Lions of the Sea

34

"Pilot, one point astarboard! Gunners to the larboard battery!" Castillano ordered with a firm, loud voice.

Alonso left another officer to repeat the orders below deck and joined his friend on the bridge. Castillano didn't seem to notice. Pale, clenched teeth, glaring eyes, white knuckles around the handrail.

The Lion corrected it's course, that would take it under a hundred yards of the Phantom's side once it caught up. Everybody was ready for battle on and below deck.

Endless minutes went by, while Castillano waited for the right moment to open fire. Until something happened onboard the Phantom.

"They're about to turn!" a lookout warned.

"Where to?" the bosun asked.

Castillano raised the telescope and saw the pirates work the rigging. And he was surprised at their swiftness and coordination.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Alonso cried by his side. "Look what they're doing!"

Castillano lowered the glass, frowning when he noticed the Phantom wasn't turning. It kept its course with empty sails parallel to the wind, loosing speed rapidly. He needed a moment to understand what they were up to.

"Larboard battery! Fire as she bears!" he shouted.

But it was too late. The Phantom had nearly stopped on its tracks and the Lion caught up with it way before planned. As the Spanish warrior outstripped the Phantom, the pirates fired their starboard guns from the stern forward. At least half a dozen shots hit the Lion's hull before the Spaniards were able to respond. Then Castillano heard a shouting from the Phantom. He looked up and saw them work the rigging again, this time to trim the sails and load wind.

"Pilot, alarboard! Don't let them catch up!" he shouted.

He ran to the larboard bulwark, still trying to believe his eyes, because the Phantom let the Lion pass by and seemed to jump forward. The Spanish pilot left the pirate ship on the Lion's wake, and Castillano saw the Phantom's bowsprit cleave the air only yards away from his bridge. He tackled Alonso down and covered him with his own body.

"Starboard guns!" he shouted, while the musket fire from the pirate sharpshooters at the yards and tops pierced the bridge boards only inches away from him.

But his gunners were not ready, and many of them had died or were wounded after the Phantom's unexpected broadside.

Castillano was standing up when he felt two simultaneous hits under his feet.

"The rudder!" the pilot cried. "We've lost stirring!"

Castillano and Alonso were forced to crouch down to have some shelter from the pirates' heavy fire. Castillano stood up anyway, repeating on top of his lungs his order to open fire with the starboard cannons.

No use. It was the pirates who heeded his words, unloading another broadside, this time against the Lion's starboard side from only a few tenths of yards away. Castillano could almost feel the chained balls piercing his ship's hull from side to side, tearing apart everything on their way, be it bulkheads, pillars, cannons, bodies. The musket fire of the soldiers on deck didn't cause any harm to the pirate crew, sheltered behind the gunwale and the rigging, and showing up only to respond to the Spanish fire.

Then it was as if an invisible hand grabbed Castillano's head and turned it, forcing him to look at the Phantom's bridge. The boy wearing black was there. But the ships were so close that he could only surrender to what he was seeing with his own eyes: it wasn't a boy, but a girl. The same one that had beaten him in the battle against the Sovereign.