The Sea Hawk (30 page)

"It is the lighthouse. Gaston has checked the chart four times," Raul answered, a wide smile cutting across his weathered face.

Simone ran up the steps leading to the main deck, taking them two at a time. Once topside she moved quickly to the wheel deck, smiling at Gaston who was manning the wheel as she picked up her spyglass. Scanning the horizon, she could see the coastline in the distance and the flashing light that marked its location.

"There are many light beacons along this coast,
Faucon
," Gaston said.

"You have checked the charts. Is this the place?"

"I believe it is."

Smiling at the young man, she said, "You have become my best navigator, Gaston. If this is not the exact location for which we search, it will be close enough. We must prepare."

Le Faucon
became a flurry of activity in the fading light. Turning the ship toward shore and lowering the largest sails to slow their approach, Simone piloted the vessel as crew members called out the water's depth. Satisfied they could get no closer, they set anchor. The horses were led through a cargo door in the side of the ship and into the water. Simone was grateful for calm water as the long boats guided the animals to shore. Two trips later, the crewmen's families and goods were ferried safely ashore.

Simone and a single crewman returned to
Le Faucon
for the final time. As they reached the ship, Simone grabbed the cargo netting and looked down at Raul. "As soon as I drop my personal belongings to you, row away from the ship. Light your lantern and I will swim to you."

"I can wait for you here,
Faucon
," Raul protested.

"No. If I don't join you in an hour, return to shore and make sure the animals are cared for." The resolute look in her eyes warned Raul to obey without further protest.

Simone climbed onto the main deck and walked to her cabin. She removed her journal from the desk, wrapping it in paper she waxed during their voyage and stuffed the pewter sculpture Julia had given her into a small bag along with her clothing. Glancing quickly around, she saw nothing else she wanted. It would all become a part of her past, just as
Le Faucon
would.

As soon as she dropped her bag down to Raul and watched him row away, she struck a match and lit the wick on the lantern hanging outside her cabin door, using it to guide her into the decks below.
Le Faucon
was a well-built ship and she wasn't sure how much damage it would take to send her to the bottom of the sea. She and her crew had worked three days moving four cannons into the belly of the ship and setting them up. She stopped on the cannon deck and grabbed a bag of powder to fire the cannons one last time.

As she made her way toward the keel, well below the water line, she smelled the ever-present mold and mildew permeating the wooden hull. Two cannon were already set to fire at a downward angle through the left side of the hull, two for the right. She would have to work quickly before water pouring in through the damaged hull became deep enough to make the powder too damp to ignite. She filled quills with gunpowder, setting one as a fuse in each cannon. She lit a patch of wadding on a spark rod and took a deep breath, glancing in the direction of the stairway out of the keel. Standing away from the recoil of the first cannon, she lit the fuse. Immediately, the cannon roared, the cannonball shattering the wooden hull. She reached out to brace her body as the ship shuddered its protests and water began rising swiftly around her feet. Stepping back again, she touched the fuse of the second cannon with the spark. The cannon recoiled and turned slightly as the wooden wheels slipped in the ankle-deep sea water. It slammed back against Simone's leg, knocking her off her feet. As she struggled to stand in the rapidly rising water, she estimated she wouldn't have time to fire the final two cannons before the water overtook them and waded through thigh deep water toward the steps, pulling herself up and out of the filling compartment.

As the weight of the water began to pull the bottom of the ship down, she ran up the three upper decks and finally emerged onto the main deck. The ship creaked and groaned pitifully, but the sea around her remained calm. The sails had been dropped while they unloaded the Arabians and it occurred to her she would never hear the sound of sail cloth snapping in a good breeze again. She swung a leg over the deck railing and onto the netting as the vessel shifted and began to list. Halfway down the netting, she turned and dove away from the ship, hoping the masts wouldn't snap and fall in her direction. Stroking under water as quickly as she could, she popped out of the water and stopped. Watching as
Le Faucon
began to sink, bemoaning its fate, tears began trickling down her cheeks. Treading water as she watched, she finally turned away and began swimming toward Raul's lantern. Even without Julia, this would be her new home.

