The Emerald Storm

Chapter 40

Life is never simple. My captured family and I were now within imminent gunshot range of English, French, and Haitian rivals; the weather was deteriorating toward a real storm; and fish had gotten all our rolls. I was sticky with salt, windburned, thirsty, and weary. Any man who tells you adventuring is a lark is a liar.

“Maybe the English won’t see us if we row out to the buoy,” Jubal whispered back.

“In these seas? We’ll splash like a duck,” I said.

“They’ll see no more if we meet them with steel,” Martel suggested. He drew a stiletto as wicked as a warlock’s wand, and it gleamed in the night like a shard of ice. The bastard looked as anticipatory about sliding it between a man’s ribs as I do about stroking a woman. Our renegade policeman was a dog needing to be put down, but we could use his bite now.

“You’ve certainly more pluck than I can muster,” I said to encourage him. “Could you show us how to stalk, please? Jubal and I will guard the rear until Pelee heaves to. We’ll keep your flying machines safe as well.”

He looked at the lantern bobbing above. “I prefer that we cut English throats together, Gage. Just to continue our partnership.”

“I rather like the Albions, despite our differences at Lexington and Concord. They’re terribly earnest but have a dry sense of humor. Slitting English throats seems more of a French than an American task, don’t you think? Not that my hopes and prayers don’t go with you.”

“You’ll strand me on the rock.”

Excellent idea. “Not if you’re quick,” I lied.

But before Martel could demonstrate his assassination skills or, even more conveniently, be killed, more pebbles rained down and a shout came from above. “There’s a boat down here!”

“Too late,” the Frenchman muttered. He tucked his stiletto away, unwrapped an oilcloth, uncovered a brace of pistols, and tossed one each to Jubal and me. He took up a third, stood in our bouncing craft, aimed, and fired. There was a cry and the lantern tumbled, bouncing into the air like a meteor and then plunging in the sea, leaving us in darkness again. “Vive Napoleon!”

“Frogs!” the British sailors exclaimed. Muskets flashed above, and balls pinged and whined about our heads.

“Couldn’t we have discussed our strategy before you cried out like a charging regiment?” I grumbled.

“French elan, and a commendable shot in these conditions,” Martel replied. “ Pelee will be here soon. Make them hesitate, Gage.”

So Jubal and I fired, too. British pistols banged back, I heard the richest variety of curses this side of a Portsmouth alehouse, and then we were all busy reloading. More lights appeared at the top of the rock, and a general alarm was raised. A trumpet sounded, and drums rattled. We’d spent the entire day slipping out treasure from under the British noses, and now, in the dead of night, we’d raised the entire garrison. Was Martel trying to get us killed?

“We can’t fight the whole bloody fort,” I said. “Let’s row for Martinique and you lads can come back for the treasure later. I’ll take Astiza and Harry and be on my way.” Leaving an emperor’s ransom hurt, of course, but I had my emerald on deposit.

“They’ll wonder what we were here for, dive, and find it,” Martel replied. “We need that treasure, Gage. No man should understand the importance of money better than a drifting pauper like yourself.”

Alas, he had a point. We work all our lives for filthy lucre in hopes of not working at all. It makes no sense, but then neither does love, fashion, or the American Congress.

A cannon boomed from atop Diamond Rock. They couldn’t depress the barrel enough to hit us, the shot flying overhead. But the spout of water it raised out to sea reminded us that retreat had its own perils. Then more musket shots rose from above, one ricocheting off rock and thunking into the wood of our longboat. Too close! While the overhang gave us protection, we ultimately were fish in a barrel in our little cleft of a cove.

I looked up. More lanterns, ropes slithering in descent as they uncoiled. I’d no doubt sailors and marines would soon be swinging down them like angry apes. I could see musket muzzles poking out from crevices above, pivoting to look for us like the antenna of insects. I envied Jubal his dark skin, figuring it made him more invisible.

“There they are!” the cry echoed down. “In that tight cove! Ready

…”

Muskets swung to aim at us. I winced, wondering if I was about to expel my emerald long before I’d planned to.

And then a boom of a different cannon, this time from the other direction, and with a crash a cannon ball hit the cliff above and rock splinters flew in all directions. Men howled.

It was Pelee, leaning hard in the wind as she scudded out of the night, smoke drifting off the muzzle of a deck gun. Then another of her cannon fired, the flash like lightning. Martel whooped at the arrival of our allies and lit our own lantern in the longboat, uncovering the side that faced the water to signal where we were.

The ketch banged again and again, shot bouncing off the flank of Diamond Rock like a castle wall. The British sailors were in full retreat, scrambling upward even faster than they’d swung down. Their own artillery crashed in reply, water geysers shooting up. The French mortar on the ketch barked, and a shell screamed up toward the clouds to burst. In the flashes of illumination, we joined the tumult by shooting our pistols again.

Martel untied the longboat. “We salvage under their gun muzzles,” he said. “Prepare to dive where bullets can’t reach us.”

I didn’t have a better plan. Jubal and I pushed off toward Pelee and the buoy we’d set. Musket fire peppered the water, cannons crashed, but the French ketch had turned into the wind so close to Diamond Rock that the British couldn’t help but overshoot her. She dropped her mizzen and anchored, continuing to lob with her mortar while spraying the side of the rock with swivel guns. Her captain, a man named Augustus Brienne, was showing elan of his own.

