Bride of the Baja by Jane Toombs Read Free Book Online

deck.
    The wind struck her a savage blow from behind and she went to her knees to keep from falling across the wet deck. The night was so dark she saw only the faint outline of the ship. Huge waves rose and fell blackly against the dark gray of the sky. When she stood up, a rain-soaked cloth slapped her face. Reaching over her head, she felt the cloth and recognized it as a torn section of sail. Without enough crewmen to work aloft, the Yankee's sails had been shredded by the wind.
    A wave roared across the deck as though trying to sweep her into the sea, but she had found a rope along the starboard side and kept her feet. Though she peered to both port and starboard, she couldn't see the telltale white of the surf nor could she hear its boom above the howling of the storm and the shrieks and groans of the ship around her.
    A brilliant flash illuminated the deck. Lightning! The flash, gone in an instant, was followed by a crack of thunder that seemed to rend the sky. In that moment of intense light, Alitha had stared in horror at the shambles of the once-proud Yankee —the mizzenmast was gone, carried away. Rigging and sails hung over the port side in a jumble of ropes and spars. Forward, near the forecastle, she had seen men in black oilskins and sea boots straining to free the ship's boat from beneath a tangle of debris. Were they abandoning ship?
    She waited until another wave crashed across the main deck. Then, holding the rail with both hands, she inched her way forward, slipping and sliding on the wet, pitching deck. Her hair was soaked and her dress clung to her legs, the cold of the water sending chills coursing through her body.
    Lightning flickered in the distance. Seeing a man looming ahead of her, Alitha took him by the arm. He turned to her with an oath.
    "It's Alitha Bradford," she shouted.
    When he recognized her, he leaned toward her and bellowed in her ear. "Get thee to the starboard side. We'll soon have the boat ready for launching."
    So they did mean to launch the boat—they were abandoning the Yankee . Alitha couldn't imagine her father giving up this ship, his ship, without more of a fight. Could they have been swept closer to the shore than she realized? Had they fought the sea and the storm and lost?
    She tensed, waiting for her chance to let go of the rail so she could cross the deck to the starboard side. The ship pitched and tossed, the sea rougher than she had ever known it. Now? No, the Yankee's bow rose high on the next wave, and she had to wrap her arms around the rail. If only we had a full crew, she thought, even now we could outrun this storm and save the ship. If only the cholera hadn't—
    She gasped. She had forgotten the men in the forecastle. They probably lay huddled helplessly in their bunks, deathly ill yet confident the ship would ride out this storm as she had so many others. After all, the Flying Yankee had faced the worst of the Cape Horn gales and survived.
    When the ship steadied, Alitha clambered up the sloping deck, pushed open the door and climbed down the ladder into the terrible stench of the forecastle. A lamp, swinging with every rise and dip of the Yankee , burned dimly overhead. All around her men lay groaning in their bunks. The deck was aslop with sea water and vomit.
    "You have to get out," she cried, steadying herself in the doorway. "They're abandoning the ship."
    None of the men seemed to hear. Lost in their misery, they lay curled on their bunks, some dead, others unconscious, the rest heedless of all but the extremes of their agony. Alitha sloshed across the forecastle deck to Jenkins's bunk—he had been more alert than the others that afternoon when, together, they had prayed for his recovery. She looked down into his unseeing eyes. Jenkins was dead.
    She returned to the ladder, recalling a phrase from Shakespeare. The men were "past hope, past cure, past help." After one last despairing look around the forecastle that burned the scene into her memory