A Scandal to Remember (29 page)

“Please,” he groaned against her ear, his breath ragged and hoarse from shouting orders over the wind, but gentle compared to the rough strength of his hands. She could feel the weight and length of his arousal pressing into her, making heat and something that had to be want pool low in her belly, and between her legs. “For pity’s sake, Jane, please stay. Because I cannot afford to worry about you on top of everything else. I will not be able to do my job when all I can think is that I want you safe. Damn your eyes”—he kissed her lids to give lie to the oath—“for once stop trying to manage everything, and do as you’re told. If you have an ounce of pity in you, do this for me.”

And as if he knew he had said too much, and not enough all at the same time, he kissed her so hard she felt the jolt all the way to her toes.

Then he slammed his way out of the stern cabin until his footfalls were drowned out by the louder noise of the rain streaming onto the open deck in the waist.

And with that she let go of her pride and slid down the wall to the floor. And was left to contemplate the sight of the monstrous-looking gray-green waves of water that seemed to rise up above the stern gallery windows as if they were about to swallow
Tenacious
whole. Jonah inside the whale.

Chapter Seventeen

There was no respite. The wind picked up another knot if anything, and the amount of icy sleet pouring down upon them was nearly as great as the amount of water pouring through the bow. And it became more and more apparent that they would make it out of the tempest with their lives, only if every man jack of them pulled together and did their jobs.

And if the damn breastworks held.

If the carpenter and the men’s incessant work to keep the Pacific Ocean from pouring in through the seams at a rate faster than it could be pumped out was working.

Dance was about to make another trip below, to measure the state of things with his own eyes, when Able Simmons stepped up instead.

“I’ll go. You’re needed here.”

“Thank you, Mr. Simmons.” And he had rather keep an eye on the patched foremast, which showed signs of weakening as a result of the incessant strain from the standing rigging of the weakened bowsprit. Though made up of many different, individual component pieces, the ship was only as strong as her weakest part, because it was all tied together into a cohesive whole.

And no sooner had he thought it than a great cracking sound rent the frozen air, and the whole of the foremast gave way in a splinter of pine. A welter of twisted lines, backstays and halyards, collapsed forward, crashing and tangling with the bowsprit, and carrying it down into the ravenous, clawing waves.

There was no time to even curse. “All hands! Clear away! Get an ax, man,” he screamed at a sailor running in the opposite direction, and had to physically shove the man toward the tools locker. “Clear it off. Cut away. Cut away!”

He was at the rail himself, chopping his way through the tangle of fallen rigging, mentally unraveling it like a skein, trying to find the salient line to cut first, to clear the weight dragging over the port forequarter, and making the ship lurch to larboard so that she was taking the pounding of the waves full abeam, pushing them relentlessly into the wall of water on the sides of the troughs.

The pounding rhythm of the axes matched the pounding of his heart, and the relentless pummel of the rain. His arms ached, and still there was more to be done. “Flanaghan, see what you can do to take another reef in the main and mizzen courses and topsails. But send only your best, most experienced men. And tell them to go handsomely.”

But the reports started coming in fast and furious.

Ransome came to the quarterdeck at a run, with a look like nothing Dance had ever seen before—wild-eyed and almost as frightened as an infant midshipman and not a twenty-year veteran. “Captain. She’s taking on more water than we can pump. The men are in it up to their waists.”

Where was Simmons?

“She’s settling heavy in the bow,” Ransome pleaded. “There’s nothing more can be done.”

Dance wouldn’t believe it. His gaze went immediately to the helmsmen who were all but wrestling the wheel to keep the vessel on course. “Mr. Whitely?”

The sailing master looked older than all his years. “Wallowing like a stuck pig, sir. She’s going.”

So she was.

For a moment his brain wouldn’t believe it. But the cold truth of the matter was that his ship was going down.

Jane.

No. He had more than eighty other souls to think of before Jane Burke—she was safe in his cabin. He had to do what was right for all of them.

