by Cat Lindler
Samantha bounded out of bed, flew into her dressing room, and pulled on a riding habit. She stuffed a small bag with essentials, including her jewels, and joined Steven in the bedchamber. “I’m ready. We should go before someone discovers us.” Steven headed toward the open window, and Samantha stopped beside the desk to take up a pen. “I must first leave a note for Aunt Delia. She will be frantic if I should suddenly disappear.”
Steven crossed the room and laid a hand on her wrist. “That would be unwise. If your family discovers our plans and applies to the military garrison for help, Miggs will learn about it. It may endanger our lives and Richard’s.” He held her gaze in a sorrowful look. “‘Tis best for now they know nothing. When we return with Richard, you can explain everything.”
“I-I suppose you have a point, but I cannot simply leave them to worry about me.”
“Samantha,” he said firmly, “if you truly wish to save Richard, you have no choice.”
She squared her shoulders and dropped the pen on the desk. “We should leave now.”
He helped her climb down the trellis supporting a thick growth of trumpet vines on the side of the house. At the back entrance to the garden, six men sat on horses and held two other mounts by the reins. “Can you ride astride?” Steven asked.
Samantha answered by swinging into the saddle with no assistance, gathering up the reins, and applying her heels to the horse’s flanks.
They left in a clatter of hooves and a cloud of dust. Samantha looked back over her shoulder only once and wondered what her family would think of her sudden disappearance. Her thoughts turned to Christian, and her heart ached.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In the Tasman Sea
Christian leaned back in the captain’s chair and crossed his ankles on top of the desk corner. He held a glass of whiskey in his right hand and a cigar clamped between his teeth. Garrett occupied a similar chair, feet also on the desk. He preferred brandy to whiskey and puffed on a slim cheroot. A pile of charts depicting the islands and waterways of the surrounding sea lay between their feet. A collection of navigational instruments sat atop the papers.
The Maiden Anne was anchored dead center over the spot where the Manta Ray engaged and sank the Rapier over a year ago. For hours, Christian and Garrett had pored over the charts, but the results remained unchanged. The nearest landfall lay hundreds of miles from their present location.
“Assuming they escaped the ship,” Christian said, “did they survive? If so, how?”
Garrett picked up Christian’s train of thought. “Miggs’s man said he applied the cat to both. Truett was either dead or nearly so. We can assume the beatings, along with the little food and water they’d have been allowed, would weaken them. They couldn’t go far under their own power, even if they managed to escape the ship during the battle.”
“So they didn’t swim away.” Christian sent Garrett a pointed look. “If you were starved and beaten and too weak to swim, what would you do?”
Garrett lifted a brow. “Float?”
“Float,” Christian agreed. “In the wake of a battle, debris litters the ocean. A determined man could latch onto a floating keg or spar and, perhaps with a large dose of luck, hang on to it long enough to make land, if the sun and sharks didn’t get him first.”
He swung his feet off the desk and snapped at Garrett, “Find a chart showing the currents at the time the Rapier sank. Assuming Richard and James floated away from the ship, we should be able to determine in which direction they headed.”
Garrett dragged out the chart and spread it on the desk. Swirls on its surface indicated the ocean currents. Garrett drew a line from Hobart, Tasmania, to Wellington, New Zealand, the Rapier’s home port. The line crossed their present location, which lay in the center of the East Australian Current of the Tasman Sea. The current swept down from the Coral Sea along Australia’s eastern coast, then curved westward at the northwestern tip of Tasmania, creating a circle that passed by the western edge of New Zealand and moved northward.
From there it fanned out in two directions: back into the circle of the East Australian Current or southwest along the northern tip of Australia to pick up the South Equatorial Current, which eventually led up the western coast of South America.
Christian traced a finger along the second route. “If they passed New Zealand and floated eastward, we have no hope of finding them alive. The passage is too distant and leads back into cold water. If we’re to assume they reached land at some point, they must have caught the same current in which they began their journey. What lies in that path?”
