WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Wind and a Cluster of Stars

Chapter 27

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Despair, Sao Tome

48. Despair

"The ship's taking on water!"

Amy came scrambling up from the lower deck in a panic.

She and the cat had made it through the chaos alive.

The cat was trembling all over. The shock had clearly hit it hard.

I barely got myself under control and stood up.

The ship was already listing badly enough to see at a glance.

She was leaning about fifteen degrees to starboard, and if we left her like this, she would capsize and sink.

"H-h, abandon ship."

The ship looked completely beyond saving.

I knew very well that if we hesitated now, we could all die.

It felt like my insides were burning and tearing, but I still gave the order to abandon ship.

I could see water surging in below the upper deck hatch.

Now the only thing we could rely on was the sloop-of-war Agincourt.

Agincourt was waiting beside the listing Red Tea.

She had cut speed as much as possible and was holding close.

"Abandon ship, my ass!"

Zenon popped his head up through the hatch, blood running down his forehead.

"Jacob! Hurry! Bring the oakum!"

Even now, he was trying everything he could to save the ship.

Seeing him gave me a little strength.

He was a veteran navigator, and he still had not given up on her.

Amy and I ran down to the lower deck.

...

The lower deck was a wreck.

"..."

I had been up in the deckhouse, and only then did I realize men had died.

Every skilled sailor except Colton was dead.

On top of that, two ordinary sailors were dead as well.

No, one of them was still dying...

I knelt beside the collapsed sailor, bleeding out, and held his hand.

He tried to speak, but no words came.

"He's beyond saving."

Even without Zenon saying it, I knew he had already lost too much blood to recover.

I could see the light fading from his eyes.

"No... no... don't die, please..."

I had sworn I would not cry as captain, but tears came anyway, cruel and unstoppable.

Around me lay sailors I had known.

Just yesterday, they had laughed, talked, and sung.

Now they were dead from that vicious frigate's grapeshot.

Other than Zenon, whose forehead had been split by shrapnel, there were no wounded.

Anyone hit by cannon fire had died on the spot...

The dying sailor's hand went limp.

Waves came through the breached hull and washed his blood away.

"Sob... sob..."

"Captain..."

"Sob... I'll get revenge... sob."

I could tell Amy was fighting with everything she had to keep herself together in this nightmare.

She pulled me to my feet.

-Bang bang bang!

Zenon and the surviving sailors were sealing a leaking door.

They were desperately trying to block the lower starboard storeroom bulkhead door on Red Tea.

They jammed cloth into the cracks and hammered in wooden wedges with a mallet.

The lowest stern section of Red Tea was already flooding.

Scrapes higher up on the hull were not the problem. We could tell that either a sea-skipping shot or a shell aimed low had punched through somewhere inside the hull behind the section we were blocking.

Since water was coming in, it had to be near the draft line.

I forced myself to focus for the men trying to save the ship,

and helped them stuff sawdust and old rags into clothing to plug holes in the side of the hull.

The sailors brought planks and nailed them over hull breaches where waves kept pouring in.

Right now, rough seas kept forcing water in through the lower stern section, so we had no choice but to seal the bulkhead door and contain it. Once the sea calmed, we would have to open it again for proper repairs.

Still, after we sealed the side holes as an emergency measure, thankfully the situation did not seem to get worse.

"Is everyone all right down there?!"

Before long, navy men who had grasped our situation came over.

They brought their ship alongside, crossed to Red Tea, tied buckets to ropes, and started bailing out pooled water.

Naval officers led sailors below and moved the sandbags used as ballast to other positions, slowly correcting the list.

(Modern ships use water as ballast for balance, but in the old days they used sandbags, stone, or metal.)

Meanwhile, Zenon and the crew recovered the sailors killed in battle.

They wrapped each one in sailcloth.

...

The bulkhead door we had barely sealed still leaked, as if it were crying.

The space behind it was probably already in terrible shape, far beyond quick repair, but for now it looked like we could at least make the ship navigable again.

The hull was still listing about five degrees from the weight of the flooded hold...

