Read Chapter 3: A Gunner's Test

The Vagabond’s deck smelled of coal oil and fresh tar, and the morning sun burned the last of the harbor mist from the rigging. Elias stood at the quarterdeck rail, a tin cup of bitter coffee in his hand, watching the two candidates below.

MacReady had found them. A pair of hard-eyed men with powder burns on their cuffs and the lean look of men who had spent years hunched behind cannon. They stood stiffly on the main deck, each beside a rack of rusted muskets that Pip had rigged as targets. Twenty paces from the forecastle, a line of empty bottles—gin, port, ale—winked in the sunrise.

“Rules are simple,” Elias called down. “Five shots each. Whoever shatters the most bottles earns a berth. In the event of a tie, I’ll think of something nastier.”

The older of the two, a square-jawed man named Corbin who claimed ten years in the merchant marine, spat over the side. “And if I don’t fancy your little parlor game, Captain?”

Elias smiled without warmth. “Then you can swim back to the docks. The river’s cold this time of year.”

Corbin grunted and picked up the first pistol. He sighted down the barrel, breathed out, and fired. The green bottle on the far left burst into glittering shards. He worked through the rack with mechanical precision—five shots, four bottles, one miss that sent a splinter of wood flying from the mast.

The second candidate, a wiry lad named Tench, managed only three before his hands began to shake.

Elias shook his head. “Not good enough. I need a gunner who can hold steady when the deck’s pitching and the French are closing.” He glanced at MacReady, who leaned against the mizzenmast with a wooden leg tapping the deck. “That the best the grapevine could offer?”

MacReady scratched his grizzled beard. “There’s one more. Showed up late. Says she heard the Vagabond needed a sharp eye.”

Elias followed the man’s gaze to the gangplank. A woman stood there, silhouetted against the pale sky. She was tall, with shoulders squared like a soldier’s and dark hair cropped short beneath a leather cap. A long canvas duster hung open over a sailor’s slop shirt and trousers. At her hip, a cutlass rode with the ease of long familiarity. Her eyes—sharp, the color of storm water—scanned the ship with an appraising calm.

“You’re late,” Elias said.

“You’re still hiring,” she replied, stepping aboard without an invitation. Her voice had a rasp to it, like grit caught in a hinge. “I’m Sable.”

“Last name?”

“Just Sable.”

Elias studied her. There was something in her bearing—not the slouch of a dock rat, but the upright carriage of a woman who had served under discipline and chosen to leave it behind. Or been cast out. The thought touched a nerve.

“You know how to handle a pistol?”

“Better than your two candidates.” She nodded at the shattered bottles. “Four and three. I counted.”

Corbin bristled. “The little lady talks big for someone who hasn’t pulled a trigger yet.”

Sable didn’t rise to the bait. She simply walked to the rack, picked up a fresh pistol, and checked the mechanism with practiced fingers. She loaded it with a single ball, tamped the charge, and raised the weapon. No wasted motion. No showmanship.

She fired.

The bottle on the far right vanished.

She worked down the line with a rhythm that was almost mechanical—crack, shatter, crack, shatter. Two more fell. On the fourth shot, she paused, adjusted her aim by a hair, and fired. The bottle burst. The fifth shot she held, breathing slow, the pistol steady in her grip.

Elias watched the line of her shoulders. No tremor. No doubt.

The fifth report echoed off the water. The last bottle exploded.

Sable set the pistol down and turned. “Five for five.”

Silence hung over the deck. Corbin’s jaw worked, but he had nothing to say. Tench was already gathering his things, muttering about wasting his morning.

Elias descended to the main deck. “You’re hired. MacReady will show you to the gun lockers. We sail on the afternoon tide.”

Sable nodded once, a curt gesture that carried no gratitude. She turned and followed MacReady toward the stern hatch. Elias watched her go, turning the empty coffee cup in his hands. Something about her was familiar, and that unsettled him more than the thought of another French patrol.

