Voyage of Ice (13 page)

The door was locked tight. “Stand back! I'm going to bust down the door!” I hung the lantern overhead. Grasping the chain, I swung back and hit the door as hard as I could. Wood splintered.

“Hurry!”

Again I hit the door. Again. Swinging the chain was about as easy as swinging an anchor. Again. Again. Finally, with a crack, the door splintered in half. I ripped it away with my bare hands, amazed at my strength.

Elizabeth squeezed through the opening. She wore her hooded reindeer coat belted round the waist, deerskin trousers, and sealskin boots. Her eyes were bloodshot and watery. Her chin trembled. “I'm ready.”

I wanted to hug her but instead grabbed the lantern and her mittened hand. “Follow me!” I stumbled up the companionway, tripping over my chain once, twice, hearing her ragged breathing behind me.

Out we staggered onto the sloping deck. Cold hit me like a sledgehammer, knocking my breath away. I was sopping wet, bareheaded—my woolen cap and sou'wester lost in the hold. I held up the lantern. Chain rattled. Needles of thick snow stabbed my skin, swirled round the light like thousands of moths, hissing against the glass, stinging my eyes so that I had to squint to see. My breath came out in foggy gasps. From what I could tell, the
Sea Hawk
was deserted—masts down like felled trees, rigging tangled like a spider's web.

“Hello!” I shouted. “Anyone here?”

At first, all I heard was the howl of the wind, the groan of timber, and the ringing of the ship's bell as waves crashed in and over the ship. Then I heard a vague shouting.

“Over here!” Elizabeth tugged me down the slanted deck. “Hurry!”

We picked our way over rigging and broken spars and then peered over the rail.

Sheltered somewhat from the storm, a whaleboat lay in the lee of the wrecked
Sea Hawk.
In the center of the boat, clinging to the rope that kept it from being swept away, sat Dexter. His face was white and pinched with cold. When he saw us, a spark lit his eyes and his mouth flew open. “Jerusalem crickets, Nick! I thought you were dead! Miss Elizabeth—I thought you were with the captain!”

“Where are the others?” Elizabeth asked. “Where's my father?”

“Everyone's abandoned ship, took off in other whaleboats. Nick, I swear I looked for you everywhere. Where were you?”

“I'll explain later.”

“Well, what are you two standing there for? I was about to shove off. Hurry! Climb down before it's too late!”

Elizabeth hesitated only a second before she clambered over the side. It was tricky, what with the wind screaming and the whaleboat rocking about like a seesaw. She finished the last few feet by falling flat on her back in the whaleboat.

“C'mon, Nick, hurry!” cried Dexter.

Just then, I heard a cry. A moan. It was human and coming from amidships. A chill raced over my scalp.
By fire, someone else is aboard!
“Hang on a while longer, Dex! I hear someone! I'll be right back!”

“Wait—Nick! Don't …”

I stumbled in the direction of the cry, the blasted chain knocking the devil out of my bruised shins. There! I heard it again! “Where are you?” I hollered.

Then I saw movement. I held up my lantern, squinting
through the blinding snow, the smell of burning whale oil sharp in my nose. Pinned under the mainmast was a man. Blood seeped out of his mouth. His lips moved. A hand twitched.

It was Captain Thorndike.

I stopped short.

Part of me wanted to run back to Elizabeth and Dexter. To pretend I'd never seen Thorndike pinned beneath the mast. I hated Thorndike. He deserved to die.

But part of me wouldn't let him die.

I don't know how long I stood there—only seconds, likely— but when Thorndike opened his eyes and I glimpsed the raw pain, the defeat, my hatred vanished.
Hatred.
One second it was there; the next second, gone. Swallowed in the heart of a storm.

I hurried over and set down the lantern.

He glanced at me, at the chain still dangling from my wrists. “Go,” he said, his voice raspy and weak. “Take Elizabeth and go while you can. Leave me.”