And of all holds, it was the food store next to the galley,

so we had no choice but to take a major hit in supplies.

"We need to reach the nearest stop, Sao Tome, first."

It was Captain Howard, the commanding officer.

He was in his late twenties, a Royal Navy captain and commander of the sloop-of-war Agincourt.

"I know this must weigh heavily on you."

His expression was bitter.

Agincourt had taken casualties too.

On deck, they held funerals for the dead from both Agincourt and Red Tea.

They paid simple British honors and sent them down to the sea.

In front of everyone, sailcloth body bags sank into deep water.

"Goodbye, Cooper..."

One sailor gave his final farewell to his crewmate.

Red Tea had lost six sailors, while Agincourt had three dead and fifteen wounded.

That was because the naval sloop had been built to endure structural damage, armor impacts, and bombardment, and because enemy fire had been concentrated on Agincourt.

Agincourt's stout hull and oak armor had finally done their job...

Even so, Agincourt had snapped rigging lines, a pierced gun deck, and torn sails, and she was in the middle of emergency repairs herself.

"Th-thank you for helping us. I don't even know what to say..."

"Come with us to Sao Tome."

"Thank you, Captain."

We kept doing everything we could, but there was nothing we could do yet about the shattered deck and upper hull.

The deck was cracked in half, heaved up in the middle, with cannonballs still lodged in it.

Even to reach Sao Tome, where repairs were possible, it was a full day's sail.

The captain transferred food for us to use during that time.

The food and water in our supply hold, as well as the beer, water casks, and vegetables, were all soaked in seawater and unusable.

The captain's cabin had taken one hit too, but it had been a small shot from a bow gun early in the fight, so the damage was not severe.

The window glass had shattered, and the cannonball had gouged the cabin floor badly, but it had not punched through and had simply rolled around the floor.

The greatest relief was that our expensive trade goods had been sitting alone in a small section of the cargo hold, so they were unharmed.

And though Zenon had hurt his forehead, all the officers had survived.

Six sailors were dead, but...

I wanted anything at all to hold on to.

...

Everything went quiet.

The waves eased, and everyone stayed silent.

"..."

The weather seemed to be clearing, and sunlight began to fall through the iron grating on the upper deck onto the lower deck where I sat.

-Thud

From a potato sack left in the middle of the messy lower deck, one potato rolled out and went all the way to the wall.

The list had not been fully corrected, so it rolled easily.

Nobody spoke.

Now that we finally had a moment to breathe, there was room to think.

The ship's biscuits, sacks of potatoes, and a little oil the navy had left us only made the situation feel sadder.

Tears came again, pathetic as it was.

"Sob..."

It felt like we had lost everything and become beggars...

Zenon and Amy were both holding it in, but I could not hold on any longer.

The ship we had finally obtained was half-destroyed, and above all, sailors had died right in front of me...

The survivors were huddled around sacks of food laid out for us in this wrecked ship.

"It's okay. Now..."

Amy hugged me with tears in her eyes,

but that only triggered full sobbing.

For a seventeen-year-old girl, this was too much to bear.

49. Sao Tome

May 12, 5:00 p.m.

The ship rocked side to side, then moved forward little by little.

But unlike before, the acceleration and rolling were wildly uneven.

She stayed tilted to starboard as if she had a huge bundle strapped to one side.

Even with a five-degree list, the sails were set and she kept moving.

Our crew had dropped from nineteen to thirteen after losing six men, and we were barely operating the ship.

The ship looked like a battered disabled veteran, limping along.

She gained speed slowly, but whenever the side waves got even a little stronger, I could feel her stagger far worse than before.

Water moved in and out through the hole below, adding drag and killing speed,

and the helm barely answered, to the point that Zenon, Colton, and I had to work the wheel in turns by force.

Still, this was something.

The ship had survived that brutal fight...

If we fixed her, maybe she could return to what she had been.

"Please eat."

Amy brought out steamed potatoes in wooden bowls.

She washed them in seawater, added a little seawater, and steamed them.

A poor meal.

Still, this was the best we could do, and I knew Amy had done everything she could.

So everyone quietly ate their share.