He retrieved the broken chronometer from his coat pocket. The crystal was still cracked, the hands frozen at 3:17. He had tried three times to set it, and three times the mechanism refused to move. He ran a thumb over the amber crown etched into the back plate, worn smooth in places—as if a thumb had rested there often.

“What debts did you leave me, LaRoche?” he murmured.

A cry came from the masthead. “Sail ho! Two points off the larboard bow—French cutter, flying colors!”

Elias shoved the chronometer back into his coat. He was on the quarterdeck in three strides, hands on the rail as he scanned the horizon. There she was: a lean three-masted cutter cutting through the chop, French tricolor snapping from her peak. Her decks bristled with guns, and she was making straight for the West India Docks.

“Damn it,” MacReady growled, hauling himself up. “They’re not patrolling. They’re hunting.”

Elias’s mind moved fast. The Vagabond was moored stern-first in the tight berth, surrounded by warehouse walls. To run, they would have to pull out into open water—right into the cutter’s guns.

“Pip!” Elias shouted down the engine hatch. “Can we get full pressure in five minutes?”

The young engineer’s voice drifted up, muffled by metal. “Four, if you stop shouting at me!”

“Good. MacReady, cast off fore and aft. Sable, get to the bow gun and make sure it’s loaded. If that cutter gets within six hundred yards, I want them to hear a welcome.”

Sable emerged from the stern hatch, her leather cap gone, her dark hair pulled back tight. She gave him a look that was almost amused. “I don’t load guns. I fire them.”

“Then fire it when I give the word.”

The mooring lines splashed into the water. The Vagabond shuddered as Pip coaxed the boilers to life. Steam hissed from the relief valves in a white plume. The cutter had spotted them—her bow swung, presenting her broadside as she moved to close the dock entrance.

Elias gripped the wheel. The channel was narrow, barely enough room for a ship of the Vagabond’s beam. On one side, a stone jetty. On the other, a sandbar that would snag a careless hull and hold it fast.

“Options, Captain?” MacReady said low.

Elias didn’t answer. His eyes were on the water, on the curl of the tide, on the cutter’s wake. She was fast, but she was deep. The Vagabond, with her shallow draft and gas-filled envelope, could skim where the cutter would drag.

He spun the wheel hard to starboard. The Vagabond nosed toward the sandbar.

“What the hell are you doing?” Sable called from the bow.

“Trusting my instincts,” Elias said. “Hold on.”

The cutter opened fire. The first shot screamed overhead, close enough to part strands of rigging. The second plowed into the water twenty yards off, drenching the deck with spray.

Elias didn’t flinch. He held course, watching the water below. The green of the channel shallows was rising beneath them. Any deeper draft and they’d be grounded in moments.

“Now,” he breathed, and wrenched the wheel the other way, hard over.

The Vagabond heeled violently, her gas envelope straining against the lines. The port wing dipped toward the water. For a heart-stopping moment, Elias felt the hull shudder against something solid—the sandbar—then they were past it, skimming through a gap so narrow that the starboard gunwale nearly brushed the jetty stones.

The cutter’s next shot went wild, ripping through a warehouse roof behind them. Her captain, unwilling to risk the shoals, swung away.

The open river opened before them.

Sable appeared at his side, a sheen of sweat on her brow, but her eyes bright. “That was either very brave or very stupid.”

Elias allowed himself a thin smile. “I get that a lot.”

From his pocket, the chronometer seemed to grow heavier, a weight against his hip. He should throw it overboard—cut the last tether to a dead Frenchman and a mystery he didn’t need. But he couldn’t. Not yet.

“MacReady, set a course for open water. And keep an eye on our new gunner. I want to know who she really is before we reach the Channel.”

MacReady nodded and limped away.

Elias glanced back once at the dockyards shrinking in the distance. The patrol was gone, but they would not be forgotten. Someone had known the Vagabond was here. Someone had sent that cutter.

And he had a feeling the chronometer was the reason.