“Breakers! Dead ahead off the larboard bow!”
And then the others heard it too, heard it over the howl of the wind, the terrible thunder that shook the very seas beneath them—the sound of waves breaking on a hidden sandbar.
It was every mariner’s nightmare. The storm had driven them too close to shore.
“Ingols! God damn ye for a traitorous bastard!”
But killing his betrayer came second to saving his ship—for Whydah was about to make an entrance that would be anything but glorious.
Cursing, slipping, going down into great floods of seawater and clawing to his feet, Sam staggered across the decks, shouting himself hoarse as he tried desperately to rally his men. He grabbed a line, hanging on for dear life as the deck canted and a giant comber broke over the bows, thundered down the deck and all but drowned him beneath a wall of water so cold that he was left gasping. The crew came stumbling up from below in confusion, their eyes going wild with terror as they saw their impending fate, and Sam felt every one of them looking to him as though he were a god, as though he and he alone could get them out of this.
As though he could save them.
He would not disappoint them. By God, he wouldn’t! Hauling himself to his feet, he bellowed to the heavens, “Ye want a fight? Blast your bloody teeth, ’tis a fight ye’ll get! Get those bower anchors out, lads! And damn your hides, move it, else we’ll all be drinking rum with Lucifer by midnight!”
His thoughts were racing.
Get the bowers out.
Hold her off.
Get the men moving.
Show no fear.
For God’s sake, show no fear, can’t let them see I’m as damned scared as they—
“Move, damn you!” he roared.
They responded, for his rage was the only thing that penetrated their drunken, fear-clouded brains. Two thousand pounds of cast iron came tumbling from Whydah’s bows, disappearing into the mountainous black swells, sinking down, down, down into the depths. The giant flukes hit bottom, caught, clawed for a hold on the sandy bottom. Whydah swung around to face the storm, straining at her leashes and dipping her bow down toward the very pits of hell itself. Great pillars of seawater rose up to smash over her bowsprit, her beak-head, her foredeck. She staggered, fought, choking in the seas, no longer able to fling the waters from her bow with her nose tethered so. And now—
Bloody hell, Sam thought wildly. The anchors weren’t holding. Christ, they weren’t holding!
A ton of iron—and that wall of foam thundering and boiling several hundred feet off their stern was getting closer and closer—
“Captain! Captain, for God’s sake help us!”
“She’s dragging, sir!”
But he was already yelling himself hoarse. “Cut her loose, lads! Cut cables! Loose the stays’ls and mizzen! We’ve got to get her back out to sea!”
But there was no room to wear the ship, no room to get her turned around and headed back toward the safety of deep water. Cutlasses hacked at frozen hemp, staysails fell, some exploding like gunshots in the screaming gale, others hastily secured by panicky hands. Whydah took the wind, trying to crawl forward on the slight bit of canvas her captain had offered, but the storm was too much for her.
Steadily, it drove her backward.
Sam sloshed across the deck, grabbed the wheel and put the helm down hard just as the anchor cables parted and Whydah gave a great, shuddering lurch. He never felt the rope go around his waist as Julian lashed him to the wheel, didn’t hear the screams, the shouts, the supplications of his men. Every bit of his strength, every fiber of his will drove down his arms, through his fingers to the shuddering wheel and into the very heart of the ship herself. Come on, sweetheart, ye can do it, he urged, coming about as close to praying as he ever had. That’s it, lass. Just for me. That’s the way…. Good girl. Easy now…easy….
But the beautiful galley never had a chance. The storm caught her, drove her toward the breakers, and as she swept stern-first toward impending death, a burst of lightning purpled the sky and silhouetted the long, cliff-backed shoreline just beyond them.
Fate couldn’t be so cruel!
“No! Damn you, no!” Sam roared, smashing his fist against the useless wheel. But standing white against the sky, they were unmistakable.
The sand cliffs of Eastham.