Zenon, with a bandage around his forehead, dipped his potato in dried salt left on the deck after seawater had dried.

Amy broke off a little boiled potato and took it to the bow.

Even the little red crab that had survived this mess ate without complaint.

Still, it frothed bubbles and looked deeply offended.

...

7:00 p.m.

Thankfully, Agincourt followed behind us.

If we met pirates or privateers again in this condition, we would be helpless, so this was protection from a ship of our own nation.

As dusk fell, Agincourt's outline gradually blurred.

Soon her bow and stern lights came on, and around the watch officer holding a lantern,

I could see what looked like an English Setter running around happily for no reason.

"Any trouble over there?!"

From the sloop's bow, the watch officer with the lantern shouted through a speaking trumpet.

"We're fine!"

I looked over the ship once more and went back to the captain's cabin.

A cannon shot had shattered the window, and glass fragments had fallen onto the bed, so I stripped the bedding and covered it with spare linen.

Everything else was fine.

The charts, sextant, astrolabe, overhead compass, and rain gear were all safe.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

It felt like all the fatigue from everything so far had finally crashed down on me at once.

My head spun, and my hands and feet trembled so badly I had no strength.

"Ah... I need to write the log..."

I checked one last time that the overhead compass pointed north, then fell asleep as I was.

May 13, 7:00 a.m.

For breakfast, we had bland potato soup.

During the night, Red Tea had sailed to just off Sao Tome even while listing.

Once I was fully awake, I leaned on the rail and checked the ship's sides.

Both starboard and port were broken and cracked, which was a problem, but luckily the keel (the ship's central beam, the ship's spine) was not damaged,

so repairs did not seem completely impossible.

Still, this did not look like a one- or two-day job, and the cost would not be small either...

"Navigator, do you think we can get repairs in Sao Tome?"

"I've heard there is a shipyard in Sao Tome. I don't know how large it is, though."

"That's a relief, at least... though Agincourt must be badly damaged too..."

"We don't need to carry that burden. They have war funds."

"When we arrive in Sao Tome, I think we should buy them drinks."

"Right, that's only proper courtesy..."

10:00 a.m., Red Tea finally docked in port, still wobbling.

Sao Tome had long been Portuguese territory, and its overall feel was similar to Cape Verde.

But Sao Tome, made up of just two islands, looked generally low and tightly packed.

Tall palms, broad-leafed African trees, and wide white beaches...

Amy asked around and found the location of the shipyard.

We informed Captain Howard of Agincourt, who had docked nearby.

Our two battered ships moved again toward the shipyard.

...

"Th-this is the shipyard? No way."

The place they told us was the shipyard was just a sandbar.

If there had not been a workshop and stacks of timber on one side of the beach, I would never have believed it.

There was not even a single ship on that sandbar.

First we brought the ship close to the beach, then Amy and I took a boat to the shipyard workshop.

The sloop Agincourt also came in beside Red Tea.

Amy greeted a Portuguese man busily planing wood and explained what we needed.

He looked at Red Tea and Agincourt and just nodded as if it were nothing.

"It's possible? There isn't even a caisson dry dock here..."

(dry dock: A harbor facility where a ship is brought in, closed off with a gate, drained, and repaired.)

Amy asked again.

"They use the tidal range." (In places like our country, severe areas can have a water level gap of over 9 meters.)

"Th-that works?"

Captain Howard had also come ashore with an officer in glasses and a couple of NCOs and stopped by the workshop.

"They say repairs are possible."

"Is that so..."

Captain Howard did not look very convinced either.

But we had no other option, so we decided to leave our ships to them for now.

...

2:00 p.m.

Red Tea and Agincourt were guided into a leveled coastal channel and moored there.

Because of that, the channel had almost no slope against the sea, and once the tide went out, water drained rapidly.

Before that, they set supports in dozens of places so the ships would stay level,

and the channel worked like a natural dry dock.

The biggest problem was that they had to finish as much as possible before the water came back in.

Once the water dropped and we could inspect the hull properly, I realized the condition was worse than I had thought.

The outer wall of the flooded hold had a hole big enough for a person to pass through.

