Page 17 of Hooked By a Hero
“Get out of our way if you know what’s good for you,” Tumbrill snapped as he and the others hurried to the stairs leading up to the main deck, where Caspian and Elias stood.
“What are you doing?” Elias asked in a gasp, eyes wide with disbelief.
Caspian grabbed Elias’s arm, ready to drag him out of the way, even as Tumbrill said, “Exactly what I told that idiot, Woodward, I would do if he didn’t play nice.”
“But you cannot,” Elias said, still not moving when, really, he should have.
“We have to move,” Caspian whispered to him, staring warily at Tumbrill.
Tumbrill wasn’t the one they should worry about, however. Caspian tugged Elias far enough out of the way so that Tumbrill could pass, but as soon as Dick stepped up after him, he shoved Elias so hard that both he and Caspian tumbled to the floor in a pile. Partially because the ship rocked hard at just that moment.
Farther along the deck, screams or shouts for God’s help sounded from the other side of various cabin doors. Caspian sympathized with them, but they had yet to realize what sort of help they really should have been appealing for from their gods.
“Want me to run these Nancies through?” one of the convicts who had come up from below behind Dick asked, raising a long knife over Elias.
Caspian was ready to do whatever he could to protect his sweetheart, but Dick growled out, “No. He’s the doctor. We might need him.”
“Come on!” Tumbrill shouted from halfway up the stairs as rain and waves splashed down on him through the hatch he’d just opened. “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it fast, before Woodward has time to gather himself.”
Caspian didn’t need to ask what they were going to do. He’d heard for himself weeks ago, when he’d taken his morning swim. He cursed himself now for allowing Elias to distract him into forgetting, dismissing what he’d heard, and failing to tell anyone. Not that Captain Woodward would have listened to him at any rate.
“We need to get away from them,” he said quietly but urgently, struggling to stand.
Elias nodded in agreement, but it was clear he was stunned by what was happening and could only react instead of taking charge.
They stumbled back several yards as the ship continued to pitch and sway. Sounds of the storm were all around them now, including cracks of lightning that sounded entirely too close.More men poured up from the lower deck, all of them armed and none of them in shackles anymore. Whether there had been a plan in place from the beginning or Dick had come to some sort of agreement with Tumbrill during the first part of their voyage didn’t matter. They were well and truly in the midst of a mutiny now.
“We have to warn the others,” Caspian said, pulling Elias deeper into the ship, to the long line of cabin doors halfway down the middeck. “We have to let them know what is happening.”
“But what can we do?” Elias asked, seeming to shake himself out of his initial fear.
Caspian’s gut dropped at the question. “I do not honestly know,” he said. “This may be the end for all of us. But at least the passengers should be given the option of facing their ends instead of cowering from them.”
Elias nodded, the ship dipped harshly as they hit another trough between waves, and they began to knock on doors.
The majority of the passengers were male, but that did not mean that they were ready to take up arms and defend Captain Woodward and the ship. Caspian was disappointed that most of them wanted nothing more than to stay locked in their cabins, clinging to whatever they could, faces pinched in prayer.
A few men joined them in alerting the others, a man named Archer and another called Woburn, and one or two others headed up to the main deck to see what was going on. Caspian and Elias encountered a much bigger problem when they reached the end of the line of cabins only to have green-faced Miss Winters open the door instead of a gentleman.
“The convicts have taken over the ship?” she asked, swallowing hard and bracing herself in the cabin’s doorway as theFortunecontinued to roll.
“They have not yet,” Elias explained. “At least, as far as we know.”
“But they will,” Miss Winters said, bursting into a sob. “I shall be captured and brutalized by those horrible men.”
Caspian’s gut dropped farther, and not because of the raging sea. Miss Winters was not being fanciful or exaggerating. Caspian had seen the way women were treated by vicious men who had spent too long at sea, away from women. Miss Winters, and Ruby and Lady Adelaide and the few other women aboard, would be savaged if Tumbrill and Dick won the battle for control of the ship.
“You need to come away from there at once,” Caspian said, thinking quickly and offering his hand to Miss Winters. “You need to remove your clothing and get as far away from your cabin as possible.”
“I beg your pardon?” Miss Winters asked, white-faced and shocked.
“Caspian, what good would it possibly do to traumatize the poor woman before Dick and his henchmen get to her?” Elias asked, equally offended.
Caspian shook his head. “They will be looking for women once all of this is over, but they will not be looking for young men or boys.”
Elias seemed to catch on to what Caspian was thinking straight away. “If the ladies disguise themselves as men, Dick and the rest will be less likely to touch them.”
“Precisely,” Caspian said with a nod.
