The sound of shattering crystal awoke her. A chandelier had fallen from the dining room ceiling, just missing her. An explosion rocked the ship followed by several smaller blasts. More chandeliers fell, joining a cacophony of crashing sounds as plates tipped from their racks or slid from tables. Grasping the top of a table she tried again to stand and after several attempts, succeeded. Taking a step, however, did not go as well and she stumbled into a gilt chair. More explosions came. Windows along the promenades to both sides of the dining room twisted in their frames until they cracked. The liner began to list. Bethany slipped from the chair and found herself again in agony on the floor.
Bethany heard Farley’s voice, near yet hollow, as if in a dream, “she is living then?”
“Yes, sir,” another replied.
“How in God’s name did she get over here?”
“Can’t say sir and she’s no wounds.”
“Someone must have given her a good beating then, damn. Can you get her up?”
A heavy hand, smelling of gunpowder, turned Bethany’s face and was about to force open her eyes when she did so herself. She saw the steward. He had a papaver syrette in his hand.
“You’ll need more than that...” Bethany muttered.
“Any more and you’ll drop right off to sleep.”
“I won’t.”
The steward began with one injection and when Bethany did not seem to react, gave another. On that the look of misery began to leave her face. Farley and the steward help her to her feet.
“Were you alone?” Farley questioned.
“No, I was with the stokers, we came to reinforce the boarders, we hadn’t seen...”
Farley and the steward exchanged a glance. The marine captain pronounced: “Granger must be mad” and stifled a laugh, before going on, “right, where did they go? Do you know?”
“Forward, down that corridor, Bexarians were fighting us but they moved off after they heard shots that way too. What were those blasts? Is Fletch firing?”
Farley waved his detachment of marines and sailors forward toward the corridor, “Not Fletch and neither a boiler or we would be dead - we just came from the engine room by a fireman’s passage. It must be a magazine, likely she is carrying arms for an outpost in addition to mail, as the little complement of shells for her deck guns would never have been enough to touch off something like that.”
“Your legs look alright, try to move on your own,” the Steward instructed, letting go of Bethany. She could walk, albeit awkwardly because nothing above her waist wished to cooperate. She stooped to gather up her carbine but neglected the rapier, leaving it laying in the corner of the room near the dead marine.
With Bethany trailing behind Farley’s party passed through the corridor, the sound of gunfire growing louder. When they rounded a corner into a tall room with a skylight above they found the source. The chamber spanned three decks vertically with a balcony at each connected by a sprawling mahogany staircase. A statue, in the center on the lowest deck provided the only cover on that level and men there exchanged fire with men above on the landings.
Farley signaled “halt” and surveyed the men around the statue. He quickly concluded they were Bexarian. Before he could advance the liner’s list increased suddenly.
“We’re losing compartments,” Farley whispered as hundreds of spent cartridge casings rolled across the deck with a gentle metallic tinkling, “there’s not much time.”
To emphasize this he opened fire on the clutch of Bexarians around the statue. Surprised, they withered. Most were unable to return fire before Farley’s party finished them off. Plucking the last handful of shells from the sling and feeding them into his shotgun the marine ambled into the freshly cleared compartment.
“Good god!” a sailor on one of the landings exclaimed, “we were certain your lot had drowned.”
Bethany shuffled into the tall chamber as well. She looked up and saw Badrine and his surviving men along with several other sailors from the original boarding party. Threlfall was not among them but neither was he dead on the deck or landings.
“We nearly did,” Farley replied, “is this all of you?”
“No sir, Mr. Threlfall took some men to go after the purser’s safe, after we got loose.”
“Got loose?”
Badrine fielded this question: “Threlfall’s party was ambushed and captured in this room.”
“Aye, they had riflemen on every landing firing down,” a sailor added.
“When my party came up to the dining room, well you’ve seen it for you’ve Miss Esterhouse with you, we got hit as well and the commotion evidently drew off enough of their captors, they mounted an escape.”