The weakened area from the cannon hit had likely widened during transit.

Agincourt clearly had less cannon damage than our ship.

Her structure itself was stronger, and with copper sheathing below the waterline, even where she was holed, the damage was minimal.

Now the shipyard workers and craftsmen got to work and removed the damaged joints.

They remeasured everything and fitted new planks exactly into place...

"They say it'll take at least a week."

"In London this would take three days."

It left a bitter taste, but there was no helping it.

...

I invited Captain Howard and rented out a tavern to honor the navy men who had risked their lives for us.

I almost treated them casually at first, then got shocked when I learned there were sixty-eight of them in total.

For a moment I had forgotten Agincourt was a warship.

Still, with the valuable liquor from Saint George's, trade with locals, and what we had seized from pirates,

we had more than enough to host them and still cover repair costs.

And after surviving, how could I not at least do this much?

Our sailors and navy men packed into a small coastal tavern, raised their glasses in thanks for my hospitality,

and drank beer in deep gulps while devouring grilled dried fish served as bar food, like people starved by thirst and hunger.

"Thank you, Captain."

That formal address felt awkward to me, but I thought the captain had earned it.

"I only did my duty."

Captain Howard, a master and commander* type, felt very different from one of the few military men I knew, Lieutenant Shawn.

(*Master and commander is also a movie title. It refers to a one-man independent ship command system. Usually the rank is lieutenant, but they are addressed as captain. Larger ships struggle to operate independently, and these smaller ships became both a test bed and good experience for newly assigned rookie captains.)

He had a distinctly aristocratic air,

a little different from Lieutenant Shawn, who seemed to put it on deliberately.

He was always formal, and because of that everyone found him a little hard to approach.

There were several officer cadets under him, the first lieutenant and other officers,

plus NCOs.

You could almost say an entire unit was aboard one ship*.

(Remember that in those days, many fights were decided in coming-alongside combat rather than artillery duels.)

Judging by how everyone here was dressed, there were maybe three or four officers, six or seven NCOs, and five or six officer cadets...

around thirty marines, and the rest were navy sailors.

If you counted it up, they also carried more guns than many ordinary army artillery units.

All those people gathered in one place and drank noisily.

But one person did not drink at all,

and that was Agincourt's purser.

Lieutenant Walker, the purser, did not take even one sip and kept writing in his ledger.

Even at a glance, it was obvious he was recording losses from this battle, and that made me uneasy.

"Lieutenant, everyone's drinking. Why don't you join them?"

"No, sir. Better not until I finish this, Captain."

He wore narrow pince-nez glasses and shot me a sidelong look over them.

Damn it.

...

Most of the officer cadets were around my age or younger,

and they had already collapsed face-first onto the tables, dead drunk.

Older sailors and NCOs, mostly in their twenties and thirties, kept drinking just fine.

Zenon took his glass and went to ask the tavern owner about hiring sailors,

(as expected, innkeepers and tavern owners arranged hiring)

and Colton picked up the cheroot butt Zenon had thrown away and sliced it fine with a pocketknife.

Poor man, he earned less than Zenon, so tobacco that expensive was out of reach for him.

Colton carefully packed the tobacco and lit his pipe.

Amy, weak with alcohol as always, was mechanically chewing fish and meat,

and a couple of marines pointed at her.

It finally felt like we were returning to normal life again.

"Come here, Sherry."

A lively English Setter wandered between tables, taking food from people, then ran over and sat beside its owner when Captain Howard called.

The dog had bright, intelligent eyes, and when it noticed Amy's cat across from it,

its gaze locked there.

The cat saw the dog too, but whether it did not know better or was just bold, it did not care at all.

When the cat climbed down from Amy's lap and walked closer, the one who got flustered was the dog.

The English Setter's eyes went round, and it did not know what to do.

The cat grew smug, raised its tail straight up, and strutted around in its own elegant way.

When the yellow cat walked behind it and vanished from sight, the dog suddenly got scared and started trembling with anxiety.

It looked around frantically, as if the cat might jump out and bite from behind.

Ridiculous.

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