Garrett read the names off the map. “Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, the Loyalty Islands, the Hebrides, and New Caledonia. The closest, Lord Howe Island, is over eight hundred miles from here.” He looked up. “It’s impossible, Chris. They couldn’t have made it that far.”
Christian frowned. “We either believe they’re alive or give up all hope and return to Hobart empty-handed. As we’re committed to the former, we must assume another island exists between here and Lord Howe Island, uncharted but there nonetheless.”
“And we find it how?” Garrett asked. “By floating on the current?”
Christian rubbed a hand across his chin. “You may have an idea there.”
Garrett emitted a short laugh. He took a turn around the room, puffing hard on his cheroot. “I was being facetious. Have you any idea how long that would take a ship this size?”
Christian lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Longer than I would wish. However, after a year, we’re no longer searching for survivors at sea. They had to make landfall to endure this long. Hopefully, their situation will be no more dire than it already is no matter how long it takes for us to find them.”
The next day the sailors lashed together a line of empty water kegs. A lead line attached them to the ship’s bow and allowed the crew to haul in the buoys at night or during rough seas. The line remained slack while the ship, under boiler power at low speed, followed the kegs, which floated freely in the current far ahead but still within sight of a spyglass wielded by a lookout in the crow’s nest.
The plan proceeded well. The Maiden Anne trailed the barrels for eight days, bobbing northeastward in the East Australian Current. Then Neptune intervened, taking them by surprise.
The Maiden Anne received warning of only a few minutes. When the lookout spied the seawall, Christian was at the helm with Captain Lindstrom and Garrett. The three men tied themselves to the wheel, and the captain bellowed out for the crew to turn the ship’s stern into the wave and lash themselves to the masts. The Maiden Anne would surely go beneath the tremendous wave, but it might not sink. A man secured to the ship had a greater chance of surviving than one swept out to sea.
The ship turned. Close to half the crew managed to comply with Lindstrom’s order before the wave smashed into them. It lifted the ship a hundred feet in the air. The Maiden Anne surfed along the crest for endless minutes, then dropped like a stone into a trough, pushed along from behind, while Lindstrom, Garrett, and Christian fought the wheel to keep the ship’s stern turned into the waves following the initial seawall.
When the hull suddenly crashed into a coral reef, it broke into pieces and took on water. Those still conscious after the impact untied their ropes and rushed to help the others before the ship slipped beneath the waves. Christian, Garrett, and the captain, still lashed to the wheel, were knocked senseless by a falling timber.
When Christian cracked open his eyes, he lay on his back. A bright red and black honeyeater, with a long curved beak, cocked its head at him from a branch overhead. He tried to sit up. Blood dripped into his left eye, his head spun, and he sank back to the ground.
He rolled his head to the right to view a wall of luxuriant vegetation. Exotic birdcalls rang through air redolent with tropical flowers. He saw no sign of humans, the ground beneath him was hard, and he ached like hell.
With a groan, he turned his head to the left and came face-to-face
with a pair of dusty brown feet and the pointed end of a spear. He panned his gaze up the long, sturdy body, naked except for a loincloth, and covered from waist to knees in fantastic designs, swirls, circles, lines, and dots, tattooed into the skin with blackish blue ink. He reached the man’s face, a harsh countenance, bare of whiskers. His dark, golden brown complexion appeared even in color. Blue black hair hung straight to his shoulders. A pair of arrogant obsidian eyes glittered under heavy, prominent brow ridges.
He recognized the tattoos as Samoan, but surely the wave couldn’t have pushed them all the way to Samoa.
The spear prodded Christian in the side. He grunted and struggled to sit up again. When he failed, falling back once more, the man motioned to two others standing behind him. One was a veritable giant. He pulled Christian up by his arms and slung him over one massive shoulder, carrying him like a sack of grain. Christian passed out from the pain.
