The untrained eye might have noted the darkish underbellies of the clouds. The optimistic sailor might have heeded the proximity of Rio and thought that perhaps they’d reach safe harbor before the violent squall struck.
Ryan knew better. A wind gall, luminous in its strange halo on the edge of a cloud, promised heavy rains to windward. He’d concealed his reaction from Isadora and his mother, but the moment he’d broken free of them he had convened the watch and sent them rushing about, battening the ship for a storm.
It struck within the hour, a long wall of wind and heavy seas pitching in from the far Atlantic. A swell hit the ship with such force that her timbers reverberated stem to stern, the vibrations driving up into the legs of those on deck. Gale winds plucked at the shrouds like a clumsy musician playing a badly strung fiddle.
Ryan and Izard met in the chart room. The chief mate’s eyes said what his voice would not—Ryan’s beginner’s luck had run out. Here was the storm that would test his true mettle as a skipper.
“We’ll heave to and make her fast,” Ryan said.
Izard didn’t argue. He merely nodded. An open hatchway let in a gust of wind that swept the charts off the slant-topped table. Wordlessly Izard stowed the charts and turned down the lantern.
As the ship plunged into its inevitable roll, Ryan passed Journey in the companionway. “Check on the women,” he said tersely. “Tell them to keep to their quarters.”
Though a chilling dread seized him, he couldn’t deny the tingle and spark of excitement that churned through him as he rushed out to the deck. Acres of foam surrounded the ship.
He shouldn’t like this, but God help him, he did. He desired the sea as he desired a woman’s body. The sea was his mistress, one with the power to heal, nurture, love, torture…or destroy at her caprice. Like a woman, she was dark, mysterious, unpredictable—impossible to skim over the surface; a man had to plunge in and sink deep.
“Heave,” he ordered. “Heave and sink her.”
The men didn’t need to be told twice. With a rusty whir of the hawse pipe, the heavy-weather anchors spun out and plummeted downward.
Scrolling waves rose higher and higher, and the Swan climbed helplessly to a foaming peak, then dove with breathtaking speed into the trough. Ryan stood in the cockpit with the second mate, both men mute with awe.
“We’ll be swamped,” Click promised him.
“I’ve got Craven and Pole manning the pumps.” Ryan heard a grinding sound, and regarded the cables while the stern fishtailed helplessly. “We’ve got to run before it,” he shouted.
“We’ll be lost for sure,” Click bellowed back. “We might have to jettison our cargo to boot!”
A crushing sense of defeat pressed at Ryan. Christ, not the cargo. The storm had grown mythically ugly, with the seething seas and the smoky clouds a vision of hell. He took a deep breath and bellowed the order past his own reluctance. “Up anchor, and take a double reef in the mains’l for hoisting!”
He knew in his gut it would take more men than he had to navigate the yawing ship through the gale. He refused to let himself think of disaster. Refused to think about his shame if he had to turn the ship over to the underwriters.
Timothy Datty came running, the wind blowing his feet out from under him. “My fault, skipper,” he said. “I fouled a rope.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Aye, sir!” the boy shouted.
“Carry on, then.” Ryan wrestled with the tiller and Timothy went aloft. He reefed the topsails. Luigi set the staysails, and the ship raced before the wind, sweeping up and down the swells, on no set course save that determined by the unrelenting storm.
Datty was in the process of hoisting the mainsail, precariously balanced on the lee yardarm. He reached over to fasten the earring, a short length of rope used to lash the upper corners of the sail to the yardarm.
At that moment a wave struck the ship, a huge slap of water so thick and deep that Ryan felt himself start to drown as the sea gushed over him. Instinctively he hung on to the tiller, opening his eyes to slits and seeing nothing but green water rushing past.
He was under deep. Perhaps the ship had turned. His lungs nearly burst, and when he was about to surrender to the urge to let go, the water slid away like the seas before Moses.
Drawing in a frantic breath, he became aware of two things—
Timothy Datty had fallen from the yardarm.
And in defiance of orders, Isadora Peabody had appeared on deck.
Lightning blazed near the ship. Ryan swore, pounding across the deck, trying to center himself under Datty. The youth hung from the earring, suspended from the jackstay. His slender body swung like the clapper of a bell, back and forth with the violent pitch of the ship.
Ryan didn’t stop to think. He grabbed a coil of rope and a gaff hook and started to climb. As he went up the rigging, he saw Isadora pitch in like a seasoned tar, helping Izard wrestle the tiller and taking physical risks, disobeying all good caution, flouting his command.
He had no time to grow angry at her. The storm swept him up in its teeth and he felt like the prey of a wolf that shook him, trying to break his neck. He hung on, his gaze never leaving Timothy. Any moment now the boy might lose his grasp, might fall into the house-high swells, never to be seen again.
I won’t let you fall. Ryan closed the vow into his heart as he climbed. Securing himself in the footrope under the yardarm, he tossed out the rope. Time and time again the wind snatched it away. The end of the rope flashed by too quickly. Impossible to grab it. Timothy’s face, running clear with rainwater and spume, was the greenish white of a marble slab.
His eyes rolled; his lips moved in mindless, hopeless prayer.
Ryan felt himself losing the boy. He shouted encouragement, screamed at the lad to hang on, but the wind stole his words.
He suspected Timothy wasn’t listening, anyway. He could see the slender hands frozen around the earring line. The lad was weakening. If he let go to grab the thrown line, he’d fall for sure.
“Here,” said a voice near Ryan, practically in his ear.
Incredulous, he looked through the rigging and saw Isadora, passing him the end of the rope. “Secure this to the yardarm and swing out and grab him.”
It was an insane idea. Datty hung too far out toward the end of the yardarm to reach. But if Ryan did as she said, if he swung out as the ship pitched leeward, he might be able to grab the boy.
“You want to see us both die, don’t you?” he shouted, but even as he did, he grasped the rope and lashed it to the yardarm.
On the deck below, Ralph and Journey held the other end of the line to rein him in after he pulled Timothy to safety. That was all the thought he would allow. Anything more and he’d talk himself out of it.
He watched the swells and waited until the ship pitched toward Timothy. Then, with a last look at Isadora—wet face, plastered hair, wide, terrified eyes—he pushed off from the foot rope.
The sensation of soaring was, for the briefest of moments, an ecstasy and a wonderment he hadn’t expected. The next moment he felt nothing. The sea rose up at him. He’d miscalculated the distance. He was going to miss Timothy altogether. He might even sweep the boy away for good.
“Again,” Isadora screamed. “You must try again!”
He belled out and then swung back.
And Timothy dangled right