Chris cleared his throat. "If we stay close in to shore for that last hour, they won't be able to follow."
It made sense, Lorna thought; the cruiser was a deeper-draft vessel and would not be able to follow into the shallows where they could go. But, even before Chris finished speaking, Slick was shaking his head. "If she catches up, she can stand out and pound the hell out of us."
That Ramon had taken these factors into account on the instant was obvious, for he seemed hardly to be listening. The bronze planes of his face were set in grim lines as he stared out at the federal cruiser. Finally, he turned. With a brief glance at Slick, he said, "Set sails."
The executive officer looked at Chris, then exchanged a glance with Frazier. The man at the helm stared at Ramon in surprise. It was not the order they had expected. It would be a close race, but at the rate they were traveling, it would take the cruiser some three hours to overtake them, and they had to try to reach port. If, on the other hand, they ran out of fuel before they could make harbor, the federal vessel would have all eternity to overhaul them.
Chris saw it first. "I get it; we gain an extra knot or two for time, because the cruiser doesn't have to be right on our stern to start firing."
None of it mattered, neither their calculations and brow-furrowing worries nor the haste with which a pair of flying jibs, a main sail, foresail, and an aft spanker were hauled up and set to catch the wind. A half hour after they were in place, a call came up from the engine room. The boilers were overheating from flues full of soot and cotton lint. If they didn't blow off steam for a little cleaning, they would explode.
The hiss of the steam escaping, the white cloud of it boiling into the sky while the federal ship bore down upon them, was enough to make the strongest heart quail. There was, at least, no reason to wince now at the noise. By the time the gauges showed a safe margin and they were able to get under way again, the cruiser was so close they could see without glasses the preparations for firing.
They ran on. The spume flew from the uncovered paddle wheels, wetting the decks. The deck cabin structure was chopped away and carried below. The crew with their axes set to work on the bulwarks, and it was a toss-up among the men on deck whether they were glad to be rid of the potential for splinters or felt exposed without the protection from grapeshot. The relative merits would be tested, it seemed, for the cruiser was slowly gaining.
Ahead of them, the water turned aquamarine, shading with the swirls of cream that was the living reef beneath the surface, deepening to turquoise, lightening to jade. They bore down on the land, coming close enough to see the outlines of the palms, the stunted pines, and the sharp formations of coral along the shore. There was an island close at hand now on their left, neutral territory, safety, and yet because there was no channel to reach it, no harbor, it was of no more protection than if it had been a thousand miles away.
With narrowed eyes, Ramon watched the cruiser, swung to stare ahead, ran his gaze along the sand beaches that stretched beyond the reef. He stood straight, his feet slightly apart and his hands on his hips, balancing easily with the ship's movement. The wind ruffled the dark waves of his hair and flapped the fullness of his shirt. He glanced back at the cruiser again, then looked away to where the sun was just breaking above the horizon, it was a long time before he moved; then, he turned to the helmsman.
"I'll take her," he said.
The seaman stepped aside, relinquishing his post. Ramon wrapped his strong hands around the spokes, holding them with care, as he might the hands of a woman. His chest filled, then he relaxed, letting his breath out slowly. He turned his head then, releasing his left hand, holding it out to Lorna where she stood watching him. She smiled, a puzzled expression in her gray eyes, but she went to him. He encircled her waist with his arm, smiling down at her. Then, setting his jaw, he spun the wheel hard over, turning the bow of the Lorelei straight in toward the beach shining in the light of the rising sun, and toward the jagged teeth of the reef. Above them, her canvas spilled the wind and flapped dismally as the crew jumped to furl it.
"Captain!" Slick called, his voice sharp. "What are you doing?"
"Prepare to lower the boats," was his answer.
The first office tried again. "Captain-"
"The risk is too great. That isn't a gunboat out there, it's a man-of-war, two thousand tons, armed to the teeth, and manned by the best gunnery officers in the United States Navy. She'll blast us to bits if we don't surrender when the order comes, and there's every reason to think it will do just that in the next half hour. Surrender would mean prison, maybe hanging, for all of us, but most of all for Lorna. Taking their fire would be suicide. The only safe place is on Bahamas soil, and that is over the reef."
