HT02 - Sing: A Novel of Colorado

by Lisa T. Bergren

  A woman, still in her nightdress and cap, covered her mouth in horror at Daniel’s words, but her husband emerged from their room, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and then led her toward the stairs. Others followed them. How many were left?

  Daniel made his way to the end of the hallway and began pounding on each door, shouting at the occupants to rise, make their way upstairs. He opened each one, surprising an elderly couple, but finding the rest mostly empty. He got to Gavin Knapp’s room and heard moaning inside. He quickly entered and found the man on the floor rolling back and forth, his head bright with blood. He frowned and picked up the man and placed him on his bunk again, tying a shirt across the top of him to keep him somewhat in place. He’d come back for him once he knew everyone else was out.

  The next two cabins produced two more men, one a merchant, another a banker he’d met at the captain’s table. Both had managed to don jackets and trousers, although neither wore shoes. They nodded at him in grim greeting and, with hands out to either side of the passageway to brace themselves, made their way to the stairs.

  Daniel hesitated at Moira’s door. Then, irritated with himself, knocked sharply. “Miss St. Clair! Moira! We need to get above decks!”

  “I cannot!” she called back. “I’m trapped. A trunk slid sideways and it’s jammed against the door.”

  Her tone denoted fear, but not panic. “Shove, Moira. With your shoulder. You must get it clear.”

  Another wave hit, making the ship groan, as if every plank wished to crack in half. Daniel crashed against the door across the hall from Moira’s, but it held. He looked down the hallway to the lantern, his eyes narrowing in concern as it was again at nearly a forty-five degree angle.

  “Daniel!” Moira called. “Daniel!”

  “I’m here! When the ship rights itself, get away from the door!”

  “All right!”

  They seemed to be hanging on the edge of this giant wave for a terribly long time. How big were the swells? But then they were past it, coming down the far side, and Daniel used the momentum of the shift to crash to the other side, shoulder first, breaking through the top of the thin wall of her cabin door. He peered inside, trying to see her in the deep shadows. “Moira?”

  “Here!” she called, and suddenly he could see her slender fingers reaching for his. He grabbed hold and, going to his knees, pulled her up and through the hole. The wave released them and they crashed across the hallway. He held on tight to the woman, fearful she would be hurt, but then found he was fighting for breath.

  “Daniel?” she edged off him and to his side. “Daniel?”

  He turned toward her, noting her pretty wide eyes were now under the eave of a furrowed brow. Heavens, she was a sight. Mass of blonde curls about her shoulders. White nightdress with soft ruffles at the neck. An angel. So like—

  The boat rocked again and he grabbed hold of her forearm and braced himself against the far hallway wall, easing them both across the way. “We have to get out of here, Moira. Go, up the stairs to the parlor. If we capsize, being down here will be our doom.”

  “I want to stay with you,” she said, suddenly a frightened little girl in a grown woman’s body.

  “No, I have to go and get Gavin. He’s been hurt.”

  “Gavin? Let me help.”

  “No!” he said sharply. He pointed down the hall. “Go! Now!”

  She stared back at him a moment, fury making her defiant, then she turned and made her way in the direction he had pointed. Daniel watched her for a long moment, then turned to get Gavin.

  Moira sank down into a corner, knees before her chest, and looked around in terror. Women screamed with each new wave, and men grunted or groaned. Light from the few lamps in the room cast eerie shadows across them all and glittered on the stream of water that leaked from under the door and across the parlor floor.

  A man outside shrieked and then a massive wave hit, sending many of them tumbling down to the other side of the room. Moira clung to the deck doorway, where water was pouring in from all sides. Would it hold? Or would the very sea soon pour in upon them, filling the ship until it sank to the bottom? Water sprayed downward, drenching her, and the ship hung for so long, at such a terrible angle, she feared it was the moment of demise.

  What had happened to the sailor who had called out before the wave hit? Was he gone? Overboard, drifting, calling, helpless?

