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But, just beforehand, the Magdalena had pitched precipitously to starboard, suddenly lunging away from the Fancy Rat and away from the gunners’ sights. The broadside they fired, therefore, went mostly into the water. Still, the ship shoot and rattled from the impact, and Cooke lost his footing. His great jacket, pinched from the Dutch captain, spilled the contents of all its pockets, most notably the crystal skull that he had confiscated from Mister Mott.

It skittered across the deck before coming to rest, almost as if by magnets, upon the timbers.

Across the churning waters, the Spanish ship righted itself. Reloaded, its guns were once again brought to bear, and there was nothing to prevent their guns from finding their mark. In a burst of smoke and fury, the Magdalena roared its broadside…

…and the shot bounced off the Fancy Rat’s battered timbers as if they were coated in iron.

“What?” Cooke said, wonderingly.

“What?” said Hume, down on the deck with the guns.

“What?” said Braxton, trying to plug leaks belowdecks.

“What?” said De Groot from inside his surgery.

“What?” said Mott, malingering within that selfsame surgery.

“What?” said Exposito, on the bridge of the Magdalena.

Cooke, thinking quickly, pulled the Fancy Rat to port to try and compensate for the list and give his gunners time to reload. “Ready again on those guns, my jolly fellows!” he cried. “I think this next one might give them something to talk about in Cádiz!”

“It will indeed.”

Cooke looked behind him, startled. The same golden creature he had been so terrified of before had slithered up the ship’s superstructure behind him. And even as her magnificent scales began to dry back into ordinary olive skin, Mercedes tossed something at his feet.

A velvet bag, dripping wet.

Opening it, Cooke saw a crystal skull, a twin of the one he had just dropped to the deck. “I think,” he said, “that as much as I may not understand it, this will definitely put us a head in this game.” He planted it firmly on the deck next to the other.

The Spanish fired again, with their shot just as ineffective as before. But by now, even the ragged and depleted gunners of the Fancy Rat were ready. They had chocked up the guns enough to compensate for the list, and loaded them with double powder and shot to boot.

“FIRE!” howled Cooke.

From his vantage point, the effect was devastating. Cannonballs tore through the formerly iron sides of the Spanish ship as if it were made of rags. Men and cannon were tossed about like toys. A moment later, in a terrific conflagration, the center part of the ship erupted in flames, smashing the Magdalena in two. The prow continued for a little bit before slowing and dipping beneath the waves, while the stern was slow enough to sink that the ship’s jolly boats appeared in the water before the final plunge. In the middle, there was nothing but ruin.

“Ha!” Cooke cried, looking at the bobbing wreckage and the Spanish survivors trying to make their way into the few boats. “There’s the answer of a free prince to your false power!”

A musket cracked from amid the debris; Cooke had a momentary vision of the Spanish leader, Exposito, with murder and strange amber in his eyes before he pitched over the side, holding a spreading red stain on his shoulder.

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“Braxton!” Cooke said. “Go to Mister Foote down below, and instruct him to fire our own stern guns at will! Slow that blasted Spanish ship down! Aim for the sails–I’ve seen our ball and shot cut into their bewitched rigging before!”

Braxton took the order below, where Foote had just finished slinging two additional chase guns out the great cabin’s rear windows to complement the two on lower decks. Foote had his gun crews well-drilled in such a way as to compensate for their drunkenness; the Fancy Rat was able to muster an impressive rear shot at the Magdalena.

It did little good; a skilled seaman was clearly at the helm of the Spanish ship, and she had changed tack to match the Fancy Rat. The shot splashed into empty waters.

“She’s still gaining on us, skipper,” said Hume. “You have any other tricks up your sleeve?”

“Not a one, Hume,” said Cooke with a grim smile. “You?”

“Prayer has been known to work, on occasion.”

“Try it then, and we’ll see if it deserves its reputation.”

The Spanish chase guns roared again, and this time they struck true. There was no magazine explosion, but the shot nevertheless tore through the Fancy Rat, tearing a hole in the side and ripping through one of the sails. The impact knocked back some of the loaded guns, and loaded gunners, crushing a few of them beneath the careening weapons. Cooke, at the wheel, felt the ship heave as the torn sails were felt.

“The Spaniards are catching up!” Hume cried. “They’ll be ready for a broadside any moment!”

“Go to Mister Foote,” Cooke said. “Have him fire everything at the Magdalena.”

