Sharpes Devil   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

"Ask how many there are on board," Ardiles commanded.

"Four of us, mister! The rest drowned!"

"Tell them to keep away," Ardiles was worried that the heavily built whaler might stove in the Espiritu Santos ribs. "And tell them I'll float a couple of water barrels to them." Ardiles saw Sharpe's puzzlement, and explained. "Barrels of fresh water float in saltwater."

Sharpe leaned over the rail. "Keep away from our side! We're going to float water barrels to you!"

"We hear you, mister!" One of the Americans dutifully leaned on the makeshift steering oar, though his efforts seemed to have little effect for the clumsy whaler kept heaving herself ever closer to the frigate.

Ardiles had ordered two barrels of water brought onto deck and a sling rove to heave them overboard. Now, while he waited for the barrels to arrive, he frowned at the Mary Starbuck's wallowing hulk. "Ask them where Nantucket is," he ordered suddenly.

Sharpe obeyed. "Off Cape Cod, mister!" came back the answer.

Ardiles nodded, but some instinct was still troubling him. "Tell them to sheer away!" he snapped, then, perhaps not trusting Sharpe to deliver the order with sufficient force, he seized the speaking trumpet. "Keep clear! Keep clear!" he shouted in English.

"We're trying, mister! We're trying!" The man on the steering oar was desperately pushing against the whaler's weight.

"Trying?" Ardiles repeated the word, then, still in English, he swore. "The devil! They didn't lose their tryworks when they rolled!" He turned to shout toward the quarterdeck, but already events were accelerating to combat pace and Ardiles's warning shout was lost in the sudden chaos.

For just as Ardiles turned, so a massive wave lifted the whaler's square stern and an officer on the Espiritu Santos quarterdeck saw that the Mary Starbuck's rudder was not shorn away after all, but was in place and being steered from a tiller concealed beneath the whaler's deck. The rudder was bringing the heavy boat toward the Spanish frigate, which meant the steering oar was faked, which meant the shipwreck was faked, a fact that Ardiles had simultaneously guessed when he saw that the whaler's tryworks, a brick furnace built amidships in which the whale blubber was rendered down into the precious oil, had survived the apparent rolling of a ship that had destroyed three solid masts.

The Spaniards were shouting in warning, but the Mary Starbuck was already within ten feet of the frigate.