“I-I think so,” the boy stammered. “My leg got stuck when the crate slid into it, but I don’t think it’s broke.”
“I’ll help you.” The sailor swooped Ronnie up in his arms.
“I can help too.” Another shiver swept through him, this one so fierce he reached for the railing. Curse his wet clothes. At this rate, he’d be lucky to make it across the deck without freezing solid.
The sailor frowned. “Save your landlubber legs for walking yourself across the deck.”
Thomas took a step across the deck with the sailor, but the slope was so steep and the wood so slick he nearly slid back down to the gunwale.
“Come on.” The sailor glanced over his shoulder. “We don’t got all day. Least not if you want to be off this ship before it goes down.”
“Coming.” Thomas inched his way farther up the deck. White snow, gray sky, and violent, white-capped seas surrounded the boat. A little town sat shrouded in shadows across the harbor. It seemed so close, and yet so very far. Beside it, the Eagle Harbor lighthouse swathed a path of illumination across the storm, but the beam was weakened by the snow.
He reached the side of the ship and leaned over to glimpse a rowboat filled with people. It floated in a patch of water that wasn’t churning as much as the rest of the lake. Something hit the deck beside him with a thud.
The sailor next to him picked it up and held out a ring that looked to be made of cork. “Put this on,” he shouted over the storm. “It’ll make you float.”
“Don’t you need it?”
The sailor shrugged, then pointed to one of the men that had just jumped into the water. Sure enough he was floating over the swelling waves, the cork ring keeping his shoulders and head above the water. “I’ll find Johnson once I get in the water. We can share.”
“What about Ronnie?”
The sailor who’d carried the cabin boy across the deck was already slipping another one of the cork rings over Ronnie’s chest. “We’ll share.” The man looked at Ronnie. “You ready?”
The boy gave a nod, and the two of them tumbled over the side of the ketch together, leaving him completely alone on the wrecked ship. Thomas clutched the large ring and slipped it over his head, only to have it get stuck around his shoulders. He forced the ring down anyway, never mind how tightly it squeezed his chest.
A foaming wave slammed into the wood and rocks below, and he gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white. Give him a pickax, and he’d burrow into the dankest, darkest, narrowest tunnel and splinter rock until he found precious metals. But put him on the sea, and he was useless. He’d spent his childhood days in Cornwall hauling rocks out of mines, not fishing off the coast.
Ronnie and the sailor surfaced in the water and swam toward the small boat.
Maybe if he timed his jump to miss one of the large waves, he’d have a chance of reaching the rescue boat. He had to try jumping. Either that or give up all hope of finding his missing wife and daughters.
Just the thought of Jessalyn, of her long, blonde hair and vibrant blue eyes and hopeful smile, caused guilt to rise in his chest, so thick and cloying it nearly choked him.
On the little vessel, a form stepped apart from the others huddled together. It almost looked like the man was preparing to…
“No!” Thomas shouted.
But the man jumped anyway, diving off the side of the boat and disappearing beneath the water. Was the swimmer coming to get him off the ship? He’d never forgive himself if the other man drowned.
Clutching the ring about him, Thomas balanced on the railing, drew in a breath of stinging, frigid air… and jumped.
Cold. The wind and snow up on the ship might have seemed cold, but it was nothing compared to the icy, watery fingers that worked beneath his woolen clothes until his breath nearly froze in his chest. Yet despite his weight and the sodden garments tugging him downward, the ring pulled him up to the surface.
The instant he broke through the waves, he sucked air into his starved lungs.
“There you are.” A man bobbed in the water not five feet from him, then swam closer. “I lost sight of you when you jumped. You floating all right?” He tugged on the rope attached to Thomas’s life ring.
“Fine.” Or he was if he didn’t think about how he couldn’t feel any of his limbs. “You didn’t need to come after me. I was going to jump.”
“Didn’t look like it.”
There was a jerk on the rope, then it started moving, pulling him toward the lifeboat. The man gripped the rope right beforeit attached to the ring and half swam, half let himself be pulled toward the boat.
Who was this man? Even with snow driving into the water and wind stinging Thomas’s eyes, the swimmer looked vaguely familiar. They crested the swell of a wave, then dropped into a trough, but the man didn’t lose his grip on the rope for even a second.
Wasn’t he cold? So numb he couldn’t move? Shouldn’t his lips be turning blue and his teeth chattering? “You’re crazy,” Thomas muttered.
