Voyage of Midnight (10 page)

At half past two in the morning, when all was securely battened, we left our anchorage. We’d gone no more than a quarter mile when a heavy rain began to fall and a lucky breeze blew from astern. We dared not set an awning for shelter, as we didn’t want anything flapping in the wind. So, sticky as molasses, I stood under the shelter of one of the spare boats hoisted high above, trying to see more than just vague shapes in the darkness.

At least the mosquitoes don’t pester us when it’s raining
, I thought, attempting to cheer myself up. At the same time, I realized I was a bit queasy.
And where’s that Pea Soup when I need him? I could use a bit of sailor’s biscuit to calm my stomach
.

A half hour passed …

An hour …

Rain pounded the boat above me, sluicing off the gunwales,
spattering the deck. Despite my shelter, I was drenched—at least from the waist down. I’d been caught in a downpour once in New Orleans, on my way back from a delivery clear across town. I’d opened the shop door, shivering. Bells jangled. Then Mrs. Gallagher was there, tut-tutting, whisking me upstairs, and drying my hair with a towel, meanwhile drawing me a bubbly bath that steamed the windows.

I miss you, Mrs. Gallagher
, I realized. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of the Gallaghers since embarking upon my voyage, but it
was
the first time I did so while an ache grew in my belly—quite apart from the usual sickness. Rather like a cold, heavy stone settling deep inside.

The sky rumbled.

The wind intensified.

I was thinking about corned beef and cabbage just like what Mrs. Gallagher often cooked—thinking I could actually smell it, taste it, perhaps—when suddenly a bone-jarring bolt of lightning ripped the sky asunder. And in that split second I saw a ship, almost abreast with the
Formidable
. And even after the light vanished, the images remained, seared onto my eyeballs. Our gunners, crouched like tigers beside the long guns. A young man aboard the American vessel, blond and mustached, staring open-mouthed at us. Hat upon his head. Rain pouring off the hat’s gunwales. The American warship no longer listing to its side, but level in the water. Gunports black and gaping. Sharpshooters positioned in the shrouds.

An earsplitting crack of thunder pounded the darkness that followed.

My hair stood on end.

Uncle screamed, “Blast them to hell!”

The
Formidable
discharged her cannon just as lightning
blazed and thunder roared. At the same time, musket balls punched the deck like hail. I dove for cover behind the mainmast, the blood surging to my head.

Beneath me, the hold erupted with banging and screams of terror. Again lightning flashed and thunder crackled. The air sizzled with a burning stench.

By the deuce, I’m about to be killed!

And suddenly Jonas was there, wheezing, a bottle of brandy in his hand. “They must’ve been waiting for us!”

In the next flash of light, to my horror, men leaped from the other vessel onto our ship. “They’re boarding us, Jonas! Do—do they hang us now or later?”

Jonas didn’t answer, instead tipping back his bottle and guzzling.

I closed my eyes and pressed back against the mainmast alongside Jonas, ignoring the splinters and dampness, the chills racing up my spine, the clatter of my teeth. In the darkness I heard the clash of cutlasses. A grunt. Pistols fired. Thunder crashed.

“Fire at will!” The timbers of the
Formidable
shook again.

Someone screamed in agony. I peered about the mainmast, swiping the rain from my eyes. In the thunderous flashes of light, I saw one of our crew clutching his belly. Crimson mushroomed on his shirt. He sank to his knees, then fell to his face. “One of our men is down!” I cried.

Except for his coughing and wheezing, Jonas didn’t move.

I shook him. “I said, one of our men is down! He could be dying!”

Jonas stirred. “Then what are you waiting for, you stupid boy? Go and fetch him. Do your duty.”

Me? Fetch him? Under enemy fire? But what if I’m hit?

These were my thoughts even as I shoved away from Jonas and dashed through the darkness toward where I’d last seen the wounded fellow. Forward, near the foremast.