Spray exploded from the sand bar and rained down upon them. Men fell to their knees, screaming and sobbing like children. And through the roar of the gale, the thunder of breaking surf, came their captain’s voice as, shaking a fist at the raging heavens, he bellowed at the top of his lungs:
“So help me God, I’ll see you, Maria, if I have to sail this damned ship over the blasted dunes themselves!”
And then they were in the breakers, their roar drowning out all sound. With a violent grinding jolt, Whydah struck the bar.
* * *
She hit stern-first, and those who lived through the nightmare would never forget her agony as the sea drove her into the sand and crushed her very backbone beneath its terrible fury.
Men clawed their way up canting decks, scrambling over the gunwales as they tried to escape the thirty-foot waves that towered over them and swept them away to their deaths. Others clung to spars only to be lost as comber upon comber roared out of the sea and tore them from their last precarious holds on life. Terrified of drowning, those men that remained began to surge belowdecks, bottlenecking at the hatches, screaming, cursing, hacking at each other with knives and cutlasses in their frenzied haste to escape the raging seas. Others clung pitifully to shrouds that could no longer bear the weight of the masts as Whydah groaned and started to broach. And then the decks began to tremble and vibrate and an unholy roar rose from the very depths of the ship as guns, breaking loose from their moorings, thundered on wheels of death across the decks, crushing men, gutting the ship, ripping through her timbers and smashing great holes in her hull before finally plunging into the angry seas.
Topside, the scene was repeated. Tethered to the wheel and choking beneath wall upon wall of freezing seawater, Sam looked up in time to see a six-pounder break loose and charge down the quarterdeck toward—
“Madigan!” he bellowed, but it was too late. Sickened, he turned his head, but not before he saw the lad fall beneath the huge gun, his body slamming into the bulwarks and vanishing into the gaping hole where the sea thrashed below.
There was nothing left to do but try to save himself.
Numbed fingers tore the dagger from his belt. He slashed and chopped at the frozen hemp that bound him to the wheel. The ship canted further yet. “Give, goddamn you! For God’s sake give!” A monstrous comber reared out of the darkness, exploded on the breakers and felled him beneath tons of water. He came up coughing and choking, feet slipping on the tilted deck, fingers clawing desperately for a hold. Splinters drove deep beneath his nails. His lungs ached, threatened to explode.
And from high above came a sound like gunshots.
He froze, clenching the knife as he stared up at a hundred feet of wildly teetering mast. In a flash of lightning, he saw stays popping and writhing like snakes. The mainmast was coming down, and dragging a tangle of sails, spars, and rigging down with it.
Frantically, Sam tried to jump clear but the last threads of hemp binding him to the wheel held fast. His desperate lunge threw him to his knees. A falling block crashed across his back, knocking the wind from his lungs and slamming him facedown into seawater and deck planking. Spars and frozen hemp rained out of the darkness around him. Gasping, he reached his knees just as a spar hit the wheel, smashing it to kindling and sending chunks of wood and ice bursting in a brilliant shower about him. And then pain exploded behind his eyes as something struck him a glancing blow to the side of his skull.
He staggered, fell. Nothing now but a humming roar that grew louder and louder in his head. No screams of his dying crew, no clanging of the ship’s bell, no thunder. Just lightning spinning around him in a brilliant vorte
x of light. Numbness. Warmth on his cheek and running down his jaw. With fading realization, he knew it was his own blood.
He sagged against the splintered wheel, defeated. I’m so sorry, Maria…so very…very…sorry….
The knife dropped from his hand and was swept away by the sea. The galley shuddered, gasped, and capsizing, began to break up. And then the great mainsail came drifting down, a funeral shroud to blanket Whydah’s remains and the body of her fallen captain.
