Peril on the Sea by Michael Cadnum

the religious upheaval well before Sherwin’s childhood, and looking at this larger-than-life image stirred his deepest deference.
    Captain Fletcher crunched across the shore to join Sherwin gazing at the carved figure, who in her nearly horizontal position looked like a matron whose dignity was nearly under doubt.
    â€œI had this ship shadow-built to my design, some twenty years past,” said Fletcher.
Shadow-built
meant that no drawn plan had been used, only the exacting vision of the builder.
    Sherwin knew something of boatwrights, having grown up around the wherries and scull-boats of the river Thames. The construction, out of a single vision, of a ship like the
Vixen
struck Sherwin as nothing short of marvelous.
    â€œIs the ship as fine as you had hoped?” Sherwin asked.
    â€œShe is the very echo of my dream,” said the captain, gazing at the vessel with an air of affectionate pride. “When it came to this stalwart maiden, the figurehead, the carver followed my orders, but he wanted her to clasp a cross.” He gave the wooden figure a caress. “He was an older man with, I think, antiquated religious sympathies. I thought arrows were more fitting.”
    The captain added, without pause, or change of tone, “We are being watched.”
    Â 
    A HEAVILY CLOAKED FIGURE was observing the ship from the summit of the cliff, a young woman, Sherwin judged, with light brown hair.
    â€œI am not well pleased by having a witness,” said Captain Fletcher, “especially when my pretty ship is lying on her beams. I hope to be at sea again by midnight, after the next flood tide. Until then a visit by a port constable or one of his tipstaves would be unwelcome.” Tipstaves were a constable’s attendants, notorious for putting their staves to rough use.
    â€œIs concealment so very important?” asked Sherwin.
    â€œWe need secrecy while we heal. Do you see this wound,” added the captain, “there below the waterline?”
    The captain indicated a tear-shaped gash below the gunports, like a long single claw mark ending in a round hole. As matter-of-fact as the wound was, exposed to the daylight, Sherwin’s breath caught at the sight, the secret wound looking small but mortal.
    â€œMade by a Spanish gun firing ten-pound shot,” said the captain. “It pains me to see such an injury. The carpenter and his mate will have her mended, under my care, but we’ve been taking on water, and with the trouble to come we can’t let the damage go untended. She’ll be seaworthy again by nightfall, but until then we are vulnerable.”
    â€œWhat,” Sherwin found himself asking, hoping that he already knew the answer, “is the trouble that is bound to come?”
    â€œA great fleet, as men describe it,” said the captain. “The largest navy ever to set sail, if the drain of shipwrights from Porto to Parma, from what I hear, is any evidence. This would be the greatest sea force of all time—a historic armada—if the reports are true.”
    To hear the possibility so described gave Sherwin a quiet thrill—and a surprising degree of dread, too.
    â€œAnd you’ll want the
Vixen
to be fit so you can join the battle,” said Sherwin, sure that he understood the captain’s meaning.
    â€œWhat I hope to be, when the fury begins,” responded the captain, “is as far away as possible.”
    â€œWe are not, I hope, a white-livered ship,” said Sherwin. It would not be polite or even wise to say
cowardly
.
    â€œDo you think cowardice has any meaning for me,” said the captain, “or courage, for that matter? While the entire world is gathered to spoil the sea with blood, we’ll slip north to pluck a few ocean geese off Bristol, or Liverpool.” He stopped to consider his remarks, and then he added, “Although I would enjoy getting my hooks into a Spanish prize.”
    Highbridge had joined the