“Everything, skipper?”

“EVERYTHING!” Cooke screamed. “Bring the guns from the port side and fire them two to a port if need be! Strew them on the deck! You saw what happens if they get a good shot at us, the magazine blows and we fly our way home!”

Below, Mercedes clutched Reynard the rat and wafted aside smoke from the Fancy Rat‘s chase guns. As the crews loaded up for another volley, she looked across at the approaching Magdalena. “We’re not going to make it,” she said to the rat, “are we?”

Reynard looked at her, then flinched as the guns fired a volley. The shot bounced off the Spanish ship harmlessly, having been fired too low to reach a sail.

Hume arrived bearing Cooke’s orders. “Get these guns to starboard!” he cried. “As fast as possible! We’ve got one chance to wipe these Spaniards off of us!”

“Here,” said Mercedes. She handed the rat to Hume. “Take this.”

“What? What are you doing?” he cried.

“This is all my fault. They’re here for me.” Mercedes stepped up on the threshold of the windows. “I need to make this right.”

“Miss!” Hume cried. “MISS!”

It was too late. She had stepped off the stern of the Fancy Rat and into the briny waves. Hume could see a flash of gold in the waves and then nothing.

Rather than simply firing its chase guns again, the Magdalena’s skipper apparently decided it was time to risk a broadside. The ship wasn’t quite in position, so half of the shots were over open water, but the other half were murderous. Wood splintered, men screamed, and one of the fore masts fell, taking with it two men and all its sails. Seawater began seeping in through cracks in the hull, and the ship slowed still further, with a decided list to starboard.

One of the casualties was Mister Foote, who took a full brunt of splinters from a nearby impact. Doctor De Groot appeared among the carnage, walking unperturbed past those beyond his help, to bear Foote and the others that might be saved down below for surgery.

“Fire all the guns,” Cooke cried. “FIRE ALL OF THEM! Don’t you understand this is our last chance?”

Mister Foote’s men were not even close to being in position, but the order was taken up and passed along regardless. Every gun that was ready was touched off and fired, not quite a double broadside. But the list made shots at the rigging impossible; there was no way, and no time, to correct for it. Instead of tearing into the sails like Cooke had hoped, the shot went straight into the bewitched sides of the Magdalena and rolled into the sea.

Cooke could only stare as his last chance to make an escape disappeared. He closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m okay with this,” he said. “Better to go out like Sam Bellamy. That’ll show Bess. That’ll show her.”

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The preparations were made apace, even as the Spanish ship made sail to attempt a pursuit. Despite the Fancy Rat having the wind gauge and being a smaller ship, the Spaniard made uncommonly good speed against them and, in fact, was soon within gunnery range. The Spaniard fired a second warning shot, but then, oddly, a man in ragged clothes appeared at its bow, shouting across the gap between the two ships.

“Oy there! Ben Cooke!”

“What the devil…?” said Cooke. He turned to Hume. “We oughtn’t be able to hear that.”

Hume nodded. “There’s no way, even with a speaking-trumpet, that ought to be audible.”

“There’s no way, and yet I can hear you and you can hear me! How’s that for a rub?”

Cooke squinted. “John Samuels, is that you? Did you finally get nabbed for pinching one fishing boat too many?”

Samuels laughed. “I’ve thrown in my lot with a winning hand of cards, Cooke! I work for the Spanish now, on the inside!”

“What witchcraft is this?” shouted Hume. “I’ve had my fill of things not making sense on this voyage, thank you very much!”

“You needn’t mind the witchcraft, Jacob Hume! Are you still dragging behind Cooke like a weighted anchor with that consumptive toy Mott of yours as still more ballast?”

“You shut your mouth!” Hume cried.

“Oooh, struck a nerve, have I?” chortled Samuels. “I’ll strike a few more before the end, never you worry! But I actually come with merciful tidings!”

Cooke, still at the wheel and still snapping orders to rig the sails for a getaway that was seeming increasingly unlikely, replied: “The same mercies you showed to those Jamaican fishermen over that piece of eight they wouldn’t surrender?”

“Maybe so, if you keep arguing when you should be listening!” Samuels said. “This ship, the Magdalena, outguns you at the best of times. But you’ve seen what her sister could do at Jolly Port, and she bears the same enchantments and more! One good blast of her guns, and you’ll go straight to the bottom!”

