Page 9 of Transporting a Ruthless Highlander
She could barely summon up one. She had erased the memory of her father’s face, and it had been many years since she had seen Captain Hunter. Her whole existence had been spent aboard theWeeping Willow.It was the only home she had ever known, and now she was about to lose it. However, none of that mattered anymore. She was going to die, and nothing could save her now.
Then she saw something that made her heart leap into her chest and beat frantically with hope. In the distance, but faintly visible through the mist, she saw a dark stripe, the faraway but unmistakable, blessed sign of land, and land meant life.
She swam as strongly as she could, but she could not outpace the wave as it thundered in behind her. She could only hope that it swept her into shore and left her there. A moment later, the wave engulfed her, and she stared into its green depths, flailing her arms helplessly as she tried to reach the surface, but it was no use. The urge to breathe was too strong, and all she managed to do was inhale a great lungful of seawater. After that, everything went black, and she knew no more.
5
When the first waves began torock the boat, Struan was not unduly frightened. He had been in perilous situations before but had always survived. However, when the motion of the vessel became more and more pronounced, he realized that he was locked in a small cage surrounded by water, where he was completely out of his element. On land, he could fight off several men at a time with a sword, but there was no weapon he could use against the sea.
“Hey!” he yelled to one of the crew who was stumbling down the passageway, clinging on to the rope for dear life as he tried to stay upright. “Hey! Help us! We are trapped! For the love of God, get us out of here!”
The man ignored him and battled his way forward until he was out of Struan’s sight. A moment later, theWeeping Willowgave an almighty lurch sideways, but this time she did not right herself again. She began to list further and further to port until it became clear that she would not recover. The ship was sinking. Struan heard the panicked cries of the other prisoners erupt all around him, and he saw a sight that terrified him. There was water creeping toward them, inching its way up inexorably as the boat dipped downward. It was like a live thing, a hideous snake uncoiling and slithering closer and closer still. Soon it would drown them.
For a frozen second, Struan watched it, then he cursed roundly and began to kick hard at the bars of the cell. He had used the limited means at his disposal to stay fit during the prisoners’ short period on deck, and when inside, he had pulled and pushed his body weight against the bars to keep his arms and legs strong. Now he realized that all his straining against the bars had loosened them considerably to the point where they could be very easily dislodged. He lay with his back on the floor and kicked with both feet and all his strength until the cell door sprang open.
He heard the screaming from the cells all around him intensify and wondered desperately how he could release the convicts. “I am coming!” he yelled. “Do not lose hope!” He kicked at the doors as he had done with his own cell, then tried to instruct the other convicts how to do it.
“Kick as hard as you can!” he shouted, striving to make himself heard above the noise of the waves. Some of the stronger men managed to escape, but they did not stop to help anyone else.
“Every man for himself!” one of them shouted as he sped past Struan. However, like most of the others on board, he could not swim, and Struan saw his body a few minutes later as he made his own escape. No one else was as strong as he was, and eventually, he realized that without keys, any chance of escape was hopeless. It was the hardest decision Struan had ever had to make, but he knew it would be useless to make himself just one more corpse to add to the hundreds that were going to die anyway. He had to go without them.
“Forgive me!” he cried. Then, his heart breaking, he ran to the water and waded in. He knew he would hear the cries of his fellow convicts in his nightmares for the rest of his life, but there was nothing else he could do to help them. The seawater was freezing, and as he walked forward, it became deeper and deeper until it eventually closed over his head. He began to swim until he saw a stairway to his left; then, his lungs about to burst, he half-swam, half-stumbled upward.
After what seemed like an eternity, he broke the surface of the water and filled his lungs with glorious, life-giving air. It seemed unimportant that his face was being blasted with a spray of saltwater so intense that he had to keep his eyes closed to protect them. He could breathe. Now all he had to do was live.
Somewhere far above him, he could hear seagulls mewling, and seagulls meant land. At once, a flame of hope leaped up inside him, and he began to swim, trying to see above the waves to find out if he was going in the right direction. At last, he managed to propel himself high enough out of the water to see a brown strip not too far ahead. Land! But could he get there? Damn, even if it were too far for him to swim, he would die trying!
