Chapter 46
Eddie raised his binoculars and studied the oncoming Danish fleet nervously. Hans’ estimate of their numbers had been accurate, he decided, though it was difficult to get any sort of a definitive count. Too many of the vessels overlapped and merged into one another when he tried to make one out.
Most of the twenty or thirty ships he could see seemed to have gun ports, but that didn’t mean a lot, he reminded himself. Most 17th-century seagoing merchant ships carried at least a few guns to ward off pirates, if nothing else. The majority of the ships in that straggling formation had to be transports, not regular warships. Of course, the fact that they weren’t officially warships didn’t mean that any anti-pirate guns they carried couldn’t be sufficiently dangerous.
He swung the binoculars gently back and forth while he tried to analyze the Danish formation . . . such as it was, and what there was of it. The larger ships appeared to be in what was supposed to be a single column, heading toward Wismar at perhaps three or four miles an hour. If it was supposed to be a column, it wasn’t a very neat one, but he and Larry were scarcely in a position to criticize anyone else’s seamanship.
His mouth twitched in an almost-smile at the thought, and he turned his attention to the smaller vessels Hans had reported. There were more of them than of the larger ones, clustered around the untidy column like goslings around geese. Most of them looked like no more than large row boats, although the majority had at least some sort of sail, but four or five of them were larger, lower, and sleeker. And—his binoculars stopped moving, and his jaw muscles tightened—those larger “row boats” each had what looked like a good-sized cannon mounted in its bows.
They can’t be as big as I think they are, he told himself sternly. The damned boats would capsize if they tried to fire thirty-two-pounders at us! But even a teeny-tiny one-pounder can take someone’s head off without any trouble at all. And those ain’t one-pounders, Eddie! Probably more like three-pounders, maybe even sixes . . . or nine-pounders.
He let his eyes linger on the gunboats for a few moments longer, then made himself look away. The odds of a single 17th-century cannon’s actually managing to hit a 21st-century speedboat were minute. That was going to take an entire broadside—or blind luck. He couldn’t do much about the latter, but he intended to see to it that no broadsides got a clear shot at him.
“All right.” He lowered the glasses and turned to look at Larry and their single additional crewman. “I don’t want to get any more tangled up in them than we can help, Larry. But if we can manage it, I’d like a shot where at least a couple of them overlap. That way, anything that misses the closest ship still has a chance of hitting something else.”
Larry cocked his head, lips pursed while he contemplated the Danish formation, then he nodded slowly.
“Looks to me,” Eddie continued, “like our best bet is going to be to get inshore of them. We ought to have enough water, and we’ll keep an eye on the fathometer.” He tapped the digital depth display, and Larry nodded again. “The main thing though, is that if we come at them from the coastline, we’ll have the choice of breaking left or right after we fire without having to worry about running into the coast, right?”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Larry agreed. His effort to project an air of nonchalance was not an outstanding success, but Eddie decided not to hold that against him under the circumstances.
“What I’d really like to do,” he explained, “is to take out some of their warships. That’s where their commanding officer’s most likely to be, and I’ll bet that most of those merchant ships would just as soon be somewhere else, anyway. If we can pick off a couple of their escorts, they may turn and run for it. And it looks to me like most of their regular navy units are concentrated toward the back of their formation.” He pointed across the water. “That’s probably so that they’ll have the wind behind them if they have to run down to intercept us if we try to get at the transports.”