Page 23 of Hooked By a Hero
Dick’s worry grew. “So how do we get the ship pointed the right way ’round?”
Tumbrill didn’t have a ready answer, so Elias stepped in.
“Caspian could navigate,” he said, coming up with the plan in the moment. “He’s traveled all over the world and knows the ocean in the way most people know their home village. I’m certain he said he has served as a ship’s navigator in the past as well.”
Both Tumbrill and Dick looked at him like they were trying to decide whether to believe him or throw him over the side.
“Bring the man here,” Tumbrill ordered a timid crewman who had been hovering nearby, listening in.
“Yes, sir,” the man said and shot off up the deck.
“You had better not be lying,” Tumbrill warned Elias.
Elias finished his examination and gave his diagnosis of a concussion, telling Tumbrill to rest and be still as much as he could for the next few days, as Caspian was fetched. As soon as Caspian was brought over and asked whether he knew how to navigate a ship, Elias knew he’d said the right thing.
“I can take us to Hindustan,” Caspian said, looking excited at the prospect. “Once I determine where we are, it should be an easy thing to sail straight there.”
“Then I hereby declare you the ship’s navigator,” Dick said, as though he were handing out positions for a schoolyard battle.
“I will do my best,” Caspian said with a smile.
He turned that smile on Elias, who saw more in the expression than an agreement to do Dick’s bidding. Caspian truly did know where he was positioned on the sea at any time. If any man could rescue them from the situation they had fallen into, it was him.
Eight
The seas settled once theFortunewas clear of the continent of Africa, but the mood aboard the ship was anything but settled. Every one of the captive passengers and the crew that had tried to remain loyal to Captain Woodward and their duty felt as though they were on the verge of being executed with every step they took. Instead of the sounds of music, laughter, and conversation that had taken them down the west coast of Africa, now that they were on the east side, there was nothing but the flapping of sails above and the creaking of rope and timber to break the silence.
“You’re certain you know where you’re going?” Tumbrill muttered just behind Caspian’s shoulder as he stood at the ship’s wheel, frowning up at the sky and then at the water around them.
“I do,” Caspian answered simply.
Tumbrill grunted and shifted to stand on his other side. “Because to me, it looks like you’ve sailing us into the middle of the deep for the past two weeks.”
Caspian risked a peek at Tumbrill. The man had become slovenly and grizzled since the mutiny a fortnight before. Without Captain Woodward’s rule to keep the men in line,they’d become lazy and careless with their appearance and the cleanliness of their clothes.
“If it seems as though I am sailing theFortuneinto nowhere, it is because I am,” Caspian said honestly. “You gave me orders to take the ship to Hindustan. There is very little between here and that land, only scatterings of uninhabited islands here and there.”
Tumbrill grunted again, then sniffed and backed away from Caspian. “If I find out you’re being false with me, I’ll string you up from the yardarm. You and your sodomite sweetheart.”
Tumbrill glanced forward across the main deck to where Elias was treating one of the freed convicts for sunburn. After spending months below deck, several of the convicts, particularly the ones who had not been a part of Tumbrill and Dick’s coup, had been driven so hard in their work up on the main deck that the sun had made them sick. There was little Elias could do besides give them as much fresh water as possible and urge them to keep their skin covered, but at least Elias was trying.
“Useless bunch of sods,” Dick grumbled as he approached Caspian and Tumbrill. “If I’d’ve known they would be this pathetic on a ship, I would have recruited others for our heist.”
Caspian kept his expression as neutral as he could as Dick and Tumbrill chuckled over their jest. It had come to light during the past two weeks that the plot to steal Mr. Ferrars’s fortune had been conceived of months before, while Dick was still in Newgate Prison. Dick and Tumbrill had been friends since childhood and had corresponded about various jobs Dick was involved in for years. A third friend had worked for Mr. Ferrars and knew of his plans to voyage to Australia, and still another friend worked as a guard at Newgate and had helped the four of them coordinate the plan.
Tumbrill and Woodward had despised each other for years, though Woodward respected Tumbrill’s sailing skills enough to keep him on as second mate. The supposed favor Woodward had been doing for the Crown in transporting Dick and the others was not a legitimate favor at all, but rather the penultimate step in capturing theFortuneand Mr. Ferrars’s treasure with it. The entire thing had been orchestrated to dupe Woodward into letting the gang aboard his ship.
Caspian might have been impressed with the elaborate plot, and the fact that the men had actually carried it off, if it hadn’t killed so many already and put the rest of them in danger.
“You have poor taste in friends,” Tumbrill told Dick bluntly, narrowing his eyes at the man.
Dick immediately took offense. “I’m beginning to think I do,” he replied in a harsh clip. “You’re one of them, after all.”
Tumbrill merely grunted and stared forward, following the line of Caspian’s sight as much as he could. Since learning of Tumbrill and Dick’s friendship and their plot, Caspian was no longer surprised that Tumbrill wasn’t as adept at navigating as he claimed he was. What he lacked in his knowledge of guidance, he made up for in his expertise with sails.
“Trim the main sails and spinnaker, and turn the ship ten degrees to starboard,” he ordered. “We can catch this wind and pick up speed.”
“We’d better,” Dick said, crossing his arms and frowning at Tumbrill instead of Caspian. “I want to reach Hindustan before I’m too old to enjoy my loot.”
