Page 37 of Escaping Pirates
Getting revenge, as delicious and satisfying as it would be, wasn’t as important as getting off the ship. Just as the sun was setting that evening, I looked up and wiped the sweat from my brow and spotted the faintest smudge of a shoreline in the distance. Abandoning my task, I ran to the window, staring hungrily at the mountain peaks that broke up the line where the sea met the sky. It might have only been tiny jagged pin pricks, but we were sailing towards them, and I had never seen a more beautiful sight.
Salvation was near.
CHAPTER 14
Blossom and Sugar kept Harlan out of their quarters while I scrubbed long past nightfall, until I was ready to drop from exhaustion. He had already been locked securely back in the brig by the time I was escorted down and shoved into my own cell at nearly midnight. I was black from head to toe and so filthy that I didn’t think I would ever get clean again.
“Once we get out of here, I’m going to take the longest bath in the history of bathing,” I told Harlan, sinking onto my bunk with a groan. The quilt Tyrone had gifted to me would be just as black as I was soon. But the prospect of our freedom was so tantalizingly close that it wouldn’t have mattered if I was spending the night in the freezing cold. Tomorrow was our day of liberation.
“I don’t know why I ever complained about bathing as a child,” Harlan said. “I used to avoid baths, but as an adult I crave them.”
“Me too,” I laughed, then looked to ensure the brig door was shut all the way and dropped my voice. “We should be near enough to Berkway to let a bottle outtonight. They said we’ll get there in the morning, and if we want to let it out under cover of darkness, it should be tonight.”
“I already have one written,” Harlan told me, extracting it from an inside pocket while I pawed the straw aside to unearth a bottle and handed it to him.
“We can drop it down the privy hole,” I suggested with a smile. He would think I had the same maturity as a ten-year-old boy.
Harlan chuckled. “I thought the same thing. Ready to try?”
I eagerly gave him a bottle, my exhaustion fading as excitement took over. Harlan shoved one of the notes into the bottle and pushed the cork into place.
“Want to do the honors?” he asked me, handing it back.
“Yes,” I answered. The privy hole wasn’t large enough to fit a person, but it could fit a narrow bottle. I angled the bottle and released it.
Movement from the ship caused the bottle to clatter against the sides of the shoot all the way down. The faint splash of it hitting the water was instantly accompanied by an intense rattling for a full minute, followed by a shattering sound that broke my hope just as easily as the bottle. The loss of one of our precious three bottles felt like kissing our chances of rescue goodbye.
“It must have been too fragile,” I lamented.
“No,” Harlan said with a sigh. “I think the ship sits low in the water so that the bottle was too buoyant to sink far enough in the chute to exit the hull. The chute is still half-submerged with water, so the bottle couldn’t sink and was jostled until it broke. If only we’d partially filled it with lead shot first.”
“That would just make the bottle sink and no one wouldever find it. But we still have two bottles left.” I inspected the porous cork. “Do you think any water can get in here?”
“Can you reach that lantern for me?” He nodded at the glass case hanging outside my cell door. “We can use melted wax to waterproof the next cork.”
“Good thinking,” I said. I grabbed the handle, but found it to be uncomfortably hot, so used my old blanket to wrap around my hand to unhook the lantern from where it dangled.
I set it on my quilt but kept my wrapped hand on the handle as Harlan rolled another letter. But instead of immediately sticking it into the bottle, he propped one of his boots up onto his opposite knee and tugged at the heel.
“What—” I began, but broke off as the boot’s heel swiveled away to reveal a hidden compartment. Inside was a golden ring, which he took out and placed onto his middle finger. After dripping wax onto the rolled paper, he used the ring to press down on the wax, waited a minute, then pulled it away to reveal a crest. He blew on it for a moment to help it finish cooling, then slipped it into the bottle, corked the opening, and dripped more hot wax over the cork to seal it.
He stamped the ring again on the cork’s top, then raised his eyes to meet mine. I realized my mouth was open and intended to close it, but my shock was too great. I recognized that crest as the one that belonged to Berkway’s royal family. I’d seen it on a few of the missives sent to Papa, ordering shipments of goods.
“Are you all right?” Harlan asked.
I didn’t answer his question. Realization was crashing over me in tumultuous waves.
“Elena, what’s wrong?” Harlan gripped the iron bars between ourcells. “Are you hurt?”
My arms hugged my sides in a poor attempt to keep myself grounded. “Are you Prince Jameson?” I breathed.
A yawning silence met my question, and that was answer enough.
“You are, aren’t you?” I pressed, swaying back and forth as the ship listed on the rolling waves.
He didn’t deny it. “Did you recognize the seal?” Harlan’s voice was quiet as he put the ring back into the heel of his boot.
“Yes. And when Blossom mentioned that Prince Ernst would become crown prince, you went strange. Then before, you said you call your brother Ernie.”
