Anne Dray's Arc

Chapter 27 of 28

The two cannons could sink a ship that came straight in. But Anne walked the fort wall at dawn and saw the flaw. She sighted along each muzzle. Both guns pointed at the center of the approach. To the south, where the water bent behind the point, neither barrel could reach. A ship could hug that edge and slip past both guns before the chain ever rose. She had a gate with a hole in it. Claire climbed up beside her, spyglass in hand. She had ridden the night current once to save Grimjack, and she missed nothing on open water. She followed Anne's arm to the blind stretch and did not soften it. "They'll come there," she said. "A good pilot reads the same water I do. He'll take the shadow line." "Then we cover it," Anne said. "We need a third gun." "You have two," Claire said. "Emily rusted her hands raw on those." Grimjack came up the tower stair slow, one hand on the stone. The fever had left him thin. He looked at the blind angle and grunted. "Prize hull in the harbor," he said. "She carries a long nine on her stern. Reaches twice what these throw." He tapped the wall. "Mount it here. On the south corner." Anne stared at him. The captured treasure ship still sat moored inside. Her stern gun was the heaviest iron they owned. "That's a shipboard gun. It won't sit on a wall." "Build a bed for it," Grimjack said. "Emily builds beds." They rowed to the prize hull. Tom Harker went with them, small and quick, the only hand light enough to crawl the stern rigging and free the tackle. He worked the ropes without a word, then looked back at Anne. "It's loose," he said. "But it's heavier than anything we've lifted. If the line slips, it takes a man's legs." "Then no man stands under it," Anne said. They swung the long nine off the stern by block and tackle, lowered it into a boat, and rowed it across low in the water. Emily built the bed on the fort's south corner from ship timber and iron shot crates, the same stock that held the harbor chain. It took the rest of the day. By dusk the long gun sat trained down the shadow line, its long barrel reaching the water Claire had marked. Anne sighted along it herself. The blind angle was blind no longer. Three guns now, and no seam a pilot could slip through. But the prize hull sat lighter now, and slower. She had stripped her own captured ship of its heaviest gun to arm the wall. If the Crown fleet reached the harbor mouth, that hull would have to fight them with the chain and half its teeth pulled. She had closed one hole by opening another.