The Far Horizon

by Marsha Canham

  Dante shook himself. He had no time to spare on such distractions. Instead, he trained the glass on the peaks again, his expression as bleak and inscrutable as the solid wall of the cliff.

  Moments later Pitt was back at his side with the lantern. Three of the four sides were solid pressed shell, the fourth was slatted and had a lever that could be moved to open or shut the slats. Grundy called the boy over and lit the wick then waited for the oil to catch and the flame to burn bright. While Young Pitt held it steady, Grundy turned the lever three times to make the light blink. After a count of five, he made it blink again three times, then repeated the signal twice more.

  Dante, Varian, and Artemis Franks stood rigid at the quarterdeck rail watching for a response. A full minute passed, then two. Dante quietly commanded Grundy to repeat the sequence and he barely finished the second spate of three blinks when the light on the anvil glowed brighter and blinked twice. It blinked twice again with a five second gap between, then twice and twice and twice again rapidly.

  Jonas jerked the glass away from his eye, his hackles rising.

  "Clear the decks for action," he ordered. "Artemis, open the ports and run out your guns. All decks, all guns. Blow up your matches, have powder and shot ready to hand." He turned to the helmsman and roared. "Bull, get the main and royals up. I want us through those reefs before the spit dries on my chin."

  "Captain… in this wind, she'll build up a deal o' speed! We'll never clear the turns!"

  "Get every able man in the bow with pikes and grappling irons. We'll haul her through if we have to. I'm going up front, watch for my every signal!"

  "Aye Captain!"

  Dante vaulted down the ladderway in a single leap and ran the length of the deck to the bow. Sails were dropping overhead and their speed was increasing. The dark mouth of the passage loomed ahead and everyone on board knew an error of five feet in either direction would send them smashing into the jaws of the coral.

  ~~

  Bella kept well out of the way. As soon as the orders were relayed, there was chaos on the maindeck as the ports were opened, the guns primed and loaded. The youngest crewmembers scrambled to bring balls and powder up from the armory while other men brought up bows and arrows, blunderbusses, muskets, cutlasses, and pistols.

  In short order, however, the absolute bedlam was replaced by an equally ominous silence. A silence so complete she could hear the men in the bow calling out the fathoms beneath the keel every thirty seconds. Dante was there, standing at the end of the bowsprit, his balance aided by his grip on the shrouds. He shouted orders, relayed back to the helmsman, to turn, to hold, to release a degree, to steer hard a-beam. The ship was gliding forward, rocking, dipping, canting to one side or the other. Men were on the ropes working the sails, turning the yards this way or that, sweat pouring from their bodies.

  A man screamed as he lost his footing and slipped off a yardarm. He crashed heavily to the deck, breaking bones in the fall; Bella heard the crunch from twenty feet away. Two crewmen rushed over to help him but he pushed them away and dragged himself upright, clutching his broken ribs as he stumbled off to join one of the gun crews.

  The ship took another severe turn and Bella lost her own footing as the deck canted sharply to one side. She managed to stay upright with Molly's help but just barely as they both staggered to the rail and held on for dear life. She heard a scraping sound and another loud crack and her grip tightened further as she looked over the side. They were sliding past a wide shelf of coral, so close that brittle fingers of the living coral were scraping on the hull and chunks were breaking off and tumbling away like flakes of snow in their wake. The water was so clear and the top of the reef so close to the surface, she expected to hear the keel tear away at any moment.

  Panic rose higher in her chest, pounding into her ears. She clutched Molly's hands tightly in her own for when she looked ahead to what lay beyond the reef, what she saw was even more terrifying. The massive volcanic island that was Pigeon Cay filled the horizon directly ahead. There was no calm bay in which to anchor, just sheer walls of rock being beaten by incoming waves, shrouded in a swirling mist.

  "Now! Now! Haul in sail now! Hard to starboard!"

