Pirate Wolf Trilogy (103 page)

On board the
Endurance
, there was a
natural curiosity that prompted the crewmen to climb the shrouds
and peer down at the miserable occupant of the little boat. Some
were not yet convinced she was not a siren or a water witch sent to
place a curse on all their heads. They wanted to keep a sharp eye
on her lest she suddenly sprouted a long, scaly fish tail and a
head full of writhing snakes.

Others had more practical
reasons to worry, watch, and speculate. There remained the
lingering question of why and how she had avoided taking the fever.
Douglas Podd was amongst them and he wished his cohort, Nog Kelly,
was aboard; the crusty old tar from the
Iron Rose
knew more about medicine
and doctoring and would have known how to set the crew’s mind at
ease.

A third group simply went about their normal
routines and all but forgot Eva was there. They smoked their pipes
and repaired the sails or spliced new rigging lines, and ignored
all the fretting and gossiping.

Gabriel Dante found himself
part of all three factions at one point or another. He openly
mocked most superstitions, yet he was not one to deliberately cross
the path of a black cat or stare a blind man in the eye. He knew
the girl was human—quite a delicate, lovely human, in fact, for he
had seen her naked limbs and pale white body as she scrubbed it
down with the soap and camphor. Even so, he could not get the image
out of his mind of her emerging like a ghostly specter from the
rubble on board the
Eliza
Jane
, her shapeless white form enveloped
in smoke, her long blonde hair drifting wildly about her
shoulders.

He would be a fool if he did not have
concerns about the plague infecting his own crew. The umbilical
cable that stretched between the jolly boat and the ship was sixty
feet long, but was that long enough? Stubs had suggested towing her
to the nearest island and cutting her free, but that posed a whole
other series of questions and doubts. If she was still carrying the
fever, any island she stepped onto would potentially become
infected. Even if she was clean, a young and beautiful woman
stranded on an island would be helpless against natives or pirates
or four-legged predators.

With Eduardo working by his side, Gabriel
forced the problem of what to do with the girl to the back of his
mind. He started stripping the gaudy trimmings and tassels from the
great-cabin and when the lad asked what he should do with the small
mountain of gold trappings, Dante ordered him to simply toss them
over the stern rail, forgetting that some might rain down upon the
jolly boat. At one point, he went out onto the narrow balcony to
relieve himself and had his breeches open before he realized there
was a pair of rounded emerald eyes staring up at him.

After that, he found himself periodically
drawn to the gallery windows. He saw the girl emptying her belly
several times and ordered fewer tacking maneuvers, which reduced
their speed slightly but allowed for longer stretches when the
jolly boat could ride relatively smoothly in the center channel of
the wake. Stubs offered up the expected objections but Dante
ignored them.

As the last streaks of the sunset faded to
darkness, he was again at the gallery windows, his meal of steaming
hot mutton stew cooling on his desk. He could just make out the
blurred white bundle of blankets beneath the canvas canopy before
the sea and sky turned black. He was about to turn away when he saw
a flicker of sparks, then another as the girl attempted to strike
flint and light the shielded lantern that had been provided with
the rest of the supplies.

~~

Eva used the edge of the dagger to send a
small fountain of sparks over the tiny pile of dry tinder she had
built on a metal pan. Three, four times she struck the blade on the
flint before the bits of straw caught and she was able to coddle a
flame long enough to light the wick of a candle and place it inside
the horn-sided lantern. Immensely pleased with herself, she started
to draw the sides of the tented canvas sail closed to hoard the
light and meagre heat inside, but before she did so, she glanced up
and saw the dark silhouette of a man standing at the gallery
windows. That it was the brutishly ugly and battle-scarred captain,
she had no doubt, for she had caught him watching her several times
during the day.

Shivering, she closed the edges of the canvas
tight and curled up inside the nest of woollen blankets, and was
eventually lulled into an exhausted sleep by the sound of the water
rushing by an inch beneath the keel.

