Free How Firm a Foundation by David Weber Page A

you?”
    “Uh, yes, Sir. I mean, aye, aye, Sir!”
    “Very good, Master Zhones.” Yairley smiled. “Go to your station, then.”
    “Aye, aye, Sir!”
    The midshipman saluted again and dashed away, and Yairley glanced one more time around his command, mentally double-checkingevery detail.
    The topgallant masts and topmasts were housed, but the topsail yards had been gotten back up to work on the topmast caps, and the topsails and foresails’ gaskets had been stripped off and replaced with lengths of spun yarn so that they could be set instantly. The fore- and mainyards had been braced up for the larboard tack, and the spring Aplyn-Ahrmahk and Mahlyk had managed tomake fast to the larboard anchor cable had been led in through an after gunport and made fast. Every eye was on the quarterdeck, and Yairley stepped slowly and calmly to his place by the wheel.
    He looked back at his watching men. They could all very easily die in the next few minutes. If the ship took the ground in something as rocky as Scrabble Sound in this kind of sea, she was almost certainto break up, and the chances of making it to shore would be poor, at best. Yet as he surveyed all of those watching faces, he saw no doubt. Anxiety, yes. Even fear, here and there, but not doubt. They trusted him, and he drew a deep breath.
    “Stand by the cables!”
    Tymythy Kwayle, with a gleaming, broad-headed ax in hand, stood by the riding bitts where the sheet anchor cable crossed them. BoatswainSymmyns himself stood by the larboard cable with an identical ax, both of them waiting for the order to cut the hawsers. If everything went according to plan, the moment the anchor cables were cut, the spring attached to the larboard cable would become her new anchor cable, pulling her stern, rather than her bow, around into the wind. With her yards already braced, the instant the wind came twopoints forward of the beam she could cut the spring, as well, and make sail close-hauled on the larboard tack, which would put her roughly on a course of south-southeast. She ought to be able to hold that heading clean back out of Scrabble Sound the way she’d come, if only the wind held steady. Or, for that matter, if it chose to back still further east towards the north. Of course, if it decidedto veer to the west, instead.…
    Stop that, he told himself absently. The wind isn’t really trying to kill you, Dunkyn, and you know it .
    “Stand by to make sail! Lay aloft, topmen!”
    The topmen hurried aloft, and he let them get settled into place. Then—
    “Man halliards and sheets! Man braces!”
    Everything was ready, and he squared his shoulders.
    “Cut the cables!”
    The axes flashed. It took morethan one blow to sever a cable six inches in diameter, but Kwayle and Symmyns were both powerfully muscled and only too well aware of the stakes this day. They managed it in no more than two or three blows each, and the freed hawsers went whipping out of the hawseholes like angry serpents at virtually the same moment.
    Destiny fell off the wind almost instantly, leaning over to starboard as herstern came round to larboard. It was working, and—
    Then the spring parted.
    Yairley felt the twanging shock as the line snapped, simply overpowered by the force of the sea striking the ship. She hadn’t turned remotely far enough yet, and the sea took her, driving her towards the rocky beach waiting to devour her. For a moment, just an instant, Yairley’s brain froze. He felt his ship rolling madly,starting to drive stern-first towards destruction, and knew there was nothing he could do about it.
    Yet even as that realization hammered through him, he heard someone else snapping orders in a preposterously level voice which sounded remarkably like his own.
    “Let fall fore topsail and course! Up fore topmast staysail!”
    The crewmen who’d realized just as well as their captain that their shipwas about to die didn’t even hesitate as the bone-deep discipline of the Imperial Charisian