  Dante's voice was strained with urgency as was the roar of the helmsman who threw his considerable weight against the whipstaff to execute the turn. Varian St. Clare was there in a flash, pitting his strength against the staff as well, every muscle bulging, the veins in his neck bulging.

  The Tribute groaned with the pressure on her timbers as the deck tipped, but nary a man moved from his position. The lines holding the cannon were stretched taut against the ringbolts on the larboard side, while the wooden wheels on the trunions creaked and rolled forward on the starboard row.

  "Steerage! I need steerage! Let loose the mizzen!"

  Grundy swore and shook his head. "We're goin' too fast, we'll not make the final turn in time."

  "The anchor," Jonas roared. "Drop the anchor!"

  "You'll spin us around an' rip out 'er guts if it catches on the reef!"

  "Drop the bloody anchor!"

  The command needed no second voice to relay it and a moment later the anchor fell from the cathead and the thick cable shot through the metal collar. The water was shallow enough that the curved iron hooks dug into the sandy bed of the channel almost at once. When the cable holding it ran out to its full length, the ship balked at the restraint and the bow started to swing about.

  Dante was already running back to the stern. "Ready on the axes! Cut the cable!"

  Several loud chops severed through the anchor cable and set the Tribute free. By then her bow had swung around enough to clear the last sharp curve in the channel and accomplish what the two men pitting all of their strength on the whipstaff could not.

  A cheer rose from every quarter of the ship as the crew acknowledged the amazing feat of seamanship. Several caps fluttered down from the yards and everyone apart from Varian and the helmsman—who were still bent over the whipstaff and gasping to catch their breath—was grinning ear to ear.

  Bella had no idea why they were grinning. They were still heading directly for the maelstrom of mist and waves at the base of the cliff and now that they were clear of the reef, the currents were hurling them with alarming speed toward the rocks. Augmenting her fears, a wall of green seawater crashed up against the hull and creamed over the rail, dousing everyone on the quarterdeck with salt spray.

  Instead of launching the ship to its doom, however, the current carried the Tribute almost gracefully around a jumble of jagged boulders and sent her gliding into a fissure where the cliff was split apart to form a natural passage to the interior of the island. As soon as they passed into calmer waters, men in the bow used wooden pikes and bills to keep the hull from scraping against the walls on either side.

  "Dear sweet Mother Mary, I thought sure we were done for," Molly gasped.

  When the blood stopped drumming in her ears, Bella looked around, unaware that she had been knocked to her knees by the cresting wave and that Molly was sprawled beside her. Apart from being soaked head to foot, they were uninjured, but the sense of relief did not last long as the Tribute glided deeper into the passageway and the sunlight was replaced by a moist, green-tinged gloom.

  The crew had fallen warily silent again and those who were not working the pikes took positions along the rail, between the cannon, up in the yards, armed to the teeth, intent upon whatever threat might lay ahead.

  They continually searched the shadows and Bella found herself doing the same thing though she did not know what she should be looking for, nor could she see anything through the tangled vines and greenery that covered the stone walls. She could not tell how high the chasm went or if the split reached all the way to the top of the cliffs, but she caught the occasional swish of branches as the top of the mainmast got caught in the umbrella of hanging vines.

  The only other sounds came from the water sliding past the hull and the faint hiss of two dozen
burning linstocks held at the ready by the gun crews.

  Dante was on the quarterdeck, bristling with the weapons Young Pitt had fetched from his cabin. He stood with his legs braced apart, his hands on his hips, only occasionally turning his head slightly to scour the walls of the passage searching, like the rest of the crew, for something that should have been there but was not.

  Varian stood beside him, his face grim. He had cast aside his elegant brocaded doublet and replaced it with two leather crossbelts holding pistols and small throwing axes.

  As Molly and Bella helped each other to their feet, the ship took a last lazy slide around the final turn where the chasm widened and the gentle current carried them into full sunlight again.

  The Tribute drifted slowly forward, emerging from the passage like a ghost through the shadows. The sun was nearly touching the western peaks and the shadows cast by the rock walls reached halfway across the harbor.