Christian awakened for the second time in a dusky space. Moaning came from the surrounding dimness. He stretched out a weak arm, and his hand brushed up against a body that stirred when he touched it. When his eyes adjusted to the low light, he made out shadowy figures next to him. Instead of bare ground this time, he lay on a reed pallet. Gradually, walls with tiny, silvery lines of light leaking through cracks, indicating a reed construction, became visible.
Gazing up, he gained an impression of clouds that parted at times and allowed starlight to filter down. When he flexed his limbs, pain filled every inch. It was an aching pain rather than a sharp one that would indicate broken limbs or internal damage. Lifting his hand to his forehead, which seemed particularly sore, he found a wound, smeared with a poultice, above his eye. He brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed. Vile-smelling stuff, but that someone was tending to his injury indicated his captors, should they fall into that category, had some humanitarian values.
He would have to wait until morning to determine his circumstances. Then he could count the survivors. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts turned to Samantha, as they had every night since his departure. Despite his pain and fatigue, his groin tightened. He managed a weak smile. At least that part of him still worked properly!
Early morning sun threw stripes of light through the slats in the reed walls. When the sunlight hit his eyes, needles jabbed Christian’s brain. He lowered his eyelids and moaned. A hand slipped beneath his nape, cradling his head and raising it a few inches off the mat. A bowl of sweet liquid touched his lips. He sipped the moisture into his dry throat. When he inched open his eyes, a woman was leaning over him with the bowl balanced in her hand. Sun seared his retinas. He glimpsed only a blurry impression of long, dark hair and a rounded brown face.
She laid his head back on the mat, and he tested his voice. “Who are you? Where am I? How many survived?” The words emerged in a mere whisper from his scratchy, dry throat.
The woman remained silent and moved away from him.
He turned his head, searching for familiar faces among the men on the pallets scattered across the floor. His heartbeat accelerated when he recognized Garrett lying against a wall on the other side of the room. There were others, all seamen from the Maiden Anne. Captain Lindstrom was not among them. He counted seven men, plus Garrett and himself. Unless another room similar to this existed, only nine from a complement of twenty-seven survived the wave. His breath shortened, and he strained for air, inhaling slowly, deeply.
By the look of the natives, they hadn’t landed on the coast of New Zealand or Australia, so he assumed the ship had fetched up on an island. They were fortunate to be alive. Even nine of twenty-seven was a miracle. Nonetheless, he would hold off celebrating until he learned where they were and who held them. They could have fallen, quite literally, from the sea into a cooking pot, if their hosts turned out to be cannibals.
He took another look around the corral. No other word accurately described it. Closely woven reed walls rose about eight feet high. No windows and only one door. A bumpy reed floor beneath him. The structure appeared flimsy, although he suspected it was sturdier than it looked. Small brownish geckos no larger than his finger scurried about, on and between the reeds.
Christian gazed up through the open ceiling. Their room, or prison, hovered above the ground. Treetops soared not far above him. Colorful emerald doves, parakeets, and lorikeets, with shining feathers of green, blue, orange, and yellow, fluttered back and forth, chattering in competing voices. Large bats, their leathery wings folded about them like capes—flying foxes, his scientific mind told him—clung upside down to the uppermost branches of the trees in massive brown colonies.
The woman returned and knelt beside him. The sun had risen higher and shined through the enclosure’s open top. Her features were clearer. Fortyish with a plump figure encased like a sausage in a leaf-printed sarong that wrapped around her ample waist and fell to her calves. A string of shells draped around her neck, hanging to her bare breasts. Heavy black hair rippled to below her bottom, and a pink flower with multiple tubelike florets, a species of psychotria, peeked out from behind her right ear. The flower, birds, and bats gave Christian additional clues to his location—somewhere near New Caledonia. Though the people appeared to have a Samoan source, they could easily have come from Polynesia at some point in their history. The woman’s black eyes were kind in her unlined, expressionless face as she fed him a tasteless paste with her fingers.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Christian recovered rapidly on a diet of fruit, bland paste, stringy meat that tasted like pork, fish, and a fortifying drink with an alcoholic content and a beneficial effect on his constitution. Garrett recouped his strength more quickly, having received only cuts and bruises from the ropes binding him to the wheel and a glancing blow from the spar.