"It'll tear the bottom out of her."
Ramon's tone was quiet, final, as he answered, "Don't you think I know that?"
Lorna stood in the circle of his arm, her body stiff with dismay as understanding of the sacrifice he was making struck deep into her mind. She swung, staring up at him. "Ramon, no! Not for me."
His eyes were dark, unfathomable, as he replied, "For none other, ever."
"You can't," she whispered.
"It's all I can do."
This was why women should not go to sea; not because they were useless or got in the way, or even because they were unlucky, but because their very presence, without their will or desire, affected the judgments men were forced to make. If she had not been there, she knew beyond doubting, Ramon would have taken his chances, wagering his life and that of every other man aboard against the prospect of finding a safe harbor for his ship. If she had not been there, the Bonny Girl would be floating still and Peter and all the others still alive. If she had not been there, Ramon and the Lorelei would be in Nassau. Or would they? It was difficult to find an end to this line of thought. She could not blame herself for her presence; she had been brought to sea this time against her will. Still, it was, perhaps, something within herself that had caused Nate Bacon to want her so desperately that he had abducted her.
Now, they could hear the sound of the surf see its boiling wash ahead of them. Around them men yelled and shouted and worked to free the boats from their davits, making ready to lower them the moment the ship grounded. Unconsciously, Lorna braced, felt Ramon's arm tightened at her waist. Behind them came the boom of a single salvo from the cruiser. It passed harmlessly behind them, as if in warning.
The Lorelei plunged on, dipping her bow into the waves, so that the salt mist sprayed upward and caught the sun rays, forming a rainbow in the droplets. Mutilated, but buoyant, valiant in her pride, she rode with Ramon's firm hands on the wheel holding her steady. The shouting stopped. The men fell silent. The engine beat as regularly as a giant heart, and the rushing slap of the paddle wheels was her pulse. The water ahead turned from blue to green to palest aquamarine. They saw the reef, like ancient bones, under the waves.
She struck with a ragged scream of rending iron plates and tearing timbers. She jarred to a bumping, grinding halt. Lorna was set, expecting it; still, she was thrown forward against the wheel that spun crazily as Ramon released it to catch her. The hard strength of his arms cushioned her for a moment. Then, she was swept from him, pushed into a boat that was being lowered into the sea. As it pulled away from the ship, she looked back, dragging the hair out of her eyes to watch as the ship settled, listing.
The next few moments were a confusion of events. The boat she was on landed and started back to the ship to bring more of the men to shore. The federal cruiser bore down on them, opening fire on the ship as if it meant to batter the crippled vessel to pieces. Then as another boat loaded with men started toward shore, the man-of-war peppered it with grape. Seeing the men fall, the gunsmoke on the water; hearing the cries and groans, the explosions, the whining shot; knowing that Ramon was still on the Lorelei and would not leave until every man was gone, Lorna went mad. She stood on the beach with the bright sun of morning glittering on the wild silk of her hair that whipped around her.
Her skirts billowing, she shook her fist at the cruiser, screaming her outrage.
The cruiser ceased firing, drawing in closer still until the officers could be seen standing at the railing, talking among themselves, pointing at and watching the dying ship as if in a theater box. All except the captain, who stood alone with the sun touching his epaulettes and the insignia on his cap. He removed the latter to bare his head, waving it above his brown hair, which had the sheen of mahogany.
It was Lieutenant Donavan-or perhaps it was Captain Donavan now?-the naval officer who had searched her aboard the Lorelei so many weeks before, the man she had persuaded Ramon to allow to escape. How strange were the fortunes of war, to bring him there in a position of command at just this moment. She had saved him from a war prison, and now he was returning the favor by holding his fire. He had not forgotten.