  "Mother o' God," Hobson gripped the rails and murmured. "Sweet Mother o' God an' all the saints."

  Chapter Nineteen

  The usual sight that greeted a returning ship after a long voyage was of a wide, deep blue, elongated harbor that stretched nearly two miles at its farthest point. Far from being the lifeless, barren atoll represented by the outer facade, the interior slopes were lush and green, dotted with groves of palm trees and citrus orchards. Clusters of thatched cottages had been built around the natural, inland harbor and on the long, sweeping incline of the valley beyond.

  Along the shoreline warehouses had been built to store supplies and plunder. Midway up the eastern side of the crater was the sprawling, whitewashed manor house built thirty years earlier by Simon Dante for his bride. It sat like a gleaming jewel against the verdant backdrop of lush palm trees, a two storey tropical mansion with verandas circling the upper and lower levels.

  When the entire clan was in port, the harbor boasted five magnificent tall ships and a dozen or more smaller carracks and sloops all rocking gently at anchor.

  The sight that greeted them now was as far from the remembered idyll as unparalleled destruction could take it. The charred remains of the warehouses and outbuildings littered the shoreline like black, discarded bones. In the harbor were the skeletal ruins of Isabeau Dante's Black Swan, and, although Jonas's eyes were almost too blinded by rage to recognize it, the battered, broken hull of his brother's ship, the Endurance.

  Neither of the ships had gone quietly to their watery graves, for there were two shattered galleons half sunken and burned to blackened ribs laying on their sides near shore. The Spanish vessels had been blown apart by massive volleys of cannonfire but obviously not soon enough for the Dante fleet to avoid destruction.

  Missing were Simon Dante's Avenger and Juliet Dante's Iron Rose. Initially, Geoffrey Pitt's Christiana, was nowhere to be seen, but any slight flicker of hope that she had somehow survived the onslaught was quashed as the topman spied her wreckage on the bottom of the harbor. The masts had been shot away and half the hull was a gaping wound but there was no mistaking the sleek, graceful lines of the sloop.

  They also noted several dark shapes slithering beneath the keel of the Tribute, creatures rarely seen inside the harbor.

  Sharks.

  "Make for the east shore and lower away a boat," Jonas said, his voice a mere rasp.

  Grundy stood beside him. "I'll take the boat ashore. No tellin' if we've sailed into a trap."

  Jonas tore his gaze away from the watery graveyard, the amber of his eyes burning like hellfire. "Lower the boat. I will take the first one ashore and if I give the all clear, have the others come away. I want the ship's guns ready to fire at the slightest sign of trouble."

  Hobson touched a forelock, knowing it would be futile to argue. "Aye, Capt'n. Should we send some lads with a stout rope to see who was on the anvil?"

  Jonas nodded. "Do that. We need to know what the hell happened here."

  Varian met Jonas at the gangway. "I'm coming with you."

  Dante was about to object, but he could see the fear burning through the anger in Varian's eyes. Juliet was with child, may have already given birth.

  "I welcome the company, brother." Jonas turned to look at the solemn faces of the crew. "I need ten stout men."

  Every single man on deck stepped forward to volunteer and Jonas culled the closest ten.

  Bella stepped forward as well, though she cursed her tongue for even uttering the words. "There may be wounded. I can help."

  Dante held her gaze for a full minute, so long she was unsure if he had heard her. But then he shook his head. "When we give the all clear, you can come across. In the meantime, gather up all the unguents and potions Digger has squirreled away."

  She touched his sleeve. "Please be careful."

  Bristling with weapons, Dante led the men down to the waiting longboat and within minutes they were rowing fast and steady across the harbor.

  Bella stayed at the rail and watched the boat until it nudged up against the shore. Judging by the amount of destruction to the ships in the harbor and the ruins of the settlement, she could only imagine the tremendous battle that must have taken place. From all she had learned of Simon Dante, he would have fought to the death to protect his family and home, as would his wife, his son, and his daughter. It was almost beyond belief to think all four of them… legends in their own right… had perished. The fact there were no survivors coming to the shore to meet Jonas was even more ill-omened.