While Christian lay on his pallet, Garrett related what he recalled. “I came to my senses soon after the ship hit the reef. After cutting your bonds, I managed to pull you from the wreckage before waves swept the carcass beneath the sea. I then dragged your limp body across the reef and through the lagoon. I apologize for the cuts from the coral. Our nurse has been tutting over them.”
Christian knew of the dangers from coral, a living animal, though it appeared to be inert rock. Coral embedded in flesh could grow and cause a fatal infection. The daily poultices of a smelly concoction that burned like carbolic acid seemed to be keeping serious damage at bay.
“Captain Lindstrom died,” Garrett went on, “I suspect from the impact of the falling timber. The other survivors have cuts, bruises, broken limbs, and internal injuries, but all seem to be on the mend.”
Garrett also relayed his impressions of their captors. For indeed they were captors. “Our hut sits in a tree about twenty feet off the ground. It’s the dry season. I suppose that explains the lack of a roof. I would hope they apply thatching when the winter rains come, not that I believe we’ll be here that long. I’ve found only one way down. By ladder. They remove it when they have no need for it.”
“What are their intentions?” Christian asked.
Garrett shrugged. “The only native I’ve seen close-up is the woman who tends us. I don’t believe she understands English, that or she’s mute. She hasn’t uttered a word. From what I can see through the cracks in the walls, we’re in a large camp situated on a mountainside. I counted over a hundred men and more arriving every day. Less than twenty huts at ground level, proper roofed ones but with open sides. They look hastily thrown together, and many of the new arrivals appear displaced. I assume the tsunami flooded their homes. The village looks to be a temporary gathering place. I still cannot get a sense of whether we’re on an island or on the coast of a larger landmass.”
With much groaning and hissing through his teeth, Christian pushed himself to his feet.
“Hey! You shouldn’t be standing yet.”
Christian held up a staying hand and limped around the small corral. “If I remain idle much longer, I’ll be crippled for life.” He stopped and panted, bracing himself
against the wall, and talked softly with another invalid. Then he turned back to Garrett. “I gather this is the only prison, and we’re the only survivors.”
“As far as I can determine. Some may have been taken to another location. However, I believe what you see here are all who remain of the crew.”
Christian grunted and eased back down the wall until his bottom rested on the reeds. “The one warrior I recall seeing appeared less than friendly. Any sign they’re cannibals or headhunters?”
“From up here,” Garrett said, “I can see little of significance. They haven’t removed anyone yet, are feeding us, and have seen to our injuries. Surely that’s an encouraging sign.”
Christian gave him a crooked smile. “Perhaps their purpose is to fatten us for a feast in which we’re the featured guests.”
Garrett returned the smile. “I must admit that’s a possibility I hadn’t wished to consider. Now that you mention it …”
“Assuming we come up with a plan, how many men are well enough to attempt an escape?”
“If I’m to count you, whom I’m sure you mean to include, five, maybe six. We have no weapons. They stripped us of our knives and guns before they carted us up here. We even eat with our fingers. If we’re to have any hope of arming ourselves, we’ll have to take weapons from the men below.”
“Who’s our best climber?”
“Cullen.” Garrett grinned. “Unfortunately, you failed to foretell our predicament and left him in Hobart.”
Christian scowled at Garrett’s attempt at humor.
“Among the ambulatory men, I suppose I am,” Garrett said with a sigh. “I have the least severe injuries, and I’m pretty agile.”
Christian arched a brow. “I would imagine from climbing out windows when husbands return unexpectedly.”
