Torn-missing 4 (5 page)

“Okay, they went on past,” Katherine whispered.
“There’s a group of them, going up to that door where the tracer was afraid to knock …”

She fell silent.

“What’s happening now?”

“They’re trying to decide who’s going to knock—wait, I think one of them just volunteered. …” She drew in a sharp breath. “No, they’re going to fight about it.”

It was maddening, lying there waiting for Katherine’s descriptions. Jonah sat up—his head woozy and throbbing—and peeked around the side of the barrel.

The fight seemed to be happening in slow motion. One man shoved another; a third man drew back his fist to punch the first. But the potential puncher seemed to have balance problems—just the action of moving his fist was enough to topple him over backward. He landed with a
thunk
on the deck and lay there blinking up at the sky, as if wondering what hit him.

Jonah choked back laughter.

“Jonah, shh, they’ll hear you,” Katherine hissed. “And get down, before someone sees you! The door’s opening.”

Jonah crouched down but kept his head up, watching.

The handful of sailors who hadn’t ended up flat on the ground were standing back from the door. They twisted their hands; they glanced nervously at one another.

The man closest to the door pulled out a gun.

“Um, JB?” Katherine whispered. “I know you said Jonah’s safe because his costume is bulletproof, but what about me? If that man shoots his gun over in this direction—”

“He’s not going to,” JB whispered back.

“Maybe you should crouch down behind the barrel a little more,” Jonah whispered.

Katherine hunkered down, almost on top of Jonah. Both of them peered around the barrel.

The door had swung all the way open now. A man stood in the doorway, calmly regarding the gun.

“So it’s come to this,” he said.

Jonah could see the gun shaking in the other man’s hand.

“M-master, you leave us no choice,” he said. “To avoid an icy grave we must sail for home now, whilst we can, whilst it still be summer.”

Summer?
Jonah thought.
This is summer?

“JB, are you sure we aren’t at the North Pole?” he muttered.

JB didn’t answer.

Neither did the “master” in the doorway.

“Bind his hands!” the man with the gun cried.

Two of the other sailors stepped forward with ropes.

The man standing in the doorway held his wrists out, as if he didn’t care what the others did.

“So the glory of discovery will be mine alone,” he said. “Long after you are dead and forgotten, people will praise my name as they sail the Hudson Passage!”

Katherine drove her elbow into Jonah’s back.

“That must be Henry Hudson!” she whispered.

“I’m not an idiot!” Jonah whispered back. He really wanted to ask,
Is there a Hudson Passage somewhere? Is he right?
But, well, he didn’t want to look like an idiot.

“Won’t be no ‘Hudson Passage,’” the man with the gun said. “We’re sailing for home.”

“’C-cause, you just want to drive us all to our deaths, looking for something that isn’t there,” one of the other men said.

He looked around at his buddies for agreement.

They nodded, and shuffled forward menacingly.

Hudson didn’t step back.

“You’ve lost your faith,” he said. “Now? Just when I’ve found out—” He broke off, and stared coldly out at the assembled men. “No, no, it’s not worth discussing with the faithless.”

Jonah couldn’t help being impressed that Hudson seemed so calm. Either he was crazy or really, really brave.

Or maybe he’s blind?
Jonah thought.
Doesn’t he see that gun?

The man with the gun lowered it.

“How could you have found out anything?” he asked. “We’ve been trapped in the ice since Monday. Trapped in ice in
June
!”

“I am a brilliant sea captain,” Hudson said airily. “I read the winds. I read the waves. I see things no other man could.”

Now the other men looked at each other nervously. Some in the back—the ones who’d fallen on the deck—were whispering together.

The man with the gun glared at the whisperers, then aimed the gun more precisely at Hudson.

“Do you see that you’re not the captain anymore?” he asked.

Hudson looked directly at him for the first time.

“I see that you will hang for mutiny,” he said. “You, and anyone who joins you.”

This set off more whispering.

“We’ll say you died a natural death,” the man with the gun said. “We’ll swear an oath together—nobody will speak the word
mutiny
. Nobody will ever know.”