Farley was ascending the stairs rapidly with his party in tow. Bethany struggled such that a sailor fell behind to help her. The marine captain stopped at the highest landing and the other boarders coalesced around him.
“You have me on expertise if not rank, Mr. Farley,” Badrine stated, offering up his stokers and the other men he had come to briefly command.
Farley slung his shotgun and set about loading his revolver: “Perhaps, but you are the engineer. How long, by your reckoning, does this ship have?”
“Before she goes under entirely, perhaps an hour or more. Before she capsizes, much less - a quarter hour, maybe, it might be minutes if she is not particularly watertight. This far south it is likely most of her portholes and vents are open so once she dips one side too far to the water she’ll be a sieve.”
“Right, we are leaving. Where exactly is Threlfall’s detachment?”
“One deck up, just behind the bridge. The safe will be in or near the captain’s cabin,” Badrine replied.
“Can you be so sure?”
“No, but that is where it is most likely to be and that is where Threlfall elected to go.”
Stepping onto the boat deck revealed mounting chaos. The ship’s civilian passengers and crew were now contravening whatever orders they might have had to stay below and making for the lifeboats. They largely ignored the boarders though Farley did discourage a few patriotic spirits with his bayonet. Lowering the boats was proving difficult on the seemingly safer high side of the ship, there was not enough rope for them to reach the water and on the way down they dashed themselves against the hull. Accordingly, most of the civilians had moved to the side nearest the sea. To be clear of them Farley led the boarders across the beam to the high side. There, deck chairs pressed themselves against the superstructure and boats swung inward on their davits, useless. A sickening hiss, the sound of air rushing from compartments as the sea burst in, rose from the rear of the ship and she shuddered, though the list grew only slightly she was now clearly going down by her stern.
“With luck that might actually trim her out!” Badrine observed, half-serious.
As the hissing subsided the party heard the sounds of a scuffle and Threlfall’s insistent voice. Behind the bridge and the captain’s cabin, as expected, they found the purser’s office and his safe. Some of Threlfall’s men milled about outside, standing guard. There were two with him in the office, pointing pistols at the purser’s head.
Threlfall saw Farley and the marine began to speak, “Quiet!” Threlfall interjected, “he nearly has it.”
The purser, who was bleeding from the top of his head, was haltingly working the combination lock to his safe. An unlit lamp and inkwell rolled from his desk as the list increased, heralded by a deep groan from the ship. The desk itself toppled next. Springing up, the purser tried to run for the door. Threlfall did not move to stop him but Farley stepped into his path, the sword-length bayonet of his shotgun coming only a few lines from the paunchy officer’s stomach. The purser scuttled back to the safe and made a final few turns. It clicked open. One of Threlfall’s detachment had found a canvas sack and put it to work, shoveling in the contents of the safe.
“There’s some gold here, for certain,” he announced, feeling its weight.
Farley reached for the sack “Hang that, show me charts, private signals, anything they...”
Before he could grasp it the list deepened by several degrees in a stroke.
“How do we mean to get off?” Threlfall asked.
“We’ll go aft, walk into the water and swim for Fletch,” Farley explained.
The sailors around him looked downcast.
“I’m from up north, I never learned to swim and it isn’t taught at the Academy” Threlfall stated.
“Sir, with respect, sir I volunteered out of a farm and they sent me right to Beatrix,” a young sailor added.
Farley was perturbed, “All the Marines learn.”
“’Cause you’re going over and boarding, you’re liable to get tossed off,” another sailor piped up.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“Right, we’ll make for a boat then,” Farley decided.
Badrine took him aside, “Anybody who is aboard when she rolls is a dead man. You and whoever can swim should save themselves.”
Badrine had tried to whisper but most of the sailors heard.
The ship groaned.
Farley looked at the bloodied clutch of sailors in silence as the sound of flooding grew louder.
