“You look quite flushed, dear,” Percival noted, glancing at her over his shoulder, “don't worry too much about this storm. It’s par for the course in these waters.”
It was not.
Ester's misguided wish had been granted.
She had safely returned to her cabin when it overtook theSprinterand began to toss the ship as though it were matchwood. At first, they had laughed as they were lifted from their seats on their respective beds by the ship dropping away beneath them as it descended the trough of a wave. Then the violence that raged around them began to quell their laughter. Helen dashed to Ester's side after a wave battered the ship and knocked her pugnaciously against the wall. She whimpered and Ester hugged her tightly, pushing herself back along her bed by her heels to wedge herself and her sister against the bulkhead that separated her cabin from Julian's.
Any notion of the passage of time was lost. The sun was dimmed by black storm clouds and the ship bucked and thrashed like a wild colt. Water began seeping into the cabin in several places, oozing between the planks as though it were a living thing seeking entry. Ester flinched from the icy coldness and the all-pervading smell of staleness that came with it. Helen began to cry and Ester bit her lip to keep her own tears at bay.
Outside came the sound of orders being barked by the captain at his officers, and of frightened men, men desperate to beat the storm by the strength of their arms alone. The cabin had nowindows and Ester was glad of it. If she could see waves that were the size that her senses told her they must be, by the frantic motions of the ship, she would lose her mind in terror.
She screamed as the door opened suddenly, slamming against the wall. Julian stood there, hair wild about his face and blood seeping from a wound on his right temple. He staggered as the ship pitched and caught himself on the edge of the bed.
“I have been on deck. We are entering the Straits at a dangerous speed because of this blasted storm!” he shouted over the raging tumult. “It will be a short passage and then we should be able to find a sheltered harbor on the coast.”
“What happened to you?” Ester asked.
“The ship threw me against the wall and I was caught unprepared. It is nothing. You have the right of it. Wedge yourself into a corner to counter the worst of the motion.”
Speechless with terror, Helen looked up from beneath disheveled hair and instinctively reached out to Julian with one arm, keeping the other firmly wrapped around Ester's waist. Ester offered her free arm and Julian clambered into the narrow space, putting his arms around both women and trying to shelter them from the violent movement of the storm with his body. Ester buried her face in his chest, holding tightly to her sister, feeling the wetness of Helen's tears against her bosom.
Then came a crack that sounded as if the heavens had split apart to announce the apocalypse. The ship lurched to one sideso violently that Julian was hurled across the cabin. He released Ester and Helen and somehow, Ester managed to cling to the bulkhead, holding Helen tightly. The motion had stopped but the deck was slanting to one side. Julian stood, taking stock.
“I think we have run aground. Or onto rocks. Stay here. I will be back.”
“Don't go!” Helen cried.
“Hush, Helen. He will not go far and will return for us. I will be here with you,” Ester assured her.
Over the sound of the crying wind and lashing rain, she could now hear what sounded very much like running water. The kind of sound that a large volume of water made as it gushed into previously denied area. Ester swallowed, whispered a fervent prayer for her family and everyone aboard the Sprinter. Helen was the first to see the water spilling through the door of the cabin, which hung ajar. She tried to climb higher up the slanting bed, keeping her feet clear of the powerful stream that was collecting at one end of the cabin but rapidly filling it.
Then Julian was back.
He looked as though he had been overboard. His hair hung about his face in dark tails and his clothes were utterly drenched. He stood, now knee-deep in the rapidly rising water, and reached for Ester's hand.
“We are on rocks a hundred yards from shore! There is land but it must be rowed for in the lifeboat. Come, we have to abandon the ship!”
It took some coaxing for Helen to uncurl herself from the protective embrace of her sister, and eventually, Julian had to pick her up bodily.
“What of my father and mother?” Ester shouted.
“The crew are helping them into the lifeboat as we speak. The hull is breached and the ship is taking on water. They had given up on trying to reach this end of the vessel, the blackguards!”
Ester's blood ran cold at the idea that without Julian's presence, she and Helen might have been left to die by panicked crewmen. She followed him closely along a companionway that was half full of freezing seawater. It sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, making the walk more of a climb.
At the ladder, Harper stood, braced with his arm wrapped around the rungs and reaching out with his other arm. Water sloshed onto him from above. He took Helen from Julian who turned and picked up Ester. As Harper ascended, Julian placed Ester on the ladder and shoved her hard in the rump to push her upwards. She scrambled onto the deck.
The lifeboat was in the water, manned by crewmen and full of the Sprinter's passengers, including her mother and father. Harper was handing Helen to a crewman and then staggering back up the sloping deck towards Ester. The slickness of the deckand its steepening angle defeated though. He slid towards the rails, at the mercy of the waiting sea.
Captain Edwards was the one who saved him, grabbing him about the waist and almost hurling him into the boat. Ester hesitated at the top of the ladder, reaching back for Julian. Captain Edwards shouted something to her but his words were utterly drowned by the raging storm. Julian's feet were slipping from the rungs of the ladder and the constant deluge pouring down the deck was threatening to dislodge him. Ester screamed his name and reached out.
Through the water, he saw her and reached back. For a moment, their hands clasped, but the leather was too slick after its soaking. A barrage of water beat at Julian and he was forced to use all his strength to cling to his precarious position.
The glove was slipping from his hand. Inch by inch.
She held on with everything she had, but it was not enough.
Suddenly, he was gone. The sodden leather had slipped from his hand, left behind in hers. She screamed, rendered silent by the fury of the storm. Julian was lost to sight by a fresh downpour of seawater, and for one horrifying moment, she thought he had been swept away, back into the flooded companionway which had now become an almost vertical incline.