Hudson’s head shot up.

“You’ll say you left me in the shallop,” he said. “At my request.”

“Shallop?”
Jonah whispered. “What’s that?”

“It’s the rowboat,” JB whispered back.” Or—kind of like one.”

“He’s
asking
to be put out in a rowboat?” Jonah asked. “In ice?”

“It beats being shot,” Katherine said in a shaky voice.

“Would you deny an old sea captain his last wish?” Hudson pressed.

Now the man with the gun stepped back to whisper with the others.

Jonah caught bits and pieces of the argument, because the sailors weren’t very good at keeping their voices low.

“But what if
we
need the shallop to go out fishing?” one sailor moaned.

“Will this make us more or less likely to hang?” another yelped.

Finally the man with the gun stepped back toward Hudson.

“Fine,” he said. “You get the shallop. And any man crazy enough to follow you.” He nudged Hudson’s chest with the gun. “We get to keep the food you’ve been hiding.”

“Wait—there’s not going to be any food in the rowboat, either?” Jonah asked.

“Jonah—shh!” JB hissed.

“Go get the others,” the man with the gun muttered to the sailors beside him. Two broke off from the group
and scurried down the stairs—Jonah had to admire the way they could walk so quickly even on the rolling ship.

A few minutes later the men reappeared, carrying or prodding along a small group of even more sick-looking sailors.

“Are those
corpses
?” Katherine asked. “Are they going to send Hudson out in a rowboat with a bunch of dead bodies?”

“No, they’re not dead … yet,” JB whispered grimly. “Just very, very close. Hudson’s going to be out in a rowboat in the ice with a bunch of dying sailors.”

Katherine sank down to the floor, sliding away from Jonah. She wasn’t trying to peek around the barrels anymore. She stared unseeingly at the dark wood of the cask before her.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Okay, sure, the sailors are mad at Henry Hudson because they’re ready to go home and he’s not. But those other guys are already dying. You don’t put dying people out in a rowboat in ice. You tuck them into bed and feed them, I don’t know, chicken noodle soup.”

“When no one’s seen a chicken since they left England more than a year ago?” JB asked her. “When every bite that crosses a dying man’s lips is food that the others can’t have? When every man on this ship is
already scared he’s going to starve to death?”

Jonah shivered. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or because JB’s words were so harsh. This ship was an awful place. It would be cold and brutal and nasty even if they weren’t floating through ice.

Jonah poked at John Hudson’s unconscious tracer.

“Hey, dude,” he whispered. “Don’t you want to wake up and be a hero? Fight back for your dad and all those dying sailors?”

But of course Jonah’s hand slipped right through the tracer.

Katherine turned her head toward her brother.

“Jonah?” she said. “Do you think—”

She broke off, because the sailors were screaming on the other side of the barrel now.

“Watch out!”

“No, no, don’t—”

“He’s got a sword!”

Jonah sprang up to watch.

“Stay out of sight!” JB ordered.

“Oh, sorry,” Jonah muttered, crouching slightly so his eyes would barely show above the top of the barrel. He expected JB to complain about that, too, but the Elucidator was silent.

Jonah eagerly turned his gaze toward Henry Hudson. Hudson had been talking a few moments ago about being an old sea captain, but maybe that was just a bluff. Maybe he was really youthful and athletic and agile—and good with a sword. Maybe he’d had one hidden in his sleeve. He could have used it to slash the ropes binding his wrists, then flicked the tip of the sword against the gun, swinging it out of the other man’s grasp. Stuff like that happened all the time in the movies. Jonah hoped he’d
sprung up in time to see some really fancy moves, like Henry Hudson spinning the gun around the tip of the sword a few times before flinging it out into the water.

But Henry Hudson was still standing quietly by the door, his wrists still tightly bound.

Only the man with the gun had moved. Rather than pointing the gun at Henry Hudson, he’d turned it, so he was now aiming at …

Jonah had to crane his neck and try to look around the mast.

A whole cluster of sailors was jumping around over by the stairs. Jonah saw a flash of sword, but he couldn’t tell who was holding it. One of the sailors on the edge turned around and yelled at the man with the gun.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! You’ll hit one of us!”

