Part 5

At the insistence of Captain Raven, who hopes this will prevent trouble later, Lieutenant Dominguez and Diego are inducted into the crew of the Black Mamba. When this is done, she tells them that they are cursed, like the rest of us, and why this is so, telling them our tale.

They are not happy at this. Lieutenant Dominguez appears unimpressed, but given his already-injured state does not protest.

As Lieutenant Dominguez is still bleeding from the finger Finbar chopped off, Mr Vaughn cauterises the stump with a red-hot poker. Well, at least the bleeding has stopped now...

Finbar suggests we go to a pirate haven of some kind and recruit some more ships to take on the galleon carrying the Cross of St Benedict. By showing how lucky we have been we should be able to get others to join us. Or failing that we have enough money now to hire them if need be.

There are a couple of pirate ships that we have teamed up with before for larger jobs, so if we can find them that will do the trick. Although to take on a galleon, we think we'll still need more ships than that.

Bert suggests we supply a ship full of naked women as a distraction.

Other people like this idea too, though more on general principles rather than as something to help us get the Cross.

Finbar suggests we run the galleon aground at high tide (so we can be sure to recover its cargo later). Perhaps scare them onto the rocks.

Perhaps we can make the ships look bigger and more formidable than they actually are to help with this.

Spike suggests that we could pretend to be a plague ship - that would scare them!

Captain Raven rightly points out that the galleon would sink us. Fair point.

We do think we need to take out the Juliana first. Finbar points out that it would be good to capture it if we could.

We consider all of this.

We also discuss which of the stories we have been told about the arrival of the Cross of St Benedict is true. Is it due very soon, or in two weeks? We don't know. And we killed all of the Spanish prisoners who could have corroborated Lieutenant Dominguez's story. Damn.

Spike suggests we leave someone here to keep an eye on things while the rest of us go and get some help.

Finbar suggests we take the forts guarding Havana harbour in order to be able to out-gun the treasure galleon, as part of

a text-book 'cutting out' operation to quickly capture an enemy ship. Or just threaten the city until the Spanish give us the Cross.

Captain Raven is very sceptical of this idea, and who can blame her, given how 'challenging' it would be with our level of resources? She is of the opinion that the original story is the true one, rather than what Lieutenant Dominguez said. However, she does think that taking the Juliana is a good idea, if we can do it.

She thinks we should take our boats and invade the Juliana, doing to them what they intended to do to us. She certainly agrees with Finbar that we do not want to sink it - we want to make it ours!

We should certainly be able to move some of our smaller guns into the ships boats.

That being decided, we discuss plans.

After due consideration, we decide to attempt to board the Juliana with eighty of our crew in four boats. The boats will be very packed, but it should be do-able as long as the sea is not too rough. The twenty most trustworthy of the crew will be left on board the Black Mamba in case of trouble. Lieutenant Dominguez and Diego will also remain on the Black Mamba.

With Bert at the helm, the Black Mamba sails back to Nuevitas and moors outside the harbour entrance. The four ships boats are prepared ready for our boarding attempt. Their rowlocks are muffled and the Black Mamba's swivel guns dismounted and fitted into the boats.

Four swimmers are selected to board the Juliana ahead of the main party and deal with any guards. Spike and Finbar are two of these; the other two are Jake and Ebediah Phipps.

Mr Vaughn quickly knocks up small barrels for them to keep their pistols dry in while they swim to the Juliana. He also rigs up some 'grenades', which are distributed to the trustworthiest crewmembers in each boat.

We question Lieutenant Dominguez about the likely guards on the Juliana. He tells us that there should be four guards on deck.

We decide that, assuming the guards are dealt with, three boatloads of our crew will board onto the main deck; the other boatload will climb in through the windows of the captain's cabin.

We will abort the boarding attempt if we are discovered at the stealth-party-on-deck stage of the plan. Otherwise we'll just bull our way onwards.

And with that being so, we set out...

