Page 28 of Hooked By a Hero
He jolted forward, grabbing Caspian by the front of his shirt.
“What are you doing?” Elias gasped.
Caspian seemed to have a far clearer head about the interaction. He stared Tumbrill down calmly, as if daring him to do his worst.
“I will not have perversion on my ship,” Tumbrill said, tightening his fist in Caspian’s shirt and shaking him.
“It’s my ship as much as it’s yours,” Dick slurred, then laughed and pitched to the side, crashing against the ship’s railing.
“Tumbrill!” one of the seasoned sailors, a man named Brunning, shouted, making his way up the deck towards the confrontation. “Tumbrill, we need to take immediate action for this storm.”
“Quiet!” Tumbrill demanded, lurching around to glower at the man while still holding onto Caspian. “I am the commander of this ship. I say what we need to do and when.”
“But the storm,” Brunning persisted. “We are at full sail. No one gave the order to furl the sails or to secure the deck.”
“I give the orders!” Tumbrill repeated.
A roll of thunder ahead of them gave even more gravity to the situation.
Brunning was frantic. “We cannot go into a storm at full sail,” he insisted. “The wind alone will snap the yardarms and might even break a mast. Something must be done.”
“Yes, something must be done,” Tumbrill growled, turning back to Caspian and shaking him again. “We will make these disgusting lovers walk the plank.”
“No!” Elias shouted, his heart beating in his throat.
“Yes, go ahead and do that,” Caspian said, smiling.
Elias stared at him in disbelief. What was Caspian thinking? Did he imagine Tumbrill’s threat was hollow? Elias could see as clear as day the blackguard was serious, despite having insisted before that Caspian should live as their navigator. Rum turned men into fools.
“You cannot!” Elias shouted. “Who will navigate if you dispose of Caspian?”
“Coming to your lover’s defense, are you?” Tumbrill demanded.
Another crash of thunder sounded, closer than the one before.
“Tumbrill, the sails!” Brunning shouted.
“Damn the sails!” Tumbrill bellowed in reply. “Set the plank!”
“This is madness!” Elias shouted as rain suddenly started to lash down harder.
“Let him do it,” Caspian insisted. “You’ll see.”
Elias’s mouth dropped open, but he was too shocked to say a word. A tiny part of him urged him to trust Caspian, but he knew Tumbrill was not bluffing.
“I’ll get the plank,” Dick said, pushing away from the railing and hurrying down the deck.
Tumbrill pulled Caspian along after him, and out of sheer panic for his beloved, Elias followed, though it was becoming more and more treacherous on the deck.
“If you won’t give the order to save this ship, then I will,” Brunning growled, then stepped away from them, calling out, “Reef the mainsails, furl the foresails, and heave to!”
Whether anyone followed the order, Elias did not know. He raced after Dick and Tumbrill as they pulled Caspian to the center of the main deck. Dick clumsily removed part of the railing where the gangplank had been set when they’d departed London. He found a smaller plank and fit it into place with surprising dexterity for his drunken state and the ferocity of the storm blowing over them.
Caspian did nothing at all to free himself from Tumbrill’s grip. Elias tried to intervene and yank his beloved away, assuming Caspian was once again too weak to resist, but he could do nothing to separate the two men. They seemed to be involved in some sort of battle of wills, Caspian staring at Tumbrill as if daring him to do it, and Tumbrill grinning at Caspian in return, as if he planned to enjoy every second of Caspian’s demise.
“This is madness!” Elias called out. “See to the ship, not this feud. Do you want to kill Caspian or have us all lost at sea?”
“Death to all sodomites!” Tumbrill shouted.