Powered on by a new surge of strength, Struan swam until he felt that his arms would give out. To give himself further impetus and the will to go on, he thought of Kevin, imagining that he had caught him just as he was about to kill their father. His anger spurred him on. He had to live so that he could avenge him.
He was walking along the passage between his bedroom and the laird’s on the day after the funeral when he saw Kevin tiptoeing into the laird’s room.
“What are you doing?” Struan asked, frowning. Something about Kevin’s demeanor made him uneasy.
As soon as he saw his brother, Kevin slid his hand into the pocket of his dressing gown, then he gave Struan a strange, nervous smile.
“Going to see Father,” Kevin answered. “I wanted to make sure that he was well after the funeral. He looked ill and tired.”
“What did you put in your pocket?” Struan asked, trying not to look as suspicious as he felt. This person was not acting like the brother he knew and loved.
Kevin stared back at him, a muscle in his jaw twitching. He put his hand in his pocket…
Struan never found out what his brother had been about to pull from his pocket. At that moment a huge splintered plank of wood from the ship cannoned into him, propelled by the force of another powerful wave. The pain in his thigh was excruciating, like nothing he had ever felt in his life before, and he flinched instinctively as he put his hand on the painful spot. Then he groaned, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he caught a fleeting glimpse of the stormy sky. Then there was nothing.
When Gavina woke up, she was lying on her stomach, and her cheek was pillowed on something wet and grainy. As well as that, she was soaked to the skin and absolutely freezing. She groaned, wondering where she was, but reasoned that she must have died and gone to hell. Her whole body ached, and as she struggled to sit upright, she saw that her feet were immersed in the icy water of the North Sea while her head was resting on rough, gritty sand. She wrinkled her nose at the rank stench of seaweed, but when she finally managed to sit upright and look around her, her eyes encountered something much, much worse.
The beach was littered with the wreckage of the ship. Planks of wood, nails, pieces of metal and rope were strewn haphazardly along the sand. The detritus was all that remained of theWeeping Willow.However, it was not only the ship that had gone to its grave. Among the wreckage were dozens and dozens of corpses, people she had known and loved, their battered bodies cast onto the shore by the heartless sea as if they were all rubbish.
Gavina felt sick as she gazed at them, then she realized that some of them might still be alive. Although she had little hope, she took a deep breath and began a grim and heartbreaking journey across the beach. She stopped to feel the pulse of each member of the crew she encountered, slowly realizing the futility of her search. Surely someone would be alive? However, she knew that most sailors could not swim, especially not in a fierce storm like the one she had just encountered, so although she tried to keep her hope alive, it died very quickly.
When she found Callum, she began to weep in earnest, and tears rained down her face. He looked so peaceful, and she could even fancy she saw a smile on his face. “Oh, my friend,” she whispered. “What did you do to deserve this?” Gavina remembered that the last word he had ever uttered was his wife’s name. He had loved his Mary and his children with all his heart, and he had been one of the best men she had ever met.
She leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on his forehead, then moved on, her heart aching, hoping against hope that she would find someone, even if it were only one person, alive. However, as she trudged along the beach and found no signs of life anywhere, her hopes turned to despair.
She looked out to sea to see if there was anything left of the ship she had called home for so many years, but she could not make out anything beyond the mist rising from the crashing waves. If only she had been able to free some of the convicts! They were all criminals, to be sure, but they had not deserved a death like this.
She sat down on the sand again and put her head on her knees, trying to block out the sight of the corpses. The rain and wind were still battering her, but she no longer cared.
“If I die this very moment,” she said aloud, “who will miss me? Nobody.” This was true. She did not have a relative anywhere to her knowledge. Her father was long dead, she knew, and she had never known her extended family. The only person she could think of was Captain Hunter, and she had not seen him for an age. Besides, he would not want to know her now that she had sunk his ship.