The sea is a bit rough and choppy, but not enough to endanger the heavily-laden boats. The sky is still dark and cloudy.

We row in.

At the base of the headland, we beach the boats briefly and a crewman sprints up the headland to determine the situation of the Juliana.

He quickly returns and tells us that she is moored in the centre of the natural harbour of Nuevitas, where she was before. There are two lights visible on the deck of the Juliana, one at the bow and one at the stern; no other lights are visible.

We absorb this, and the crewman is sent back to the top of the headland to observe and, if necessary, to relay a signal to summon the Black Mamba.

We row on.

The swimming party prepare to go. Finbar covers himself in smelly lard, for protection from cold. After smelling it Spike, Jake and Ebediah do not do the same.

When the boats reach what we think is a safe distance to stop, they slip over the side of the boat and swim off towards the Juliana.

On the way, a shark takes an interest in Finbar, swimming past him to investigate, then returning with more hostile intent. Finbar stabs it in the nose with his cutlass, which is wrenched from his hands as it swims off with it embedded in its head.

The four of them swim on faster, expecting more sharks to be attracted by the blood of this one.

Shortly, they arrive at the Juliana, and the four of them sneak up the anchor chain. Spike goes first, slipping over the rail and into cover. The deck is good for hiding, with ropes, boats and so on stowed about it. Finbar joins Spike in cover, and they creep towards the first two guards, who are leaning on the far railing.

Spike's is nodding off, and he easily slits his throat, the blood gushing into the sea to encourage the sharks. The guard wakes up dead.

Finbar's is more alert, but still dies without alerting anyone else. More blood goes into the water, exciting the sharks.

Finbar steals a cutlass from one of the bodies while he and Spike hide them.

Jake and Ebediah join them on deck.

Finbar and Spike sneak up on the other two guards, who are on the poop deck. They also die without alerting anyone else. The four take the guard's helmets, for disguise, and their muskets too.

Then Finbar uses one of the lights to signal the waiting boats.

They cannot see whether there is a response, so they creep below decks to kill off Captain de Alvarez, using a set of stairs that leads down from the poop deck into the officers quarters, and further down into the Juliana too.

There were two gun ports visible on each side of the Juliana when we saw her in daylight, presumably in officers' cabins. These are not visible from the foot of the stairs down, just a corridor with nine doors opening off of it, two at each end and five into cabins or whatever. There is a lantern hanging from a beam.

The four of them creep rearwards and through one of the doors there, into the captains cabin. Captain de Alvarez is asleep in bed. We sneak over, hold him down, and slit his throat. He dies messily.

Then Finbar brings in the lantern and signals the boats through the rear windows of the Juliana.

With that done, they open a window and lower a rope ladder out of it for the pirates on Bert's boat to climb. Bert's boat pulls up below, and his twenty pirates climb into the Juliana.

Half of them stay below to guard the doors of the officers' cabins while the rest stealthily return to the deck and lower a lubber's net (climbing net) for the people on the other three boats to climb. The sixty pirates in the other three boats begin to do this.

Finbar and Spike check the foremost of the other seven doors in the poop deck hallway, in case it is the armoury, but it proves to the infirmary instead.

In the captain's cabin, Bert begins to loot his charts, navigational instruments and so on.

Finbar and Spike go further below decks to search them

The sixty pirates on deck also slip below-decks via the forward staircase.

Bert's pirates slip into the officers' cabins and kill them all.

The others slip into the main deck of the Juliana, where the crew are asleep in hammocks, and begin to kill them, too, as silently as possible.

Unfortunately, someone wakes up. We begin to shoot and use grenades.

It is butchery.

After a short while, some of the crew of the Juliana give up and are allowed to live. Everyone else is killed. We also take casualties, both deaths and injuries.

At the end of the battle, thirty of the crew of the Juliana have surrendered. Fifteen of the them are actually Spanish, two are Spanish-speaking Englishmen, who claim they were press-ganged into service in Spain. The remaining thirteen are slaves. The Englishmen willingly join us.