I didn't answer. There wasn't time. I looped my chain round the back of my neck so it wouldn't clank against my shins, wishing I'd thought of it earlier, grabbed him under the arms, and pulled. The mast wasn't pinning him entirely, for it rested on the bulwarks, leaving a gap above the deck. I pulled again, straining, blood surging in my head.

“Go! 'Tis an order! Save Elizabeth. I beg of ye. Go after the
Merimont
while there's time. The
Sea Hawk
won't stay afloat much longer.”

I tried for a better grip. He stiffened with pain. Again I pulled. Nothing. He was wedged too tight. For a moment I considered leaving him as he'd ordered, knowing that Elizabeth and Dexter were waiting for me, that they'd never leave without me. But no sooner did I think it than I was pulling again.

Suddenly, the
Sea Hawk
lurched to starboard. The mainmast groaned and shifted. Thorndike was free!

“C'mon, sir! Can you walk?”

Hanging on to the mainmast, Thorndike staggered to his feet. He winced and gasped.

I placed his arm round my shoulder, grabbed my lantern, and off we went, stumbling over rigging and debris. A crate of potatoes. A cage filled with straw, feed, and dead chickens. A bro-ken oar. A scrap of sail. Blubber. Ninny, struggling against her rope, hooves scrabbling on the slanted deck, bleating, looking at me with frantic eyes.

Thorndike and I peered over the rail.

Dexter and Elizabeth sat in the boat, facing us. Elizabeth gasped, “Father! I—I thought you were gone!” Her voice broke. “I—I thought you'd left me!”

“Hurry!” cried Dexter. “Captain Thorndike, sir, climb down! Quickly!”

While Thorndike climbed down, I scrambled back to fetch Ninny. “Good girl. Steady now, steady. Don't be frightened.” By the time I returned with the goat, Thorndike was in the boat. After lowering the lantern, I slung Ninny over my shoulders and down I went. She struggled, blasting my face with hot goat breath and poking my cheek with a horn. Finally, with a grunt, a bleat, and a clatter of chain and hooves, we were in. Elizabeth took hold of Ninny.

“Grab an oar, Nick, let's go!” Dexter cast off our moorings, and we were off. “Pull! Pull!”

No sooner were we away than the
Sea Hawk
lurched and groaned. With a sigh, her bell still ringing, she rolled over and sank beneath the waves.

e checked the compass, set our sail, and headed southwest.

Thorndike unlocked my shackles. I was about to toss the chain overboard when he stopped me. “Keep it. We might need it.” He collapsed in the center of the boat, saying nothing more, clenching his jaw whenever he trimmed the sail. Elizabeth cast worried looks at her father but had no time to tend to him, for she had tied Ninny to the mast and now bailed frantically.

Dexter sat at the bow holding the lantern, looking ahead, snow swirling round him in gusts. I sat at the stern oper-ating the tiller according to Dexter's com-mands. “Ice four points off the starboard bow!” “Keep her off a point!” “Ease her!”

“Luff a little!” “Brace yourselves, here comes a big one!” “Steady as she goes!”

Captain Thorndike was injured—how badly I didn't know. And me—beneath my stiffened oilskins, my woolen clothes seemed turned to ice. The wind seeped through the seams, through the very fabric. I shivered violently, muscles rigid, eyes watering, face stinging and numb, as salt spray lashed me.

I thought my teeth would freeze off as the wind continued to blast out of the northwest. The night thickened, the black, heavy sky seeming within reach of my fingers. Ice, ghostly and thick, coated the weather side of the boat, the rigging, the mast.

“I can only see a few feet, sir!” Dexter yelled over the scream of the wind. “We're sailing blind!”

Thorndike stirred and pointed south. “Put in to shore, Nicholas.”

“Sir?” My teeth chattered.

“The risk of stoving our boat is too great! We must stop for the night.”

