"Turn her into the wind! Now! Afore we're blown broadside into the Eagle! She's sinking, and there's nowt we can do about it now!" Captain Rob shouted as loud as he could, trying to make himself heard above the roar of the storm. "There's no chance in hell of picking up any survivors in these waters. We'll have to leave them all behind."
Nobody argued. Captain Rob McGregor could see the fear written all over their faces. Not a man in his crew had ever seen a storm like this before, and none of them wanted to die. The fact that they had managed to save a handful of men from the Royal Thistle before it went down an hour ago had been a miracle in itself, but the experience was still fresh in their minds, and with three boats already claimed by Davey Jones' Locker, no one wanted to make it four.
The Sea Dancer rocked violently and sunk down deep into the depths of a massive hole that seemed to appear from nowhere in the ocean as two massive waves collided and passed each other going in different directions.
Captain Rob was scared. He had spent almost all of his life at sea, and he could never recall a sea or a storm like this before. The wave movements made no sense to him: it was proving almost impossible to judge how to navigate in these waters. Instead of one ocean, it seemed like they were riding the waves of two or three seas which were all heading in different directions, each fighting for dominance. Giant waves roared up from nowhere, towering above them, and then crashed down on their deck, sweeping everything before them.
Only minutes ago in the failing light and between sheets of driving rain, Captain Rob had seen the third ship in his fleet, the Eagle, riding up over the top of one large wave, just as a second wave collided and crashed into it broadside from another direction.
The force of the water had pushed the Eagle over, and within seconds it was on its side. As the waves passed by, it left the Eagle and its crew floundering in the water.
Most boats would normally float for long enough to let some of the crew get out, but with the weight of its heavy cargo dragging it down, Rob knew that this time there would be no chance.
The Eagle was doomed.
In seconds it would be gone.
Both ships had gone down within a few hundred yards of each other. First to sink had been the Royal Thistle, as they sheltered in the lee of Black Rock, a small volcanic island where they had sought refuge after their raid on Captain Kidd's lair. They had dropped anchor just off Sharp's Point, and Captain Rob had issued a measure of grog for everyone on all three ships in way of celebration for the success of the raid, with a promise of more when they made harbor. But a few hours before nightfall, a tremendous storm had blown up out of nowhere, and with no natural harbor where they could ride it out, they had been forced to weigh anchor, run with the wind and head for deeper water. Unfortunately, the arrival of the storm was so fast, that surging seas had forced the Thistle onto the rocks and she had been ripped open and sunk before they had been able to launch their boats and recover any of its cargo. It had gone down with all hands and a quarter of the booty from the raid.
At first the Thistle and the Sea Dancer had hoped to round the island and find new shelter from the storm on the other side, but the sea was even rougher there than where the Thistle went down. The risk of being driven onto the rocks was still just as great there as before, so in desperation they had started out away from the island making for deep water. They had only managed to get about a thousand yards when the Eagle had been sunk. Davey Jones had claimed another quarter of the remaining treasure they had stolen from Kidd's drunken rabble earlier that day.
Captain Rob gripped the tiller with all his strength, hanging on for dear life as another wave crashed onto the sterncastle from behind him. He was a tall man, broad across the shoulders and strong. The wave pushed him against the massive oak tiller in the middle of the quarterdeck, driving the wind out of his lungs and sweeping him off his feet.
Thankfully, the rope that he had tied around his waist and attached to the tiller held, and after the wave had passed by he managed to struggle back up to his feet, coughing the salt water out of his throat and gasping for breath.
He reached down, offering his hand to James Silver, the quartermaster, who like Captain Rob, had been knocked to the ground by the force of the wave.
James Silver spat water from his mouth, and pushed Rob's hand aside, pulling himself up alone.
"Thanking ye kindly, Captain Rob, but I can manage on me own, just fine."
Suddenly there was a loud, earth shattering crack, and as the quartermaster and Captain Rob looked up, the front mast split in half at the middle, and fell forward toward the deck.
At the same moment, a swell pushed the Sea Dancer upwards, and the remaining sails which they had not yet managed to furl away and had been forced to just let fly freely, caught a large blast of wind bouncing of the tumultuous surface of the ocean, filled completely, and started turning the ship around and changing its course. While the body of the ship swiveled underneath it, the front mast fell towards the side of the boat, dragging its top sails down with it.
As the weight of the mast and the sails pulled it downwards, the ropes and guides holding the sails upwards and attached to the ship beneath, suddenly tightened, stretched and started to snap, whiplashing wildly across the deck.
Too late, the quartermaster shouted out a warning to the deck crew, his cries drowned in the roar of the storm: "Smith,... the rigging lines...watch out!"
Captain Rob and the quartermaster looked on helplessly as one of the lines cut through the air at great speed, slicing clean through the leg of the Miles Smith, the young boatswain, amputating it from the middle of his thigh downwards.
The young lad screamed, his cry of pain cutting through the cacophony of the storm, and alarming even the most hardy and battle-hardened of the pirates on board.
As Smith looked down at the stump of his leg, his grip loosened on the base of the mast to which he has hanging for dear life, and the force of a receding wave swept his remaining leg away from under him, pushing his body towards the side of the Sea Dancer, catapulting him over the edge, and into the boiling cauldron of the ocean beneath.
One moment he was there, a second later he was gone. As was the rest of the mast which had now vanished over the side.
The quartermaster turned and stared horrified at Captain Rob, his expression and his eyes conveying everything that needed to be said.
They had used the wind to drive them away from clutches of the Black Rock. Ideally, in a storm, once they had reached deeper water far from land, they would turn into the wind to reduce the pressure on the sails, and furl away most of the canvas. But such was the speed with which the storm had intensified and come upon them that they had been unable to do this.
Within minutes of clearing the Black Rock, the wind had begun to come at them in great gusts from all directions. Unable to stow the sails properly, they only managed to loosen the sheet lines and let the sheets flap uselessly in the wind.
Even in a storm, it was necessary to maintain a small amount of canvas, so that the Captain could have some control where the ship was blown. With that in mind, they had kept one sail partially filled with wind. But now, the loosely hanging top sail on the remaining mast was suddenly caught by another powerful gust of wind, whipping it outwards and then ripping it loudly from top to bottom.
With no other sails set, and the last vestige of their control gone, the Sea Dancer and its crew were now nothing more than flotsam being buffeted violently amidst the roughest waters any sailor had ever experienced in this century, the last, or any one before that.
Only a miracle could save them now.
Chapter 3
Stormchaser 3
10,000 ft above the Atlantic Ocean
2013
Sunday
11.48 p.m.
Time Ship (Book One): A Time Travel Romantic Adventure Page 2