But still he could not stop himself. “Send word to Punch to go to the captain’s cabin. Mr. Lawrence, keep them clearing away as much as you can. Make preparations to abandon ship—handsomely, quietly—so we can get the davits working, and at least two boats in the water before I call all hands to abandon ship.”

He wanted to be sure before he gave the order. He wanted to walk from one end of the ship to the other, looking and taking full account. He wanted to see for himself, and count each man, from Able Simmons in the bows, to the last of the midshipmen working like dogs on the orlop.

Heels clattered on the ladders as the men streamed upward past him, going in the other direction. Down across the waist he went, and down to the berth deck where the floors were awash with a thin but steady steam of water. And farther down, to the orlop platform where the water was up to his knees before he had even reached the bottom of the ladder.

And where Able Simmons was crawling through the wash toward him on hands and knees, with blood streaming from a ghastly gash across the right side of his skull.

“Able!” Dance hauled him up, and slung the lieutenant’s arm across his shoulders. “You there,” he called upward to the first man he saw. “Mr. Simmons is injured. Get him to Mr. Denman.”

“No,” Simmons croaked. “Not injured. Struck. There was a claw—a lever—thrown down in the fore peak. Someone had gone at the bows with it.” He strained to get the words out. “Pulled out all the stops and plugs”—he was gasping as his strength failed, and his breathing grew labored—“and caulking that the carpenter had put in. Someone deliberately”—another passing breath—“damaged the hull.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck all.

Someone of his crew was deliberately trying to sink his ship. Deliberately trying to kill a superior officer by coshing him over the head, and leaving him to drown at the bottom of the hull. Rage boiled through his blood, making his voice dark with seething anger. “Who?”

“Couldn’t— From behind—” Simmons slumped heavily against Dance’s chest, out cold from the deadly combination of cold, blood loss, and the blow to his head.

The rage ripping through Dance’s chest was such that he was sure he was going to kill the next man who so much as crossed him. Devil take him, but he wanted it to be Ransome. Only Ransome had the bloody, mutinous disrespect to strike a superior officer—hadn’t he almost done so the first day Dance had come aboard? And only Ransome had the strength to do such a savagely efficient job of it.

Dance dragged Simmons up the ladder to the berth deck, where he found Denman and his assistants carrying up his boxes of medical supplies. Jack paused, but behind the surgeon the three other naturalists hustled up the aft ladder.

“He’ll have to be carried to the boat,” Denman judged with one finger at the pulse on Simmons’s neck. “I’ve sent everything that could be carried up already. Is there really nothing more that can be done?”

The deck slid precipitously to larboard, and a wave of frigid water spewed down upon them from the open companionway.

“Nothing.” Damn it to hell.

There was really nothing left for Dance to do but gather his necessary things—compass, sextant, log, and Jane—and pray to a God he had long since stopped believing to see them through it safely.

*   *   *

Jane could not do as he asked. Perhaps the habit of obedience had gone out of her, or perhaps she was too tired, taut with exhaustion and the terrible brittle tension of worry, to sit still. And not even the incessant rain could drown out the noises—the creaks and moans of the ship’s timbers as she strained and fought against the wind and waves, and the desperate shouted orders and frantic calls from the men.

She could not sit, but neither could she stand—the ship’s movements were so fitful, and the deck seemed to slant downward to larboard. Jane braced herself between the stanchion and the batten wall, and waited, though she knew not for what.

And then she knew. She heard Dance’s voice through the canvas-covered vent in the ceiling above, low but forceful above the wail of the storm. “—give the order to abandon ship.”

Abandon ship. Jane jerked to her feet with the sluggish surge of fear and prickling energy, and the necessity to do something, anything, other than stand there waiting for someone to come and get her. She was J. E. Burke, the conchologist, a scientist and a woman of learning and skill. She was not some drooping damsel. She was not helpless.

She went to the doorway, and found it empty—the sentry had already abandoned his position. And so would she. But the sight of the streaming cold rain and the dark gray water looming outside the stern gallery windows had her heading down to the wardroom to retrieve her hat and cloak. They would at least afford her some protection against the violent weather.

