Page 100 of Blow Me Down
Corbin woke me up a short while later with one word that struck fear deep and hard within me.
“The island is on fire,” he said, strapping his sword belt to his hips and grabbing his pistols. He’d already pulled his pants and boots on, but before I could pull my thoughts together in my sleep-muddled brain, he was running out of the room, yelling for the few servants who slept in to wake up and help.
“Fire?” I asked, sitting up in bed, sniffing the air. “Are you sure? I don’t smell smoke. How do you know there’s a—” As I swung my legs over the bed, the window came into my view. Beyond the scraggy line of trees that marked the boundary between the settled part of Turtle’s Back and the rest of the island, the sky glowed orangey red.
“Oh, hell,” I swore, jumping from bed and grabbing the nearest clothes—my knickers and Corbin’s shirt. My arms and legs protested the quick movement, but I ignored the stiffness and hurried into my boots, grabbing my foil out of instinct before I ran from the room. Downstairs, the cook and scullery maid were lighting candles. Bas emerged from a room two doors from mine, rubbing his eyes.
“Bas, I want you to get dressed and go down to Renata’s house,” I told him.
Holder bolted past me from the room he’d confiscated as his own, leaping down the stairs to the main hall.
“What’s happenin‘?” Bas asked, standing at the top of the stairs.
Corbin was standing just outside the opened double doors, shouting orders to the remaining servants. Holder joined him for a moment, then took off toward the town, presumably to raise the alarm there.
“Fire,” I said succinctly, not waiting to explain further. “Just go to Renata’s house and tell the ladies there to get on a ship if the fire reaches the town.”
I raced out of the house, following Corbin, intent on helping him fight the fire.
Outside, the smoke was thick and heavy as I reached the point where the lawn ended and the scrubby, sparse forest that covered much of Turtle’s Back began.
The palm trees and surrounding tall grass were fully ablaze, casting grotesque shadows as Corbin and the men danced around it, trying to beat out the burning grass. Billows of black smoke shot up into the night sky, mushrooming as they hit cold air in the upper levels. The heat from the fire at ground level was breathtaking—literally—absorbing the oxygen and leaving everyone breathless and gasping.
“Get in the bucket line,” Corbin yelled when he saw me standing, staring helplessly at the burning trees.
I gave the fire a wide swath as I ran painfully around to the back of the house, where I knew the well was located. Bas’s black silhouette darted past me as he grabbed a bucket in his good hand.
“Dammit, Bas, I told you to go to Renata’s house,” I gasped, clutching my ribs where they’d been bruised in my clash with the rocks.
“Do more good here,” was all he said.
“Only until I say you have to leave,” I warned, rolling up the sleeves to Corbin’s shirt as I joined the bucket line. There were about five of us in the line, carrying water from the well around to the edge of the lawn where Corbin, the cook, and a couple of others leaped around the fire, beating the grass with wet curtains and hurling buckets of water on the worst spots.
We hauled bucket after bucket of water down the line. My hands quickly formed blisters from the wet handles; my arms and shoulders ached with the unaccustomed strain. The relief I felt each time I passed on a full bucket fizzled with the sight of the next one approaching. The horror of the situation combined with the repetition of the bucket line soon consumed my brain until all that became my whole world. Ten steps to the left led to my hands and shoulders complaining as a heavy bucketful of water was passed to me, followed by ten steps to the right and the blessed relief of handing it on. We coughed on the acrid smoke that filled the air, turning breathing into a labored chore that left my chest aching. My eyes watered, sending tears down my cheeks, but I couldn’t stop long enough to wipe my face.
It seemed like an eternity, but probably a half hour later Corbin called a halt to the bucket line.
“It’s no good. It’s too far spread,” he yelled in between gasps for air. “We’ll never get it out.”
The scullery maid fell to the ground, overcome by the smoke. Someone pulled her out of the line. My arms were shaking with the strain, my breath raspy and painful, my throat raw. I wheezed as I breathed, my lungs burning as if they were filled with hot embers.
“What now?” I asked, looking at the others in the bucket line. At Corbin’s call to halt, the line had collapsed, everyone on the ground panting for air, rubbing aching arms and hands.
“We make a fire break to keep it from going down to the town. We need shovels and axes,” he directed one of the male servants. “As many as you can get.”
The man nodded and took off at a run around to a small gardening shed. Two others from the bucket line staggered to their feet and followed him.
“Did you guys really write things like axes and shovels into the game?” I asked Corbin, dragging a half-filled bucket of water over to him.
“Of course. We anticipated towns being fired,” he answered, dipping his hands into the water, drinking from his cupped hands. “It was a traditional pirate action upon taking a town, although this…”
He looked at flames leaping from tree to tree.
“It’s Bart, isn’t it?” I asked quietly.
“Possibly. Probably. It’s suspicious that the fire should start right behind your house. Sweetheart, I’m afraid you’re going to lose it. We can’t save it and the town, both.”
“That’s all right. It’s just a house, and it wasn’t really mine anyway. The town is what matters.”
