The Treasure Ship
During Aleksei's Birthday Party, the very intoxicated Admiral Praisse du Rachetisse told the heroes he had a mission for them, but was too drugged (due to some missteps) to explain it. The next day he was rather unwell, but the day after he summoned the companions to ask for a favor.
The Admiral's Mission
Several times a year, the Castillians send a treasure fleet - the flota - full of gold, silver and jewels back to Castille from the Midnight Archipelago. The flota is of huge importance -- it funds the Castillian war effort, and if one of the treasure galleons were captured it would provide Montaigne with a substantial financial boost.
This time, Montaigne has managed to get a spy with Porté inside the flota, and the Admiral wants the companions along with a disgraced Castillian seaman named Captain Ochoa to travel to Porté to one of the ships of the flota and stage a mutiny. Apparently, Captain Luis Montoya of the Santa Maria is a tyrant and the crew are ready to rebel, and if the companions can lead that mutiny and then bring the galleon to Mertí it would be a huge coup. Lucien is to bring them through to the galleon, and will keep in contact with them through Bernard Rodriguez, the half-blood Porté spy aboard the Santa Maria.
Mutiny on the Santa Maria
Once through on the Santa Maria, the companions meet with the leaders of the mutiny - Rodriguez, Old Jack Armstrong, Ferrara del Sol and Juan Delgado. A planned is formed; Ochoa and the mutineers will take the officers in the wardroom while the companions lead a party to clear the deck and take care of the captain.
The fighting for the ship is brutal, but after Marie-Celeste defeats Captain Montoya in a night-time fight the ship is won. There is a brief scare when a nearby frigate, the Gaviota, hails the Santa Maria but the companions convince the Gaviota's Captain Sofia Orduno that there is plague aboard the galleon. After a night-time diversion with lanterns, the Santa Maria slips away and makes for Mertí, leaving Montoya and the officers behind for the Gaviota to pick up.
The mutiny is not without casualties, however: Captain Ochoa is gravely wounded and Bernard Rodriguez is dead, leaving the companions cut off from Lucien and Montaigne.
Supply Problems
As the ship sails for Mertí, supply problems loom. During the mutiny, the crew broke into the rum ration, and so discipline is extremely lax, leading in one case to the death of three sailors falling from the yards. Even worse, the surgeon's bay was raided, and so Marie-Celeste -- serving as surgeon -- lacks the laudanum needed to treat Captain Ochoa and the other wounded.
With Ochoa out of the action, Aleksei takes charge as captain of the ship, with Julien and Sebastien as his officers and Old Jack Armstrong as his bosun. Julien, particularly, tries to instill fear in the men, but Armstrong believes that if something is not done a second mutiny will result. He is particularly worried about Juan Delgado, who has begun to question whether or not Mertí and Montaigne are a better destination than the Straits of Blood or some other pirate haven.
The Confrontation
Things come to a head at a all-hands-on-deck discipline for sailors caught drinking. Delgado challenges Aleksei's authority, and then goes silent when Julien threatens to attack the next man who speaks out. Another sailor does and is stabbed by Julien, dying on the deck.
The crew is momentarily pacified, but there are other problems -- even with the immediate crisis past, discipline is so lacking that the ship can barely man its guns, trouble if the Castillian navy catches up with them.
Aleksei and Sebastien fix on a solution; they will share out part of the gold with the crew, starting with Delgado, who they promote to lead a gun-watch. When Delgado's gunners begin to perform, they are given bars of gold which go a long way to quieting mutiny and turning the crew into an effective fighting force.
Things are beginning to look well - with the threat of mutiny gone, the ship begins to function better, though it still lacks martial discipline, and it is Julien and Aleksei's conclusion that it may be able to survive a fight with the Castillians. Marie-Celeste is worried, however, that without landfall soon many of the wounded in her care will not survive.
The Storm
All plans are set back when a storm sets in -- it is a titanic effort, three days of blowing with Aleksei at the helm and Sebastien and Julien keeping the crews together as Marie-Celeste treats the constant stream of wounded. At one point, a mast goes down and Julien is almost lost overboard, only for Sebastien to climb out on the mast with a boarding axe to catch Julien while cutting the rigging free before it can drag the ship under.
Julien begins to man the tiller as Aleksei tries to make sense of the charts, hoping that the storm does not blow them too far, but rapidly they realize that they are in dangerous waters, blown out of a sea passage and into a midst of a clump of islands.
Shipwrecked!
The companions worst fears are realized when they strike a reef; all hands move to abandon ship, but with few boats there is a general panic. Aleksei has to shoot one of the crew trying to make off with a longboat before some semblance of order is restored and rafts are constructed, as Marie-Celeste tries to move the wounded into a boat before the ship entirely breaks apart.
Finally, the companions take to boats -- Aleksei and Marie-Celeste with the wouned in one, Sebastien, Julien and some of the sailors in another - and paddle hard for an island. Sebastien and Julien's boat doesn't make it, and Aleksei alone is barely conscious as he drags his companions from the surf and tries to get the remaining boat high enough to avoid being swept away before he collapses, exhausted, under a tree.
Persons of Note
- Lucien du Lac -- A Porté master and associate of Philip du Paix.
- Admiral Alazais Valois Praisse du Rachetisse -- High Admiral of the Montaigne Navy and a patron of the companions.
- Captain Julio Ochoa -- A disgraced Castillian sea-officer who has defected to Montaigne.
- Captain Luis Montoya -- Tyrannical captain of the Castillian treasure galleon Santa Maria.
- Captain Sofia Orduno -- Captain of the Castillian frigate Gaviota.
- Old Jack Armstrong -- A salty old Avalon sailor aboard the Santa Maria.
- Ferrara del Sol -- A beautiful, fiery-spirited Castillian topswoman on the Santa Maria.
- Juan Delgado -- One of the Santa Maria's gunners, he almost leads a mutiny against the companions.