The Pirate Captain (107 page)

“How bad is it?” she asked of Millbridge, straining for all the nonchalance she could manage.

“None so bad,” he said judiciously. The seamed face was immobile and of little guidance. “Water’s only knee-deep at the waist and the spars are still standing.”

She looked upward at the deck overhead, uneasy at the thought of such waves washing just on the other side of those planks.

“We ain’t been pooped…waves overtaking the stern,” he explained semi-patiently to her puzzled look. “And I heard the Cap’n laugh a bit ago.”

“Daft he is,” put in Harrier, with significance.

“Charmed,” Millbridge countered solemnly. “And we’ll all have the benefit for it.”

As the injured filed in, she was kept abreast of Nathan’s well-being through their reports. “Cross-braced…,” “double-rigged…,” “relief-tackled…,” “spliced and knotted…”: she had no idea as to the meaning. The wonderment mixed with the graveness with which the deeds were reported were indicative of the import.

The clang of the watch bell was barely discernible over the howl of the storm, and yet sufficient to stir the men from their sleep and to “show a leg.” No one desired Hodder to come looking, nor be seen as a slacker. The relieved watch came down, half-drowned and exhausted. Some headed straight away for their hammocks, collapsing with an audible groan. The remainder perched on the guns or wherever they might. Rain and seawater dripping from their clothes, they huddled over the cups of half-warm coffee, tea, or tepid portable soup and ship’s biscuit, served by Kirkland and Millbridge. Hollow-eyed, their spirits were high, not a worried face among them.

And the noise…always, the noise!

At one point, Cate thought the storm to be easing, and said as much to Hallchurch—Mr. Mole, she had first christened him—as she strapped his broken collarbone, thinking it to be a good sign.

“Not if it backth on ye.” Hallchurch’s ominous warning came through horrifically bucked teeth and a severe lisp. “Just as bad, if not worsth, but from the opposhite direction. The seath all ahoo…” Shuddering, the rest was left to her imagination.

A galvanic crack of thunder made everyone jump. A marrow-penetrating charge, like a massive frisson, shot through her, while simultaneous explosions came from directly overhead. All eyes were fixed upward, wondering what the hell had happened, why the rush of feet and cries of alarm. Every downward tilt of the capering ship filled Cate with a rising panic that they were sinking, every lee lurch feeling like it was about to bowl over. Everyone was still deep in wonderment when three more men stumbled in. All larbolin forecastlemen, they were severely shaken and their hands burned.

Mr. Heap sat round-eyed and stunned, responding in vague monosyllables, and only if spoken to. At one point he turned his head into the light. Like most f’c’stlemen, his pride was his pigtail, long and tarred, but it was no more. He was singed bald.

“Sparked and went up like a goddamned torch, beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” reported Fouts, one of his mates. “The sod woulda been naught but glowin’ cinder had the Cap’n not doused ’im.”

Heap’s freshly denuded skull was livid red in the semi-dim, the sharp tang of burned hair, and a lesser of urine, stirring at his every move.

“Glowin’ like a babe’s bum,” snickered Fouts.

“Might never grow back, neither,” said Hughes, one eye closed in speculation.

“What happened?” Cate asked as she examined Heap.

“Lightning bolt hit the larboard kedge,” said Hughes in restrained awe. “Set off
Lucifer
and
Beelzebub
to boot.”

“Damn near blew
Bloody Bess
clean off her carriage,” Fouts added.

Cate smiled faintly at the affection for a cannon, so tenderly named.

“Thought the Almighty was sendin’ me a signal,” said Heap. His blistered hand shook violently as he reached for a cup proffered by Millbridge.

“After all the drinkin’ and blasphemin’, ain’t the Lord gonna be comin’ after you,” said Hallchurch.

“Ain’t nothin’ that damned ugly allowed in Heaven,” added Seymour. His senses finally had congealed enough to follow the conversation.

“Tossed Cheeves over,” Owens announced over his cup, as flat-voiced as if asking for someone to pass the bread barge. His shoulder moved in a half-shrug at Cate’s aghast. “T’weren’t enough o’ him left for services.”

All the men fell quiet. Those manning the forecastle tended to be most seasoned seamen aboard, and were a tight-knit, proud group, and severely felt the loss of a mate. Cheeves was given his moment of silence then, with an unspoken pledge that a more official memorial would be held at a more opportune time. Cheeves was sure to be remembered fondly at the next dispensing of grog, and for many months to come.

