Pirate - Duncan Falconer [70]
As he looked at them, he saw something wrong with the picture of the vessels. From the angle of approach the ships were in a line and appeared as a single object. But as they drew closer, and the angle widened, he could pick out the individual ships. He could see three bulkers. Not four. He kept walking, his eyes fixed on the boats, hoping that one had been moved, tucked behind one of the others, or that it wasn’t the Oasis that was missing. The girl had also been staring at the ships and came alongside him, transfixed and praying that what she suspected wasn’t true.
They both slowed to a halt. Their vessel of hope had been the largest of the four and the largest of those that remained wasn’t large enough. The Dutch captain’s vessel had gone. It had sailed without them.
The girl dropped to her knees, more out of staggering dis appointment than anything else.
Stratton sat down beside her and stretched out his feet.
She looked at him, trying to see into his eyes in the darkness, wondering if she would find the same distress and frustration that she was feeling. But she could see nothing of the sort in them. She wasn’t surprised. Not any more. She found him to be a most unusual man. He got angry like normal men, showed petty frustrations and irritation at predictable times. But when most people reached the point where they were expected to lose hope, and could be forgiven for it, this one simply went cold and began to hatch an alternative plan, looking like he had missed a bus. He never seemed to tire of looking for options.
She wondered what he was thinking. Then she decided to search for an option herself. It was no surprise to her to discover the one that came to mind, something they had considered from the beginning, and probably the only other reasonable option available to them.
‘I suppose we look for a small boat now,’ she said.
‘Out of land, sea and air that remains our best option,’ he said.
He looked towards the cove in front of the first cargo carrier. She followed his gaze. Several small boats bobbed in the protected waters of the unusual loop in the beach.
He looked to the skies, the gentle breeze rustling his scraggly hair. ‘I’d say we have five or six hours of darkness,’ he said. ‘We could be miles from here by dawn even with a poor sail.’
She felt like she could have cracked up on seeing their cargo ship gone. But his sheer confidence and tenacity prevented any chance of that happening. She got to her feet, doing her best to forget the cargo vessel and focus on the next plan. ‘Let’s do it then.’
He got up and they walked down to the beach and towards the boats.
12
Stratton and the girl reached the shore and studied the boats anchored beyond the surf. Stratton’s first concern had been that a sentry might be nearby. It didn’t surprise him to see no sign of one.
He saw several kinds of boat, the majority exposed skiffs, their empty poles sticking in the air, sails stowed, or simple rowing boats. They walked along the beach to get a better look at some slightly larger craft. In the darkness it was difficult to make them out but one appeared to have a kind of cabin.
‘What do you think?’ she asked.
‘I was thinking sail earlier. But now I’m thinking motor.’
‘A motor won’t get us across the Gulf. Not without a lot of fuel.’
‘We don’t need to cross the Gulf. All we need to do is reach the transit corridor. Something like eighty ships a day use it. And then there are all the naval ships.’
‘Could we even get that far in a motor boat? The Gulf is a couple of million square miles. That’s a lot of ocean to get stranded in if we run out of fuel. At least with a sail we have power all the time.’
‘We won’t have speed though. There’s little wind right now.’
‘It’ll pick up when we’re out there.’
‘I’d rather get as far away as I could from this coastline as quickly as I could.’
She decided he showed at least one sign of stress. He had no time for anyone else’s ideas. Unless of course he was like that all the time.
‘Let’s take a look,’ he said. ‘If there