  Alone. Mama, I’m so alone. It pierced her, the thought, stole her breath. I don’t want to die alone. She wished her mother was here now, huddled with her, cradling her head to her chest.

  You’re not alone, Moira.

  I am. I need to get to someone. Someone who can save me … or die with me.

  The ship groaned and creaked, sounding as if it might break in two, and then slowly rocked back. Moira used the momentum to stand again and move as quickly down the stairs as possible before the next wave hit. In seconds, she was down in the sleeping quarters. But it was terribly dark.

  “Daniel! Gavin!” she called. “Daniel!”

  Water dripped down from above from every hole and crevice between the planks. How much water had they taken on? She was drenched and cold. Were the men underwater? Trapped?

  “Daniel!” she cried, making her way forward, hands out to keep her from crashing into either wall. “Gavin!”

  Daniel swung partway into the hallway then, lantern in one hand, Gavin to his side. For but a portion of a moment, Daniel’s eyes locked with hers, intense, as if he was silently communicating with her. He was angry, furious, frustrated, but conversely glad to see her, glad she was all right. She could see all that in his eyes. Moira held her breath, waiting for him to speak again to her, speak without words. “I told you to stay above, Moira,” he ground out, breaking their reverie. “If we go over, I don’t want you to—”

  But then the momentum of a smaller wave brought both men fully into the hall, side by side, and it was Gavin who captured her attention. Gavin’s arm was stretched across Daniel’s back and blood flooded down his handsome face. He lifted his head and grinned, staring at her. “Do my eyes deceive me? Look, Adams, the storm has brought us the most beautiful mermaid of all. Heavens, Moira, if a stage director could capture you, like this, there would be no end to that opera’s production.”

  “Shush, Gavin,” she said, making her way to them. The passageway was too narrow to help them, to slide under Gavin’s other arm, but she waited until they were near. She lifted a trembling hand to push back a shock of wet blond hair from Gavin’s brow, studying the gash.

  He took her hand and kissed it. “I’ll be all right, beautiful. We only have to survive this storm and we’ll have a tale to tell, won’t we?”

  She glanced at Daniel, but he was already moving his eyes from her and hauling Gavin forward.

  Apparently, he had nothing left to say to her, spoken or unspoken.

  “Keep your eyes open for phantom ships,” William said lowly.

  “No pirate would dare attack us,” Nic retorted. But still he ran his fingers over the hilt of his revolver, tucked into the back of his waistband. The Falkland Islands were rumored to be rife with pirates, intent on capturing any merchant daring to round the Cape Horn en route to the West Coast of America or onward to the Far East. He couldn’t blame them, really. This was a solid trade route. The Mirabella held a wealth of her own in the hold.

  “The British privateers keep most of them at bay, but word has it the brigands favor fog such as this.”

  “Nothing but the ghost stories of idle sailors.” Nic raised his fingers and widened his eyes, feigning fear a moment, then letting out a scoffing sound. “It makes no sense. If we can’t see where we’re going, how would they find us to attack?”

  William pursed his lips and lowered his voice. “They say they know these waters as a blind man knows his own street. They’re able to sail sightless.”

  “But if they were sailing, they’d be dead in the water in this soup,” Nic retorted. “We would have to assume
they were powered by steam, as are we. And we’d hear their approach.”

  William narrowed his eyes, barely covering a grin, and straightened his jacket. “Would we? Or would our own steam engines block the sound of their approach?” He clapped him on the shoulder as he departed. “Don’t let them kill you if they come.”

  Nic resumed his pacing along his portion of the steam clipper’s deck. This was the first time the captain had elected to fire up the steam engines, since a steady wind had accompanied them from Uruguay on. But here by the islands the wind had abruptly stopped, an odd occurrence this time of year. It had set all the sailors on edge. The engine made a terrible racket, and they missed the soothing rush of wind and water.