Lorna put up her hand slowly, hesitantly, to return his salute. He turned to rap out an order, the sound of his voice traveling clearly across the water. The federal cruiser began to sheer away. He looked back, waved again, then turned away with a great show of discipline.
Before the cruiser was a half mile out to sea, a sailing sloop appeared, ghosting from around a headland as if out of nowhere. Moving silently, but with purpose, it headed toward the ship on the reef.
"Wreckers," a man said in tones of disgust from somewhere behind her.
"Wreckers," Frazier said, moving to her side, his voice filled with interest and curiosity.
They were right, both of them, and Lorna had reason to be grateful for it within the hour. It was the wreckers who brought the last load of men from the ship before going back to see what could be salvaged. Among them was Ramon, standing tall and straight, laughing with an equally tall blonde-haired man with a rakish white bandage around his head as they jumped into the crystal water at the edge of the beach and waded onto the sand. She started forward with tears rising to her eyes. When she had dashed them away, the two were still there. Ramon and Peter, striding toward her with their arms over each other's shoulders.
The Englishman caught her in a bear hug, whirling her around as she laughed and cried and tried to ask him when? How? The wreckers had made it a habit of late to stay near the entrance to the North West Channel, since it was there that the cruisers liked to lie in wait for the ships that had to take that route toward the east coast of the United States. They had seen the fire of the Bonny Girl and, when the excitement died away, slipped out to investigate. They had found him unconscious, lashed to a hatch cover by his belt. He could just remember taking care of that last detail before he passed out, but had no memory at all of the rescue. His bump on the head was nothing; he would live to watch a certain young Lansing sister grow up, and do his bit in the process. He was looking forward to the results, and even the proceedings, though as things were at the present, he didn't intend to rush it.
Safe.
Before, endless ages ago before she had left New Orleans, it had been a word; now, it was a concept rich with meaning. Lorna sat on a rock beneath the shade of a sea grape tree and let the peace of it seep into her. From her vantage point, she could watch as the sunburned islanders stripped the ship and ferried the salvage to the shore. They worked fast, for, bit by bit, what was left of the beautiful blockade vessel was settling. Like dying gasps, the air was driven from her shattered portholes. Water reached her hot boilers, her fireboxes, bringing forth a hissing and bubbling as steam rose into the air. Men yelled, diving for the water as the hulk shifted and sank below the decks in the warm turquoise sea. Lorna closed her eyes tightly then, not wanting to see the last of the drowning masts and crosstrees as the waves lapped around them. When she opened them again, the water was smooth and empty. The Lorelei was gone, but they were all safe.
Peter came to sit with her awhile, lounging on the rock shelf beside her with his forearm propped on his thigh. He bhad been there when the ship went down, a silent companion. They had watched without speaking as Ramon, standing on the shore, had turned and walked away then, the angles and hollows of his face prominent as he disappeared among the pines and sea grapes of the limestone cay.
"What will you do now?" Lorna asked, for something to say to distract them both.
"The same, I suppose."
"You will find another ship?"
"The firm will supply one."
"What of…Ramon?"
He shook his head. "Who can say? You'll have to ask him, but he has been dissatisfied with running lately, I think."
She did not comment, picking up a twig and brushing at the sand that had lodged in a crevice of the rock. "Has it been decided how we are going to get back to Nassau?"
"The wreckers have agreed to take a few of us to the big town, for a price. I'll be going to see about transport for my crew. I expect Ramon will do the same, and you, of course. There's food and water for the men, enough to last a day or two, and that's all the time it should take to send after them."
There was a long pause. He looked from the beach where the wreckers were stowing goods to where she sat beside him. His gaze rested on the pure oval of her face, and, as she turned her head to face him, his dark blue gaze was clouded.
"Are you happy, Lorna?"
Surprisingly, considering the unsettled state of things around her and of her future, she was. She told him so.
"I'm glad. It helps."
"But…what of Charlotte?" She could not forebear to ask. It wasn't vulgar curiosity that moved her, or a probing into his feelings, but rather the need of reassurance that she had not hurt him.