CHAPTER FIVE

The sea began to turn
choppy shortly before dawn. The previous day’s glorious blue sky
was obscured by a fast-moving ceiling of gray and green-bellied
clouds. Wind spun across the surface of the water, feathering the
crests of the whitecaps, sending sprays of mist as high as the
upper deck of the
Endurance
. The threat of the
impending squall had Dante clearing the decks and ensuring the guns
were securely lashed. As the heavy ship began to roll and dip with
the taller waves, the crew began to grumble that it was a sign. A
sure sign they had made the wrong choice in rescuing the witch-girl
from the death ship.

Sixty feet behind
the
Endurance
,
Eva was under the tented canvas, holding onto the gunwales for dear
life. Being towed through the wake of the massive ship had been
terrifying enough. Buffeted now with gusts of wind and spray as the
little wooden boat jumped from peak to trough had her clenching her
teeth so hard she feared they would snap off at the gums. The water
was ankle deep in the bottom and filling more with each wave that
flung spume over the side. In desperation, she had emptied a cask
of drinking water and was using it to bail, but a week without food
had seriously depleted her strength and she simply could not keep
up.

The camphor oil she had rubbed on her skin
and hair ran down into her eyes, stinging them so badly she could
not keep them open. The temperature of the air plunged and the cold
sucked the breath from her lungs. When the sheeting wall of rain
engulfed the little boat, she crawled back under the canvas and
prayed to a God who, she was all but certain now, had forsaken
her.

~~

Gabriel Dante stood with
his long legs braced apart and welcomed the sweet rain on his
battered face. He had ordered all the mainsails taken in so that
they would ride the squall using only the top sheets for stability.
In spite of having sailed many galleons under a prize flag, he was
never sure how one would behave in heavy winds, and the
Endurance
carried more
weight in armaments than most.

"I thank the devil we are nowhere near the
Dragon’s Teeth," he shouted to Stubs. "We'd be hard-pressed to keep
this sow from being gutted on the reef."

He said this through a flash of even white
teeth, grinning in the face of the storm. While he respected the
absolute power of the wind and the sea, he also drew strength from
its awesome might. Nature was the one thing man could not control
and must bow to whether a king or a common sailor. Twenty years
earlier it had been the storms in the English Channel that had
caused more damage to the fearsome Spanish Armada than the
undermanned, poorly armed ships of the English navy. Not a single
galleon or galleyass had been hulled by English shot, yet dozens
upon dozens had been crushed against rocks or swamped by
treacherous currents and enormous seas.

Few places on earth could boast storms more
savage, more destructive than those that formed in the tropical
waters of the Spanish Main. Hurricanes could level islands and wash
entire towns and villages into the sea. Ships weighing hundreds of
tons could be tossed about like a child’s toy in waves high enough
to block out the sky.

This was no hurricane, but a tropical squall
that could be equally sharp and vicious. Gabriel knew the sun would
be out an hour from now, and the rigging would be shedding water
droplets like diamonds, but at the moment the rain was falling in a
deluge and the decks were ankle deep in rushing water. Men who had
to be out in the open were clinging to anything solid to keep
themselves from being swept away.

Something white, flapping loose, caught
Gabriel's eye and he squinted into the blurring haze of rain. It
was a sheet of canvas half sucked through the rails that surrounded
the aftercastle. He looked up but could not see any yards that were
missing sails. He was about to dismiss it when a sudden thought
occurred and he ran to the rail and looked down over the ships
wake.

"Damn it all to hell!"

Stubs came up beside him and followed his
gaze. The cable attached to the jolly boat was pulled taut but the
boat at the end of the umbilical was twisting and careening through
the wash. The canvas Dante had seen had been torn free of its
lashings on the jolly boat and, through the sheets of rain, the two
men could see the girl curled tight against the stern, the belly of
the craft half-filled with water that would soon swamp the vessel
and drag it under.

