Gone to Texas (30 page)

"But what if Morrell caught up with her?" asked O'Connor.

"Then I would have to say, God help Morrell."

O'Connor didn't look the least bit amused. In fact, when it came to Noelle, he had apparently misplaced his well-developed sense of humor altogether. Christopher fondly remembered the old O'Connor, from their West Point days together, a happy-go-lucky character who never let himself become too serious about anything.

"You're an ungrateful wretch," said O'Connor bitterly. "Twice she saved your life. And this is how you repay her. She loved you."

"I don't think so."

"Then you are a fool."

Christopher didn't bother to respond. He remained carefully impassive in the face of O'Connor's harangue.

"I will sail with you to Texas," said O'Connor. "But as soon as we get there I'm coming back to find Noelle."

That was his final word on the subject. For the rest of the day, and the day after, his attitude was decidedly cool.

Christopher's heart ached for missing Noelle. He was willing to concede that he had done wrong by her. But
he consoled himself with thoughts of Greta. And, to his surprise, he found that as the day wore on he began to feel better about things. The memory of Noelle gave his heart a sharp twinge along about sunset. He countered this bit of unpleasantness by writing another letter to Greta. Elaborating on how much he missed her, pouring out his heart as he had never done before, informing her that in a matter of days he would be settled somewhere in Texas, and then he could send for her. Greta was a tonic which eased the misery of his longing for Noelle. He went to his bed hopeful that by tomorrow Noelle would have faded from his thoughts, that as the distance between them grew the hold she had on him would weaken. Yet she came to him in his dreams, haunting him with her hot, silky, café-au-lait skin against the cold graveyard stone—and then he saw the cane knives, flashing in the moonlight, dripping blood, and he woke up in a cold sweat.

The morning dawned gray and blustery. The sea had become violent overnight. The brigantine clawed her way westward, a strong southerly wind laying her over and howling in the rigging. Massive gray foam-crested waves smashed against the ship. The port bow of the
Liberty
received the brunt of this brutal assault, and the impact would send the bowsprit leaping toward the sky, and the brigantine began to heave slowly over, with the bowsprit rising, rising, rising ever more steeply, until she rolled and slid down the far side of the wave, and the ship would settle for a moment on an even keel, heeling into the wind as the wave passed beneath the stern and lifted it. Then the next wave came, hard on the heels of the one before it, and the bowsprit leaped for the sky again, and she would begin to heave slowly over . . . Pitch, roll, heave, roll—in this way the
Liberty
gamely corkscrewed her way through the heavy seas, with the waves crashing over the bulwarks and sweeping the deck.

Even Christopher felt a little nauseated now. He went aft from his forecastle berth to check on his mother and Prissy. Rebecca was trying to console Prissy—a futile attempt.

"We all gwine drown!" screeched Prissy, quite beside herself.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Christopher. "We'll be fine."

"Dere's a big storm a-comin'," said Prissy. "The cap'n done tol' us to stay below. You mark my words, we all gwine drown."

Christopher asked his mother how she was bearing up.

"I'm fine," was Rebecca's stoic reply. "But keep an eye on Mr. Klesko, Christopher. I dont think he's doing too well."

Christopher didn't tell her he had just left Klesko, swaying in his canvas hammock and looking like he would have to get better to die.

Leaving the captain's cabin, he went up a companionway to the deck, and was thoroughly drenched by a cascade of seawater as he threw open the hatch. He didn't care. It was preferable to staying below, where the sound of the sea hammering against the hull trying to get in, mingled with the creak and groan of the ship timbers as they tried to keep the sea out, and the stench of the lower deck, and the grim, anxious faces of that portion of the crew not on watch all combined to create an oppressive atmosphere.

He saw Nathaniel and the captain on the quarterdeck, and started across the waist to join them. A thirty-foot wave rose up out of the sea and crashed over the port bow. He felt the deck shudder beneath his feet, and lost his balance just as the wave struck him and threw him into the starboard scuppers. The brigantine heeled over and before Christopher could get a grip on anything the water collecting against the bulwark lifted him off the deck. Gripped by sudden panic, he realized that he was
about to be swept overboard, and knew he wouldn't last five minutes in such rough seas. He grabbed a handful of rigging and held on for dear life until the
Liberty
settled on its keel. Making it to the quarterdeck, he saw by the expression on Nathaniel's face that the old leatherstocking had witnessed his brush with death.

"You better get below," said Nathaniel, shouting to be heard above the harping of the wind.

"No thanks. As bad as it is up here, it's worse below."

Nathaniel nodded, and turned to look at the captain as the latter yelled to the helmsman to turn her a few points into the wind.

"We'll have to take in another reef," the
Liberty'
s skipper told his first mate, shouting even though the man stood at his shoulder. "There's nothing for it."

"Aye, sir," agreed the mate. "We'll lose canvas if we don't. The wind is picking up." He cast a worried glance aloft.

"And the sea is becoming steeper." The captain glanced grimly at Nathaniel. "No ordinary squall, I fear, Mr. Jones. We are in the very teeth of a hurricane."

"Call all hands, Mr. Wells," said the captain.

Leaning over the poop rail, the
Liberty'
s brass-throated first mate passed the word along. A seaman threw open the forecastle hatch and yelled to the men below.

"All hands! All hands to reef topsails!"

They came pouring out of the hatch, scattering to their stations. Christopher watched them go to work with great admiration for their prowess as well as their nerve. The brigantine pitched and rolled violently. Steep waves crashed down upon the decks. Yet the crew was an experienced lot. They manned the halliards and reef tackles, and Christopher could scarcely believe that any man would have the guts to venture aloft under such conditons. But these men scampered up the rigging, agile as monkeys.

