Bride of the Baja by Jane Toombs Read Free Book Online Page A

forever, she climbed to the main deck. The ship still raced forward, but the wind had lessened and the Yankee's pitching had abated. They'll launch the ship's boat now, she told herself. When lightning flickered again, she looked to where the boat should be.
    The deck was empty, the boat and the men were gone. Only the litter of sails and rigging remained. She looked ahead—during the lightning's flash she thought she had seen something from the corner of her eye--and saw a line of white to starboard only a cable length from the ship—the white line of surf. A grinding crash shook the ship. The deck tilted and she heard a pistol-like crack from above and a thudding from behind. A yardarm must have splintered, she told herself, and come hurtling to the deck. The ship no longer plunged ahead. She had grounded on rocks and, listing at least thirty degrees to port, offered no resistance to the waves thundering over her stern. For the first time Alitha felt gusts of rain pelting against her face.
    She froze. She should stay with the ship, she told herself, until the storm abated and she could reach shore. Surely the crew had abandoned the Yankee too soon. No, she argued with herself, the waves would surely break the ship apart on the rocks. She should lower herself from the side into the sea and try to swim to shore even though she was a weak swimmer. Undecided, she felt a quiver of fear for the first time since she had fled from her cabin.
    Fighting down her fear and hopelessness, she pulled herself along the rail, making her way aft. She would go to her father's cabin. Only there would she be safe.
    A roar filled her ears as the ship shuddered. Water cascaded over her and she grasped for a rope, found none and was swept forward and over the port side into the sea. Fighting her way to the surface, she gasped for air. When she tried to swim, her dress tangled around her legs, so she held her breath and went under as she frantically unbuttoned the front of the dress and shrugged her arms out of the sleeves. After long moments she felt her legs kick their way free, and she surfaced once again.
    She couldn't swim in the strong current. Time after time she struggled to the surface and gulped air into her lungs, only to be pushed under again as she was borne forward by the sea. An object struck her arm and her fingers closed on a board as she dimly realized it must be planking from the ship or a piece of crating wrested loose from the hold by the waves. Wrapping her arms around the board, she shut her eyes, concentrating all her energy on holding fast as she let the current sweep her on.
    When Alitha opened her eyes, she found herself on a rocky shelf of land with her feet entangled in strands of a brown tubular growth. Water flowed up along her legs, fell away, then rose again. Rain beat down on her back, and the wind moaned mournfully overhead. She had no strength left, her shoulder ached and every muscle in her body seemed sore. She kicked her feet free of the kelp and crawled a few yards higher on the beach, cradled her head in her arms and slept.
    When she wakened, the rain had stopped. A strong wind off the Pacific sent dark clouds scudding overhead and drove menacing waves onto the rocks below. The Flying Yankee was nowhere to be seen. The only evidence that the ship had ever existed was the timber scattered on the shingled beach.
    Alitha pushed herself to her feet, her body aching, her legs and arms blackened by bruises. The torn white chemise, which came only to her thighs, clung wetly to her body and she shivered in the cold wind. Climbing in her bare feet to the top of a rise behind the beach, she looked around and saw that she stood on a point of land thrusting into the sea. A few hundred feet inland the ground rose to twin hills. There were no trees, only the barren, black rocks along the shore and the fields of April-green grass on the hillsides.
    She walked along the water's edge—the clouds hid the sun so that she had