Lightning branded the sky. In that instant my breath caught. A sword glittered in its sweep toward my neck. Behind the sword was a man, his face hard and murderous. I ducked and dropped to the deck just as darkness swallowed us, just as the sword swished through nothingness. I crawled away, knees thumping, water sloshing, hearing someone’s frightened panting and realizing it was my own.

Oh God! Save me!

Crawling, crawling, expecting at any second to have my head parted forever from my body, I bumped into something. Something warm, wet, and hairy. And with the next eerie flash, eyes stared out at me from a doughy face. Pale. Sightless. Dead.

It was the man I’d been after.

I stood, muscles tensed, wanting to run, shrieking, back to Jonas.

But at the next stroke of lightning, all thoughts of the dead man vanished. For I spied Pea Soup at the bow, dagger clamped between his teeth, climbing out onto the bowsprit. He glanced back. And in his eyes I saw it again.

It …

That dreadful, murderous hatred.

W
ith a clarity as searching as lightning, I knew there was only one reason Pea Soup would be crawling out on the bowsprit with a dagger.

Sabotage
.

No doubt he was off to sever the tow-line that stretched from the end of the jib-boom to the longboat. And if it was severed, the
Formidable
would be dead in the water. We’d be finished in minutes.

I understood this in the time it took me to leap over the dead man and dart to the bowsprit, heart pounding.

I had to stop him.

Lightning flashed every couple of seconds, illuminating Pea Soup in an eerie light display.

Already he was several feet out over the
water, crawling like a caterpillar atop the gigantic wooden spar that thrust outward and upward from the bow of the
Formidable
like a sword.

Light …

Darkness …

Light …

Darkness …

“Pea Soup!”

He hesitated, then looked back, the shock of discovery registering on his face.

“Pea Soup! I order you to return! Now!”

Light …

Darkness …

“Now! Do you hear me? I—I demand you obey me! I’m your master!” I heard my voice, shrill, hysterical almost, punctuated by earsplitting cracks of thunder.

Narrowed, hate-filled eyes glared back at me. Rain pounded and ran in rivulets down both our faces. Then Pea Soup took the dagger from his mouth, turned away from me, and continued to crawl into the darkness.

I peered at the water below, remembering what lurked beneath.

But I’d no choice. Not if I wished to save Uncle. Not if I wished to save myself and the
Formidable
.

Taking a shaky breath, I climbed out on the bowsprit. My hands grasped and pulled, slipping on the smooth, wet surface. Water streamed into my eyes. And every few seconds, total darkness surrounded me, except for the images seared into my brain as with a hot iron.

Images of a jutting bowsprit. Pea Soup in front of me, naked except for a loincloth, black as tar, inching along, dagger in hand.
The myriad of ropes and lines arced beneath me, sweeping like evil grins—footropes, sheets, and stays, attached at both ends. Creek water, black with night, seeming to roil with shapes beneath. Dreadful, hungry shapes.

By the devil, whatever you do, Philip Arthur Higgins, don’t fall now
.

On I struggled.

Desperate, I took a conciliatory tone, though I knew he couldn’t understand a word. “Pea Soup, come back, please. I promise I’m not angry. And if I’ve ever done anything to hurt you, I’m sorry. Tell you what, I’ll give you some extra food—I will, really I will—if you’ll just turn round. All right, several extra portions. Cook’s got some fine jam. You can have bread and jam. Really, I swear I’m not angry. I’m not even angry that you’ve a knife. A gigantic, bloody knife. Just please,
please
, come back. Pea Soup, Pea Soup, don’t
do
this.”

And then he stopped. Or rather, he
was
stopped, by the tangle of spars, lines, and blocks, all coming together at the juncture of the bowsprit with the jibboom—the extra spar that stretched even farther from the ship, maybe forty feet, all told.

I caught his heel.

He kicked me away.

I inched forward and seized his ankle.

He grunted and flailed his leg, catching me in the teeth.