Chapter Twenty-five

JULIA HAD ONLY been back in her own home two weeks. She finally convinced her parents she would be fine alone, in fact, she preferred it that way. Now as she rambled around in the empty home, the time dragged by. She wanted to talk to someone about what happened to her, about the places she saw, about the rogue who stole her heart, but knew no one would believe it had been anything more than an elaborate fantasy concocted in the mind of a woman desperately clinging to life. As the evenings began to come earlier, Julia walked along the light sandy beach on Tybee Island. In each small inlet she wondered if Simone had returned safely to Martinique. If she had been real, was she suffering her loss as much as Julia was. Occasionally a light breeze tousled her hair as she lowered her head to walk along the beach, hearing the swell and break of the water as it rolled up to shore over the gentle slope of the Continental Shelf.

She strolled up a small grassy hillock and shoved her hands in her jacket pocket as she looked out over the water. Marsh grasses swayed gently and everything seemed peaceful. Sitting on the edge of the hillock, Julia stretched her legs out in front of her and inhaled the salty fragrance of the sea air escorting the waves inland. Since her return to Tybee Island she hadn't been able to get Simone out of her mind. Her logical mind told her nothing could have happened. It defied all the laws of nature she believed in as a scientist. But her heart refused to accept the logic her mind was demanding. She refused to believe the love she always searched for might have been nothing more than a figment of her imagination. If she closed her eyes and listened to her inner voice, she could hear Simone's softly accented voice carried by the breeze around her and feel her touch when the same breezes shifted the fabric of her clothing against her skin. Her stomach clenched thinking of the reality only she had known.

JULIA WALKED INTO the Atlantic Marine Institute again nearly a month after her return to Tybee Island. She pulled her chair closer to her desk, but hesitated before powering up the new computer in front of her. Frankie promised every word concerning the
Peach
was loaded on the laptop, replacing what she lost when the
Discovery
was hijacked.

Data skimmed up the monitor, and Julia smiled. Frankie had uploaded descriptions and pictures of everything salvaged from the wreck in her absence. She clicked on each itemized entry, her eyes scanning quickly through the pictures. As she glanced at and passed by one picture, she suddenly stopped and backed the page up, staring at a slide that made her heart stop. Side-by-side before and after pictures revealed an item tagged RGP # 78. The description listed it as a pewter tankard, origin unknown. It was hard to identify in the condition in which it was recovered, but the cleaned version clearly showed an ornately engraved "M' on one side. Although age and salt water had changed its appearance, Julia buried her face in her hands after seeing the familiar tankard.

"Julia? Are you all right?" Frankie's concerned voice asked from the office doorway. "Maybe you came back too soon."

Wiping her eyes, Julia looked up at the frowning face. "No, I'm fine, Frankie. You have all done a wonderful job with the recovery."

"There's a lot more there. The bow of the ship is still partially buried, but you can see the shots of the masthead near the end of the slides," Frankie said, the excitement building in her voice as she talked about the
Peach
.

"What does it look like?" Julia asked, closing her eyes.

"It appears to be an eagle with its wings swept back and seeming to look up to the sky. Pretty cool looking, but a lot of ships from that time period had something similar."

"You and Damian have done a lot of work. Really good work."

"Did you check out the pictures we took of the hull?"

"Which ones?" Julia asked.

Frankie squatted next to Julia's desk and moved the computer cursor to a file labeled
Questions
. "Not a very scientific label, but we couldn't think of anything else at the time," she chuckled. She clicked the file open and a series of pictures began to open.

"What do you think?" Frankie asked.

Julia squinted at a close-up picture taken of the ship's hull. "Is this below the water line?"

"Abso-freakin'-lutely. And the hole was made from
inside
the ship." Frankie's voice was brimming with excitement, the kind that came from discovering something no one had before. "We think the ship was either sabotaged or deliberately sunk by the crew, maybe to avoid being captured. Check this one out," she said clicking on another slide. "I thought Damian was going to kill himself getting this shot."

"What the hell..." Julia started.

"It's probably against the rules of excavation, but Damian cleared away a depression in the sediment and somehow managed to squeeze into it. Isn't it a great shot! You can clearly see the directionality of the wood surrounding the hole. It's definitely out."

