Alexandra slammed into the rail. The deadseaman rolled over her and into the sea. Water churned below, thewaves like tumbling white-horses. Gone was the lifeboat, into thesea upside down, men’s cries to their savior lost in the screamingwind.
Hand over hand she pulled on one pilasterand then another. Nicholas and Damiano tumbled on the deck, fistsflying and cursing at each other. TheSantanas’fore andmainmasts staggered and then began to topple sideways, the sailsjerking to the bombardment of wind.
A crippled wreck, the frigate’s sails rippedand punctured like rags. Lightning exploded, and the ships’foremast vanished in a mass of rigging and ripped canvas. Stillclutching the belaying pin, she edged toward the men. Damianopulled a knife from his belt.
Death coming up the hawse, Nicholas dodgedDamiano’s knife thrusts. She stared at Lord Rutland, her eyescritical. For just those few moments, she had seen the real manbeneath and it frightened her. Nicholas punched, feinted, andtaunted Damiano again and again, never giving the sailor a chanceto recover.
Alexandra reached the quarterdeck, yankedher wet hair from her eyes. The mast was shattering and ready tofall. “Watch out, Nicholas.”
Damiano bellowed, dropped his knife.Nicholas broke off as the splintering crash of the main topgallantcanted over, the sail whipping madly in a web of parted rigging,while the yard itself snapped into equal halves before pitchingtoward the sea. Alexandra covered her head as an avalanche of woodand cording suddenly rained down upon her. Where was Nicholas? Onher hands and knees, the slippery deck raised as she crawled overfallen rigging.
Damiano. Her gaze went to his corpse, hisbody severed by the weight of the cordage draped over the larboardand trailing along the sea. She swallowed the sour bile in hermouth, squeezed her eyes shut and forced her limbs to creep aroundDamiano’s body to find Nicholas.
Below, flotsam clawed at theSantanas, the storm a battering ram splitting her seams wideopen. Alexandra combed the deck and the sea. Rain slashed atdifferent angles from the wind changing direction and blinding her.Through the haze, she saw Nicholas bobbing on the mast dragged fromthe ship, the foremast shrouds catching him in a giant web. TheSantanasshrieked, tilted more to port. Alexandra screamed,stretched her arms out, freed the halyard and grasped Damiano’sknife. In a matter of seconds the ship would sink, the riggingtrapping Nicolas and dragging him into the jaws of the sea.
Clasping the knife between her teeth, shedove into the water, her skirts and coat, a lodestone, that draggedher downward to a watery grave. She tore them off and kicked. Thesea tumbled her round and round in a rolling motion. In the darkwaters, she had no idea what was up or what was down. She coulddrown and no one would know.
No. She was not going to die in the sea.Swim.She had to swim. Her lungs about to burst, she gaveanother valiant kick.Swim, Alexandra. The muscles in herbody ached. Her shoulders burned. Lights danced in front of hereyes.
At last, she broke the surface, grabbed theknife from her mouth, and spitting water, sucked in a lungful ofair before another wave rolled over her. With saltwater stingingher eyes as she peered through the grey mist, she called out,“Nicholas!”
She pulled in another long draught ofoxygen, dove and came up through the rigging. Found Nicholas limp,and with blood pouring from an ugly gash across his forehead.No. No.She heard a moan. Nicholas? Or was that the wind?She placed trembling fingers on his chest, felt a slight movement,then a thump under her fingers. Tears welled in her eyes. Her chestsqueezed.Oh, God. Thank God.
But, like the tentacles of an octopus, therigging held him fast. Suddenly numb to the storm, she sawed at hisbonds, looking behind, the ship yawed over them. Any minute itwould succumb to its weight and carry them below. She tugged thelast rope free. His wrists slipped from her grasp and she lunged,grabbing one of his hands.Hold on. Hold on. Don’t letgo.
Spray dashed across their heads, and then awave curled over them, sucking them down in its wrath. One. Two.Three…ten seconds elapsed before they surfaced in the air. Solittle time. Grabbing flotsam large enough for one person, and withlong portions of the remaining rope, she tied him to the top of it,wrapped a rope around his wrist to hers, and then secured herselfon top of him, tucking her precious knife in her bodice with herfather’s spectacles. She kicked her little craft away from thestraying rigging.
She looked up as a giant wall of watercrashed over them, possessing an otherworldly, wicked force. Itscurved hollow felt like the inside of a clenching fist as it hurledthem across the unknown waters of the Atlantic. They fell intoanother trough, and again the wave threw them into its belly. Noair. Her head exploded. Lights went out in her brain. Air. Death.We are the interlopers.The sea will have its retaliation.It will devour us.
For hours, feathers of spray lifted fromwave after wave, spinning, and then plunging their little crafthard into the grey crescents, surrendering them to the mercy of thelong-drawn out shrieking of the wind as if a thousand devils hadbeen freed from the sea itself.
Currents whirled them toward a shadowy landform. Sharp rocks loomed, the land more dangerous than the sea. Araging, mountain-like wave rolled astern with such fury and wastheir finalcoup de grâce. In a chest-squeezing panic, asense arose within that the ocean held all the power.
Shadows blanketed and fogged at the edges ofher mind, in time with the sea that undulated and yawed. So weak.Losing all sense of where and who she was…she wanted to let go.Fatigue settled in, and with it, she allowed the monster to swallowher up.
ChapterThree
Gentle surf rolled in at his feet causingNicholas to snap his eyes open. He stared through a mesh of leaves.He glanced around. What the… He pushed off the palm frondsscattered over him, rose, and clutched his pounding head, thethrobbing about to split his head open.
He staggered a few feet, and then collapsednear a coconut log and rested his back against it. He squinted atthe blue sky with cloud racks piled upon the horizon, and parallelto him lay the sea, the restless, turbulent sea, now at peace.
His energy depleted, he sat there allowingthe sun to beat down upon him. His stomach had long sincecontracted into a hard, little fist, shrunk to nothing. Withneither food nor adequate water, he sweated little. His stomachgurgled with hunger and every muscle in his body ached from thehammering blows delivered by Damiano.
He brushed a sandy hand through his hair,remembered the mast falling on him. How had his life beendelivered? He looked about. Nothing to eat or drink and…noweapons.
Worse than the prospect of perishing fromhunger or being devoured by beasts in this godforsaken end of theworld, was finding himself alone. To watch the sun, rise in theeast, cross the sky and sink into the west while listening to theechoes of his own thoughts, and finding no other inspiration, wouldbreak him.
Entertaining the melancholy of hisisolation, he narrowed his eyes on a trail of footsteps along thebeach. He saw her then, with barely a stitch of clothing on,walking down the shoreline like a goddess, a knife tucked in herbodice.
Bright as the morning’s light, she was thesymbol of the earth, the movement of waves, and the song at night.Blood pounded in his temples as he absorbed the movement of herhips beneath the sheer fabric of her chemise, and the way she woreher hair, long, wavy, gleaming gold tumbling down her back. Thesight of well-shaped breasts unconfined by the normal femalefrivolities, stirred-up the heat in his loins and muddled hiswits.
He scrubbed a hand across his face. He mustbe delirious with dehydration.
“Oh, you’re awake,” said his hallucination.She clutched a coconut to her chest, used it as a ridiculous shieldof modesty.
He closed his eyes tight shut and openedthem again to make sure he was not dreaming.
“Is it my state of undress, LordRutland?”
