Newcomb stepped to the center of the boat, balancing with one hand on the
“Tie that onto the bollard.”
Wendy took the rope, looked at it, looked at Newcomb standing below her. He was in the boat, and they were on the ship. A mistake. He had made a mistake. She and Molly were not likely to get a better chance.
“Tie the goddamned painter to the bollard, you bitch, I don’t have time for your games!” Newcomb raised the gun and Wendy flung the rope in his face, side arm, as hard as she could, knocking him back into the boat, as much from his off-balance effort to shield his face as from the force of the blow. She turned and shoved Molly, pushed her right over the low bulwark and leaped after her, so they tumbled together onto the foredeck, screened from Newcomb by the wooden wall.
Wendy pushed herself up on her arms, looked around. They had only a few seconds before Newcomb found his feet and came after them, but where would they go?
Inside. Through the gun ports. There was no other place.
There were three gun ports at the forward end of the ship, one over the centerline and one on either of the rounded corners of the casemate. Each of the gun ports had a heavy iron shutter, built in two parts like the blades of scissors. The gun ports, thankfully, were open, the shutters swung out of the way and held off the gun port by a chain that ran through a hole in the casemate to the interior.
“There! Let’s go!” Wendy shouted, nodding toward the far corner. They could hear Newcomb screaming, a high-pitched, horrible sound, “Goddamn you! Goddamn you!” and Wendy was certain now that they would be killed immediately if they were caught. Newcomb had a bigger vision, and the assassins he had captured were only an impediment.
They kept low as they ran across the foredeck, waiting for the crack of Newcomb’s pistol, the ball in their bent backs. There was a gun blocking the way through the center gun port, and in any event it was too high for them to reach. But they could get to the one on the far corner by standing on the bulwark where it met the casemate, and there was no gun there.
They reached the far bulwark, ran hard into it as they tried to stop, turned together to see if they were too late, but they could not see Newcomb. The boat must have drifted off as he flailed to regain his feet, and that bought them a few seconds more.
“Go, Molly, there!” Wendy pointed. Molly stepped up onto the bulwark, caught her foot in her filthy, tattered skirt, freed it, reached up for the opening. The gun port was higher than Wendy had realized. Molly was just able to get her head and shoulders through. Wendy put her hands on Molly’s rear end and pushed, let Molly push her feet against her shoulders, and finally she was in.
Wendy climbed up onto the bulwark, reached up into the gun port. The interior of the casemate was brilliantly lit with the flames that were burning up the wooden sides on which the iron plating was fastened, burning in patches on the deck where flammable material had been spread. Halfway through the gun port she could see the chains holding up the heavy iron shutters where they came through the casemate and were held in place by a lever. She prayed the lever would not let go right then.
Molly grabbed her hands and pulled and Wendy kicked her way up.
She heard Newcomb shout. The pistol cracked, a bullet struck the iron casemate near her flailing legs and whistled away, and then she was in, falling to the gun deck only two feet below the edge of the gun port.
She pulled herself to her feet, with Molly’s help, and looked around. Flames everywhere, climbing up the sides of the casemate, roaring up through the hatches from the engine room below. Thick black smoke rolled in clouds along the overhead, was sucked out through the hatches above. The sound was nearly deafening. She felt as if her skin would blister in the heat. There was no chance that fire would be put out by Roger Newcomb acting on his own-but that truth would make no difference to him.
They were trapped on the burning ship, Newcomb, armed, furious, just behind them. He might die trying to save
“God forgive me, Aunt, I’ve killed us both!” Wendy shouted above the flames.
Molly shook her head. A sharp roar like an explosion filled the casemate, made the deck shudder underfoot, and Wendy was certain the ship was blowing up. A scream built in her throat and she stifled it. Halfway down the gun deck, one of the big guns, engulfed in flame, leaped back as if trying to escape, half-flew across the deck, slammed with a clanging sound into the gun opposite, tilted, and fell with a crash that shook the deck again.
“We have to hide!” Molly shouted.
Wendy nodded. To their right and above their heads was a semi-enclosed platform, a ladder leading up. “There!” Wendy shouted. They raced to the ladder, took the steps fast, tumbled onto the small deck, dark and smoke-filled.
It was the pilothouse. They could see the flames playing off the spokes of the wheel, the smoke being sucked out of the narrow view slits. On hands and knees they crawled to the forward corner and huddled against the ship’s side, lost in the shadows forward of the wheel box.
It was less than a minute later when they saw Newcomb.
From where they hid they could look right down the companionway of the pilothouse to the burning gun deck below. They saw Newcomb move past, slowly, pistol in front of him. A hunter. He was looking everywhere, stepping aft, peering into the few places where the ship was not engulfed in flame. They saw him double over as he coughed, put a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, push on. They pressed themselves against the side of the ship, sat silent. He could not go too far aft. The flames would stop him, and he would know they could not have gone there either. He would be back.
Thirty seconds, an excruciating, breathless thirty seconds, and they saw him again, stumbling forward, retching from the smoke. But still alert, still looking. He stopped, a few paces away. His eyes moved up the ladder, until he was looking at them, looking directly at them, as if he were engaging them in conversation. But there was no recognition on his face, nothing to indicate he had seen them. They were hidden in the shadows, partially obscured by the wheel box, invisible to eyes that had lost their sensitivity to the dark in the glare of the flames.
Newcomb stepped toward the ladder, slow and cautious. The pilothouse was an obvious choice for a hiding spot. There were not many options.
He reached the ladder and took a step up, then another, gun ready, hammer back. His eyes, his wild eyes, were everywhere. He would see them in a second, there was no way he could not, not from so close up. They were trapped. They would soon be dead.
Another step, and his chest was level with the deck of the pilothouse. His head was thrust forward, as if that would help him see. He scanned the space, beginning at the side opposite where the women were hiding, running his eyes slowly around the small stage.
Behind him, another gun discharged, a huge sound echoing around the interior, deafening even over the roar of the flames. The vessel shook as if it had been struck.
Newcomb wheeled around in surprise, twisted on the ladder to see aft.
With a flurry of skirts, a shriek like a banshee, Molly launched herself off the side of the ship and flew across the deck at New-comb, so suddenly Wendy shouted in surprise.
Newcomb swung around, fired the gun, and Molly hit him square in the chest. The two of them flew down the ladder in a wild, chaotic tumble to the deck below.
Wendy leaped to her feet, raced for the ladder, all but jumped down to the gun deck. Newcomb was pulling himself away, trying to disengage himself from Molly, who was slashing at him with clawed hands, cursing and screaming, out of her mind with rage. Five feet from his right hand, the pistol lay on the deck.
“Oh!” Wendy shouted, ran for the gun. Newcomb cocked a leg, kicked Molly hard, knocked her free, lunged for the pistol. The smoke was coming thicker now, a dark cloud filling the forward end of the casement, obscuring objects even close up.
Wendy fell to her knees, grabbed at the gun, but Newcomb got there first. His hand wrapped around the butt, he swung the weapon around at Wendy’s face. Wendy grabbed the barrel and shoved it away as he pulled the trigger.
The pistol fired six inches from her head. The barrel jerked from her fingers, the sound of the shot like a hammer blow, the bullet loud in her ear as it flew past. Newcomb’s crazy eyes were a foot from hers. She
