“Quarrels must wait for the open sea,” the captain said, with a puff of smoke that drifted into Matthew’s face. “Right now we’ve got to get this ship out of here. I don’t want to think what might be coming down that road at any moment. So…my new additions to the crew…you will join the men already in those longboats. You will take orders from Mr. Spedder, my first mate. I expect you to pull hard and steady. With just the two boats, we’ll be lucky to get out of this cove in another hour.” He spoke to Zed in their common tongue. At once Zed released Matthew and was first down the gangplank.
“Ladies,” said Falco, “I mean you as well. Get to it!”
As Matthew walked between Berry and Minx on their way to the longboats tied up at the bow, he realized that before they reached New York—if, pray to God, they ever did—they were going to know every inch of the Nightflyer, have worked their fingers to the bone and have an affair of both love and hate with every sail and every mast. Their affairs of love and hate were about to begin, commencing with the longboat’s oars and the first mate’s roar of “Row! Row! Row!” amplified through a tin voice-horn.
The captain was correct in his judgement of how much time the two longboats and their crews would need to row the Nightflyer out of the cove into tide and wind. It took a little over one hour, after which Matthew thought his shoulders were near falling off and Berry would have cried if that might have done any good, but tears would not move sailing ships. They returned to the Nightflyer by means of rope ladders lowered over the side, and the longboats were cast off to drift. Matthew, Berry, Minx and Zed were instantly put to work on tasks involving the hoisting of sails and the tying down of ropes, of which there seemed to be hundreds aboard ship and all excess to be coiled neatly and out of the way.
It was going to be pure hell, Matthew realized, and no one this trip would be a passenger save perhaps Saffron, her child, two other women of middle age, an elderly woman and three more children who were aboard.
Falco aimed the Nightflyer to the northwest. The sails filled and swept them along. The sun had broken through the gray morning clouds and painted the blue sea with gilded caps. There were over a dozen other smaller boats—native craft—in the water around Pendulum Island, embarked from the local harbor that was somewhere in the vicinity of Templeton. They were circling about, their masters and passengers waiting to see if they would have an island to return to. When Matthew stood at the railing and looked back at the island he could see the haze of dust rising in the area where Castle Fell had stood, and fires still burning in the wreckage of the fort and the ravaged woods. For the most part, though, the quake seemed to have ended.
He thought of what Sirki had said, in his last moments of life. He asked me to tell you that he will not be very much damaged by this little incident.
It seemed to Matthew that that was the professor’s pride talking. Great damage had been done to the professor’s schemes and enterprises. His refuge half-destroyed, the gunpowder works likely fully destroyed, the storehouse of Cymbeline gone up, his trusted Sirki gone down, the brothers Thacker finished off, the remains of Fell’s weapons man and finances expert consumed by an octopus, and…of Aria Chillany? Matthew hadn’t asked Minx about that yet, but it was obvious who had survived that bitter confrontation.
But what of Augustus Pons, Toy, Cesar Sabroso and Mother Deare? The problem-solver had no clue. Either they had survived, or they had not. He expected they had. Especially Mother Deare, who seemed to know a great deal about survival.
And Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone. Gone dreaming in her blue silence, which hurt Matthew’s heart but made him realize he could not be the champion for everyone, and he could not make life-or-death decisions for them either.
The sun lay heavy upon him. He was tired, near exhaustion. Finding a hammock below deck and falling into a peaceful sleep would be his idea of paradise right now, but until Captain Falco said he could leave the deck here he stayed.
The Nightflyer had been out of harbor for nearly an hour, and Matthew staggering around doing whatever task he was ordered to do by the first mate, when the very same short, thickly-set bulldog of a man hollered to him over the noise of wind and spray, “You there! Deadwood! Captain wants you! Now!” He hooked a dirty thumb toward the upper deck where the helmsman steered the ship. Falco stood at the stern viewing something behind them through a spyglass.
On climbing up the set of steps to reach that exalted poop deck, Matthew saw immediately what was the captain’s object of attention. A three-masted ship, sails spread, was at their back maybe a mile or so distant.
“That’s Grayson Hardwick’s command,” said Falco, with the pipe gripped between his teeth. “Mr. Hardwick is one of the professor’s best…shall we say…providers. His sloop carries twelve guns. Mr. Landsing!” He was addressing the helmsman, a fair-haired native lad. “Course change twelve degrees port.”
“Twelve degrees port! Aye, sir!”
“They’re after us?” Matthew asked.
“You,” said Falco, “win the prize.” He turned toward the first mate, who had followed Matthew up. He said quietly, with the tone of full and calm authority. “Full sails, Mr. Spedder. Everything we’ve got and more. And when you deliver the orders, do remember that our lives may depend on three extra knots.”
Spedder hollered at the crew in a voice hard enough to shred the bark off a tree, and at once the experienced crew went to work raising whatever sails were not already catching wind.
“Shall I help?” Matthew asked.
“Stay put. I don’t want green hands tangling ropes right now.” Falco put the spyglass to his eye again. “That little bitch is coming on,” he said. “Going to be close enough for an aimed shot in a couple of hours. But my Nightflyer’s fast too, when she needs to be. We’ll just wait and see.” He turned to watch the progress of his men aloft in the shrouds, and spotting some hesitation he did not like he leaned forward on his cane and shouted, “To the task, ladies! Get that royal up!”
The morning moved on. Water was provided to the crew, and bits of limes to chew on. Falco allowed Berry to join Matthew at the poop deck’s railing, watching Hardwick’s armed ship close the gap. Every so often Falco ordered the helmsman to change course a few degrees, and he monitored the wind by watching the smoke of his pipe. The sails held full and steady, and as the Nightflyer hissed through the dark blue waves flying fish leaped before the bow.
Berry voiced the question that had been poised like a swordpoint in Matthew’s mind. “Is he on that ship?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he’s not dead…he won’t let you go that easily.”
“He’s not dead,” Matthew said. “And yes, you’re perfectly correct.” His eyes narrowed against the glare, he watched the vessel coming on with a mixture of dread and fascination. Dread that he should be the cause of the Nightflyer being blown out of the water, and fascination that of all the people in this world he alone might now be the prime object of Professor Fell’s cold and calculating wrath.
“He knows you must be here, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, yes.” Matthew was sure of it. When Sirki had not returned with some bleeding part of Matthew, the professor had to realize his giant had been vanquished. “He knows.”
Captain Falco watched the sails, his amber eyes taking in every detail. Then he turned to Matthew and Berry. “I assume you two are very tired.”