Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [512]
“Good enough,” Jamie said with a smile. His chest was still heaving, but he had recovered his breath. “I hope the Porpoise will be sufficiently occupied for the time being.”
A warning shout from Raeburn indicated that this was not to be, however. Looking back, I could see the gleam of brass on the Porpoise’s deck as the pair of long guns called stern chasers were uncovered and began their process of aiming.
Now it was us at gunpoint, and I found the sensation very objectionable. Still, we were moving, and fast, at that. Innes put the wheel hard over, then hard again, tacking a zigzag path past the headland.
The stern chasers boomed together. There was a splash off the port bow, twenty yards away, but a good deal too close for comfort, given the fact that a twenty-four pound ball through the floor of the pinnace would sink us like a rock.
Innes cursed and hunched his shoulders over the wheel, his missing arm giving him an odd, lopsided appearance. Our course became still more erratic, and the next three tries came nowhere near. Then came a louder boom, and I looked back to see the side of the canted Bruja erupt in splinters, as the Porpoise came in range and trained her forward guns on the grounded ship.
A rain of grapeshot hit the beach, striking dead in the center of a group of fleeing slaves. Bodies—and parts of bodies—flew into the air like black stick-figures and fell to the sand, staining it with red blotches. Severed limbs were scattered over the beach like driftwood.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Ian, white to the lips, crossed himself, staring in horror at the beach as the shelling went on. Two more shots struck the Bruja, opening up a great hole in her side. Several landed harmlessly in the sand, and two more found their mark among the fleeing people. Then we were round the edge of the headland, and heading into the open sea, the beach and its carnage lost to view.
“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Ian finished his prayer in a whisper, and crossed himself again.
There was little conversation in the boat, beyond Jamie’s giving Innes instructions for Eleuthera, and a conference between Innes and MacLeod as to the proper heading. The rest of us were too appalled by what we had just seen—and too relieved at our own escape—to want to talk.
The weather was fair, with a bright, brisk breeze, and we made good way. By sundown, the island of Hispaniola had dropped below the horizon, and Grand Turk Island was rising to the left.
I ate my small share of the available biscuit, drank a cup of water, and curled myself in the bottom of the boat, lying down between Ian and Jamie to sleep. Innes, yawning, took his own rest in the bow, while MacLeod and Meldrum took it in turns to man the helm through the night.
A shout woke me in the morning. I rose on one elbow, blinking with sleep and stiff from a night spent on bare, damp boards. Jamie was standing by me, his hair blowing back in the morning breeze.
“What?” I asked Jamie. “What is it?”
“I dinna believe it,” he said, staring aft over the rail. “It’s that bloody boat again!”
I scrambled to my feet, to find that it was true; far astern were tiny white sails.
“Are you sure?” I said, squinting. “Can you tell at this distance?”
“I can’t, no,” Jamie said frankly, “but Innes and MacLeod can, and they say it’s the bloodsucking English, right enough. They’ll have guessed our heading, maybe, and come after us, as soon as they’d dealt with those poor black buggers on Hispaniola.” He turned away from the rail, shrugging.
“Damned little to be done about it, save to hope we stay ahead of them. Innes says there’s a hope of giving them the slip off Cat Island, if we reach there by dark.”
As the day wore on, we kept just out of firing distance, but Innes looked more and more worried.
* * *
The sea between Cat Island and Eleuthera was shallow, and filled with coral heads. A man-of-war could never follow us into