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"Aye aye, Captain." Louder: "Ready about!"
The orders echoed louder than they had before the Event, without the continual burr of generators and fans; those were secured for emergency use only, now.
Feet thundered across the deck. At least they had a full crew-overfull. Walker had taken only six of the Eagle's complement with him, thank God. None of them were men she would miss, except McAndrews, and she could guess how Walker had scammed the black cadet; no women among the deserters, she noted without surprise. As it was, there were a hundred and fifty sets of hands available for this maneuver where thirty would do at a pinch.
Commands cracked out, to the helm, to the hands on the lines across the decks. Everything had to be adjusted throughout the maneuver, and precisely, with split-second timing.
"Fore ma
"Main ma
"Mizzen ma
"Helm's alee!" she ordered. "Right full rudder."
The four hands standing on the platforms beside the wheels heaved at the spokes. Down in the waist and on the forecastle deck came a chorus of heave… ho as the lines controlling the yards that held the square sails braced to starboard were paid out and their mirror images drawn taut.
"Ease the headsail sheets!"
The ship's bowsprit began to move from port to starboard, left to right. Dacron thuttered and flapped in thunder-cracks up aloft. She could feel the ship's deck swaying back toward the level as the wind lost leverage on the sails. This was the critical part of the maneuver; unless they were hauled around sharp and the vessel's momentum was sufficient to carry her through the dead spot, she could be taken aback and held in irons-sliding humiliatingly sternward.
"Haul spanker boom amidships!"
"Rise tacks and sheets!" Clewlines hauled the square sails up, spilling wind.
"Mainsail… haul!"
The Eagle was through the eye of the wind, and the orders continued:
"Shift headsail sheets!"
"Ease spanker!"
"Ease the helm!"
The wheels spun, pointing her rudder amidships.
"Let go, and haul! Set the main!"
Eagle tilted to starboard. The sails swung, set, braced, filled out into lovely white curves. Feet moved across the deck in a dance more neatly choreographed than any ballet, making lines fast to belaying pins, cleats, and bits.
"On the port tack, ma'am," Hiller said, satisfaction in his voice.
Alston looked at her watch and the clinometer, and overside. They were almost back up to speed, slicing southeast instead of southwest. "Six minutes forty-five seconds. Very good, Mr. Hiller."
He nodded. That had been very good. There was an easier way to come about onto the other tack, but it meant going the wrong way for a few minutes, and took a bite-sized chunk out of your forward passage.
And there was no time to spare. One small consolation was that they knew, pretty well, where the Bentley was headed. The other was that Cofflin knew better than to nag her over the radio; she'd had superiors in uniform who hadn't grasped the futility of jogging a subordinate's elbow nearly so well. Even as it was, she felt an impatience that seemed strong enough to urge the Eagle faster through the water by a sheer effort of will.
Swindapa came bounding up the gangway stairs from the waist, where she'd been helping out on the line teams. You never have to tell her twice, or find her work to do, Alston thought, fighting back a grin she knew would be both unprofessional and silly. The impulse faded quickly, driven out by worry. There would probably be fighting at the end of this trip, one way or the other.
Loving means giving hostages to fortune, she told herself grimly. Do your best; it's all anyone can.
"That's the Coatzacoalcos River," the yachtsman among Lisketter's followers said.
Silence fell as the Bentley ghosted forward under an unmerciful noon. The air here where the Isthmus of Tehuantepec narrowed was hot, hazy and hot and damp, still and full of the smell of vegetable rot. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico-Martha supposed it should be called that, for want of another name-beat on the shores as the schooner coasted down along them; sometimes on beaches of white sand, as often on marsh and forest growing tangled to the water's edge. They had stopped at islands for wood and water, never seeing a dweller. There were Indians in the Caribbean, she knew, but they were few and scattered. Farming hadn't penetrated there yet, and wouldn't for some centuries. Mile after mile, white beaches that turned jungle-green at the high-tide mark, islands like lush emeralds in the unbelievably blue sea.
Martha listened to the conversation behind her at the wheel with half an ear, already convinced that the sailor was right. The maps were unreliable for the smaller things, lesser streams, shoals, reefs, the precise outlines of coasts; such had changed too much in the three mille
The engine of the Bentley burbled into life for the first time in weeks. Sails came down with a rattle, to be roughly lashed to the booms. As the diesel blatting echoed back from the near bank of the river, birds exploded out of it. There were thousands of them, showers of feathered shapes in canary yellow, red, blue, sulfur gold, and sunset crimson. Parrots, macaws, others she couldn't name, their cries loud and raucous in the heavy air. Alligators slipped off mud-banks into the water with little rippling splashes like low-slung dragons. Insects rose from the river and the swamps along it in clouds, and without the sea breeze to scatter them soon had everyone on the schooner's deck slapping and scratching.
"Do you have a depth sounder on this ship?" Martha asked.
"No," the yachtsman said. "But this looks pretty deep."
Oh, God, Martha thought, wiping at her face with a handkerchief. Sweat lay oily, refusing to dry. At least she'd stopped getting so sick.
Most of the crew-she supposed that was the way to describe Lisketter's followers, after a couple of weeks at sea-were resting along the rails of the schooner, pointing and chattering. Everyone was ta
She turned to Lisketter. "You should have someone checking the depth," she said. "And shouldn't you break out the guns, after all the trouble you went to to steal them?"
Lisketter had been staring out at the passing wilderness of wood and jungle, transfixed. She came to herself with a start. "Whatever for?" she said. "There's nobody here but the Native Americans we've come to help."
Martha reined in her sarcasm with a massive effort of will. "They might… they might misunderstand you," she said. "After all, we can't talk to them until someone's learned their language. How do you expect them to know you're friendly?"
"Well, they'd certainly misunderstand any show of force," Lisketter said, shrugging. "We'll demonstrate them when we get to their leadership. From what I've read, the Olmecs had a deep spiritual relationship with nature, so it'll probably be priests or priestesses of some sort."
Martha closed her eyes and sighed, sinking back on the blanket, only to come alert again when voices rose in excitement. The river had narrowed, though it was still hundreds of yards across. On the north side was a village in a clearing, set on the natural levees that always flanked a lowland river like this, given to seasonal floods. Fields surrounded it; plots of maize stood green, overgrown with bean vines, and interspersed with cotton and other plants she couldn't begin to identify. The houses were rectangular, thatched, with sides of mud and wattle to waist height and rolled-up screens of matting below. Canoes were drawn up on the dirt beach that fronted the slow-moving river, some of them quite large; others were out on the water, fishing. The buildings straggled, except for some larger ones grouped in a square of beaten dirt around a rectangular earth platform in the center. That held something much larger atop it, still timber and thatch but with corner posts intricately carved. Smoke drifted up from hearths outside the doors of huts and from a larger fire on the platform.