  Nic didn’t care one way or another. He only wished for them to return to eating up the miles that lay between him and his life. His life … what was that? Where would he go? What would he do with his time? How would he make money? He leaned against the rail and stared into the dense fog, the passing ship sending it swirling into forms that would make many a sailor believe in ghosts. He shivered, but forced himself to remain where he was. He had to admit that while he missed the release of the ring, it was a relief to not be constantly healing. Life aboard ship was strengthening new muscles, and once his hands healed from that first encounter with splicing ropes, he had had no other injuries.

  He rolled his left shoulder, feeling the familiar ache of an old boxing blow there. By the time his father was twenty-seven, he had taken over the helm of St. Clair Press and seen Nic born. He was settled, a success. Happy, at peace. Why couldn’t Nic find the path that would take him to such a position in life? These last years had been a relief—the new towns, new women, new fights an escape, a diversion. But standing here, preparing to round the Horn and make their way toward North America again, Nic thought he felt much the same when he stood on the bookshop’s stairs for the last time in Colorado Springs. He’d experienced much, but little had changed inside. Would life always feel unsettled for him? Would he always have this constant need for something else inside? What food would fill him, what liquor would ease him, what woman would soothe him? And why couldn’t he discover it?

  Chapter 7

  By the pale hours of the morning, the seas eased, like a spent monster at last taking slow, steady breaths. The weary passengers fell asleep against walls in the parlor, huddled together—depending on one another to sound an alarm in case the monster regained its fury—and they’d secured Gavin and another injured man to two settees, tying them down with long strips of old cloth to keep them from rolling off after they’d dressed their wounds.

  Gavin was sitting up a couple hours later, complaining of a headache, but jesting with Moira and others around him, when the captain announced they were clear of any further danger, and they could all return to their cabins. Daniel rose to go, without looking Moira’s way.

  “Daniel,” Gavin called.

  The man stopped in the doorway and then looked over his shoulder. He was plainly weary, as they all were, but Moira wondered what else was behind the sorrow in his eyes.

  “Daniel, thank you for getting me—and Moira—up here,” Gavin said. “We are indebted.”

  Moira shifted under the inference of Gavin’s statement—that they were a couple—and watched as Daniel looked from Gavin to her and back again. He gave him a slow nod and then disappeared into the hallway.

  “We’re all indebted to him,” said a man to Moira’s right. Another woman murmured her agreement.

  Moira thought back to the dark cabin, being trapped, and what might have happened if the ship had indeed capsized.

  “My men will have your door repaired in a quarter hour, Miss St. Clair,” said the captain, patting her shoulder in a fatherly way.

  “Thank you,” she murmured. But inside, she trembled. Entering that cabin, and closing the door behind her, would take an act of courage in itself. Her eyes shifted to the empty hall doorway and she found herself wishing—

  “Will you be quite all right, Moira?” Gavin asked, slipping his warm hand beneath hers. “You must’ve been terrified.”

  “Oh, I’ll fare all right, I’m certain. I’m more alarmed over you. Are you certain your head is quite all right?”

  He smiled and knocked on the other side of his head, the side that wasn’t injured. “Hard as rock, this one. I’ll be up for ballroom dancing on the morrow. Care to take a turn?” He grinned and she couldn’t avoid matching his smile. He was so charming, even in the midst of trauma.

  “I’d be delighted, Gavin.” And in that moment, she could see herself in his arms, gliding across a parquet floor. The image of being on shore, in her finery, at his side, restored her confidence, focus, and she rose, shoving thoughts of Daniel to the back of her mind. “Will you be so kind as to escort me to my cabin?”

  “Indeed,” he said, rising slowly. He straightened his shirt and offered his arm.

  “Should you be taking my arm instead?”

  “Most likely,” he said with a small laugh. “Most likely.”

  Nic thought he had his sea legs, thought himself utterly comfortable atop the lanyards, until the Mirabella attempted to round the Cape Horn. After three days of fighting thirty-foot swells, the steam engine quit, and the crew was called upon to lash sails, unfurl sails, and lash them again in the midst of forty-knot winds and driving wind so hard it stung a man’s cheek as it landed. Weary sailors began to make mistakes, and men fell to the boards again and again as the waves washed across the deck.

