As he glimpsed the gun flash from the corner of one eye, Ben heard the familiar shrieking whirr cut the night air. He hurled himself flat. Ned bulled into the back of Thuron’s knees, knocking him down beside Ben. Whump! The noise was followed by a loud ripping sound. Thuron leapt to his feet, roaring at his steersman. “Take her out! We’re being fired upon!” Heeling out into the rainswept Caribbean, the Marie sailed on a zigzag course, tacking to get out of danger.
Ned shook rain from his coat, thinking, “It couldn’t have been the Flying Dutchman, Ben – ghosts can’t fire cannon-balls.”
Ben answered his friend’s thought. “That wasn’t a cannon-ball, it was chain shot. I remember the sound from when the privateer fired on us.”
Thuron’s strong hands hauled Ben upright. “Up ye come, lucky lad. Look at that!”
Ben saw the foresail, directly overhead, now nothing but a mass of canvas tatters flapping wetly in the wind. Anaconda, who had given the wheel over to Pierre, ambled along. He whistled softly at the sight of the wrecked sail.
“Someone tryin’ to chop our mast, Cap’n. Who was it?”
Wiping raindrops from his telescope lens, Thuron swept the coast. “The Diablo. I’d forgotten about her. That fox Madrid must have found our trail. Hah! His aim hasn’t improved much. All he did was blow a hole in a foresail. If that chain shot had hit its target, we’d have been without a foremast!”
Anaconda made a sobering observation. “Aye, Cap’n, an’if we’d been on an upswell instead of a downswell, you an’ your lucky mates would’ve been mashed to ribbons!”
The Frenchman, who could still retain his sense of humour, even in the midst of a crisis, remarked drily, “Aye, an’ then Ned would have never been made captain of his own ship!”
Ned sent Ben an indignant thought through the ensuing laughter. “I fail to see the humour in that remark!”
The Frenchman grew serious as he took another sighting through his glass. “We’ve got trouble enough for any vessel now, an English privateer to one side an’ a Spanish pirate to t’other. Well, Mr Anaconda, what would you do in a case like this?”
The giant steersman gave a deep bass chuckle. “Cap’n, I’d be doin’ the old Trinidad Shuffle.”
Ben looked from one to the other. “What’s the old Trinidad Shuffle?”
Thuron winked at him. “I’m going to take the wheel. You tell him, mate.”