Searching further below decks, Spike and Finbar find the powder room, which is below the waterline, in the centre of the ship, to the rear.

The armoury is nearby, and holds lots of muskets, ball and so on. There is also a lot of the crew's gear. However, there is not any treasure, just some cash, which seems to be the operating fund of the ship.

We feed the dead to the (now plentiful) sharks, and decide what to do.

Well, we are now a flotilla of two ships. It is decided that the Juliana will now be our main ship. We rename it the 'Mamba's Prize'. Mr Vaughn will captain the Black Mamba from now on.

We revel in our luck. "The luck of the Devil," as Finbar puts it.

We also check the ships log and the captain's orders.

The latter indicate that the Juliana had been sent out to patrol the northern coast of Cuba, to stop pirates and any other trouble that might appear.

The log indicates that this is exactly what they did. There is no mention of the Cross of St Benedict anywhere. There are, however, some secret love letters from the daughter of the governor of Cuba to Captain de Alvarez. Seeing these, Finbar immediately hatches a kidnap plot...

KA-BOOM!!

There is a massive explosion from the powder room.

We run below decks. It quickly becomes clear that the entire powder room has gone up, and the rear of the Mamba's Prize has been destroyed. The mizzen mast has been toppled too. Water is pouring in, and the ship is sinking.

In amongst the wreckage, Captain Raven sees one of the pirates she had put to guard the powder room. His throat has been slit, in a way that is much too clean for it to have been done by flying debris.

Hmm...

But still, the ship is sinking.

We quickly decide to sail the ship aground on the beach at Nuevitas. Finbar jury rigs some canvas to slow the incoming water while Bert plots a course. With everyone working together, the Mamba's Prize is quickly beached in an upright position. The lower deck is awash with water, but the ship will not sink any further.

Mr Vaughn is assigned to quiz the crew and find out what happened.

We wonder who did this.

Someone from the Black Freighter? But as far as we know they have the same goal as us, so why sabotage it?

Someone out for revenge? This is possible. But no-one is missing.

The Spanish survivors are still under guard too.

Finbar suspects the two Englishmen.

There was plenty of opportunity for this in all the confusion of the taking of the ship.

Have we missed a crewman of the Juliana?

We do not know.

We begin to bring the Mamba's Prize's cannon ashore, emplacing them on the headland.

From the questioning of the crew, of the eighty or so of us on the Mamba's Prize, sixty-eight can account for one another's whereabouts via a series of interlocking alibis. Of the ten who cannot, three are from the Black Freighter, one is an ex-slave from the Juliana, and six are members of the original crew of the Black Mamba, so we discount them, at least, leaving only four suspects.

Bert organises a search in case anyone is hiding on board, but finds no-one, and no-one seems to have been hiding either. We do wonder if anyone got away over the side after lighting the powder room, but then they would have to contend with the still-frenzied sharks...

Finbar assesses the damage. He thinks it will take months to fix the ship here, and we can't take it anywhere else. Damn.

Spike suggests that we could jury-rig a fix and hide the Mamba's Prize somewhere else until we can fix it properly. However, Finbar and the rest of the officers dismiss this as impractical.

That being so, we begin to strip the Mamba's Prize of everything useful.

Once this is done, we will sink the ship in the harbour mouth to help us take on the galleon bearing the Cross of St Benedict.

Bert begins to survey the harbour mouth for the best place to sink the Mamba's Prize.

Mr Vaughn interrogates our four suspects, without torture for now.

Over the nest two days the Mamba's Prize is stripped bare.

Bert finds a 'good' place to sink her [but rolls -2, so he thinks it is a good place...]

And the Mamba's Prize is towed out to the harbour mouth and sunk. She seems to sink without any problems, onto the bottom and rolling over onto her side at high tide, as intended. Everything looks fine.

And we decide what to do next...

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