With rum liberally applied to all patients, and patients resting as comfortably as could be expected, Cate judged it a good time to resupply her blood box. Nearly all the bandages and splints were gone, the carron oil, too. The burn dressing could be mixed up readily enough—half limewater and half sweet oil, shaken well—but the middle of a storm was no time to attempt it. Honey, vinegar, or just fresh lard would serve well—sometimes better. All of which could be found in the galley. Kirkland would either have what she needed, or as keeper of the keys to the stores, could get it for her. And so she struck off.

Groping through the lightless ’tween deck was like finding one’s way through an underground cave. Cate knew the ship well enough, but navigation was rendered nigh impossible by the total darkness and wildly pitching floor. Any landmarks she might have relied upon had either been moved for the storm, or blocked by hammocks. The lamp she carried had long died, either guttered out or doused by the steady drip of water from overhead. With no flint, she clutched it anyway, if for no other reason than security, and the slim hope of light sometime in the future.

After colliding with several hammocks, eliciting rude remarks from the occupants, bumping into two guns, and tripping on the training tackle of a third, she found what she hoped was the aft bulkhead. The ship took a violent lurch and she had the sense of flying through the air. Landing hard, she lay in a crumpled heap, gasping for the wind knocked out of her. The ship tilted anew and she began to slide, discovering then that she had been lying on the bulkhead. Cate lay with a spinning head, not only from the collision, but the pain of still trying to draw a breath. She groped with one hand, and thought she might be on the floor. Unable to trust her battered senses, she considered remaining there until the storm passed, in spite of the risk of being trampled in the dark.

“Cate!”

A bobbing light broke the darkness and came steadily toward her.

“Cate! Cate!”

Nathan’s gruff voice rose over the racket of the storm. Each cry grew more urgent, verging on panic, as he cast about with the lamp. It was a prayer answered, proof Providence, or whatever deity, watched over her.

“Cate!”

“Here,” she called in a thin wheeze.

He sped to her. Lifting the lantern over her, he slumped with relief.

“Goddammit to bloody hell! You weren’t there. What the hell are you doing here?”

“They were hurt,” was all she could manage.

“
Tachh
!”

Rainwater dripping from every aspect, it was unclear if he understood or even gave a damn as to her excuse. Her muddled head allowed her to vaguely wonder if he was more annoyed at having to search for her, or that she had disobeyed orders. Swearing and mouthing very unflattering references, he hauled her, floundering, up from the floor and propelled her toward the companionway. Nathan bolstered her when she staggered or slid as they climbed, flashes of lightning from the cabin above and Nathan’s lantern lighted the way topside.

“Stay here or I’ll lash you to that mizzenmast,” he said, once they were in the cabin.

Given his mood, it was a credible threat.

Nathan saw her concern and smiled. He patted the mast, and then clapped a startlingly warm hand on her shoulder with considerably less affection. “No worries, luv! Neither I or this ol’ girl are ready to wait upon Jones and his Locker anytime soon.”

Wet to the marrow, bright red-rimmed eyes, braced against the sickening pitch, half-hoarse from shouting over wind and water, and she believed him. He brushed her cheek with a kiss, his lips hot against her chilled skin.

The lamp’s small flicker faded as Nathan trundled down the stairs, and she was alone again.

Standing in the middle of the room, Cate avoided looking toward the sweep of the gallery windows. In the darting flashes of lightning, it was necessary to look up to see the wave crests. It was too easy to imagine them bursting through—the dreaded “pooped,” as represented by Millbridge.
Merdering Mary
and
Widower
strained at their lashings. If they were to break loose, it would mean a near half-ton of iron careening about. Lingering anywhere in the salon was less than appealing.

Cate made a halting path to the sleeping quarters and her bunk. There she lay, braced by both feet and hands to keep from being tossed out. In spite of those precautions, a violent lee lurch pitched her out. She landed in a rib-jarring heap where bulkhead and floor met, and there she remained. Fine sheets of water sloshed back and forth across the planks, soaking her clothing and the quilt in which she was cocooned.

Thirst and hunger gnawed. Exhaustion being an unfailing sleep potion, at last she slept.