Dante cursed again and vaulted over the rail
to the deck below. He shed his doublet and boots as he ran toward
the gangway. Stubs was a step behind, shouting for men to go below
and winch the boat closer. At the same time he snatched up a line
and tied it around Gabriel's waist, mumbling and spitting oaths
about drowning kittens.

Happily the galleon was not moving fast, so
that when Gabriel dove into the sea, he was sheltered from the
gusting wind until he swam out from behind the bulbous stern of the
ship. By then the jolly boat had been winched close enough for a
score of powerful strokes to bring him abreast. There was almost no
difference between the level of the sea and the level of water
inside the gig and he dared not risk trying to pull himself on
board. Instead he moved hand over hand along the side until he saw
the girl curled in the green seawater.

She looked dead already. Her skin was as
white as her shirt, her lips were blue. Her hair was fanned out in
wide, wet waves that tangled around his hand as he reached over the
side and grabbed her arm.

"Noooooo!" She screamed and jerked out of his
grasp. "Let me die! Just let me die! I can't save him! I tried, but
I can't save him!"

A wave slapped across the side of the boat
and Gabriel shook the seawater out of his eyes. He rose up and
grabbed at her arm again, this time putting all of his strength
into hauling her out of the boat and into the sea. The added weight
as he tipped the side to drag her out was enough to fill the
remaining inch of space and the jolly boat sank below the
surface.

The girl was coughing, choking, kicking. She
was covered in camphor oil and slippery as an eel. Her hair covered
his face in a yellow smear, blinding what little sight he had.
Once, she almost slipped out of his grasp, but he roared an oath to
Neptune and wrapped an arm under her neck, signaling with his free
hand for Stubs to pull them back on board. He felt the rope bite
into his waist and had to struggle to keep both their heads above
the waves. Halfway back to the gangway ladder, she stopped fighting
and went limp in his arms.

Stubs reeled them in hand over fist. Rain was
driving down like spikes and blurring the surface of the water, but
as Gabriel came closer to the hull, he coughed and spluttered an
order for Stubs to get himself clear. Fighting the sea and
maneuvering the girl's limp weight took an exhausting toll on his
battered muscles, but he caught the bottom rung of the ladder and
slung her over his shoulder, thankful Stubs and Rowly used the rope
to help haul him up the steep side of the ship.

He staggered over the last rung and spilled
his burden onto the deck. He unslung the rope from his waist and
swayed a moment on all fours. The lashmarks on his back were on
fire from the salt water, so much so he could barely catch his
breath. When he did, he glanced at the girl and noticed she had
still not moved, and there was water trickling from her lips.

"No you don't, goddamnit," he snarled,
hauling himself closer. He rolled her onto her side then did the
first thing that came to mind: he slapped her hard across the ass
to startle her back into breathing.

A second slap and a thump between her
shoulder blades was rewarded by choking sounds of salt water being
ejected from her lungs. Her hands groped empty air for a moment,
then spread flat on the deck as she coughed and gulped and vomited
sea water onto the planks.

Dante heaved himself upright, shaking water
out of his hair and eyes. What few men had ventured onto the deck
had moved well back and were alternately staring aghast at the
girl, then at their captain for bringing her on board.

As for the girl herself, the choking sounds
had stopped. She was still panting hard, trying to fight through
the burning sensation in her lungs and throat. Huge green eyes
searched the deck around her and came to an abrupt halt when she
saw Gabriel Dante waiting patiently for her to focus through the
rain.

"Can you stand?"

Her chin was shivering so hard he could hear
her teeth chattering as she tried to answer but failed.

Cursing again, he slipped his arms beneath
her knees and shoulders to scoop her off the deck, then carried her
through the hatch. He ducked down the wooden steps and went
straight to his cabin, shouting a warning ahead to any crewmen who
might be taking shelter in the companionway.

Inside the great-cabin, he looked for a place
to deposit the quivering burden and settled upon a chair near the
gallery windows.