“Then stand back!” the man with the gun yelled.

“But he’s chasing us!”

The cluster of men scattered and re-formed, as the man with the sword lunged toward the others, and the others lunged toward him, trying to knock the sword out of his hands. This was nothing like a sword fight in a movie: The swordsman was clumsy and awkward, and the men around him were panicky and stupid, moving in a pack when they should have divided up.

Jonah remembered that he’d seen much better swordsmanship
in the fifteenth century, at the Battle of Bosworth.

He’d also seen swordsmen die.

He closed his eyes.

“Doesn’t he know he’s going to get shot?” Katherine fumed. “It’s like a game of rock-paper-scissors—guns beat swords, every time.”

“Not necessarily,” JB said softly. “Guns weren’t very accurate in 1611.”

“So that guy is afraid to shoot?” Katherine asked. “Afraid he’ll hit one of his friends?”

Jonah opened his eyes just a crack, to see that Katherine was pointing toward the man with the gun. Jonah followed her gesture—and then stared.

“Look at that!” he muttered.

Henry Hudson had stepped forward and put his hand against the gun—not to grab it, but to push it aside.

“My loyal mate, John King,” he called out.

Jonah craned his neck again to see across the deck. The man with the sword glanced up.

“Yes, Captain?” he said.

“Put down the sword,” Hudson said. “Come with me in the shallop, and we shall meet our glory away from these cowards.”

The swordsman, John King, stopped parrying and thrusting, but he kept a hold on the sword.

“By ‘meet our glory,’ you don’t mean dying, do you?” King asked suspiciously.

“No, no,” Hudson said, waving aside the question, as if death weren’t even a possibility. “I’m talking about the Northwest Passage. I know how to find it now.”

Northwest Passage?
Jonah thought. He had a vague memory of talking about that in some social studies class.
I would have paid a lot more attention if somebody had told me I was going to end up on Henry Hudson’s ship in Canada. Or what’s going to be Canada someday.

The sailors reacted as if Hudson had said he knew how to win the lottery, guaranteed. Some looked awed. Others were shaking their heads, rolling their eyes.

“He lies!” the man with the gun yelled. “Just like he’s lied all along! Do you want to spend another winter here? Do you want this to be your grave?”

He pointed out into fog, toward the dark water.

Even the sailors who’d looked amazed began to grumble and complain.

Like almost everyone else John King was watching Hudson and the man with the gun. One of the nearby sailors kicked King’s hand, sending the sword scuttling across the deck.

One of the other sailors instantly grabbed King’s arms and pinned them behind his back.

King struggled, then slumped helplessly when he couldn’t break the other sailor’s grip.

“To the shallop!” Hudson cried, raising his arm in the air. He fixed the man with the gun with a withering gaze. “You do not need to coerce me. I go of my own free will.”

Hudson marched forward, the others trailing him a bit uncertainly.

“If this is a mutiny, why does it seem like Henry Hudson is still in control?” Katherine whispered.

“In control?” Jonah whispered back. “He’s going to end up in a rowboat and his enemies are going to get the ship! With all the food!”

“But it seems like that’s what he wants,” Katherine said.

“Reverse psychology,” JB muttered. “He’s really good at it. Especially for someone who’s so bad at interpersonal relationships. Unless … Oh, no!
No!
It can’t be!”

“What?” Jonah and Katherine said together.

JB didn’t answer.

“JB?” Jonah said.

Still no answer.

On the other side of the ship Henry Hudson and John King were climbing into a small boat—the shallop. The mutineers were lifting the dying sailors in behind them. Probably someone would come looking for John Hudson in a few moments, to carry him to the shallop as well.
Jonah didn’t relish the thought of getting into a rowboat in icy water, but the sooner that happened, the sooner he could be done with 1611.
The sooner I can rescue Andrea. And get something to eat,
Jonah thought, grinning slightly. He looked down, thinking that JB would probably want him to make sure he mimicked the position of John Hudson’s tracer exactly.