CHAPTER FORTY TWO

The arrow swam through the mist and found a spot between the shoulder blades of the helmsman. He fell onto the ship’s wheel where he balanced for a moment. Then the wheel became unbalanced, and the helmsman slipped with the wheel spinning beneath him. He fell to the floor and the wheel kept spinning. The stern of the ship began pitching outwards, until it got caught in a flow of water that was moving faster than the flood beneath the body of the ship. The stern came around wildly until the ship was completely sideways to the river.

On the other side of the river the prow of the ship was aimed straight at a rocky outcrop, and a second later there was a crunch as the ship’s bow smashed into the far cliff. The front of the ship crumpled, and splintery boards sheared into the air.

The ship’s stern floundered toward where Jane stood on the riverbank. Jane stood still, transfixed by this slow moving disaster. The ship’s aft ploughed into the river bank, pushing hard into the black soil, tearing out soil and grass, shoving over a river pine so that its root ball lifted into the air dropping black soil and webs of fungi. The ground trembled beneath Jane’s feet.

The flood thumped against the ship’s side, heaving and pushing and trying to lift the ship up and over.

Back up the river’s edge Trinket ran, a green streak, from the suspension bridge toward where the ship had struck. She waved at Jane, and shouted, ‘Unlock the brig before the ship sinks.’

The roof of the brig rose above the river bank, and had levered into the bank, holding the ship back from pitching right over into the flood. In the rear of the brig was a small window, directly level to where Jane stood. She would have to work her way around the root ball of the river pine that had fallen.

Carefully, she negotiated the root ball, grasping handfuls of wet roots while digging her feet into the clumps of black soil. One limb at a time she shifted through the roots, getting scratched on her cheek and legs. Water boiled up between the rear of the ship and the riverbank. There was a gap she would have to jump. She bent her knees and straightened her arms and, using the root as an anchor point, she leaped.

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She landed against the back of the ship with two hands on the railing that protected the narrow passageway behind the brig. She landed with her right knee on the walkway and her left foot bouncing in the flood. She paused for breath, then pulled her left leg up. She scrambled upright.

She looked through the window but could only see darkness. The window was held shut by a bolt that went from a metal holding clasp into a brass eyelet. Jane took hold of the bolt and slipped its eye down and pushed hard. At first the bolt resisted, then it leapt and the window sprung open.

Jane didn’t stop to consider there might be danger inside the brig. She put her face into the square of darkness and called:

‘Tom.’

From the darkness, Tom’s voice came back, ‘How the bother did you get here Jane?’

‘No time … quickly … take my hand.’

Jane put her hand through the window into the darkness, and she heard a thud and sound like timber falling on timber. Then she heard another voice.

‘Me first.’

Into the sallow light cast by the window came the boy, Andrew, who had been taken up the cliff in the northern meadow.

‘Me first,’ he said again, his face looming, beetroot skinned, beady eyed. His mouth wobbled like a groping fish.

Jane drew her hand back, then thrust it forward again. It would be easiest to quickly get Andrew out of the brig.

Andrew took her hand, but just then the door between the brig and the deck opened. Through the door came a huge man with a head like a crate, and hair that whipped around like mad animals. His face was like hammer beaten metal.

‘I knew it was you,’ said the big man, looking at Tom in the light cast by the door he had just opened.

’Are you the captain?’asked Tom.

‘I’m the captain,’ said the man. ‘Now we have to get you off this ship before it sinks.’

The captain lunged across the brig and reached out, his long arm wound tightly with muscle. He grabbed Andrew and dragged him away from the window, wrenching Jane’s arm as Andrew’s grip got broken. He threw Andrew like a discarded blanket, and Andrew fell hard into the crates and ropes.

Andrew yelled something unintelligible.

‘Who are you?’ said the captain to Jane.

Tom answered, ‘She is a friend.’

Just then the boat bumped onto a steep angle as the river thumped the side, and tried to roll the ship up and over.

‘Elion, take the girl’s hand,’ said the captain to Tom. ‘This boat is going under.’