  ~~

  The longboat was ten feet from the narrow shingled beach when it became mired in a thick bed of weeds. Impatient, Jonas leaped into thigh-deep water, pistols in hand. He waded ahead while the others brought the boat close enough to drag up onto the volcanic sand, his gaze constantly moving, vigilant, searching the shadows and the treeline higher up the slope.

  The first body he saw was draped over a broken timber. It was male. Birds and insects had been feeding on the gaping wounds in his back, and the white knuckles of his spine were showing.

  There were others, some laying where they had fallen, bloated grotesquely from the tropical sun. Some corpses were stacked in piles like logs of firewood, the ones on top black with insects, the ones on the bottom oozing fluids, the flesh deteriorating quickly in the heat and melting slowly into the sand.

  The stench was almost unbearable.

  Varian had sloshed through the water a step behind Jonas and when he hit the shore, he started running, heading for the great white house on the hill.

  "Varian, wait! Grundy is right, it could be a trap!"

  There was no break in the duke's stride. He had lost his hat. His sword was gleaming in his hand, his long legs were chewing up the ground beneath him.

  Jonas cursed and ran after him. The two charged up the slope a few feet apart, pausing only to gulp a few breaths before running up the steep incline again. From the water, the house had looked almost untouched. As they came closer they could see the shattered windows, the holes in the wood made by hundreds of musket balls. The entire west wing was gone, scorched down to a few stone chimneys. The air stank of burned wood… and something else the men were all too familiar with: the smell of roasted flesh.

  Varian burst through the front door with such force it smashed on the wall and sent glass from a nearby window tinkling to the floor. The main staircase was half gone and part of the second storey had collapsed inward. The floor was littered with slashed paintings and shards of crockery. Whatever furniture had escaped the fires lay in broken heaps amongst empty bottles and anything considered not valuable enough to carry away.

  Everywhere, staining everything, hinting at the charnel horror that it must have been, were the smears and pools of dried blood.

  It soon became clear, by the sheer number of bodies they found, that the manor had not only been the site of the fiercest fighting, but likely the last bastion of defense. Some of the rooms had been barricaded with furniture. Four small bowchasers mounted on the railings had been fired so often, two of the bar
rels had cracked and split apart.

  Varian started up the stairs, using the railing for support as the broken treads creaked and twisted under his weight. While he searched the upper rooms one after another, Jonas started going through the lower rooms… the library, the dining hall, and Isabeau Dante's pride and joy: the chart room. It was aptly named for the huge reproductions of continents and coastlines painted directly onto two of the sixteen foot walls… walls that were now gouged and torn away. The ceiling had been a navigator's dream with its magnificent depiction of the night sky and all the constellations laboriously painted over a dozen years. It was riddled now with holes and musket balls; scores of swords hung there, having been hurled upward in victory, the points buried in the wood.

  Against one wall was the table Simon Dante had painstakingly built to his wife's precise specifications showing the elevations of every island, every harbor, every port around the gulf from Spanish Florida to Panama, along the northern coast of Terra Firma from Cartagena to Paria. All of the islands in the great bowl of the Caribbee had been depicted and marked friend or foe; each known city, port, cay and islet had been identified.

  It was now a pile of smashed rubble.

  Jonas spotted something half buried in the debris. He bent over and picked up a carved replica of the Avenger. Simon's next closest friend after Geoffrey Pitt had been an enormous former slave, Lucifer. He had lovingly carved copies of all the Dante ships from scraps of white oak. Black as coal, the Cimaroon stood over seven feet tall, with limbs as thick as tree trunks. Jonas had seen him take on twenty Spaniards at once and emerge the victor. It was inconceivable that Lucifer would have let any harm come to Simon or his family.