  Two were washed overboard that morning. One had lost his footing and then was washed over the rail. While he clung there, his mate tried to pull him in. Another wave, a monster, came and pushed them both into the frigid seas. Nic had watched it happen from across the deck, as if it were a dream. He could barely see between the rain and the wave spray streaming over his eyes. But he had seen the men, struggling there. And then the wave. And then the empty deck.

  He’d rushed over, intent on tossing the sailors a line, but all he could see was dark, roiling seas, as if she had sucked the men under immediately, giving them no chance to call for aid, no hope. He was so stunned by the sight, another wave took him by surprise. He was only glad that he had been clinging to ropes, rather than the slick rail, when it came.

  Nic followed William up the ropes as the first mate called, a bare whisper over the whistling wind, asking for a second sail. He was obviously trying to stabilize the ship’s progress, aid her in exiting this storm rather than languishing in its eye, where the storm would slowly, methodically tear the Mirabella apart. And yet it was a delicate dance, for if there was too much sail aloft, with this much wind and such odd swells, she could list too far, too fast for the crew to right her. They’d end up capsized, and Nic was sure, no matter how hard he could swim, eventually, the seas would drag him down too. He’d disappear, just as his mates had disappeared that morning.

  The ship crested a giant wave and then heaved to her starboard side. Above him, William shouted as he turned in the air, following the ship’s progress. He held on to one rope with his left hand, but then he was spinning, his legs flayed out, the rope arcing farther. His body slammed into a mast and he lost hold, slipping several feet, before gaining his grip again. He swung back toward the ropes where Nic clung. “Here! William, give me your hand!” Nic screamed above the wind.

  William reached for him as he neared, but their fingertips only barely touched before the ship swayed again and his friend was swinging back toward the mast. He rammed into it, lost hold of the rope, and fell to the deck, twenty feet below. Nic lost sight of him as another wave washed over the deck and the whole ship tilted, threatening to capsize. Had the bilge pump failed? Weren’t they riding lower in the water now, plowing through waves rather than sliding over them? Or were the waves simply growing larger?

  “Belay the order! Belay the order for second sail!” called a man from beneath him on the nets. The wind had increased to such a keening wail that they could no longer hear ca
ptain or mate from the bridge. They were down to passing along orders. He looked up to the three sailors ahead of him, two already clinging to the second lanyard, high above. “Belay the order!” he screamed. “Belay it!”

  The man ahead of him nodded and appeared to shout to the two up top, but Nic could hear none of it. He took a step down, pleased to be heading toward relative safety. Up on the higher lanyards, in seas like this, sailors talked of being “shaken loose like a monkey out of a tree.” He glanced through the holes of the net as he climbed and at last saw William, cradling his knee, his face contorted in pain. But then there was another wave.

  “Dear God!” Nic screamed at the sky. “Enough! It is enough!”

  He paused a moment, as if hoping his furious words might be heard by the Almighty, but only the continued sounds of wind and wave greeted him. No sudden calm. No beam of light from between parted clouds. He laughed at his foolishness, tasting the salt of the sea on his tongue. After all, he’d sworn off God years before, when “the good Lord” had seen fit to take one brother after another, and then his sister and mother. Why would God listen to him now?

  “Fine!” he shouted upward. “Let me have it! You’ve never held back before!”

  “St. Clair!” shouted a man above him. “Move! Go!”

  Nic glanced from the black skies, still streaming with rain and wind, to the men above him. He was blocking the way.

  “You want us all to meet our death?” shouted the man. “Go!”

  Nic hesitated and then mechanically moved down the ropes. Did he want to die? Was he really ready to die? Disappear beneath the waves this night? Never see his sisters again? He shook his head, as if there were water in his ears and he couldn’t hear himself think. He reached bottom, and the other crewmen passed him by, the first angrily shoving him aside. But Nic just stepped to his left, one fist full of net in case another wave came, as he stared at the deck. Men were striving to keep their feet, stay alive, while the sea seemed intent upon taking them down.