Julia stared at the picture.
Was it possible? Had Simone really existed? Did she sail to Georgia and scuttle her own ship?

"You might want to come down to the lab and take a peak at the cannon we just finished partially cleaning. It's the last one you recovered before you were...before you disappeared," Frankie said.

Julia clicked out of the folder and returned to the first set of artifact slides. Her stomach was in knots and she gripped the mouse to prevent her shaking hand from showing. "Where did you find this tankard?" she asked as she looked back at the computer monitor.

Frankie smiled when she saw it. "I found it by accident a few yards from the main vessel. Something caught my eye during an ascent and I had to go back to investigate. It's a beauty, isn't it?"

"Yes. Very beautiful," Julia murmured. "I'd like to see it as well."

"Then let's get to the lab, woman."

JULIA ENTERED THE lab and pulled on a work smock and gloves before she joined Frankie at a work table. Obviously a lot of time-consuming work had been performed on the cannon since the last time she saw it. It was still beautiful, a powerful reminder of a time long past.

"There's an engraved plate near the breach," Frankie said.

Reaching out, Julie placed both hands lightly on the barrel and swung a lighted magnifying glass over the breach. She blinked away the burning sensation of tears forming as she ran her gloved fingers over the pitted plate. It was Louis Rochat's cannon! The one that never performed correctly. The one Simone kept to remind her of what happened to her at Rochat's hands. As she stared at the cannon lying in its cushioned cradle, Julia suddenly hated it. It represented a terrible time in her lover's life and, even as a historian and scientist, she knew she would never be able to look at it the same way again. The cannon and tankard were not part of an elaborate hallucination. Simone's ship was resting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean no more than twenty miles from Julia's home.

"We think the name of the ship is engraved on the plate," Frankie said, breaking into Julia's thoughts. "
Le Faucon de Mer
. The Sea Hawk, if my French isn't too rusty."

"Yes. Yes it is," Julia managed to murmur as she ran her hand over the plate. Glancing at Frankie she said, "I mean it probably is."

"Damian's researching for some mention of the ship, but hasn't come up with anything definitive yet." Frankie shrugged. "We might never know for sure."

But Julia did know. "I want to make a dive at the site," she said suddenly. "Today."

"ARE YOU SURE you're up for this?" Frankie asked as Julia tightened the straps holding her tanks across her chest. "It's been what, three months since your last dive."

"I haven't forgotten how. My experience doesn't mean I've lost my love for the sea or my work, Frankie," Julia said. "My article about the excavation is almost complete, but a couple of new shots of the ship now that more of it has been uncovered can't hurt. Time for me to get back on my horse and ride."

Julia took a deep breath as she and Frankie began their dive to the
Peach
. A detailed grid marked the location of everything remaining on the ocean floor. If her article resulted in more money being allotted to the project, the Institute might resume salvaging the remaining cannons, but there wasn't much else of interest left. When the hulk of the
Peach
came into view, Julia paused in her descent to gaze at it. She hadn't been to the site in nearly three months, but nothing seemed to have changed other than the exposed figurehead gracing the bow of the wreckage. She swam slowly along the starboard side of the hull, knowing in her heart the shipwreck was
Le Faucon de Mer
. In her mind's eye she pictured what it once looked like. Frankie separated from her to move down the port side. When Julia reached the newly exposed bow of the
Peach
she unhooked an underwater camera from her utility belt. She took pictures from both sides before moving away from the bow to take a picture from the front. As she looked through the viewfinder she nearly dropped the camera. Lowering it from her mask, she stared at the ship. Standing on the bow, Simone brought her hand up and held it out toward Julia. The gentle current moved her hair as if it were the wind. Julia squeezed her eyes shut tightly, afraid to open them. She felt overwhelming loss and sadness run through her and began to cry. She couldn't control the deep wracking sobs suddenly interfering with her breathing. She was in trouble, but couldn't stop. From out of nowhere Frankie was at her side. She shook Julia and pointed upward. Julia nodded and hung onto Frankie as they began their ascent. Looking at the
Peach
slipping away below her, she saw amber eyes following her. She vowed never to return to the ship again.