Page 60 of Devil of the High Seas
“Who?” Griffin demanded.
“Beau... champ...” The name escaped Encino’s lips as his gaze slowly turned distant and the light faded from his eyes.
“Beauchamp... That name... I know it,” Griffin said.
“He was one of Gavin’s crew,” Dominic said. “I met him once.”
“That’s the man who my brother said led the mutiny against him,” Griffin said. The captain had mistaken him for his brother.
They both stared at the dead man for a long moment.
“We have to get off the ship,” Dominic said. “Beauchamp could be following at a distance. I noticed he spiked the cannons so they cannot be fired. The line from the wheel was cut so the ship can’t be steered. Anyone who boards this vessel would easily be trapped. All of the cargo was removed... I think Beauchamp set a trap for anyone who came to see this ship.”
Dominic strode to the door, and Griffin was on his heels. There was no talk of burying the dead at sea. There simply wasn’t time to even collect the bodies and give them a quick ceremony. Every life aboard Brianna’s ship, including Vesper’s, was in grave danger.
* * *
Josephine stoodknee-deep in the shallows of the waves with Sam. They both held spears, watching for fish. She had left her dress in the wardrobe today and was in her borrowed clothes from Dominic’s ship, which Jada had been kind enough to wash for her.
“Wait,” Sam counseled as a silvery fish slowly swam around their feet.
“When?” Josephine whispered, even though the fish could not hear her.
He held his spear ready. “Not yet... Now!”
Josephine plunged her spear deep into the water, impaling the fish. With a hoot of triumph, she raised the spear up. Sunlight sparkled off the fish’s silvery scales.
Sam grinned. “We’ll cook it tonight. I’ll show you how to remove its scales. We just need to—” His next words died as he stared off at something beyond her.
“Sam? What is it?” She turned toward the horizon and saw a ship sailing for the cove. It dropped anchor just outside the area only Gavin knew how to sail past.
“That’s not thePixie,” she muttered to herself as she raised a hand over her eyes to shield her gaze from the sun as she studied the ship.
Sam whooped and waved at the vessel. “It’s theSiren!”
“TheSiren?” A sudden feeling of dread bottomed out in her stomach. If Gavin had recovered his ship, it would have been easy for him to guide it into the cove. But the ship stayed safely away from the maze of reefs, which meant Gavin was not at the helm.
“Sam!” She snatched the boy by the shoulders and shook him. “Listen to me. That’s not Gavin. You must go! Tell everyone to hide. Oh God...” Was there even a place in this little spot of paradise to hide from such evil?
She glanced back at the ship and saw they were in the midst of lowering a small boat into the water.
“Josie...,” Sam began uncertainly, his dark eyes wide with terror.
“Go, Sam!” She hurried him toward the shore. At the sight of the sails, some of the island’s residents had left their fields and homes to come greet the newcomers. Josephine screamed for them to run. They had only a few minutes before the mutineers would reach land.
Jada met them halfway to the shore. When she spotted the ship and then saw Josephine’s face, she seemed to know at once that this wasn’t Gavin.
“We have to hide. That man tried to kill Gavin, and he’ll kill anyone in his path,” Josephine explained as they raced toward the house.
Jada ran across the front porch of the house and toward a silver bell that hung from one overhead beam. Grasping the brown rope with a metal ball that hung from beneath it, she rang the bell hard. The sound echoed far and wide across the island.
“This will warn the others. We must go to the caves.” Jada grasped Sam’s and Josephine’s hands in each of hers.
“The caves?”
“Gavin always feared something might happen to us while he was away, so he set up a shelter in the caves for us in case of storm or attack.”
“But won’t Beauchamp and his men know about it?”
