To Lie with Lions - Dorothy Dunnett [176]
He didn’t go down, for there was nothing to go to. The waves, the cold green waves were buttoned with the dark heads of men, and the boats were two shivering nests of loose planking which disintegrated, as he watched, into single crescents of timber, undulating out of his sight.
Paúel Benecke said, ‘Pick up these men. Navigator, a course as close to the ship as you can. If they fend off a strike, we may save her. If not, we take back our own men and the broker. Are they towing the boat?’ The skies, leaden with wind, were losing all light. It was half an hour to full darkness; forty minutes before the ebb started to run, with all the harm that might do to the Unicorn. He saw that no one had answered his question because it had answered itself. As the Unicorn sped to destruction, it dragged no laden pinnace to brake it; only a starfish of dismantled timber spreading out on the sea at its side, and scoured by the disorganised flap of its rudder. As he watched, the Unicorn struck.
You would think the crash of it jarred through the Maiden, the way that silence fell, if you could have silence in a fast-sailing ship with a big working crew in full action. Then they all looked at him.
Nails.
Paúel Benecke knew what had happened, as if he had been watching it all. As if he had been able to pierce the ill-timed, monstrous screen of the snowstorm and set eyes on the nodding hoods, the claw hammers, the shears; the small busy cod-boats like corks, mobbing the flanks of the Unicorn and withdrawing what held it together. He knew that somewhere on shore, carefully pouched, every nail from these three boats was sitting. The anchor-cables hung shorn; the anchors were marked, no doubt, for easy retrieval. Everything of iron had gone, even to the hinges on the Unicorn’s rudder.
And at last he realised why it had happened, and why he should have heeded the boasts of Ochoa. The crash of the Unicorn, still in his ears, had coincided with another crash from behind. At his side, catching his eye, a cascade in the sea was descending. He spun round then, as did they all, and looked into the confident guns of the Svipa.
Nikolás-riddari. Amid the rattle of orders, standing firm, as he spoke, to be armed, Paúel Benecke found himself moved to a grudging delight.
Nicholas said, ‘Well, John. The mainmast, if you please, and then the mizzen. Boatmen ready. Hackbutters ready. Grappling hooks ready. Mick, you have the helm. Father Moriz?’
‘It is unethical,’ said the voice of Father Moriz from halfway up the mast.
‘It will save lives,’ Nicholas said. ‘You’re the only one who can do it. Do it.’ Beside him on the crowded foredeck the fuses burned and the cans stood ranked with their powder. It appeared a little less orderly on the Maiden where someone stood, fully armed on the after-deck. A thin man, of about his own height. Paúel Benecke, for sure. Paúel Benecke, one hoped, in a towering temper.
Nicholas smiled, and put back his helm, and lifted the speaking-trumpet.
Temper was an indulgence of fools: Paúel Benecke had never been known to lose his. When the Svipa failed to fire off its guns, he put it down to mishap or mismanagement, and ordered a cannonade of his own. It should have been simple. Both ships were still sailing west by south-west, the space between them too small for comfort; the space between himself and the cliffs even smaller. A shot from each of his guns should resolve it. And so it might, had each gun not worked loose from its swivel plate. Because, they found, its nails had