"She's spoiled and willful, but there's something worthwhile underneath. I like the way she says what she thinks, and the way she is developing in looks, and…I'm trying."
"I'm sorry."
"Save your sympathy," he said, his smile twisted as he-squinted out over the bright water. "I've broken a few hearts in my time, and I suppose I deserve to know how it feels. No doubt it will be the making of me. "I’m sure Charlotte would say so, if she knew."
"Do you think she doesn't?"
He gave a light shrug. "Probably. If not, I think I'll tell her, see what she says, see if she's capable of compassion, or maybe even jealousy. Should be interesting."
"You are not to experiment with her," she said severely. "She's too young for that."
He sent her a glance that brimmed with amusement, though it faded slowly as he looked at her. "Dear Lorna, you would tell me if you weren't really happy, wouldn't you?" He frowned, saying quickly, "No. Don't answer."
He left her soon after that. She saw him talking to the captain of the wrecker's sloop. Within an hour, he had boarded her and was gone.
Ramon did not go. Charging Peter with a message to Edward Lansing concerning arrangements for their deliverance, he stayed behind with his crew, and Lorna with him. He spent the remainder of the day organizing the men into parties to erect shelters of poles and palm thatch, dig a latrine, gather wood for fires, and to scout for flesh water, ripe fruit, and the possibility of wild boar from swine whose ancestors might have been left on the cay by buccaneers a hundred and fifty years before. His time away from the beach, in the wooded interior of the cay, or small island, had been used to good purpose, for he knew the size of it and the most likely locations for the things they would find useful.
He had also discovered a cave well away from the others. Dry, clean, not large, it had a tiny spring just below it where the limestone formation jutted out over the sloping shelf of the beach, much like the caves on New Providence, except on a smaller scale. He showed his find to Lorna early in the afternoon. She was delighted at his thoughtfulness, and the prospect of a measure of privacy away from the watching eyes of over three score of men. Toward evening, she returned with a pair of blankets from the store left behind, a tin cup to drink from, and a length of cloth for sketchy bathing. She spent a domestic hour seeing as best she could to their comfort.
The day came to an end. They feasted on roast pork, beans, hard tack, mangoes, and, to dr
ink, lemonade improved by the addition of a goodly portion of rum. It was served up by Cupid and eaten in the rose-pink glow of sunset. Lorna and Ramon ate with the others, but as the talk grew louder and more raucous, he picked up his guitar that had been brought ashore from his cabin, and led her away to their blanket-lined bower.
The trade winds blew gently over the island. The waves sighed onto the sand. A gibbous moon rose, shining over the moving sea, gleaming on their faces, so they seemed pale. There wasn't room to stand in the low cave; they sat in the entrance, leaning against the sides of the opening. Ramon's guitar lay across his lap and he brushed his thumb over the strings, picking out a soft melody as they stared out over the water.
It was the first time they had been alone to talk since she had been taken from Nassau. There was so much Lorna wanted to know, to say, but she could not find a place to start. She shifted, glancing at him.
"Are you comfortable?" he asked, his voice warm in the growing darkness.
"Yes. Very. I…was just wondering, since you managed to save your guitar, if you also salvaged your gold."
"Part of it. It was in my trunk, and I was there to protect it with pistol in hand; otherwise, the wreckers would have claimed it. As it was, because I couldn't get to shore without their help, I divided it with them for carting it in for me."
"I suppose Nate's hoard is at the bottom of the sea."
A quirk of a brow indicated that it was the first time he had considered the matter. "I guess so."
She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry about the Lorelei."
He sent her a brief smile across the space that separated them. "According to the ancient legends, Lorelei was a siren singing on a rock who lured sailors to shipwreck on the reef. Maybe she is where she was meant to be."
His tone was fanciful, not meant to be taken seriously, a cover, she thought, for his loss. "You can replace her."
"There is no need. I won't be running the blockade again."
She turned her head sharply, trying to see his expression. "What?"
Surrender in Moonlight Page 44
