"Beggin' your pardon, sir." Malloyre's voice was urgent, bringing him back. "What's the firin' orders?"
"Just fire the starboard round as a broadside, and set for the lower gun deck."
"Aye aye, sir." He paused. "And Lord Jesus pray we'll live to swab out."
Malloyre's parting words would have followed him up the ladder to the main deck, but they were swallowed in the muffled roll of cannon fire sounding over the bay. The galleons were spreading, circling the Resolve as they bore down upon her, and they had begun to vomit round after round, jets of water randomly around the frigate as she plunged toward the shallows and safety. Any minute now, Hawksworth told himself, and she'll be in the shallows. If she doesn't run aground on a bar.
Then he saw the Resolve begin to come about, reefing and furling her sails. She's made the shallows. And the Portugals' guns have quieted.
"Permission to set sail, sir. The bleedin' Portugals'll be on her in a trice." Mackintosh stood on the quarterdeck by the steering house. And he made no attempt to disguise the anxiety in his eyes.
"Give the Portugals time, Mackintosh, and you'll see their second fatal mistake. The first was overheating the cannon on their upper decks. The second will be to short-hand their crews. They're out of cannon range now, so they'll launch longboats, and assign half the watch as oarsmen. Here, take the glass. Tell me what you see."
Mackintosh studied the shallows with the telescope, while a smile slowly grew on his hard face. "I'm a motherless Dutchman. An' there's a king's guard o' Portugal musketmen loadin' in. Wearin' their damn'd silver helmets."
They haven't changed in thirty years, Hawksworth smiled to himself. The Portugals still think their infantry is too dignified to row, so they assign their crews to the oars and leave their warships shorthanded. But they won't find it easy to board the Resolve from longboats. Not with English musketmen in her maintop. And that should give us just enough time. . . .
"Are all the longboats out yet, Mackintosh?"