Late at night, the sea is quiet.
Tonight's Biscayne Bay has no wind, the calm sea is as clear as a mirror, the sea and the sky are opposite two rounds of bright moon, so beautiful that people are intoxicated and obsessed.
Lorraine remained at the bow of the ship.
His eyes were closed, his legs were bent, and he was humming an unknown ditty as he leaned his back against Scott's crossbow.
The main yards of the crossbow's attached ropes had been removed, and were now placed in a single piece with the unattached spare yards, neatly lined up on the side of the crossbow.
The crew is ready too.
The large Kron, carrying his sledgehammer and his newly acquired cable-breaking axe on his belt, was pacing the main deck in annoyance.
Hina, on the other hand, stayed on the high lookout, her emerald eyes looking away from the land, motionless and statuesque.
During the meal, Lorraine announces to the crew that there will be fighting this night, fighting against an indeterminate number of Romulans of unknown strength, and uses this as a reason to put Pierce and Noah in the stern cabin.
Pierce is quite a bit resistant to being alone in a cabin with a witch, but as an English gentleman, he can neither oppose the captain's orders nor refuse to protect the lady.
So there will be no mopping up on deck tonight.
The group waited, calmly or not, for nearly three hours, and when it was nearly ten o'clock, Hina climbed the halyard and leaped down, swinging longingly to Lorraine's side.
Lorraine slowly opened her eyes, "Coming?"
"Five dinghies, not far offshore, four fast, one slow."
"It seems that Noa's three cousins are not as united as they seem."
Lorraine patted her butt and stood up, gesturing toward Keren. Keren s footsteps jerked, and his first reaction was to ... pull out the cross around his neck, flash it to the outside of his clothes, and start praying out loud.
Hina glanced at him with a frown and whispered to Lorraine, "Do you think that he and Noa will get along?"
"He's an open-minded believer, he's just not quite used to his new partner yet, he'll be fine in a couple of days."
"Really?"
"Yes, because he couldn't find a better captain than me." Lorraine tightened the leather cord that hung the knife and smiled sardonically, "You don't understand the white man. If he can even give up his paycheck, there's nothing in the world, that can stop him from staying on this ship."
The two men joked in whispers as the sight of the dinghy finally appeared at the end of the eye pole.
The bow of the Beauty was facing land, and first one appeared on the front of the bow, then another to the east, and soon two more appeared, followed by the last one.
Keren's prayer was done.
He stepped onto the bow deck with great strides, his eyes resolute, like a blessed holy warrior.
He said in a hushed voice, "Captain, there are only two boats in the angle of fire of the harpoon guns."
"I see it ..." Lorraine clicked and yanked the noose free, and Keren leaned over to press on the ready vector.
Nearly three hundred meters apart, Lorraine pushed the dial to aim at the dinghy at the edge of the shooting angle, and did not hesitate to excite it with a single vector.
There was a long buzz!
The large fishing fork shot out from the bow of the Beauty like a bolt of lightning, hitting the raised bow of the dinghy with a bang and shattering the boards straight on, almost blowing a third of the boat to pieces.
The dinghy began to sink, screams rose in the night sky, the Roma on board panicked and jumped into the water, and the dinghy at the bow began to turn in the hope of escaping the range of the harpoon gun.
Lorraine ripped the noose once more.
The second prepared vector, inspired!
There was a loud boom as the skiff, eager to escape, was turned sideways against the crossbow, and was blasted in two by Lorraine's shot, and two of the Romulans were struck by the crossbow bolt and blown to pieces, blood staining a large portion of the ocean.
In the midst of the pervasive screams, Haina quickly reported the count; two rounds of crossbow fire, a total of two standing dead and fourteen in the water.
Lorraine let go of her crossbow and took off her boots at the side of the ship, "Hina, you and Keren deal with the other two boats here, remember to kill fewer people."
Hina hmmm'd softly.
