Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [57]
“You can’t know that.” Tabitha turned her back to the rail and gripped it with both hands. “He’s usually a gentleman and—” She caught her breath. “Raleigh, we have company.”
15
______
Compared to a frigate, the vessel was small, a mere two-masted sloop built for speed and boldly flying the Union Jack from its mainmast. It swooped over the horizon like a hawk stooping on a rabbit, and the Marianne might as well have sprouted ears and a furry tail.
Tabitha’s stomach dropped to the pit of her belly. Her hands flexed on the rail as she waited for the explosion of the long gun mounted on the sloop’s bow.
In front of her, Raleigh’s face whitened and he spun. “The anchor.” He sprinted forward. “Loose the sail.”
Tabitha sprang to obey. She didn’t take time to remind him she hadn’t touched a belaying pin or sheet since he left two years earlier. Surely she remembered how to spring the knot free and let the canvas fall without sending it flapping from the spar like a broken bird wing. Surely . . . surely . . .
She grappled with the salt-stiffened lines, tugged at the belaying pin holding it fast to the rail. Rough hemp scored her palms.
Behind her, Raleigh took an ax to the anchor hawser. A loss for him, the anchor. Better than his life. Better than the fishing boat.
She kept her gaze fixed on the sloop. Every second drew it nearer, made it larger. She caught the movement of men on the deck, the flash of a telescope.
“How dare you? How dare you?” she shouted at them. “This is our country, our ocean.”
She slammed her fist into the belaying pin. It sprang free and sailed across the water to disappear into the foam of a wave. A big, beautiful wave that lifted the smack and edged her toward shore. Of course. The tide had turned.
“We can do this, Raleigh.” Tabitha grasped the sheet and raced across the deck, the sail swirling out behind her.
The chunk, chunk, chunk of the ax on a hawser as thick as a man’s arm was the only reply.
“If I can sheet home, draw that line taut, and flatten the sail—”
A gust of wind caught the canvas and tore the line from her hand. With a shriek of frustration, she dove after it, tackling the trailing end against the rail. The sail sagged. The smack yawed, then dropped into a trough. Seawater splashed Tabitha’s face. She coughed and blinked to clear her eyes, and held fast to the line.
“Help me,” she choked out. “Raleigh—”
The sloop drew nearer, loomed too close, black-hulled and menacing.
Tabitha scrabbled for footing on the slippery deck. One of the discarded fishing lines caught on her ankle. She landed on her knees. But she held fast to the sail line, her front pressed to the gunwale, her legs entangled in skirts and fishing tackle.
Another chunk sounded a dull vibration through the deck, and the Marianne pitched and rolled, uncontrolled in the heightening waves of an incoming tide.
“Tabbie, the sail,” Raleigh shouted. “If we don’t—” He interrupted his admonition with something like a bellowed prayer. His footfalls pounded on the deck. He tore the line from her hands. “Got it. Hold on tight. I’ll help you.”
“No, the wheel. Get the wheel.”
They swung and dipped over the waves like a mere bucket on the swells. And the sloop drew nearer, near enough for her to see faces of the men, mere blurs of white against the misty blue of the sky.
But the gun didn’t fire.
“They’re not going to fire on us,” she announced with relief.
“They don’t have to.” Raleigh sounded breathless. He hauled the sail across the boom and slammed a belaying pin through the knot. “They’ll just run us down.”
“But why?”
“I don’t . . . know.” He stumbled over the fishing poles stretched across the tiny deck. “But they’re chasing us or they’d have sheered off by now.”
“The water gets shallow soon.” Tabitha leaned on the wheel, fighting the waves, the current, the boat’s lack of propulsion—besides the water—without the sail raised. “If we can get into shallower water than their draft can draw, we