“Come on, comrades!” I heard Antoine call.

I studied the crowd on board. Yes, there was Astiza, waving to me over the gunwale. Stay down, darling. Harry must be somewhere below. I also saw other Negro heads besides Antoine, assuring me that the French hadn’t betrayed Jubal’s men yet. There was still a chance.

Once we got to our submerged buoy we dove over the side of our longboat, eager to evacuate before British fire found it. The sea was inky below, its heave pulling and pushing below the surface. At night I could imagine a thousand hideous things coming at me from deep. But the surest way to get out of this mess was to retrieve what we’d come for, so I followed the buoy line to the bottom, groped by the longboat anchor, and seized slick metal.

Aztec gold!

I swam up, narrowly missing knocking my own head on the tethered launch. Then I kicked over to the ketch and hollered for a ladder. A rope-and-peg one uncurled down the side. The little ship was bouncing up and down in the seas like a coach on a potholed American road, the weather both screening us and making salvage difficult. I had to time my grab to avoid the scrape of barnacles that girded the vessel’s waterline. At last I climbed partway up and slapped what I’d grabbed-it was one of the gold necklaces, I saw-on deck. The French gaped.

“Get it in a strongbox,” I ordered. “There’s much more to come.”

Martel squeezed up beside me, crying for help to lift the golden alligator. “Yes, and don’t cut anchor until we’re all aboard,” he added. “Send the blacks to help.”

We dropped back into the sea, bullets whapping into the ketch’s hull and plunking into the water. Jubal swam by, hoisted his own piece of the hoard on deck, and shouted to his comrades. “Dive, freemen! The faster we fetch, the faster we leave!”

Men leaped from the ship and swam with us back to the buoy. Even Crow and Buzzard jumped in to help. Down we ducked like otters, groping for gold, and then swam gasping to Pelee ’s far side. The ship’s coughing mortar gave fits of illumination. British cannonballs kept arcing over us to fall harmlessly into the sea beyond, and their gunners swore like the sailors they were, frustrated they couldn’t depress their cannon barrels far enough and no doubt wondering what the devil we were doing down there.

Finally they tried just pitching a cannonball by hand. This, to a certain extent, worked: the sphere fell three hundred feet, hit an outcrop, and bounced outward toward our salvage operation. There was no good aim, but the ball made a disturbing impact when it splashed into the sea a few yards from where we swam.

Madness! But gold, too. I dove again.

With our team of bandits, the treasure was transferred quickly. We thrashed blindly-one poor lad got a handful of urchin spines-and it gradually became harder to find whatever was left. I could hear the plonk of ricocheting cannonballs as they struck the water, and finally thought we’d done a good night’s work. I’d decided to suggest this to Martel when there was another splash, different this time, and something bobbed on the dim surface. I dove and felt a last time for treasure.

Suddenly there was a thud, kick, and agony in my ears. I was punched sideways, and the surface of the sea erupted. Then a confusion of sounds and things hitting the water. I swam up, dazed. Other heads poked up around me, all of us rising and falling on the waves that pounded and thundered against Diamond Rock. Several ears bled. One man floated facedown and still.

Our longboat and buoy had disappeared.

Martel shouted something. My ears were ringing.

“What?”

He swam closer, looked at one ear, and then turned me to shout in the other. “Powder keg!”

Ah, the English had dropped a fused one with enough air to let it float, and the mine had gone off next to our precious longboat. Our buoy rope marking the treasure had slithered to the bottom.

“Time to leave!” Jubal shouted.

We didn’t have to be persuaded. Another barrel came down, and we swam for our lives. It erupted with fury and a huge fountain of spray as we scrambled up the side of Pelee like squirrels. One black took a splinter and fell with a cry back into the sea; we fished him out, blood running.

Something thumped our side. It was the diving bell, kicked out of our boat by the explosion. With more sentiment than sense, I insisted we haul it aboard. The leaded rum barrel thumped down, its little glass porthole intact.

Then I collapsed on deck, dripping and exhausted. An ax swung, the anchor cable parted, and a jib unreeled to catch the wind. The ketch’s bow swung as sharply as a wayward compass needle, cannonballs still crashing, and then we were off, flying from Diamond Rock.

A shout went up from the British side as they saw us sail through the range of their guns, but by now rain was beginning to fall, obscuring us further. Their cannon boomed, and a lucky shot might still have sunk us, but we had only a couple balls scream harmlessly through our rigging. We’d snatched one of the most fabulous treasures in history out from under English noses, and chances were they didn’t even know what we’d taken. When the storm abated, they’d probably clamber down and scratch their heads, evidence of our expedition churned away by the storm’s surf.

They might signal an English frigate, however, to hunt us down. So we hoisted more canvas, the overload pushing a rail into the sea, and were off like a racehorse, men scrabbling to catch treasure sliding on deck and carry it to storage below. I’d no doubt more than a few trinkets disappeared into trousers or shoes, but we had no time for inspection. The ship raced, bucking and pitching in the building waves with the sickening swoops of Cayley’s glider. Pelee was badly balanced with the mortar and rolled more than was normal.

Still, we’d recovered what the conquistadors had lost. The Sad Night of Cortes had been reversed.

I wearily sat against a mast and looked for Astiza. There she was in the stern as planned, exactly as I’d told her to be. I waved again, our smiles a flash in the night. The signal confirmed that Harry was tucked safe in a sail locker.

And that payback could soon begin.