“It’s every man for himself now, then. Godspeed.”
The swimmers began to move aft. Farley waited for them to group together, then followed, leaving Badrine, Threlfall, and eight men. Threlfall left the purser’s office and spied Bethany at the back of the group. He brushed past the sailors to reach her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he stammered.
Bethany saw that his face was bruised, his uniform jacket was missing, and, by the marks left by the rope, that his wrists had been bound.
Bethany approached him, “They captured you, they were going to kill you, you sent for me. Tell me you sent for me, else I have certainly gone mad.”
“I sent for help, not your help, but, I don’t know what you saw, you’re not a scribe, it’s not a science. Now they’ve nearly killed you...”
Bethany leaned on him, her voice slurring with pain and papaver “Never-mind all that, let’s find a boat.”
The sailors were already at work on that question. They had begun moving aft in search of a boat on the high side near enough to the water that it might be launched. A few quick glances across the tilting boat deck confirmed that all of the davits on the low side were either empty or home to boats desperately fouled by frantic passengers. Every few seconds a crash reverberated from somewhere in the ship’s bowels or superstructure. Paintings fell from walls, steamer trunks careened across staterooms, tons of coal slipped to the low side of the bunkers. Blasts of steam and soot gushed up the funnels irregularly as damped but still hot boilers were submerged. The liner - papers in the purser’s possession had revealed her name to be Dux - had given up all of her fantail to the ocean. Consequently, the sailors seemed intent on launching the aft-most boat.
When they reached it they found a group of civilians - passengers and crew of Dux - were possessed of the same idea. They had cranked out the davits but found the boat dangling over the wrong side of the gunnel, tipping with the list. When they regarded the sailors, bloodied and for the most part still armed, the chattering crowd stopped prodding the boat and went silent.
Badrine looked about, “does anybody speak our language?” he asked them.
None did, but his question had made it clear that he and his men were the invaders. A middle-aged Bexarian sailor rushed up to him with his fists raised. Eight service revolvers were swiftly pointed at the Bexarian.
Badrine pointed to the fast approaching sea and motioned for his men to lower their weapons. The sailor took a step back but then hurled himself forward. He was shot five times and dropped to the deck. Badrine drew his own revolver.
“Back! Back all of you! If there is room we will take you but if you interfere you will end up like him!” He demanded. While theyunderstood at best only some of his words they certainly grasped the violent thrusts with the revolver that punctuated them. The gaggle of Bexarians moved off, some waiting for the boat to be freed and many others rushing to work on a less likely boat forward.
“If she falls to the deck we’re liable to lose her,” Badrine began, inspecting the lifeboat, “half of you hold the prow, the other half the stern, we are going to cut her free and lower her down to the planking and let the flooding float her off.”
“..and if she rolls over before then?!” a sailor questioned.
Badrine considered this, he pointed to a badly wounded stoker, to Threlfall, and to Bethany, “gather up deck chairs, life-rings, anything buoyant. If she starts to go we’re going to have to jump for it.”
The stoker got to work eagerly, but with Bethany hanging from him Threlfall was less zealous.
“I’m surprised you can’t swim, as well bred as you are,” he observed.
“I can,” Bethany breathed.
“Then why are you still here?”
“What does it matter, I’d rather stay and help, I can always swim off if it goes wrong.”
Threlfall shook his head, “if she rolls all at once you’ll - we’ll - all be trapped. You should go now.”
Bethany let go of him, trying to stand on her own, “I’m not sure I can. I can kick I suppose but my arms...”
Dux interrupted her. A boiler or a magazine, it was impossible to know, went up. It was larger than the blast that had started her sinking in the first place and originated deep amidships. The entire length of Dux shivered and Bethany was certain she saw the deck planking bow and twist as she was knocked to it. She began to slide aft as the ship rapidly pitched toward her flooded stern, now apparently holed by the new explosion. A fusillade of smaller blasts were heard, capped by the snapping of the cables retaining the aft-mast. It fell forward, crashing into the rear funnel and ripping it free in a shower of soot and shearing steel.
