan.

Working together, under the supervision of the two mates, the crew would haul the thick, heavy anchor cable all the way from the bow on the main deck back to the stern, then pass it out of the aft-most gun port on the starboard side. Then, using ropes to keep the cable from falling into the sea, the crew would come up on the weather deck and haul the cable along the outside of the hull, all the way forward to the ship’s bow, where they’d secure it to the “small bower” anchor—basically, the W*nch’s spare anchor.

When Jack gave the order to drop anchor, the small bower would plummet down into the water, catch on the bottom, and bring the ship up short, stopping her dead, before she could run aground at the end of the trough. While the anchor was dropping and catching, the sail handlers would spill all wind from the sails to stall the ship’s forward momentum.

Borya’s sloop was slowly closing on their port side, so the Russian wouldn’t be able to see what they were doing over on the starboard side.

(...)

After another minute or two, Jack stole a glance to starboard, and saw they were almost past the sandbar, and heading straight. They were in the trough. The water on either side of the ship remained deep blue, but when he squinted, he could see the color of the sea change, grow lighter in the distance. Because of the clouds, and the length of the sun’s rays in the west, it was difficult to make out the depth of the water, due to the reflection. It would probably take Borya a while before he realized that there were now shoals hemming him in on both sides of the trough.

Koldunya followed them into the trough. She was now about three-quarters of a mile away, behind them, still on their port side. The sloop’s next shot came from her bow chaser, aimed at the W*nch’s stern. It missed, plunking into the water, but the next one hit them. Jack didn’t think it had struck below the waterline, but it was hard to tell.

Jack gave the wheel back to Matthews, and went forward, watching the water as it slid past the bow. He was sweating, but not due to the heat. He could see Gorda Cay without his spyglass, coming up to port. It wasn’t a very big island—not even half a mile long.

They hadn’t been in the deepwater trough long—perhaps five minutes. In fifteen more minutes, give or take, the W*nch would reach the end of the trough, and run into the shoal. Before that happened, Jack had to trick Borya into running aground. He knew just where he had to do it, and they were not there yet, but the waiting was torture.

(...)

Koldunya was barely half a mile away.

Ten more minutes crawled by, and finally—finally!—it was time for Jack to make his move. He raced up the ladder to the quarterdeck. Koldunya was right behind the W*nch now, less than a thousand yards astern, still gaining steadily.

“Matthews, change course to northwest,” Jack ordered. As the helmsman turned the wheel, Jack waved at Robby to stand by, indicating that he was about to issue those orders. Robby waved back, acknowledging the signal, then, in his turn, signaled Connery, who was standing ready to release the anchor.

The Wicked W*nch swung to port.

As Jack had anticipated, Borya immediately did the same. The W*nch’s turn closed the distance between them, and Koldunya was now only three hundred yards away—within broadside range.

Jack held his breath. Surely by now the Russian captain had noticed there were shoals on either side! But the sloop plunged ahead, doing exactly what Jack wanted. Borya’s sloop had a much shallower draft than the Wicked W*nch. The Little Butcher must have figured the W*nch was following yet another deepwater channel.

*Come on, run aground, run aground, run aground now, come on!* Jack thought, balling his fists. Would Borya be able to hit the W*nch with a broadside before his sloop hit the shoal? If he didn’t hit it soon, the W*nch would run aground! They were barely two hundred yards from the end of the inlet!

The sloop’s bow suddenly thrust upward as she came to a crashing halt. Jack watched as her topmast snapped off and crashed to the deck.

Jack gasped with relief. It had worked! “YES!” he yelled. “YES!”

He heard his crew yelling in celebration. It was hard to tear his eyes away from the sight of the sloop, helplessly aground, but Jack turned, and waved to Robby. “Drop anchor!” he bellowed.

Robby signed to Connery, repeating the order, in case the second mate hadn’t heard the captain over the cheering crewmen. Immediately Jack cupped his hands around his mouth, grabbed a breath, and yelled, “Let fly all sheets! Scandalize her!”

The “sheets” were the ropes that kept the sails taut, and “to scandalize” meant to spill all wind from the sails. Jack waited tensely as the crewmen worked feverishly to halt the ship.

Without warning, the Wicked W*nch’s bow lifted, then she halted so abruptly Jack was flung into the air. The top of his head whacked the railing of the quarterdeck, and he nearly catapulted right down the ladder—but some instinct made him grab the railing just in time to save himself. Stars and pinwheels spiraled past his vision; he struggled against blacking out.

Moments later, Jack slowly sat up, then he climbed to his feet, shaking his head, still stunned from the fall. The sails hung loose, as ordered. He knew the anchor had been let go.

But the anchor wasn’t what had stopped them. Not that fast, not that hard.

Jack realized the Wicked W*nch had run aground, too. Looking over to port, Jack could see Koldunya, three hundred yards distant, her starboard side facing them.

***

The Price of Freedom, Chapter 13