Tristan kept his eyes on the advancing brig. “Say his words.”
Vale drew a breath. “Stand and be boarded.”
A murmur moved through the British crew.
Tristan smiled without warmth. “Not yet.”
The privateer’s bowsprit crept larger. Her hull surged down a swell, white water thrown back from either side. She was angling now, just as he had known she would, coming up to rake or force them round.
The distance shrank to madness. The privateer was near enough for Tristan to hear a cheer rise over the water, and for a Frenchman to fire a pistol that whizzed past Vale’s bicorn. Near enough for Sarkouf to believe the Sea Wolf was within his grasp.
Tristan drew one breath.
The frigate strained beneath him, obedient only because men held her together by rope. He felt kinship with her. Too much sail. Too much weight. Too much precious cargo locked below where he could not see it.
Cut.
Tristan lifted his hand. “Now.”
The deck erupted.
“Clew up! Haul down! Let go and haul!”
Men threw their weight on the lines. Clewlines flew through blocks. Buntlines snapped taut. Sheets were let go and hauled. The great white spread of canvas that had driven them like a hunted thing collapsed in one violent breath, folding, spilling, thrashing as if the sky itself had been cut loose.
“Helm hard a-weather,” Tristan said.
The wheel spun under the helmsman’s hands. The rudder bit. The frigate, robbed in an instant of the wind that had possessed her, checked so hard that every loose thing aboard lurched forward. Men staggered and caught themselves. Below, something shattered.
Tristan held fast to the rigging. He had made his ship stop. One moment she had been flying ahead under every inch of canvas he dared carry; the next, he had stripped the wind from her sails and thrown her weight against the helm. The frigate checked, swung, and hung in the water like a dancer halted at the edge of a precipice.
Sarkouf shot past, sails swollen, hull driving, every rope and spar committed to the chase. Faces flashed along his rail. Menshouted. Orders flew too late. His bowsprit swept past the frigate’s quarter like the point of a spear.
Tristan read the fury in Sarkouf’s face. Then the privateer ran on, unable to control her speed. Fifty yards. A hundred. A quarter mile. More.
The crew roared. The sound broke over the deck, men pounding shoulders, laughing too loudly, cursing Sarkouf, praising the Sea Wolf.
Tristan lowered the glass. The roar seemed to reach him as if through water.
Then his knees nearly went. It began high in the thighs, a sudden hollowness, as if the bones had been cut from within and replaced by air. He had not breathed properly since she went below. Not once. Now the air came in too hard, carrying salt and tar and the hot stink of strained rope. Relief was too poor a word for how he felt. Relief was for weather turning fair or a shot falling short. This was something rougher, nearly savage.
She was safe.
Thank God, she was safe.
The officers had gone below. Their voices carried up through the companionway. Boots on the ladder. Someone’s laugh, too loud. The ordinary music of a ship that had survived.
Tristan remained on the quarterdeck. The night had settled over the ship. Above, the moon rode clear of a torn bank of cloud, silvering the water. The sea that had nearly carried Sarkouf to their quarter now looked innocent, each dark swell combed with light. A treacherous element, the sea. It could swallow men and then shine prettily over the place where they had gone.
The deck beneath his boots was only now easing after the violence he had demanded of the old timbers. His hands ached. When he opened one, the palm still bore the mark of the glass. He stared at it for a moment, then closed his fist.
“Fratello.”
Lorenzo’s voice came from behind him, soft enough not to startle, which meant the boy had learned something after all.
Tristan did not turn. “The officers are below.”
“So I observed. They are eating as if each mouthful personally insults Sarkouf.”
