She went out to a spit of land, a sandbar extending from the natural harbor, and found the trunk of a fallen palm to sit on. If she didn’t fall asleep, she’d consider her job done. Not seeing anything dangerous come along needing her to raise an alarm would be a bonus.
Back at the camp on the beach, some of the pirates were still awake, singing and drinking in the shelter of the campfire’s light. They made Jill grouchy; they’d spent all day working their butts off, they ought to be exhausted. How could they be happy here?
Resting her chin on her palm, she stared out over the water, which hadn’t changed at all. It still went on forever, still rippled with endless waves, the same waves she watched back at Nassau, when everything was normal. Now, though, they were flecked silver by the moonlight. Then there were the stars—tipping back her head, she looked up past the palm fronds, past the thin smoke from the fire, and saw a sky bright with stars. The scene was hypnotizing. Staying awake ended up being a big enough challenge in its own right. She’d never been so sore, and she didn’t imagine there was a hot tub around to soak the aches away. She could fall asleep watching the waves, dreaming of hot water and cold sodas. She’d never complain about homework again.
Outside the circle of the camp’s fire, the world was mostly shades of blue, black, and silver. Cool colors, soft and restful. A flicker of yellow at the edges of Jill’s vision caught her attention. She straightened, squinting to better see it. It flashed again on the other side of the cove, like a bit of flame in midair. Past the camp, past the ship, at the very edges of the trees, on the shore looking out over the ocean.
A lantern, she thought. Someone there was holding a lantern.
7
REDOUBLEMENT
She almost shouted, but stopped herself. Her call would carry over the water, and whoever was holding the lantern would escape before anyone reached the spot. Jill jumped from her perch and ran as well as she could, sliding in the sand, following the edge of the forest.
“Tadpole?” Abe said as she came around behind the camp.
“There’s someone with a lantern out there,” she said. Abe got up and signaled, and he and a couple of the pirates followed her, pistols in hand.
As she reached the end of the cover, the light was still there, and she could see the figure of the man holding the lantern.
It was Emory, the surgeon. She recognized his silhouette by the shape of his clothes and the rough cut of his hair.
“Hey,” she said.
Quickly, he turned around and slammed closed the shutter on the lantern.
“Signaling your navy friends, eh?” Abe said, and he didn’t sound surprised. He might even have been amused.
Emory straightened. Jill couldn’t see his expression clearly but imagined him frowning. “You can’t slip by them forever. They’ll find you, eventually, and you’ll all hang.”
“Get on with you, back to camp,” Abe said. The two others grabbed the surgeon by the arms and led him along, pulling him so that he stumbled. “Good eyes again, Tadpole,” Abe said to her.
Jill didn’t feel any better. She spent a moment looking out to the horizon and didn’t see anything, no sign that Emory was signaling anyone in particular rather than randomly flashing the light in the hope that someone spotted him.
Back at the camp, Abe tied Emory’s hands and feet and left him sitting sullenly near the fire. Then he told Jill to get some rest.
Hard to do when Emory slumped against a barrel, glowering at her where she sat in the sand with a thin blanket she’d dug out of the pile of gear from the ship. Jill had the feeling that the crew wouldn’t have bothered keeping him around at all except his skills as a surgeon were too valuable to let go. But it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Except the alternative was probably not just letting him go, but tipping him over the side. That didn’t seem right, either.
“So you’ve thrown your lot in with them for certain,” he said to her in a low voice that didn’t carry. “We could have helped each other.”
“You’re not helping much of anyone,” she muttered.
“What is your name—Tadpole?” She scowled and he chuckled. “Your pardon. It’s Miss Jill, isn’t it? You don’t belong here. I can see that.”
At least someone could.
The others were scattered along the beach, lying stretched out or curled up, snoring, sleeping off the rum, dead to the world after the day of hard work.
“Where are you from, really?” he said.
Shaking her head, she gave a wry smile. “A long way from here.”
“Philadelphia? Boston?” he said. “Or did you cross the Atlantic to get here?”
There was no point explaining it.
“Jill, the Royal Navy will find us, sooner or later. They’ll take the ship and everyone aboard her prisoner. But if you help me, I can save you. I can get you a pardon.”
“Help you, how?”
“Untie me, and we can both escape. Lead the navy here ourselves and collect the bounty on the pirates,” he said.
“Escape and go where?” she whispered. They were in wilderness. The jungle and hills were a solid wall around them.
“We follow the coast. It’s easy.” He sounded desperate and unbelievable.
She was absolutely sure that Emory didn’t care anything about her, only about getting what he wanted. He’d use her and she might or might not get a pardon out of it. At least Cooper and the others seemed to care about her, so long as she was part of the crew anyway.
“If I untied you, what do you think the captain would do to me?”
They both knew the answer: killed, marooned, both. Emory said, “She wouldn’t, not to you. Not to another female.”
Like that would make any difference to Captain Cooper. Jill moved away to spread her blanket on her own patch of sand, to try to sleep.
But she thought about what he’d said. Getting captured by the Royal Navy would certainly be one way of getting out of here. But it wouldn’t get her any closer to home. She could almost sympathize with Emory, though. This was a strange place for him, too. But his path was so much clearer.
Though exhausted, Jill had trouble sleeping in the open, on a sandy bed in a deserted cove. Wrapping the blanket around herself, she curled up in a warm pocket of sand. The air grew surprisingly cool, even in the tropics, as a breeze blew in from the ocean. She wished for a room and a bed. She was never going to get all the sand out of her hair.
Sleep came in fits and starts. The ground kept moving under her, starting her awake. But no, it was only the phantom movement of the schooner’s rocking that her muscles still braced against. Her arms were numb, dead from the endless work of scraping the hull. The blisters and sore muscles were a solid ache. Her head hurt even worse when she closed her eyes. What kind of life was this? How could the others sing and laugh every night? And the waves never quieted, continually rustling, nudging Jill back into consciousness.
Then the watch shouted an anxious hail—someone was coming. In the shadows of the campfire, wavering against the wall of trees and vegetation at the edge of the beach, silhouettes appeared, human shapes emerging to stand in the open.
“Captain!” the man on watch shouted again. More of the crew awoke; their agitated murmurs grew louder.
“Settle down,” Cooper answered. Unlike the others, she didn’t sound sleepy or worried. The woman’s figure joined the wavering shadows. She was upright, fully dressed, moving quickly, as if she’d never gone to sleep. Maybe she hadn’t.
A dozen people—lithe, dark-skinned—had emerged from the trees. Jill recognized their stances, the way they moved—wary, like they were ready for a fight. They held weapons in front of them—swords with short, thick blades. Machetes, maybe. Some of them held long shotguns—muskets, rather. The firelight burnished them and their weapons to a shade of copper.