Page 47 of Devil of the High Seas
“Aye, lassie. I’ll stay here. Jim is on the foreyard above us. You check on the cap’n and the guns.”
Hands freezing from the cold rain, Josephine scrambled down the ratlines to the deck and rushed for the companionway where Gavin had gone. She chanced a glance at Ronnie at the helm. His head was thrown back, red hair blowing wildly, laughing like a madman as the ship dipped into the trough of a building wave.
She ducked below into the modest safety of the gun deck as Gavin and several of the crew fought to secure the guns. Her heart pounded at the deadly threat the massive guns posed. If even one cannon got loose and slid across the deck, it would crush any sailor in its path. It could also unbalance the weight of the ship, causing it to be unable to right itself. There was even a chance it could crash down through the hull. Two sailors held one of the loose guns and were jamming the muzzle up against the clamp above the gunport so that the barrel pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle.
One of the guns lurched forward on the deck a few feet, unseen by the crew, who were focused on the opposite side of the ship. She had no time to think beyond a flash of a mad idea. She raced one deck below to where some men were storing their hammocks.
“We need to choke the trucks on a loose cannon! I need hammocks!”
Two men grabbed their hammocks and raced up after her to help. Together, they caught the sliding gun halfway across the deck by using the hammocks like slings and started to drag it back to the wall where it belonged.
“Heave!” Josephine shouted at the men helping her. Her cry caught Gavin’s attention, and he glanced her way. His eyes widened when he saw the massive gun that had been coming toward his exposed back and realized that Josephine had been the one to stop it.
He joined her, grabbing the hammocks’ ends as he lent his strength to theirs. The gun groaned in protest as it was dragged sideways toward the ship’s planking.
“Lash it alongside!” Gavin shouted at the other two men. They answered with nods and fresh cries of “Heave!” The gun was finally swung around and lashed forward and aft against the inside planking of the ship.
Josephine’s legs shook as she collapsed onto the deck. She’d given all that she had to help pull that gun across the deck.
Gavin put an arm around her lower back and helped her back up onto her feet. “Is Ronnie still at the helm?”
“Yes,” she gasped. They paused on the steps leading to the weather deck, and Gavin pinned her against the bulkhead when the ship made a sudden roll. Their soaking bodies were pressed flush against each other, and his ragged breath mixed with hers. His eyes were dark and burning as he stared at her trembling lips.
“Stay down here. Don’t come up on deck, you understand?”
“Gavin, I have to help—”
“You’ve done enough, and done it well. Now I want you safe.”
He silenced her with a hard kiss, one that sent her head spinning and her legs quaking. When he tore his mouth away from hers, she saw his grim resolve.
“Stay below. That’s an order. If you disobey, I’ll have no choice but to whip you in front of my crew.” The violence of his threat was so unexpected that she could only stare at him.
When he released her, he bolted up the steps as a clap of thunder broke through the wailing winds. She sank to the deck, leaning back against the bulkhead as she fought to steady herself. The storm was unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. She’d witnessed and lived through plenty of violent storms on land, but a storm like this took on new depths of terror because one couldn’t escape it. The knowledge that at any moment the right wave could topple thePixieor smash it to pieces filled her with raw terror. Everyone on board could perish, all of the eighty men, including her and Gavin.
For the first time in her life, Josephine understood the nature of fear as it crawled through the walls of her mind and sank its teeth and claws into her chest. She couldn’t breathe. No air was moving in or out of her lungs. There was a buzzing in her skull like a hive of raging wasps.
“Josie!” A voice penetrated the fog of terror inside her, and she looked up to see the cook, Olive, holding out a hand to her.
“Come on, girl,move! The surgeon needs us.” Olive pulled her to her feet, and they headed for the surgery.
Two sailors lay on a pair of surgery tables, and Dr. Gladstone was doing his best to keep one man lying flat. The man’s leg was broken and jutted out at an awkward angle. The sailor screamed as Dr. Gladstone tried to calm him. The man on the other table had a broken arm, which he cradled with his hand, his face pale as he watched the doctor and the sailor with the broken leg struggling.
“Hold him down so I can get some laudanum,” Gladstone ordered.
Olive and Josephine helped pin the man down on the table. Gladstone grabbed a dark-blue bottle of laudanum from a cabinet and tipped it into the sailor’s mouth. The poor man coughed and swallowed, before drifting to sleep.
“I need to set the bone,” Gladstone muttered, and Josephine winced as the sight of flesh and bone being moved back into place unsettled her stomach.
“Watch him, Mrs. Castleton,” the doctor ordered. “Olive, I need you to help Thomas while I fix his arm.”
Josephine sat down on a stool that was nailed to the deck and held on to the table with one arm as the ship swayed. The man on the table shifted in his sleep and Josephine lunged, grabbing his shoulder to keep him steady. The lamps above their heads swayed, and she stared up at the ceiling, her fear returning in full force. What was happening on the top deck?
Please let Gavin come out of this alive.
* * *
Gavin threwout an arm and caught a sailor before he was washed overboard. The man grunted and they both slammed down onto the deck as the wave passed over them. He held his breath as the seawater briefly engulfed him and then sucked in great lungfuls of air once the deck cleared of water.
