PoraBora

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Keasau had nowhere to go, so it went up.

The god's great arms of oil latched onto the cavern wall, crushing the coral. They held, and they held its weight as it dragged its body up, arm over arm, sending coral pieces and rocks, blackened until they might have been drops of oil, into the bay. Its ascent was slow, and cannons fired all the while until it got a hand over the lip, and then another, and it pulled itself over and out of the crater.

"Sharks," said Pe in as much awe as frustration, because if she had known, she wouldn't have tried so hard on the net.

Her sentiment was surely mirrored by the hundreds of men who had come to capture him.

Messages were flashed across the cavern, and Pe assumed they demanded the net retreat from the entrance so that the fleet could continue to chase.

"I need to get to him," said Akoni.

"You want me to go back?" Pe couldn't believe it.

"You go," said Hui. "We'll stop them here."

"Stop them?" asked Pe. "There's a hundred boats out there."

"I'll slip through the oil," said Akoni. "Do whatever you can to get as far from the fleet as possible. There's nothing more you three can do."

"Swell idea," said Pe. "But it'd be even better if you actually had an idea to get us out of here."

Akoni looked at the fleet, and the ship that blocked the way out, at the net, and then at the oil. "Well," he said. "Good luck."

And he jumped in.

He was good for nothing on the boat anyway, thought Pe. It had only ever been made for three people. She looked up at the ship in front of them, which didn't seem sure whether it should fire or board. In a few minutes, their decision would be made for them: the other boats attached to the net were retreating, and it would be dragged with them.

The warriors must have realized it, as they glared, grumbled, shouted hurtful things about Hui's face (they wouldn't have won any games) and Tua's mother, and disappeared over the deck.

"I'd have thought they would have taken a few shots at least," said Tua. "Surely they have men to spare."

"If they do, they're coming back with them," said Pe, and she used the sheet line to close her sail and her motor to ease away.

When they did come back, her boat wasn't close enough to board. Tua's single shot was enough to make them take cover, which put the manta well outside of reliable range.

The salting slugs took the shots anyway with their firelocks. Mostly the bullets whizzed by, but one thunked into the wood of her starboard remora, and another tore a hole through her starboard fin.

By the time they could reload for another go, Pe had them out of range of their firelocks properly, and into the range of their forward-facing cannons.

"They have to turn," she said.

"Their propeller is capable of pulling them back," said Tua.

Pe growled a response, tripping over one animal or another. They were close enough to see the ship's cannon turn towards them, if not the man who was hidden behind it, in the hull, surely holding his linstock in one hand, cannon shot already prepared.

Pe's hands moved automatically, because all she could see was the cannonball plowing through their boat, sinking them all into Keasau's blessing. She probably said something morbid, and Tua and Hui probably said something about where the cannon would aim, and where she needed to go, but the motor didn't launch her at thirty knots the second she turned it up, and they didn't have more than that from the moment the cannonball left the cannon.

It fired, and Hui and Tua shouted, and Pe watched, her boat lurching forward, as the second disappeared.