Dexter gaped at him. “But the pack ice, sir. If it reaches us before we can sail through the channel, we'll be trapped. We've got to catch the
Merimont
! It's our only hope!”

Suddenly, our whaleboat bumped something hard. Dexter peered over the side, lantern in hand. “By fire, it's a ship's yard, sir! There's grommets, and a sail still attached.”

Elizabeth stopped bailing. “But why would a ship's yard be out here? We're too far from the
Sea Hawk
's wreckage for it to be hers.”

Thorndike looked at me, his face stricken. Again I saw the defeat in his eyes. “Put in to shore, Nicholas.”

Debris littered the beach, piled ten feet high. Timbers. Yards. Rope. Canvas, torn and ragged. Casks lying hither and yon, both broken and whole. A body, waterlogged and spongy white.

Elizabeth clamped a lace handkerchief over her mouth, eyes wide with horror.

Aye, it was wreckage. But not wreckage from the
Sea Hawk.
It was the
Merimont.

“She must have wrecked.” Dexter raised his lantern and looked out to sea. “Struck ice, probably.”

“Smashed to bits,” I said, my teeth clacking.

“Hello!” cried Thorndike. “Anybody here? Hello!” But no one answered. We were alone.

We unloaded the whaleboat and moored her as best we could to the debris. The whaleboat was too heavy for the four of us to drag onto the beach, Thorndike being injured, and me so freezing I couldn't grasp a rope.

We rolled the smaller casks up the black-pebbled beach, up and over snowy dunes, far away from the thundering waves. We set them upright in a tight rectangle, leaving a two-cask space on the lee for getting in and out. Over the top and sides of the casks we secured canvas, every scrap we could find, leaving one for the floor of our shelter. I thought I'd die before we finished. I kept falling. My hands couldn't grasp anything. Thorndike himself stumbled, falling to his knees, groaning.

Truly, we made a sorry spectacle.

We crawled into our shelter, the canvas beneath us stiff and crackling. While I drew my legs to my chest, shivering, Dexter opened the watertight lantern-keg that all whaleboats carried. Inside were matches, flint and steel, tinder, candles, tobacco, hard bread, and other such necessities.

Soon there was a fire going just inside the entrance to our shelter. Smoke wisped out the shelter and into the storm. Dexter tied Ninny outside near the fire with a half cask turned on its side as shelter; then he and Elizabeth left to find more firewood. Meanwhile, Thorndike collapsed at one end of our shelter,
wheezing, lips bubbling with blood. I pulled off my brogans and draped my socks over one of the casks to dry, setting my brogans beside the fire. Bare feet toward the flames, knees to my chin, I rubbed my hands together over the fire, my teeth chattering, my body shaking uncontrollably.

“Nicholas.”

At first I didn't hear him.

“Nicholas.”

“S-sir?”

Thorndike lay flat on his back. His coat had fallen away, and I saw the gleam of the pistol, orange in the firelight.

“Take care of Elizabeth,” Thorndike was saying, his teeth stained crimson.

“Sir?”

“Take care of Elizabeth. Please.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sail hard first thing in the morning. 'Tis your only chance.”

“But sir, you're coming with us.”

He moaned and turned away. For a long time he said nothing, just wheezing. I told him to come sit at the fire, to warm himself, but I don't think he heard me. Then, his voice a gurgling whisper beneath the storm, “She's lost….”

“Sir?” I said.

“I've failed … failed everyone. Should have gone down with her. Aye, should have gone down. It'd be done by now. Ah, Catharine! Catharine! To such depths have I sunk….” He sighed, and my face warmed, for I knew I wasn't meant to hear this.

Finally, to my relief, Dexter and Elizabeth returned.

“Here.” To my surprise, Dexter handed me my reindeer fur.

“Sorry, but I took it.” He grinned. “Thought you were dead, you know. Thought I was on my own.”

I tried to smile, but my face wouldn't let me. “I—I'm glad you took it. I'd want you to have it.”