I let go, tasting blood.

Thunder cracked like a musket blast in my ear.

On he crawled.

No!

I lunged for him, grabbing both his ankles.

He kicked. And kicked.

He’s strong
, I realized.
Far stronger than me
.

And with that realization, a brilliant bolt of lightning dazzled my eyeballs and sizzled my spine, and Pea Soup bashed me in the nose with his foot.

Stars exploded.

Off the bowsprit I slid.

Down I went, heart lurching.

Flailing, screaming, I caught one of the arced ropes under the bowsprit with a hand. I dangled over the water. Indeed, there
were
shapes below. The water boiled with activity. I gasped. “Help me! Pea Soup, help me! For pity’s sake!”

Pea Soup peered down at me.

“Save me! Please! There are sharks in the water!”

And in the stark white light, his eyes hardened. As if they’d suddenly turned to stones.

Then he spoke, the first words I’d ever heard him say. His words, like a stab through my heart. Spoken through wickedly pointed teeth, each word seethed with hatred. “Tonight you will die!”

I saw the flash of steel an instant before he swiped the knife through the air, severing one end of my rope. At that very instant, three things happened. The
Formidable
shuddered with the firing of her long guns. Pea Soup lost his grip on the knife and it tumbled out of his hands as he bellowed with rage. And I plummeted down before I jerked to a stop, toes skimming the water, desperately clinging to what was left of the rope, wet hemp burning my hands.

I raised my legs, but not before something scraped my foot. Something rough and wet and alive.

“No!” I shrieked.

I don’t want to die! Not like this!

I looked up. Pea Soup had turned about and was crawling back toward the ship. Probably to fetch another knife.

“Help me! Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry! Pea Soup, don’t leave me! I’ll die! Blast it, Pea Soup,
help me!”

I begged and pleaded until Pea Soup was gone and my begging faded to weeping.

I was alone. Although a battle raged about me—men crying out, cutlasses singing, muskets firing, cannon blasting—I was alone.

I squeezed my eyes shut, panting, my heart jumping like a rabbit.

Jaws snapped beneath me.

Something splashed.

My arms began burning, quivering like harp strings. For a moment, a dreadful, awful moment, I thought of letting go, of giving up and letting the night—letting death, the sharks—just take me. All I’d have to do would be to release my hands.

Just let go
.

But in that instant I thought of Mrs. Gallagher, of her kind face. Of her saying,
Do you promise
, absolutely promise,
to come home and see us again, my little English boy? I promise
, I’d replied. And now I knew I’d do anything in the world to see her and Mr. Gallagher again.

I thought of my miserable life under Master Crump. I thought of my vow to make something of myself. To be like Uncle. To never be hungry again. I thought of the thin-lipped satisfaction Master Crump would feel if he knew I’d been devoured by sharks.

A strength born of resolve flowed through me.

Climb
, I ordered myself.
Climb, Philip Arthur Higgins!

And where moments before I’d have doubted my ability and my strength, indeed I climbed the rope. Amid the battle, sharks snapping beneath me, I climbed the rope like a born sailor.

After, I tumbled onto the deck, collapsing in a heap. I wanted
to put my face in my hands and cry, sob, weep, wail—do all sorts of unmanly things—but someone shook me by the shoulder. It was McGuire, the second mate. “Surgeon’s been looking for you. There’s wounded to attend to. Do your duty, he says to tell you.”

“You—you must find Pea Soup and place him in confinement. Immediately. And—and please don’t ask why.”

So, for the rest of that night, I did my duty. Long after we left the American vessel far behind. Long after every naval soldier or officer had been beaten back and either slain or forced overboard.

And as I did my duty—sawing, sewing, bandaging, covered with bodily fluids so wretched I thought I’d surely never eat again and surrounded by shrieks, thunder, and lightning—three thoughts kept running through my head.

Pea Soup hates me
.

Pea Soup wants me dead
.