Bethany grabbed the boat deck railing and righted herself. A few arshins aft of her the deck planking began to split. In an instant the ship opened up almost to her keel, holding together but allowing the whole ocean in to hundreds of freshly exposed compartments. The list actually decreased as the load of water was balanced but this was cold comfort. The boat deck, previously dry, was now being swamped. The fantail and weather deck were gone, only glimmers of their battered wooden decking could be seen beneath the surface, joined by whirlpools where open vents and hatches guzzled down the ocean.
“Bethany!” Threlfall cried. He had grabbed hold of an inner railing a few arshins up, “swim for it, go!”
Bethany did not move, but watched him struggle up the deck toward the lifeboat. It was still stubbornly tied to its davits. A sailor with a bayonet had been working on cutting it free while his fellows held it up but they were now scattered. A handful of them, including Badrine were shambling back in its direction. Geysers of escaping air burst from behind the swamped deck beyond them every few seconds as water rushed into compartment after compartment.
Bethany leaned forward against the pitch of the ship and moved as fast as she could toward the boat. Rather than holding it or working in concert the sailors and tens of Bexarians were piling in.
“The bayonet! A knife!” Badrine bellowed, tugging at the half-cut rope. Threlfall joined him, sawing at another line with a penknife.
Dux groaned and another several arshins of hull and deck slipped into the sea. The water touched Bethany’s ankles.
“Go on! Swim! The water’s warm and Fletch is just on the other side,” Threlfall urged.
Bethany looked long at the panicked mass in the boat. She knelt and removed her shoes, then, standing, her skirt.
“Good! Now hurry!” Threlfall encouraged.
Bethany began to walk down the boat deck toward the churning water. Some of the men in the boat were screaming now. She stopped. Standing for a moment as the water rose around her Bethany looked at the lifeboat, then dashed toward it. It still hung askew in the davits - inward with the list instead of over the rail as designed. She grasped its gunnel and moved along it until she was near the ropes at the stern, where Threlfall was making little progress with his penknife.
“Damn you!” he exclaimed, seeing her.
Bethany made no reply. She raised her free hand. Flickering tendrils of moldavite appeared and among them her rapier, barely visible. Dux shuddered and in an instant the keel of the lifeboat was in the water. Just as it began to float the lines pulled it downward, easily overcoming its scant buoyancy and swamping it.
Threlfall tried to push Bethany clear of the boat.
“Stop! Can’t you see what I’m trying to do?” she protested.
Threlfall looked long at her as men began to leap from the rapidly flooding lifeboat. The beginnings of the rapier shimmered just beyond Bethany’s palm. He let go of the boat and slid into the sea next to her, still able to stand on the flooded deck. Silently, he grabbed her wrist. Bethany felt a pang of heat where his hand touched her and the rapier’s form resolved in a rush of moldavite. Its blade was not only perfectly sharp but also fringed with flame. Bethany tried to pull herself into the boat but her upper body would not answer, quaking with pain.
“Take it,” Bethany instructed, allowing the rapier to fall from her grip, though it still clung close to her.
Threlfall reached for it but could not grasp it, whenever he tried his hand was gently pressed back, as if an invisible net was drawn taught around it.
Bethany felt several pairs of hands grip her arms and shoulders, hauling her into the boat like a dead fish. Looking up she saw Badrine and his stokers.
“Go on!” he urged, pointing to the sword.
Bethany tried to stand but faltered in the unsteady boat. Rising instead to a crouch she drew back the rapier and cut across the ropes at the fore in one stroke. With a blessed thud they gave way and the line and tackle fell into the boat. The back, however, was still being hauled downward and the imbalance made the pitch greater, drawing in more water. Stepping over and onto a shuddering mass of sailors Bethany made her way to the stern and sliced the lines there. The lifeboat shot upward, finally free and afloat. Slumping against the gunnel Bethany took a shallow, urgent breath. Near her, Threlfall hauled himself aboard.