Chapter 9
Listen: You hear the grating roar
of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease; and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow; and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
— Arnold
It had been a wild night and sleep, when Maria finally found it, had been disturbed and restless. Rain hammering against her window, lightning flooding the room like daylight, peals of thunder that had sent her bolting straight out of bed. And the wind! She shuddered at the memory. Out there in the awful darkness of the storm it had sounded like human screams. Even Gunner had been nervous, standing three inches from her nose and panting his hot breath upon her face as she’d lain awake watching the lightning flicker beyond her window.
Some time after midnight she’d finally let him up on the bed, telling herself that were she in his place she too would rather sleep on a mattress filled with cornhusks and straw than a braided rug beside a hearth that had gone cold hours before. Her efforts had not been in vain. Gunner had quieted, warmed her feet with his big, heavy body, and at last, she’d fallen asleep.
Now, the brunt of the storm had passed. Gray morning light crept through the tiny window. Wind gusted around the mud-chinked walls of the hut, flinging rain against the glass pane and moaning eerily. Yawning, Gunner crawled off the bed, shook himself, and went to stand by the door.
Maria regarded him with a malevolent eye. It was too cold to crawl out from beneath the coverlet, and exhaustion seemed quite content to keep her there. But Gunner, persistent as always, nuzzled the latch and began to whine.
Shivering, she got up and padded across the room to let him out, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The floor planking was rough and cold beneath her feet, the air damp and raw. She did not look forward to going outside for wood to start the fire.
But Auntie always said that idle hands accomplished nothing, and here she’d slept away the better part of the morning when she could have been working on the blanket that lay stretched on her loom. Now there was no way she could finish it by this afternoon, and she would just have to wait for the cornmeal, flour, eggs, and ham for which she’d planned to trade it. And wasn’t Mr. Harding, her nearest neighbor who lived two miles distant, stopping by today for some chokecherry bark medicine for his sore throat? She’d promised she’d have it ready for him.
Sighing, Maria donned a heavy woolen gown, stumbled into her moccasins, found the red woolen cloak her aunt had given her for her last birthday and pulling its hood over her head, stepped outside.
The wind tore the door out of her hands, forcing her to lean every bit of her weight upon it just to get it closed and latched behind her. “Good heavens,” she said, and then turned her gaze—as she did every morning—toward the sea.
No sails upon that misty horizon, but yet another ship had come to grief on this vicious coast and by the looks of it this one, lying smashed and beaten on the sandbar just offshore, had suffered a nasty death indeed. What was left of it was strewn as far down the beach as she could see. Maria leaned back against the door and let out her breath. Poor, poor souls. So then, the screams she’d heard last night hadn’t been the wind after all….
Forgetting the wood, she turned and went back inside. The blanket could wait, and so could the chokecherry bark medicine. If anyone had survived the shipwreck they’d need her assistance more than Mr. Harding did his gargle-juice and she her cornmeal. Filling her arms with blankets from the chest at the foot of her bed, she hurried back outside.
Only thirty feet of dunes separated Maria’s hut from the ragged edge of the sand cliffs. Here she hesitated, a willowy figure against a sky clogged with clouds, a few strands of golden hair escaping her hood to whip about her face. Down on the beach the villagers had already arrived, picking over the wreckage like hungry vultures. Her lips thinned. These were the same people who had hurled stones at her and driven her out of the parish, the same people whose mistrust of her had led to the death of her little baby. These were the same people who had thrown her into the gaol as if she were a common criminal. And the same people who sought her skills as a healer, showing up at her doorstep at night pleading for her to cure their various ills while hoping their neighbors wouldn’t find out they were seeking the services of the Sea Witch.
The Sea Witch. Maria laughed then, but it was a bitter sound that held no humor. Should any of them glance up at the sand cliffs now and see her standing atop them, the wind molding the clothes to her body, her hair brilliant against the scarlet hood of her cloak, they’d think she was indeed a witch, wouldn’t they? Let them, then. She’d been banished from the South Parish, not her own backyard. Her chin came up in defiance, and resolutely she began to pick her way down the steep slope of sand to the beach below.