The servant Manning was coming out of the wardroom with Sir Richard, the Reverend Phelps, and Mr. Parkhurst right behind.

“Miss Burke, we must go,” said Sir Richard. “We must go up.” His urgent concern and the jittery state of his own fear was evident in his strained voice.

But the naturalists already had their coats and hats. “Yes, I’m coming,” she said as she brushed past them. “I’ll be right behind you.” She did not wait for their say-so, but lunged into her cuddy, to snatch her cloak and hat off the peg on the wall.

Her eyes fell on her sea trunk. It would be the work of a moment to take a few things—some of the foodstuffs she had kept in her personal store. They were only God knew where in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and very far away from any hope of rescue. They would need every crumb of food they could take.

She threw back the lid to search for the small tin of biscuits and the wheel of hard cheese, along with the dried fruit and nuts she had purchased only weeks ago in the sunny market at Recife.

How long ago that seemed.

But the lamp over the wardroom table was swinging wildly to and fro, and she could not see as well as she would like in order to find the small cotton sack to stuff the foodstuffs into.

The lamplight flickered once more, and then at once the whole of the wardroom was plunged into darkness. “Manning?” she called to still the stab of uneasiness that pierced the roaring black silence.

But there was no answer, and when she turned to grope her way to the door of her cuddy, she found it locked.

Her door was locked. From the outside.

She rattled the handle harder, and then harder still, as disbelief and shock rattled and echoed through her like a clap of thunder.

“Manning.” Jane pounded upon the door and then the dividing wall. “Manning!”

Nothing.

Jane fought against the urge to scream. She settled for yelling at the top of her lungs. “Open this door. Please. Manning!” She pounded the flat of her palms against the walls. “Help me. Please.” Her voice trailed off into a pitiful howl. “Dance!”

*   *   *

Dance was the last one off the deck. He had left the quarterdeck only to venture to his cabin for Jane, his box of instruments, and his logbook. He took the latter two from his locked sea chest, where he had stored them as a precaution after Jane’s allegations concerning Ransome and the ransacking of their cabins. But such things hardly mattered now. He jammed the logbook tightly inside his coat. He wasted a few precious moments looking for Captain Muckross’s logs, which he had left out on the table, where he had been studying them, but which were now nowhere to be found.

And neither was Jane.

Punch would have taken her up already. He could rely upon Punch, bless his ginger beard.

“Miss Burke?” the one-legged steward echoed Dance’s query, while he tried to hustle him out the door, shoving his sea cloak into his hands, and taking up the box of instruments. “Already up, I should imagine.”

“You didn’t take her?”

“Already gone, when I came in. She’s a clever girl, that lass. We’ll find her at the boats.”

Dance followed him up to the rail, but he could not but stop, and take one last lingering look around, knowing it would be on his watch and upon his head that the ship had gone down, despite all his work and personal expense to patch up the leaking hull.

All to no avail.

But he had gotten everyone safely off—even injured Lieutenant Simmons, and broken-armed Flanaghan.

But it was still a defeat—his captaincy had not even lasted a fortnight.
Tenacious
was reduced to the large cutter, two workboats, and the captain’s gig crammed with eighty-four men and five naturalists.

But he counted only four. Where was she? Where was Jane?

He pushed the rain out of his eyes, and scanned the four boats. “Count heads, Mr. Ransome.” Dance felt like he was screeching to be heard above the shriek of the wind and the pummeling din of the rain against the water. “Keep those boats together. Lash those lanterns high so they can be seen,” he ordered Morris in the stern of the smaller gig. “I don’t want to lose anyone now.”

“All accounted for, Mr. Dance.” Mr. Ransome stood in the stern of the small gig, with men Dance recognized as loyal to the bosun. He couldn’t like the sight of so many of Ransome’s cronies crowded together—it boded ill—but he would see to a better distribution of the men as soon as he found …

The naturalists were parsed out two in the cutter, and two in one of the workboats, where Denman was hunched over Simmons, trying to shelter the injured man, and wrap a bandage around his head. Damn, but they had their work cut out for them to find their way in such a storm, and keep such a badly wounded man alive.