“Man the oars! We’re not clear yet!” he ordered.
Only a few oars had survived the crush of men entering the boat without being broken or cast overboard. These were manned and the waterlogged lifeboat began to move away from Dux.
Bethany looked aft. The liner was going fast now. Where the lifeboat had been was now entirely underwater, the aft-most funnel collapsed, and tens of Bexarians were thrashing about in the sea. The cleverer among them were fleeing forward though their progress was impeded by the increasing pitch of the deck. On the lower levels of the superstructure and along the hull boarding and provisioning hatches were opening and from them jumped crewman, including, from the lowest, men whose clothes were tattered and flesh blackened by the explosions. These hatches almost immediately provided new paths for the sea to rush in, and, indeed as the last men swam out of the lower ones the openings vanished into the ocean. Dux’s pitch increased as the nearly severed section filled entirely with water. It tugged hard on the still floating remains of the vessel and in a rush of sea and escaping air Dux lost another hundred arshins of her length and settled into the water such that her entire bow jutted up like the point of a knife.
“Come about and head for Fletch but stay well clear of the wreck,” Badrine ordered.
The boat made an awkward turn and began to row toward Fletch. She had long been invisible behind Dux but the sinking had revealed her masts and the top of her funnel. Fletch was moving slowly away from the sinking liner and had already moved off quite a bit, prompted by the explosions. The lifeboat rounded Dux’s bow at a safe distance. Bethany and the others looked up at the shrieking mass of Bexarians clinging to the railing on both sides. A few slipped and fell back along the length of the deck, breaking their backs and skulls as they careened into capstans and hatch combings.
“Did we do this?” Bethany asked.
Badrine shook his head, “we didn’t start her flooding.”
“But if we hadn’t attacked it is not as if this would have happened as a bolt from the blue.”
“You can’t reason like that in a war if you want to have any hope of holding together,” Badrine admonished, “if they had not invaded our coaling stations we would not have been out here, and nobody forced them to put civilians aboard or run her without an escort.”
“We are certain to pick up survivors once it is safe,” Threlfall added.
“There’s no room,” Bethany replied.
“Not the boat, Fletch.”
“Why is she not doing it now?”
“If another boiler goes up and she is too close that could be the end of her,” Badrine answered for Threlfall.
Bethany’s lifeboat drew alongside Fletch just as the liner’s last plunge began. The boat was too long to fit in the yacht’s davits and so a net was put over the side. Before climbing out all aboard paused to watch the end of Dux. With at least 100 Bexarians thrashing or kicking in the water around it the bow let out a sickening groan, took in a gulp of water, and slipped into the roiling ocean.
“If we go under it’ll be a lot quicker, thank the lord, that was some ugly theater,” Badrine mused. He then turned to help lift a wounded man up the net. Bethany cast about for familiar faces on the deck and saw Farley, soaking wet, make his way to the railing to help receive the injured man.
“Did you lose any on the way?” Threlfall asked, seeing him as well.
“No. Did you?”
“Heaven knows, maybe one, a few jumped for it,” Badrine muttered.
“We will need to take a count for the log,” Granger noted, “...but it looks like most of you made it.”
Granger had been hauled to the gunnel on his chair and now rose from it, tottering over to the men leaving the boat. He reached out and shook Badrine’s hand while nodding at the surviving stokers, “I asked much of you all, fine work.”
Moving over to Threlfall he went on “I am told you led a detachment to go after the safe, you acquitted yourself well, also.”
He had already recognized Farley when his group had come aboard but praised him again in front of the entire crew. As Granger finished a sailor who had swum asked: “What of the things we found in the safe? Did they make it over?”
Badrine hoisted the waterlogged canvas sack, “indeed they did.”
