Outlander 03 - Voyager

He bent and kissed me on the forehead, between the brows.

“Dinna fash, Sassenach. I’ll speak to the manager at Jared’s plantation. Perhaps he can find the man some employment, or else—”

A warning shout from above interrupted him.

“Ship ahoy! Look alive, below! Off the port bow, ahoy!” The lookout’s cry was urgent, and there was a sudden rush and stir, as hands began to turn out. Then there was a lot more shouting, and a jerk and shudder as the Artemis backed her sails.

“What in the name of God—” Jamie began. A rending crash drowned his words, and he pitched sideways, eyes wide with alarm, as the cabin tilted. The stool I was on fell over, throwing me onto the floor. The oil lamp had shot from its bracket, luckily extinguishing itself before hitting the floor, and the place was in darkness.

“Sassenach! Are ye all right?” Jamie’s voice came out of the murk close at hand, sharp with anxiety.

“Yes,” I said, scrambling out from under the table. “Are you? What happened? Did someone hit us?”

Not pausing to answer any of these questions, Jamie had reached the door and opened it. A babel of shouts and thumps came down from the deck above, punctuated by the sudden popcorn-sound of small-arms fire.

“Pirates,” he said briefly. “We’ve been boarded.” My eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light; I saw his shadow lunge for the desk, reaching for the pistol in the drawer. He paused to snatch the dirk from under the pillow of his berth, and made for the door, issuing instructions as he went.

“Take Marsali, Sassenach, and get below. Go aft as far as ye can get—the big hold where the guano blocks are. Get behind them, and stay there.” Then he was gone.

I spent a moment feeling my way through the cupboard over my berth, in search of the morocco box Mother Hildegarde had given me when I saw her in Paris. A scalpel might be little use against pirates, but I would feel better with a weapon of some kind in my hand, no matter how small.

“Mother Claire?” Marsali’s voice came from the door, high and scared.

“I’m here,” I said. I caught the gleam of pale cotton as she moved, and pressed the ivory letter-opener into her hand. “Here, take this, just in case. Come on; we’re to go below.”

With a long-handled amputation blade in one hand, and a cluster of scalpels in the other, I led the way through the ship to the after hold. Feet thundered on the deck overhead, and curses and shouts rang through the night, overlaid with a dreadful groaning, scraping noise that I thought must be caused by the rubbing of the Artemis’s timbers against those of the unknown ship that had rammed us.

The hold was black as pitch and thick with dusty fumes. We made our way slowly, coughing, toward the back of the hold.

“Who are they?” Marsali asked. Her voice had a strangely muffled sound, the echoes of the hold deadened by the blocks of guano stacked around us. “Pirates, d’ye think?”

“I expect they must be.” Lawrence had told us that the Caribbean was a rich hunting ground for pirate luggers and unscrupulous craft of all kinds, but we had expected no trouble, as our cargo was not particularly valuable. “I suppose they must not have much sense of smell.”

“Eh?”

“Never mind,” I said. “Come sit down; there’s nothing we can do but wait.”

I knew from experience that waiting while men fought was one of the most difficult things in life to do, but in this case, there wasn’t any sensible alternative.

Down here, the sounds of the battle were muted to a distant thumping, though the constant rending groan of the scraping timbers echoed through the whole ship.

“Oh, God, Fergus,” Marsali whispered, listening, her voice filled with agony. “Blessed Mary, save him!”

I silently echoed the prayer, thinking of Jamie, somewhere in the chaos overhead. I crossed myself in the dark, touching the small spot between my brows that he had kissed a few minutes before, not wanting to think that it could so easily be the last touch of him I would ever know.

Suddenly, there was an explosion overhead, a roar that sent vibrations through the jutting timbers we were sitting on.

“They’re blowing up the ship!” Marsali jumped to her feet, panicked.

“They’ll sink us! We must get out! We’ll drown down here!”

“Wait!” I called. “It’s only the guns!” but she had not waited to hear. I could hear her, blundering about in a blind panic, whimpering among the blocks of guano.

“Marsali! Come back!” There was no light at all in the hold; I took a few steps through the smothering atmosphere, trying to locate her by sound, but the deadening effect of the crumbling blocks hid her movements from me. There was another booming explosion overhead, and a third close on its heels. The air was filled with dust loosed from the vibrations, and I choked, eyes watering.

I wiped at my eyes with a sleeve, and blinked. I was not imagining it; there was a light in the hold, a dim glow that limned the edge of the nearest block.

“Marsali?” I called. “Where are you?”

The answer was a terrified shriek, from the direction of the light. I dashed around the edge of the block, dodged between two others, and emerged into the space by the ladder, to find Marsali in the clutches of a large, half-naked man.

He was hugely obese, the rolling layers of his fat decorated with a stipple of tattoos, a jangling necklace of coins and buttons hung round his neck. Marsali slapped at him, shrieking, and he jerked his face away, impatient.

Then he caught sight of me, and his eyes widened. He had a wide, flat face, and a tarred topknot of black hair. He grinned nastily at me, showing a marked lack of teeth, and said something that sounded like slurred