Kron was surprised, "Captain, you're going into the water?"
"This battle isn't over with just repelling demons, my dear Keren." Lorraine's hand rose high, "Hina and I have been planning this kidnapping for three whole days."
With a long laugh, Lorraine leapt high into the air and dug into the calm waters of the Bay of Biscay like a swimming fish.
Poof!
...
The Roma boarded the ship.
Centuries of wandering have not only made every Roma sing, dance and be cheerful, but they have also become accustomed to discrimination and persecution and are able to calmly ignore accidents and death.
It was a different kind of bravery than the Vikings, but the results were no different.
Lorraine's overly accurate crossbow bolt didn't scare them off, and the two skiffs, which were outside the firing angle, still approached the Beauty, which was anchored on the surface, quickly.
Throwing on prepared hooks and ropes, they climbed up the sides of the ship, and all of them showed agility.
Kron's cable-breaking axe had only cut through two hooked ropes before Romulans biting their short swords had already made their way onto the deck. He could only regrettably abandon his cable-cutting operation and unslung his sledgehammer to deal with the attack of the plural enemies.
Haina, who was defending the starboard side, had a much easier time of it.
She had eight red velvet flying daggers, and if Lorraine hadn't forbidden her to kill, she could have pinned all of her enemies to the boat as it approached.
And now ...
Considering that such a handy flying dagger could only be replenished in Stavanger, it suddenly struck her that Lorraine's real intention in not allowing her to kill was actually to put her opponent on the deck to facilitate the subsequent retrieval of the flying dagger.
She thought Lorraine was so thoughtful.
Hina was amused, glancing at the battle at Kron to make sure the shipwrights were not at risk of injury for the moment, and waited with good grace for all of her opponents to come aboard.
The Romulans, who could sing and dance, did not disappoint her, and in only a moment, eight of them climbed onto the deck in unison, still in an arc in front of her, waving their short swords and approaching cautiously.
Hina spun into a gyroscope.
Underneath the cowl that seemed to be in full bloom, eight streams of light shot out in a single breath, duh duh duh duh duh, poking through the tops of the feet of all eight opponents.
The Roma people fell down screaming.
Unconcerned with the outcome in front of her, she finished throwing her flying dagger and turned around to kill Keren's battle group ...
Lorraine swam like a flying fish in the shallow sea.
The twin swords, sheathed and held horizontally on either side of the body, are the broad pectoral fins of the flying fish, and the legs, swinging with slow, powerful paws, are the forked caudal fins of the flying fish.
It's just that flying fish prefer to leap out of the water and glide through the air, whereas Lorraine is only underwater, less than a meter from the surface, and doesn't even need to make an upward change of air.
He skimmed over the fallen Roma, dived hard, traversed like a ghost from under the feet of the chaotic stirrups, and in a moment approached the skiff farthest from the battlefield, and came slowly up at the bottom of it.
It was a standard small river ferry wooden boat, belonging to the same system as the dinghy used as a punching boat on the Beauty, 5 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, slender overall, with a pointed head and a wide tail.
Lorraine put away her knife and opened her large hands to gently hug the hull, followed by her arms as they powered up and began to rock.
Wow!
Wow!
His rocking became more and more violent, and the men in the boat began to fall overboard.
The first to hit the water was a still young Roma woman, who stared in horror at the sight of Lorraine underwater, wowed and spat out a large amount of air bubbles in a single gulp.
A second, and a third person fell into the water in quick succession, and among them was a man.
Lorraine pulled her mouth into a smirk, rolled over and drew her sword, stomping on the side of the boat's bottom.
This time the shaking was more violent than any of the earlier ones, and at once two men fell into the water.
They saw an apparition underwater, carrying a long knife and lightly stabbing it into the man's belly.
Bubbles of air mixed with blood gushed out as Lorraine lifted her foot and stomped away from him, guiding the knife and swimming toward the second man in the water ...