them.
“I doubt it. More likely my keen sense of seamanship has led me to choose exactly the best course downriver, which this fellow also knows.” Wendy could hear how hollow her efforts at being flip and unconcerned sounded.
She looked back again. It did seem that the boat was making an effort to close with them.
And the boat astern of them did as well, coming up fast, coming right at them, unwavering in its attempt to overtake them. Twenty minutes later, they knew. The boat was chasing them.
“I can see only one person there,” Molly said. She was looking astern. The boat was a hundred yards behind them now, sailing at least two knots faster than the women’s boat. “Who could it be?”
The women looked at one another, and all the questions and fears passed between them, unspoken.
“No,” Wendy said. “No. I blew his goddamned brains out.”
It was all so agonizingly slow, so painfully inevitable, like a lingering death. One hundred yards, seventy-five yards, fifty yards.
“It’s him,” Molly said, her voice dead.
“It can’t be.” But Wendy was no longer so certain. Why had she not felt for a pulse, tied him up, slit his throat, something?
“It is him. I can see him clear enough now.”
“You have one bullet.”
No one spoke. Newcomb was twenty yards astern. They could see his horrible blood-caked face, his clothes filthy and torn, the hair wild on his hatless head. He looked like a statue, a gargoyle, motionless in the stern sheets, eyes locked on them. Wendy wished he would curse at them, scream at them, order them to heave to, anything but that silent, relentless approach.
“Goddamn him!” Wendy said out loud, all but shouting. Her nerves were played out, she had to act. Just standing on was tantamount to submitting to the lunatic bastard.
“Hold on, Molly! Don’t shoot until we are on top of him!” Wendy bit down, pressed her lips together. Took one last look over her shoulder, then thrust the tiller hard to starboard.
The heavy boat spun up into the wind and kept on going. In the few seconds it took to turn one hundred and eighty degrees, Newcomb’s boat covered the distance between them. Wendy watched the shoreline spin past as the boat came around again on the port tack, spinning a neat circle, and then Newcomb’s boat was right under their bow.
They hit with a shock that sent Wendy tumbling forward. The boat rolled, dipped her rail under the water, and Wendy had an image of falling masts and crushing wood, Newcomb flying from his seat and water pouring in before she landed across the after-most thwart. She heard a shout like a bull’s bellow, knew it was the outraged cry of Roger Newcomb.
She struggled up. Their boat had stove in the bow of Newcomb’s boat entirely, and the impact had sent Newcomb’s mainmast by the board, though their own still stood. Molly was clawing her way up from the bottom, the gun still in her hand. Newcomb’s boat was filling fast, going down.
“Where’s Newcomb?” Molly shouted, gun held out. It was suddenly quiet. Wendy could hear her and Molly’s breath, coming hard.
Then Newcomb was there, leaping up from behind the mass of shattered wood and torn canvas that had been his boat’s rig. Bounding over the wreckage, his eyes wild, fresh blood running down his face. He had a pistol in one hand, a wooden bucket in the other
“Son of a bitch!” Molly shouted, held the gun out. Newcomb flung the bucket at her. She flinched and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot made a weak cracking sound, like a thin twig breaking underfoot. Wendy saw Newcomb jerk around, stumble, and fall. He came down hard, falling across the gunnel of the women’s boat. But he was not dead.
He pushed himself up on one arm, his.36 Navy Colt held in front of him, a horrible leer on his face. Slowly, agonizingly, he pulled himself on board, the gun steady, the muzzle aimed always at Wendy or Molly, moving between them, as if trying to decide whom to kill first.
Newcomb got both legs aboard and sat down heavy on the thwart, leaning against the gunnel, mouth open, sucking air. The wreckage of his boat drifted off, half sunk, held up only by the buoyancy of the wood.
Newcomb’s head flopped forward, as if he did not have the strength to hold it up. Wendy searched him for a bullet wound, hoping desperately that Molly had managed to hit him, that he would bleed to death before their eyes. But there was nothing. He had fallen while twisting out of the way of the bullet. She had missed.
“Ladies,” Newcomb said at last, guttural and ironic. “How nice to see you again…”
Wendy could see Molly’s jaws working, see her arms tense. She was afraid that Molly was going to launch herself at Newcomb, try to claw him to death. “Molly…” she warned. The.36 was pointed at her aunt’s chest. She would never make it across the boat before he shot her.
They sat in their silent world of hatred as Newcomb waited for his strength to return, for the pain to subside. Ten minutes they sat, then Newcomb stirred. His gun swung over to point at Wendy. His thumb pulled the hammer back. The click was loud in the quiet air.
“You bitch… you shot me.” His voice sounded stronger now, as if in the moments of quiet he had recovered some of his strength. “I should just kill you now.”
Wendy looked at the gun and then at Newcomb’s crazy eyes, and her hatred was so profound that it blotted out the fear she knew she should feel. “Go ahead, you cowardly little puke,” she hissed.
Newcomb gave a half grin, eased the hammer back. “No, no. I can wait for the pleasure of seeing you kicking and jerking at the end of a rope. Pissing yourself as you die. Be worth it.”
Wendy looked away in disgust, her eyes moving upriver, toward the column of smoke rising up from Portsmouth. Were the Yankees there yet? Would their navy come upriver soon, to rescue the wayward Acting Master Roger Newcomb?
There was a boat coming down from Norfolk, just coming into view as it rounded Finner Point at the confluence of the southern and western branches of the Elizabeth River. It was nearly two miles away, little more than a white square bobbing on the blue water.
Then another thought came to her.
“So we wait…” Newcomb was saying. “We wait, wait, for the Union to wipe out all the stinking secesh like the vermin they are, and then we go and take you two to the proper authorities, and I am made captain while you are hung.”
The women did not respond. They sat silent and glared at Newcomb, and that seemed to unnerve him a bit. “Or maybe I’ll have to kill you as you try to escape, I don’t know, I shall see. We’ll see.”
Wendy looked beyond Newcomb, out toward the eastern shore of the river. The tide had turned, the boat was slowly drifting downstream toward Hampton Roads. She wondered how long Newcomb would just sit there.
Finally, with a grunt of effort, he stood, gun held loose at his side. He jerked his pocket watch from his vest, glanced down at it, put it away, seemed not to notice that the face was crushed, the case and the hands broken off. “Perhaps we should be on our way,” he said.
Wendy glanced astern, involuntarily. She caught a glimpse of the boat, much closer now. She cursed herself and turned her head away. Heard Newcomb gasp. She looked up. He was glaring at her, the gun pointed at her face. “You traitorous bitch!” he shouted. “How long have you known they were there?”
Wendy looked astern, no point in pretending now. The boat had halved the distance between them. She still could make out no details, but by every appearance it seemed to be Jones’s boat. She had stared long and hard at it when they met before; she recognized the shape of the sail.
