Warrick and Drew shared the tin of ship’s biscuit and the last of the maple sugar fudge. Lorena had no appetite for either. Her thoughts were with Brogan out in the gale. She’d seen the look of concern on William Farragut’s face when he’d asked her to look out for his brother. She understood the grave danger of working a ship in heavy weather. Even the heartiest and most seasoned sailors were not invulnerable to the mountainous swells that could snatch a man from the safety of the deck and drag him into the sea.
Life was precious. It could be altered in an instant or someone dear lost in one stroke of fate. Having survived her mother’s passing, and more recently the events of these past weeks, Lorena had never believed this to be more true. Whatever Brogan had to tell her, whatever secret he revealed, it wouldn’t change the way she felt about him. Just, please, let him return safely.
She listened to the commotion from without and realized it had begun to rain.
The Yankee Heart gave a pitch, nearly tossing them off the settee. The tin flew from Drew’s fingers, crashing to the Brussels carpet, where it rolled among a shower of dry biscuit crumbs. Upended dining chairs shifted to leeward. They’d been diligent in tucking away even the smallest of articles, but one overlooked item glided toward them, delivered as if by Providence.
A cracked and worn brown leather volume, tied closed by a thin leather strap.
Dark clouds descended over the Yankee Heart in an unearthly haze of deep violet stirring into black. Lightning played back and forth in the distance, and thunder rent the air with the report of a cannon shot, echoing until Brogan felt its vibration in the quarterdeck beneath his Hessians.
A hard rain pounded the decks and lashed in windswept fury against his face and chest. “Hard-a-lee,” he shouted to Josiah Carter, manning the wheel.
Quartermaster Cyrus Fletcher had been sent below for some much needed rest. Brogan had relieved Jabez as well, the mate having worked tirelessly through the night, and asked that he check on Lorena and Drew before grabbing some winks.
Mr. Carter put down the wheel and turned the ship’s head. Brogan followed the circuit of the Yankee Heart’s bowsprit as she came round, then snapped his gaze to the sails as she picked up the wind from her other quarter. Gusts wailed through the rigging with a shrill loud enough to curl an old salt’s toes.
As the ship swung past the eye of the wind, his trained and discerning eye took measure. She still carried too much sail.
“Reef the main upper topsail, Mr. Farragut,” Brogan ordered into the squall, where his second mate manned the waist with several of the crew.
The wind carried back the faint echo of William’s “Aye, sir!”
The agile youth took two seamen with him into the rigging. The wind whipped around them with evil ferocity as they made the slick, dangerous ascent. It filled the sails, turning them into snapping sheets of unforgiving canvas, heavy and wet with spray. Twenty . . . forty . . . sixty feet and upward they continued to scale the mainmast. Reducing sail was tricky business in fair weather. In a gale like this, such a feat could seem near impossible. It was a precarious hold on those lofty, wet footropes, balancing against the roll and pitch of the sea, but Brogan had complete faith in the skill of his men.
And yet something disquieted him. Uneasiness churned in his gut. Something was amiss. A sense of danger surrounded him like a shark circling its prey, and Brogan searched frantically for the reason.
A broken spar hurtled up through the air on a violent gust. He yelled out a warning that was quickly lost in the deafening report of the snapping mainsail. The projectile struck Gideon Hale on the thigh and knocked him off the ratlines.
Brogan could do nothing but watch his man helplessly drop over eighty feet to the deck.
His heart plunged along with Gideon, and he felt the impact as though it were he who’d fallen. He recognized the stillness of death in Gideon’s prone form. Anguished, he dashed down the companion ladder and, upon reaching the main deck, hailed assistance from the starboard watch. It required a good bit of strength and time to walk aft against the screaming winds, and even with his own height and weight it was difficult for Brogan to stand erect.
He was first to reach the mainmast and Gideon’s body. The loss of his crewman engulfed him as the Yankee Heart’s bow rose on a swell. She rode the wave, then went down by the head. A wind blew across her beam, and as the vessel pitched to starboard, a pillar of frothing green seawater burst over the lee rail.
Brogan braced himself, but the turbulent stream struck with force. It knocked him flat, propelling both his and Gideon’s bodies across the deck. They scudded along and crashed into the bulwarks, where Gideon’s body washed over the rails. In the blink of an eye, a man was lost. The sea had buried a friend and shipmate.
Grabbing on to the first rope he could find, Brogan prayed it was secure and held fast as the surge flowed over him.