Page 31 of Hooked By a Hero
He proved his point by slamming his mouth into Caspian’s, kissing him with a fervent desperation that made Caspian’s soul laugh and his body heat with incongruous desire. Elias was his and always would be. He knew it as their lips smashed against each other and their bodies pressed together, hot and wet.
They were unable to enjoy anything more of each other, though. The ship rolled again, and another sickening crack sounded from above.
Caspian pulled back, panting, and glanced around at the eerie shadows cast by the swinging lanterns that illuminated the deck. “Hurry,” he said, including Ruby and Hunt, who clutched at each other, and several of the other passengers, who had poked their green faces out of their cabins to see what washappening, in his command. “We have to go above and get into the lifeboats.”
“Leave the ship?” one of the gentlemen asked incredulously. “On seas like this?”
“The situation is not as dire as it seems,” Caspian insisted.
Even as he said that, thunder rumbled outside the ship.
“We will all be killed!” another of the passengers, Woburn, sobbed as he braced himself in his cabin door.
“We’ll be killed anyhow,” Ruby wept, still clinging to Hunt. “I would rather face death in the open than drown when the ship sinks.”
Her words swayed at least a few of the others. Even though they were clearly terrified, they looked to Caspian to be told what to do.
“We have to go above,” Caspian reiterated. “Your only chance of surviving depends on leaving the ship. Trust me.”
For a moment, Caspian doubted any of them did trust him. Then Elias nodded grimly and said, “I trust you with my life.”
“Then come,” Caspian said, taking his hand.
Neither he nor Elias cared who noticed the affection between them or what they thought about it. He pulled Elias toward the stern, knocking on doors and warning the others they needed to leave their cabins and go above. Ruby and Hunt raced around to the port side of the middeck to follow their lead, knocking on more doors and rousing the passengers.
It was one thing to be brave while sheltered from the intensity of the storm, though, and another to keep their wits about them as they climbed up onto the chaotic main deck.
“This is madness!” one of the gentlemen, Mr. Archer, shouted once he’d barely poked his head up into the storm. “You intend to kill us, sir!”
“You’ll drown if you stay here,” Caspian shouted back to him in turn.
That was enough to rouse the man to reluctant action. Caspian stepped back to give Mr. Archer a hand, pulling him up onto the deck. Elias, whose courage had returned tenfold since their kiss, took up a position on the other side of the hatch, pulling others up as well.
The scene was one of confusion and terror as the passengers came up from below and huddled against the edge of the stern deck. They watched with nothing but fear in their eyes as the sober crew worked to take the half dozen, large lifeboats down from their housings. The effect of their tasks was to make the ship appear even more fractured than the broken mast made it look.
“Lifeboat at the ready!” the seaman, who had taken charge of the effort, called out to Caspian.
Caspian nodded and waved back, then turned to the huddled passengers. “The ladies and the elderly should go first.”
It was madness, but somehow the passengers found the courage to move. It could have been the desperation of the broken ship and all they had endured at the hands of Tumbrill and Dick so far, or it could have been the slight abatement in the storm as they passed through it, but once the first, brave souls clamored towards the first lifeboat, led by Mr. Cartwright and Lady Adelaide, the others were quick to follow.
Caspian made certain that each of the lifeboats had at least a few able-bodied crewmen aboard before sending them off, pointing to the northeast. A thin strip of land was visible in the distance in that direction, and as soon as the men manning the lifeboat’s oars saw it, they put their backs into cutting through the water to reach it.
“Did you know that land was there?” Elias asked as they helped lower more passengers into the second lifeboat.
Caspian met his eyes and nodded yes with a gravity that he was certain Elias would interpret to mean much more. Indeed,Elias looked back at him as if he were an even deeper mystery than before.
“I will explain once we are all safe,” he called out over the wind and the rain.
Elias nodded, and the two of them went back to work loading the second lifeboat.
There was more space in the boats than there were people who needed rescuing. The first storm and Tumbrill and Dick’s bloodlust had diminished the number of people sailing on theFortuneby a third at least. It took less than an hour for them to pile everyone into four of the boats, leaving two of the half dozen behind, and to push away from the flounderingFortune. A few valiant members of the crew insisted on staying behind to go down with the ship, which Caspian admired them for.
“We will never make it to whatever land that is,” Hunt called out grimly once the final lifeboat pushed away from the ship. Hunt and Ruby had stayed behind as long as they could to help the others, despite Caspian’s insistence that the women be rescued first.
“We are closer to safety than you think,” Caspian repeated his earlier words.
They would reach the land if Caspian had anything to say about it. As Elias, Hunt, and a few other men took the oars to pull them across the water, toward where the other boats had clustered together in their efforts to reach the land, Caspian closed his eyes and concentrated on their safety.
