Page 29 of Hooked By a Hero
Elias grabbed handfuls of his wet hair in frustration. He glanced back to the deck, which was now teeming with activity as those sailors who were sober or only slightly drunk rushed to secure the ship, as should have been done an hour ago. Some of the passengers rushed to help them, though they did not look as if they knew what they were doing.
Ruby and Hunt appeared at the top of the fore hatch in the midst of the madness as well. As soon as they spottedthe confrontation at the side of the ship, they raced forward, dodging sailors and waves, to join them.
“Plank is set, sir!” Dick called out as if he were playacting the entire execution. “The guilty can be dealt with now.” He grinned at Elias as well as Caspian.
“You heard the man,” Tumbrill said, solely focused on Caspian, despite the increase in both the storm and the frantic activity around them. “To your death!”
He manhandled Caspian up onto the plank. Elias called out wordlessly and tried to stop Caspian from what looked like his willingness to mount the plank.
Dick grabbed him to stop him from interfering. “Your turn is next, Dr. Sod.”
“What are you doing?” Hunt shouted as he and Ruby reached the plank. “The ship has sailed into a storm.”
“Off you go,” Tumbrill bellowed, ignoring Hunt. He shoved Caspian in the small of his back.
Caspian was still as calm as could be, despite Elias being frantic. Everything was wrong. Lightning now cut through the sky as wind and rain swirled around them. The situation was so dire that he could barely keep his wits about him.
In the midst of all the chaos, Caspian turned to grin over his shoulder at Tumbrill, as if he’d won the fight instead of very much losing it. He glanced next to Elias, winking and then blowing him a kiss, then walked to the end of the plank and dove gracefully off into the churning ocean.
“No!” Elias shouted, his heart feeling as though it was torn from his body as Caspian disappeared into the dark, frothy waves. “No! Caspian!”
Shock and horror stole his sense for a moment. He could only gape at the sea, loss washing through him and drowning everything else out. Caspian was gone. The man he cared for more than any man he’d ever met and who he would have gladlyspent the rest of his life with had been swallowed up by the sea, and he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to save him.
“Dr. Pettigrew, you must come away!” Ruby shouted behind him.
Elias blinked, but the numb feeling of grief continued to hang over him. He felt hands on his arms and assumed Dick would lift him onto the plank so that he could join Caspian in his watery death. It was what Elias wanted. He wanted no part of a life without Caspian. The two of them were meant to be together, and if that could not be in life, then it would be in death.
“Elias, come!” Hunt shouted.
It was Hunt’s hands on him, not Dick’s. Dick and Tumbrill were nowhere close, though Elias had no memory of the two of them leaving him. He turned as Hunt dragged him away from the side of the ship and saw the two of them stumbling aft. It seemed they had come to their senses at last and joined the others in attempting to gain control of the wildly tossing ship.
“It is too dangerous abovedeck,” Hunt insisted, pulling Elias toward the fore. “We must take shelter.”
Elias nodded, though he felt too numb to move on his own. Caspian was gone, dead, separated from him forever. They’d hardly had a chance to be together. They’d never even made love.
That thought was silenced in the most violent way possible as lightning tore out of the sky and struck the main mast. The electric force of it stole the air from Elias’s lungs. It also jolted sense into him. He glanced up as the men who had scrambled up the mast and along the yardarms to furl the sails as they shouted and held on for dear life. A second, louder crack split the air as the mast jerked to the side, then slowly began to fall, snapping ropes and ripping sails as it did.
“The ship!” Ruby shouted, terror in her voice.
Elias joined Hunt in pulling her toward the hatch as the mast collapsed fully, taking part of the sails on the mizzen mast with it.
“Take cover,” Hunt shouted. “Go below.”
“But what good will it do?” Ruby asked as they scrambled frantically for the hatch. “The main mast is gone. What if it drags the ship under? We’ll be lost. We’re already lost!”
They reached the hatch and Ruby and Hunt descended, but Elias turned back to study the chaos across the deck. The main mast had snapped halfway up and the top half now hung sickly over the side of the ship, unbalancing it. Sailors screamed and scrambled as they tried to save themselves and the ship both, but to Elias, it looked like a lost cause. He would not have to wait long to be reunited with Caspian. The entire ship would break apart and sink into the deep in no time at all.
Ten
The instant Caspian hit the water, he felt completely restored. As violent as the sea was above, as soon as he dove far enough down, the water was calm enough for him to think. He fumbled to remove his trousers, tied the legs around his waist, then put everything he had into swimming. He made a circle around the metal-clad hull of theFortuneto assess whether her structure would hold as the storm tossed it around. As soon as he was satisfied that the ship and its passengers would survive through the next few minutes, he turned his attention to the water around him.
He could see much farther in the water than he could in the air. Despite the darkness of the skies above and the way they blocked the light, he could make out enough of the area where theFortunefound itself to see the many hidden dangers.
They were in a part of the ocean that contained numerous shoals and underwater hazards. He’d steered theFortunethis way on purpose in an attempt to bring it closer to any number of small islands he knew of on their way to Hindustan. He’d hoped that the islands would provide him with exactly this sort of opportunity to waylay the ship and to give those members of its crew who were loyal to their duty a chance to take it backfrom Tumbrill and Dick, but he hadn’t expected the storm which tossed the ship now.
Navigating around islands in good weather was easy. Finding their way to safety in the middle of a storm would be a much greater challenge.
Caspian was still contemplating how to proceed when a muffled crash sounded from above. He shifted to look up at the bobbing underside of the ship just as bits of yardarm dipped below the surface of the waves. One of the masts had cracked.