“If you mean to blast us, blast us,” Cooke shouted. “Otherwise, turn off your witchcraft, and leave us be!”

“Surrender your passenger, Cooke. Surrender what you stole from the Nuestra Señora. You needn’t concern yourself with why King Phil wants them. But give them over and you get to leave with your ship and your life. At least until you fall back into your old plundering ways, you feisty mulatto, and get holed and sunk by this navy or some other!”

Cooke looked at the others on the bridge. Hume, clearly incensed by what Samuels had said, was fuming. Braxton had a hand on her brace of pistols. Their faces were a clear enough indication of what they thought.

“Do accept our generous offer, Mister Cooke.”

It was a new voice, with a Spanish accent but also cultured and lilting, with an inflection that suggested…instability. Insatiability.

A man in uniform, albeit a messy uniform with very few of the necessary buttons done up, appeared next to Samuels at the Madgelana‘s prow. “I am Augustín Exposito, Corregidor–governor–of Veracruz and special envoy from Don Balthazar, the Viceroy of New Spain.”

“I’m flattered!” Cooke cried back. “I’ve never been able to tell anyone with so high a rank, and so many powerful friends, to go to hell!”

Exposito laughed. “As I’ve learned from Mister Samuels, you pirates have a coarse texture all your own. But I must insist that you listen to him and accept our generous offer. What’s one Spanish brat and her offer of a little gold compared to your lives and all the gold yet to be stolen in them? I ask for nothing yet offer you everything.”

“We have a compact, signed into the ship’s articles of piracy, and sealed by secrets,” Cooke shouted back. “I always keep my word.”

“A pirate, a thief and a murderer bound up in one odious word, telling me that he dare not break a promise?” Exposito thundered. There seemed to be an odd light in his eyes as he spoke. “What about the promise between you and the civilized world, the covenant between you and the Almighty, the every natural law that piracy and free agency leaves shattered upon the ground?”

“You sniveling puppy!” Cooke cried back with a laugh of his own. “You rob the poor under the cover of law, while I plunder the rich under the protection of my own courage! You’re every bit the pirate I am; the only difference is you’ve enough gold and power to buy your way out of the name!”

“What did you call me?” Exposito clawed angrily at the air as he spoke. “I worked my way up from the lowest rung, the very bottom! Providence has seen me through thus far, and it is divine will that it be so! I am no rich princeling content to buy the valor of other men! If I were, would I be out here myself?”

“Then you’ve forgotten your roots in elevating yourself,” Cooke snorted. “I’m a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as someone who has a hundred sail of ships at sea and an army of 100,000 men in the field.”

“Forgotten my roots? They are deeper and stronger than any you’ve got, ‘prince’ and I would warn you to mind your tongue lest you feel exactly how much war I can make!”

“You, and everyone who serves you, is a hen-hearted numbskull!” Cooke shouted.

“ENOUGH!” screamed Exposito, with a fury–and a volume–that nearly everyone on both ships was startled. “Enough talking. You, and everyone who sails with you under that scabrous rag, are going to die!”

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Q: Did you ever hear about my editor who obsessed over punctuation?

A: My writing gets a routine semicolon-oscopy.

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“What are you?”

The giant raven’s head perched atop the being’s shoulders turned. “What sort of question is that?” it said in a surprisingly normal voice.

“You’ve got a raven for a head.”

“And you’ve wax with a bit of hair poked in. What of it?”

“I mean…” I said, “How did you get that way?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the raven. “Maybe it was a curse, maybe a choice, or maybe, just maybe…it’s none of your business.”

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The Great Ruckus of 1712 began in Hartfordshire, where a rowdy bar song began on St. Swithun’s Day and became a bar fight, which spilled out onto the town square in a general melee of roughousing and cacophony. Constables summoned to attend to the disturbance became part of it, and by nightfall the anarchy had spread as far as London.

While there is no record of Queen Anne punching her husband and his chamberlain, as is often claimed in legend, large parts of the old city were consumed by ruckus for the better part of 48 hours. Troops were eventually called in to quell the disorder, but no inroads could be made until soldiers who couldn’t speak fluent English were located.

The incident was little commented upon at the time, except in bawdy ballads and the like, but the Great Ruckus of 1712 is now regarded as an early example of mass hysteria. It shares this distinction with the Terrible Row of 1757, the Godawful Noise of 1691, and of course the Infernal Racket of 1802.

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