How Firm a Foundation by David Weber Read Free Book Online Page B

and buntlines!”

    Clewlines and buntlines were slipped off their belaying pins as the assigned hands tailed onto them.
    “Haul taut! In topsails! Up foresail and mainsail!”
    The canvas disappeared, drawing up like great curtains for the waiting topmen to fist it in and gasket it to the yards. Yairley felt Destiny ’s motion change as she lost the driving force of the huge square sails and continued ahead under jiband spanker alone. She became heavier, less responsive under the weight of the pounding seas as she lost speed through the water.
    “Stand clear of the starboard cable! Cock-bill the starboard anchor!”
    The shank painter, which had secured the crown of the anchor to the ship’s side, was cast off, letting the anchor hang vertically from the starboard cathead, its broad flukes dragging the waterand threatening to swing back against the hull as the broken waves surged against the ship.
    “Let go the starboard anchor!”
    A senior petty officer cast off the ring stopper, the line passed through the ring of the anchor to suspend it from the cathead, and threw himself instantly flat on the deck as the anchor plunged and the free end of the stopper came flying back across the bulwark with afearsome crack. The cable flaked on deck went thundering through the hawsehole, seasoned wood smoking with friction heat despite the all-pervasive spray as the braided hemp ran violently out while Destiny continued ahead, “sailing out” her cable.
    “Stream the starboard buoy!”
    The anchor buoy—a sealed float attached to the starboard anchor by a hundred-and-fifty-foot line—was released. It plungedinto the water, following the anchor. If the cable parted, the buoy would still mark the anchor’s location, and its line was heavy enough that the anchor could be recovered by it.
    “Stand clear of the larboard cable! Cock-bill the anchor!”
    Yairley watched men with buckets of seawater douse the smoking starboard cable. Another moment or two and—
    Destiny staggered. The galleon lurched, the menat the wheel were hurled violently to the deck, and Yairley’s head came up as a dull, crunching shock ran through the deck underfoot. For a moment, she seemed to hang in place, then there was a second crunch and she staggered onward, across whatever she’d struck.
    “Away carpenter’s party!” Lieutenant Lathyk shouted, and the carpenter and his mates bolted for the main hatchway, racing below tocheck for hull damage, but Yairley had other things on his mind. Whatever else had happened, it was obvious he’d just lost his rudder. He hoped it was only temporary, but in the meantime …
    “Down jib! Haul out the spanker!”
    The jib disappeared, settling down to be gathered in by the hands on the bowsprit. Without the thrust of the rudder, Yairley couldn’t maintain the heading he’d originallyintended. He’d planned to sail parallel to the shore while he dropped both anchors for the widest purchase possible on the treacherous bottom, but the drag of the cable still thundering out of her starboard hawsehole was already forcing Destiny ’s head up to the wind. The pounding seas continued to thrust her bodily sideways to larboard, though, and he wanted to get as far away from whatever they’dstruck—probably one of those Shan-wei-damned uncharted rocks—as possible before he released the second anchor.
    Fifty fathoms of cable had run out to the first anchor, and the ship was slowing, turning all the way back through the wind under the braking effect of the cable’s drag. She wasn’t going to carry much farther, he decided.
    “Let go the larboard anchor!”
    The second anchor plunged, andthe pounding vibration of heavy hemp hawsers hammered through the ship’s fabric as both cables ran out.
    “Stream the larboard buoy!”
    The larboard anchor buoy went over the side, and then the starboard cable came up against the riding bitt and the cable stoppers—a series of lines “nipped” to the anchor cable and then