The villagers grew silent as she approached, the occasional wary glance sent her way over a toiling shoulder reminding her of a pack of curs guarding their suppers. They worked in haste, each man hoping to beat his neighbor to the best pickings from the wreck. Chunks of splintered wood and spars, bits of rope, tattered rags that had once been proud sails—all were flung with little dignity into carts already piled high with flotsam.
The wind blasted, nailing the cold to her very bones. Shivering, Maria ignored the villagers and fought her way down the beach. How warm it must be in the tropics, where Sam was. But no. Don’t think about him, she told herself, don’t ever think about him again. For rumor had it he was a pirate now, and after a long year of unanswered prayers, she’d finally begun to accept what her aunt had insisted all along to be true—that Sam Bellamy was never coming back for her.
Maria continued on, the knifing April wind as raw and bitter as her heart. Sand stung her face like needles, forcing her to bury it in the blankets every few moments to shield her eyes from the onslaught. Stray rain slashed against her cheeks, spume melted on her lips, and the taste of salt was sharp upon her tongue. She pulled the strings of her hood tight to draw the circle of fur about her face, bent her head, and continued on.
Some distance down the beach she saw Gunner, tail wagging furiously as he sopped up a villager’s attentions like a dry sponge. Beside him, two placid, well-fed horses stood in stalwart defiance against the wind, their manes and tails streaming forward. She recognized them as belonging to Timothy Hingham, one of the young gaolers who’d been so hopelessly enamored of her during her brief stay in the gaol. And as Tim straightened up and Gunner raced off to explore elsewhere, she saw that he was deep in conversation with Justice Doane and the coroner.
The steady thunder of surf made it impossible to overhear their conversation. Would Justice Doane try to apprehend her? Perhaps she ought to walk the other way instead. Maria paused, chewing her bottom lip. But no, she reminded herself. This wild beach was her home, and they would not drive her from it.
She continued on, hating herself for the glances she still cast toward the horizon when the wind let up long enough for her to raise her head. In its turbulent state, the ocean was breathtaking: huge, angry waves racing each other to shore and thundering against the beach. Wind ripping the caps from their crests and driving spindrift and spray before it. Foam mantling the breakers, thick as snow and just as white farther out, dirty and sudsy and churning with pieces of wreckage closer to shore.
But among the broken shells, pebbles, and handfuls of randomly flung kelp that were strewn the length of the beach was the sad evidence of just what
the ocean was capable of. Some fifty feet of a mast that had been snapped like a twig, still swathed in sailcloth and knotted with twisted ratlines and rigging. Torn lengths of hemp, tatters of what had been someone’s clothing. There, a sailor’s ditty bag, forlorn and desolate in the sand. A leather shoe, a broken sea chest.
She looked away. A group of children played amongst the debris, some wrapping tattered bits of sail around their little bodies and pretending to be ghosts. Their antics brought a faint smile to Maria’s face and chased away some of the melancholy the shipwreck had brought on. But then her smile turned sad as she thought of little Charles. Had things been different, some day he too might have played upon this beach as he waited for his father to return from the sea.
Maria blinked back the tears. Charles, the only reminder she’d ever have of the man she’d loved, was gone. There was nothing she could do for him now.
But she could still help the living. The children might flee her, the villagers might shun her as a witch, but any survivors from the wreck would be grateful for any help she could give.
If there were any survivors.
She saw the first body, eyes blank and staring, tangled in seaweed just beyond the thundering surf. Another, clad in the tattered remains of a seaman’s garb, was sprawled facedown in the sand. Maria turned away, fighting the bile that rose in her throat. Bodies were everywhere. Floating in the surf, rolling over and over in the waves as the ocean flung them against the beach, then clawed them possessively back. Bodies, with great wounds torn in their flesh by the angry seas. Bodies, half buried in the sand, some open-mouthed in the eternal scream of death, some staring at her with sightless eyes as she passed.
Pirate In My Arms Page 12
