“Next!” shouted Turgenev.
The sun was up now, and the weather much abated, as, hands bound tightly behind them, the remaining crew and the captain knelt upon the deck. One could read in the eyes of each man a stark terror of what their future held.
The lieutenant, feeling much better now, took charge again. He spoke no Romanian, and hardly trusted the captain to translate to the crew.
“I’ve learned it well enough,” said little Natalya, still in defiance of what had been done to her. “You can learn a lot about a language, even on your knees or all fours. I can tell them what you want.”
“Good, child. Translate exactly what I say to them.”
“Yes, sir. I promise.”
“You are all pirates,” Turgenev began. “As such, we need no higher authority than ourselves to hang you all.”
Two of the crew, and Vraciu, himself, began to weep openly at that, Vraciu first, because he didn’t need to wait for the translation.
“You all were party to an attempt to commit a high crime on the high seas. Thus, you are all condemned.”
“We will, however, give the remainder of the crew one chance to possibly save their lives. This will be by faithfully serving us to bring us to our destination, as close as possible to Rostov-on-Don.
“One man, however, we will not trust. That is the captain. He will die.”
Immediately, Turgenev walked to the cringing Vraciu, and grabbed him by the hair. Using this, he dragged the captain to kneel beside the rope that had been used to control him earlier. Now snot ran down Vraciu’s face, to match the freely flowing tears.
“Untie the crew,” the lieutenant ordered. When this had been done he directed the crew, through Natalya, to get good grips on the running end of the rope.
“Noose the bastard, Natalya.”
Happily the girl ran to place the loop around Vraciu’s neck, and to tighten it just enough to ensure it would not slip off. After noosing him, she spat directly onto Vraciu’s snotty, dirty face.
“Lieutenant?” Natalya asked. “I’ve seen these people hang innocent men before. It’s too quick this way.”
“What do you suggest, young lady?” Turgenev asked.
“Untie his hands, so he can struggle with the rope. They did that, sometimes, too.”
Turgenev, apprised of the reason for the girl’s hatred of the captain, thought that fair. “Do it.”
Natalya used the cleaver. She chopped at the rope binding the captain’s wrists but not neatly. Before she was done, two of Vraciu’s fingers littered the deck, while a small pool of blood stained his trousers. Something else stained them, too, as the captain lost bladder control.
“His greatest crime was against you, Natalya. You can give the command to haul away to the remaining crew.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Natalya twisted the loop around the captain’s neck to where it would tighten on one side. She’d seen them do this before, too. It kept the rope from cutting off blood to the brain, thus ensuring a slow strangle and an entertaining dance before unconsciousness took over.
Then the girl walked to a spot just in front of where the line of the crew clutched the rope. There, she tied a loop into the rope. From there, she walked to a point about ten feet farther astern, near where some rigging ran down to the gunwales and where a half dozen belaying pins sat upright in their frame.
“When I give the order,” she told the crew, “walk, do not run, toward me. Stop just before running me over. Ready? NOW!”
Hesitatingly, the crew, still clutching the running end of the rope firmly, began to walk forward. Natalya paid them little mind. Instead, she watched as the rope first bit into the captain’s neck, raising him to his feet.
The captain’s bloodied hands, less those two fingers, grasped for the rope loop in an absolutely mindless panic. Before they could get a grip to try to keep Vraciu from strangling, the rope was taut everywhere but where it allowed blood still to flow. His fingers sought desperately to get between the strangling rope and his neck, even as his legs and feet began a mindless kicking dance for something to stand on, to relieve the murderous encircling pressure on his neck. Gurgling sounds came from the writhing form, a foot or so above the deck, as his lungs sought to draw in air through the tightly constricted airway. The captain continued rising as the crew continued their walk forward.
Soon enough, a matter of seconds, the crew were standing in front of Natalya, carefully keeping their eyes to the stern and away from the strangling, writhing, gurgling, dying thing at the other end of the rope.
At that point, Natalya took the loop and secured it to the ship with one of the belaying pins.
“Let him down gently,” she said. There would be no merciful neck-breaking drop for this particular child rapist. “Now turn around and watch what waits for you if you do not obey the orders of these Russians perfectly.”
Natalya then folded her arms and watched as the captain’s struggles grew weaker and weaker. First his legs stopped churning, though his feet twitched for a good deal longer. Then one hand fell away from the rope, followed shortly by the other. His eyes began to bulge as a blackened tongue protruded from a gaping mouth. The lungs still tried to work for a while, until a heaving chest told of cardiac arrest.
Finally, with shit running down his leg and piss dripping onto the deck, Vraciu gave up the ghost and died.
“And now, you swine,” said Mokrenko, “get below and start carrying up the bodies and dumping them over the side.”
Interlude
Tatiana: Flirting
Mama was having one of those days when she was nearly a corpse. She’d woken tired and barely eaten any breakfast. We girls took turns attending her as she lounged on a couch with Joy curled up at her feet. She dozed off while reading. I pulled the blanket up over her shoulder and left Maria to keep an eye on her should she wake.
I glanced at the clock. Olga was supposed to come help out but she was almost half an hour late. I crept past Alexei’s room. Anastasia was reading to him. Papa had closed the door to his study, but I heard another male voice as I passed. He was probably in another meeting and I didn’t want to interrupt, just to check if Olga was in there without checking the other rooms first.
I entered the hallway leading to the room we girls shared. The door to our room was ajar, allowing light to fall onto one of the threadbare rugs covering the wood floor. A man of medium height and build was leaning into our room. The soldiers were not supposed to be up here and I couldn’t imagine what had brought them.
As I approached, I realized that it was Sergei Chekov. Dirt and oil darkened his blond hair to an almost-brown where his cap usually sat. He had his hands shoved in his pockets as he mumbled something into the room.
I heard the scrape of a chair and the echo of lowered voices.
Chekov moved back into the hallway, allowing me to pass.
Inside, Olga was standing next to Anton Dostovalov. I recognized him, too, as one of the red soldiers. He had been raised on a farm. Just a few years older than Olga, he was a big man with a rumbling voice to match.
Olga’s cheeks were bright red. She was standing against her bed, by the curtain that she’d hung at its foot in order to partition it from the rest of the room. The buttons down the front of her white shirt were lined up wrong as if she’d missed a hole. It hadn’t been that way when I’d seen her earlier.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
She cast me a quick glance, not quite meeting my eyes. “Yes, fine. Anton was just helping me look for something.”