He looked out at the water and avoided her searching gaze. His smile was gone now, and she was sorry she’d said anything to make it disappear. “No, it an’t a good way to live. It’s a good way to die, in fact. I suppose you’d have me go ashore and live an honest working life.”
She tried to imagine Henry as a workman onshore, one of the laborers in the harbor, loading and unloading other people’s cargo all day. She couldn’t.
“It’s not my place to tell you to do anything,” she said.
He touched her cheek and kissed her forehead. “Right now, we’ll sit and watch the waves. Then we’ll see what happens tomorrow. Eh?”
She could argue ’til morning, and he’d still be right.
Dawn broke with gray and pink streaking the sky, and the sight of a three-masted ship on the horizon, matching them for direction and speed.
“It’s him. The Heart’s Revenge,” Captain Cooper said, lowering the spyglass from her eye. “I don’t know how, we had a full night’s lead and were racing.”
“We still have a lead on ’em,” Abe said. “We’ll lose the bugger.”
“Aye, we will. Make sail!”
So the race commenced.
Jill would have thought hiding would be easy on a vast, huge ocean. A person swimming, tiny and lost among the waves, certainly would vanish. A ship could sail for weeks on the open ocean and never see another, never see land. Yet a pirate ship could always find prey on common shipping lanes; piracy thrived in the Caribbean because the sea was crowded with islands rich with trade. The ocean could be deceptively crowded. And they couldn’t escape Blane’s ship.
A chase by large sailing ship wasn’t just a matter of setting sails and hoping. This wasn’t like the steady cruising of previous days. Cooper kept close watch on Blane’s ship, trying to guess his strategy, to judge how his ship was handling and how he was riding the wind. The crew attended to the Diana, making constant adjustments based on changes in the wind, trimming sails and tightening lines to best take advantage of their only source of power. They knew what they were doing and were good at their job; the Diana traveled lightly over the waves. Silver-skinned dolphins played in their wake, leaping and diving, mindless of the drama taking place between the two ships.
On watch, Jill spent part of the day on the rigging of the mainmast, waiting to take in the line to trim one of the sails. Around noon the ship changed direction and began tacking, a complicated operation that changed which side of the ship took the brunt of the wind. Booms swung across the deck, triangular sails flapped uselessly for a moment, and Abe shouted orders. In seconds, the sails grew taut again and the ship jumped forward, heeling over, then leaning into her new course. Manning the sails was difficult, precarious work, but there was satisfaction in being part of a crew, of helping to control the ship to ride the winds.
The course change confused Blane, and they lost sight of him for part of the day; the Heart’s Revenge didn’t tack as sharply and neatly as the Diana did, and he had to loop around. Captain Cooper didn’t pause to appreciate the small victory, but ordered them to maintain full sails and racing speed, still bound for the chain of islands east of the Bahamas.
Before dusk fell, the lookout cried out and pointed—there it was, that ship bobbing into view on the far horizon, white sails gleaming, catching the last rays of sun that cut across the ocean.
“Bloody hell, how’s he doing it?” Abe said.
Cooper watched him through the spyglass a moment before turning to him. “Have we got anything else we can put up?”
“Every inch of canvas we have is already set, Captain,” he answered. “Even if we had more we can’t go any faster without breaking to pieces.”
“Damn. Well then, looks like we may have a fight on our hands after all.”
The crew who weren’t on the rigging, manning the sails, or helping with the ship, spent the time cleaning and loading muskets, pistols, and making the cannons ready. No longer sure they could outrun Blane, they prepared for battle. Jill cleaned and sharpened her borrowed rapier, which seemed dull and useless.
None of them slept that night. Around what must have been midnight, Jill found Captain Cooper still at the helm, still watching behind them. Blane’s ship, lit by lanterns, was visible as a faint glow, like a star come to rest on the waves.
“What are we going to do when he catches up with us?” Jill asked. She’d moved quietly, didn’t announce herself, but Cooper didn’t seem startled when she spoke.
“We’ll make our stand, I suppose,” Cooper said, a little too fatalistically, a little too willing to give in to the inevitable.
“We can’t win against him,” Jill said. “How many cannons does he have? A dozen?”
“Twenty,” Cooper said, and Jill imagined her counting each one on their last encounter, and knowing exactly what that many cannons on a ship that size could do if it cornered a schooner like the Diana. “But we have speed. We can keep ahead of him, just watch.”
“But we’ll have to stop eventually, and he’ll find us.”
“Here now, who’s been at sea half her life and knows far more about it than you, you wee tadpole?”
It sounded like bluster. Cooper could be standing with a sword at her throat and she’d never admit she was beaten. Blane’s ship was bigger, better armed, with more crew. All the Diana had was speed, and if that didn’t work—
Well, no. They had something else that Blane didn’t—both pieces of the cursed sword. And Cooper had her, her and the sword together, which Blane had never had.
She almost hated to bring it up. “You said you’d thought about using Blane’s sword.”
Cooper huffed and shook her head. “It’s cursed. Haunted. I can’t even tell you all that sword’s about.”
“What would happen if we fixed it? Put the two pieces back together.”
“That’s what Blane wants. No, we can’t do it.” Cooper bowed her head so her thick hair fell over her shoulders. Hiding some expression. When she looked up again, her expression was cold. “If we repair the sword and Blane gets ahold of it again, we’re done for. I’ll not have that. I ought to bury both pieces on different islands and watch him scramble.”
Jill took a breath. “If I have that sword, I think I can beat him.”
The words shocked her—she was sure she hadn’t meant to say that. Then she thought, maybe that was it. Maybe fighting Blane—and winning, beating him with his own power—would send her home. It made sense: The only thing that would defeat Edmund Blane was Edmund Blane’s own power, his own curse, confronting him with the blood he’d spilled. She remembered the feeling of the sword in her hand, the sensation of leather and wood against her palm, and she knew it had power. Her hands itched to hold the sword, whole and ready for fighting, again. Even if it was haunted.
Rather than refusing and cursing at her, Cooper considered. Jill couldn’t guess what the captain was thinking when she looked at her with that narrowed gaze.
“You faced Blane, didn’t you? You fought him?”
“Yes, sir,” Jill said.
“You aren’t lying about it.”
“No, sir.”
“And you held your own against him?”
“I didn’t beat him, but I didn’t lose, either.”
“And what makes you think you can beat him now?” she demanded.
“It’s the sword. Not by myself, but with that sword.” She had to try….
Then Cooper shook her head. “It sounds all high and mighty, but we can’t risk getting close enough to Blane to see if you’re right. Now get up on the mainmast and take the next watch.”
Jill almost argued. She had stood up to Blane, however briefly; standing up to Captain Cooper ought to be easier. She was planted on the deck, her jaw stiff with the arguments she wanted to make—if the sword had power, couldn’t they use it, too? They glared at each other, neither of them flinching, Cooper daring her to make a challenge and Jill almost doing it. But unlike facing Blane back on the island, she didn’t have anywhere to run to on the ship.