###

Cate was jerked awake by a commotion at the cabin door. Its loudness and air of urgency brought her upright from the floor. Through the howl of the storm, she heard the heavy scrape of the cabin door being unbolted. As she sped into the salon, it crashed open. A burst of seawater broke over the coaming, carrying Towers, lantern on high. Bazzi and Squidge were directly behind him, staggering under the weight of Nathan, slung by the shoulders between them. Pryce came tight on their heels, more grim than stern. All were grim, for that matter, alarmingly so.

“Avast! Away, you! Get your goddamned bloody hands off me, you cod-faced, motherless bastards. I’ll have every one of you sons o’ bitches hocked and heaved before the night’s out! I’m fine. Off, I say! I’m fine…!” Nathan growled as the small, sodden parade half-dragged him toward the sleeping berth.

Shivering from the blast of cold air, Cate followed. At the bedside, Nathan was to his feet. He batted the two men away as one would an annoying insect. A puddle of water growing at his feet, he swayed precariously, while struggling to focus on her. Once her face was found, he broke into a beatific smile.

“’ello, luv!”

His eyes rolled back and he toppled backwards onto the bed. He landed with a cry one would have expected from someone landing on the deck, not a mattress. She thought him to be drunk—an extreme curiosity, for he never drank while on watch—until she touched him.

“He’s burning up!”

“Aye.” Pryce glared with the irritability of someone who had just suffered a severe scare. “A wave damn near carried ’im away. Found ’im tangled in the mizzen chains, we did. If it hadn’t been fer them…”

He allowed her to mind finished the unspoken: overboard, lost at sea. At night, in such savage seas, there would be no finding him.

It was a shock and a puzzle. Nathan was like a cat on deck; never a wrong foot set, nor even caught by an abrupt lee lurch that sent others scrabbling for a handhold. He seemed to possess a second sense regarding oncoming waves, never taking one unprepared. She had seen him walk the rails and yards like most would stroll the Sunday church aisle.

“But what…?” Cate looked at Nathan as she set to pulling off his water-logged boots, trying to comprehend what malady could have struck him with such sudden force. He flailed in a feeble attempt to rise, and cried out again, cursing and clutching his right hand.

The light caught the pinprick brightness in Nathan’s eyes that only came with fever, the very brightness she had seen just a few hours before, when he had come to check on her. She had thought it to be excitement of the storm, the heat of his touch due to the coldness of the room.

Damned fool!

Squidge, Bazzi, and Towers filed out. Millbridge hung at the door, while Cate undressed Nathan the rest of the way. The sensation spurred him into sudden amorousness. Murmuring severely slurred street slang and vulgarities, groped at her cleavage, crying out in pain every time his hand was jostled.

“He’s raving,” said Millbridge, stepping in to help.

“So it would seem,” Cate said, ducking another assault from Nathan’s searching tongue.

She stripped Nathan down, each item making a wet
splat!
when it hit the floor. While Cate tucked up Nathan in the quilt, Millbridge snatched up the sodden mass and took it away. She began to bid him to hang the clothes before the galley fires, but then recalled those were long cold.

Nathan fell quiet, his breath now reduced to short bursts. Cate sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand. It lay like a hot coal in her palm, bright red in the dim light of the horn lamp. Swollen to the point of looking like a bladder blown full of air, the fingers were like sausages. She drew out her knife and slit away the ragged binding, the very one she had begged to remove that morning, and several times before that. Guilt surged, but shifted quickly to anger: anger at him for refusing; a considerably larger dose reserved for herself for not having been more insistent.

The makeshift bandage had once been crusted with dried blood. The hours of rain had softened it, but it still required a firm tug in order to pull it free. Nathan moaned and jerked. Mumbling a curse, he settled once more. Once a mere slit, the edges of the wound were now curled back and oozed with a greenish-white pus. Her nose was met with a fetid smell. Infection, yes, she thought, sniffing delicately. Something worse? Not yet.

Initially, it had been relatively minor in the way of blade injuries: a clean slice across the back of Nathan’s hand, nowhere near deep enough to consider sewing. She had suggested a sticky plaster, but Nathan had literally laughed at her. The last time she had seen it was on the road from Lady Bart’s, after reopening during the fight with Harte. Nathan had waved her brusquely away and bound it with a strip of cloth.