“We will inventory this as soon as it is practical to do so. Any coins and notes with value outside Bexar - their war scrip is worthless - will be divided thereafter according to prize rules with a bonus for the men of the boarding party,” Granger pronounced. The boarders hurrayed. “Now, however, we are going to recover as many survivors from the water as we can. Do not grumble, we would expect them to do it for us and there are women and children out there. If you are uninjured stay on deck, all others meet the steward below.”
Granger fell back into his chair, “Helm, dead slow ahead and make for the pack of them near where bow went under.”
Fletch trundled toward the largest group of survivors. Sailors stood at her stern with oars and boat hooks to keep bodies and, potentially, the living but delirious away from her screw. The lifeboat that had delivered Badrine’s party was put to work plucking those who could not climb the netting from the sea. Bethany sat on the deck, her back against the superstructure. While never unconscious she drifted in and out of alertness, her eyes dropping closed as the high tropical sun dried her soaked hair and what remained of her uniform. She watched the recovery of survivors as if it was occurring on a distant stage, though it was in fact but an arshin from her, so close that seawater dripping from their clothes ran across the deck and touched her. A marine wielding a carbine stood near her, though he seemed totally ignorant of her presence and nearly stepped on her once - his task was to defend not Bethany but Fletch should any of the survivors make a try at revenge. None of those plucked from the sea did.
A handful of lifeboats began to approach. The first was overloaded, mostly with passengers, while the second was half empty but was at least laden with women and children. A third came bearing only four civilian men, none of them sailors. They seemed to have clambered in after the ship went down as their clothes were torn and sodden. The fourth came much later, after having rowed for a while away from Fletch. By the time it was alongside all of the other survivors - the sea was now clean of anything that moved under its own power while at least 100 corpses bobbed about - were aboard and corralled about the forecastle, though under guard they were being served tea and water. The boat was relatively full and occupied only by men in uniforms which ranged from the coarse, drab tunic of a Bexarian marine to the tailored whites of a merchant officer. Silently, they allowed their boat to be hooked to Fletch and secured with ropes. A sailor rose and from under a wad of canvas cut from the lifeboat’s auxiliary sail drew a revolver. He stood, shouted something, and fired on the marine near Bethany. Splinters from two missed shots struck her and as the sailor tried to scale the net the marine moved forward and fired a single shot into his chest. The hot cartridge casing fell into Bethany’s lap, burning her, and she stood to knock it away. Two more Bexarians came onto the deck, one was killed and one was wounded. The marine ran his carbine’s bolt only to find the weapon empty. Emboldened a mass of Bexarians swarmed out of the boat. Bethany’s rapier lay on the deck a few steps behind her. Keeping her eyes on the advancing men she moved back and grabbed it just in time to run through a merchant sailor who had armed himself with a fire ax.
Farley, swearing, came around the fore of the superstructure. Long brass shells glistened as he drew them from a fresh cartridge box - he had fired all those in his sling on Dux - and fed them into his shotgun. He dropped the box when his gun was full, ran the pump, and took up a firing stance while still moving toward the gaggle of Bexarians. He fired as fast as he could, not needing to aim for they were so tightly packed about the gunnel. They fell, some forward to be trampled, and some backward into the sea or onto their compatriots in the boat. Farley stepped to the gunnel and fired his last shell into the lifeboat, holing it and killing several Bexarians who had yet to clamber out. Around him the survivors, most bleeding from at least one bit of shot, threw down their arms and raised their hands.
By now the other marines and countless sailors had converged on the scuffle.
Farley slung his empty shotgun and coughed, the latter prompting his wounded neck to let out a trickle of blood, “search these cowards and, with Mr. Granger’s permission, lock them below.”
Bethany looked herself over, half expecting to find some of Farley’s shot in her - he had either not seen her or disregarded her when he opened fire. There was none, however, though she was bleeding from a jab delivered by an eager sailor with his pocketknife.