"Haul away!" bellowed Mr. Wells, and his stentorian voice seemed to pierce the banshee wailing of the wind. "Bear those backstays! Hands to the weather braces! Haul in the weather main brace! Haul away, boys!"

In moments he was able to turn to the captain and report that the sails had their reef.

"Bring the men down," replied the captain, well-satisfied with the conduct of his crew. "But have them stand by."

Nathaniel noticed that the
Liberty'
s skipper was continually searching the gray gloom of storm and sea off the starboard side, and the frontiersman had a hunch he knew what the man was looking for. Of course there was nothing to see but driving sheets of rain and towering waves. But there, somewhere near, was the coast—a coast notorious for its treacherous sand reefs.

"Give her a turn into the wind," said the captain.

The helmsman responded. As the brigantine swung to port, Christopher happened to glance up and saw a line of white separate sea and sky. For an instant his horrified mind refused to register what he was seeing—a wave, a wave as tall as the
Liberty'
s mainmast, or so it seemed to him.

"Good God," he breathed.

Wells saw it next. "Grab hold of something and hang on!" cried the first mate.

And then the monstrous wave came down upon them.

Gripping the poop rail for all he was worth, Christopher was slammed against the deck by the impact of tons of descending seawater. He felt the ship shudder and tilt precariously beneath him, and thought,
She's going to break apart. This wave will smash her into so much kindling
. But the ship emerged, popping up to crest like a cork, and reeling down the back side of the wave. As he gasped for breath Christopher heard a rending crash, the screams of men being swept overboard, and looked up to see the mainmast falling, toppling
sideways to starboard. The captain was yelling, but Christopher couldn't make out the words. Looking about the quarterdeck, he saw that the helmsman was gone, and the wheel was spinning madly. Mr. Wells lunged for it, and tried to hold on, but it was turning with such velocity that it struck him down, and he went sliding across the deck.

The next wave, as tall as the one before, was instantly upon them. The
Liberty
, helmless, pivoted, and the comber caught her broadside. She tilted sharply to port as the wave crested and descended to strike her so savagely that the impact shook Christopher loose from the rail. The brigantine convulsed, lurched sickeningly, rolled, and then struck with a deafening crash, the rending of timbers. The stump of the mainmast was swept against the quarterdeck, shattering the poop rail. Christopher was hurled into a tangle of rigging, to which he clung for dear life as yet another comber smashed down upon the mortally wounded ship and almost drowned him.

"Christopher!"

He dimly heard his grandfather's voice, and answered with a weak "Here!" An instant later, Nathaniel appeared, struggling to reach him through the tangle of shrouds and ratlines.

"She's run aground," said the frontiersman.

Christopher was too shaken to respond. The ship was dying. He could hear it. It was as though the
Liberty
were a living creature, cracking and shrieking and groaning as the relentless sea crashed against her and mercilessly ripped her to pieces. He had never heard such a terrible sound.

"We must find your mother."

Nathaniel's voice was calm and sane and it pierced the mad chaos of noise and destruction to reach Christopher and wrench him free of that strange, deadening apathy which had overwhelmed him.

"Yes," he mumbled, feeling new life pulse through his frozen limbs. "Yes, we've got to find her."

With Nathaniel's help he managed to untangle himself from the rigging. The ship's deck was no longer pitching and heaving. That was something, at least. But every time a comber smacked into her the deck shuddered so violently that he was certain she would disintegrate into splinters. They descended the ladder to the waist, which was littered with the debris of the foremast. The door to the captain's cabin, located beneath the quarterdeck, was blocked by the trunk of the mainmast. Several members of the crew stumbled out of the hatch. Christopher grabbed one of them.

"We need your help."

The seadog stared at him, like a man in a trance, uncomprehending.

"We must get into the captain's cabin!"

Still the man did not speak.

"What's it like below?" asked Nathaniel.

Queried on the subject of the ship and the sea the man seemed to come to life.

"Can't you hear it?" he rasped. "She's broke deep. The sea's in her belly now, and she's coming apart at the seams." He began to struggle to free himself from Christopher's grasp.

"We need help," said Christopher, holding on.

"Help yourself," cried the crewman, becoming frantic. "Get off the ship. Get off and try to make it to shore. It's your only chance."

"Let him go," said Nathaniel, realizing they would get no help from this one.

Christopher complied. The man stumbled away across the deck, vanishing behind a gray curtain of rain and sea.

"Stay here," said Nathaniel. "I'll be back."

The frontiersman returned in a matter of minutes—minutes that crept by like hours for Christopher as he clung to the rigging of the fallen mast and tried to catch
his breath between the overwhelming waves. Brandishing an axe, Nathaniel hacked his way through a snarl of tangled rope and canvas until, crouched beneath the shattered trunk of the mast, he was able to reach the door. There was room for only one man, and precious little room at that for wielding an axe against the door, so Christopher had to stand helplessly by, pummeled by the waves that swept across the
Liberty'
s waist, feeling the deck tremble and shift beneath his feet, as the sea surged through great jagged holes in the hull below him and tore at the guts of the doomed vessel.

It seemed like an eternity before Nathaniel called out that he had cut a hole in the door. Christopher scrambled into the captain's cabin, squirming through the hole on his grandfather's heels. He was shocked by the wreckage which filled the cabin. Gaping gashes had been torn out of the flanks of the brigantine, through which the battering sea rushed in with every wave. He called out, in a panic, and was relieved to hear Rebecca's voice in the darkness. Clambering over and under shattered timbers, he and Nathaniel reached her side.

Rebecca was kneeling in the water which sloshed too and fro across the deck, cradling Prissy's head in her lap. A heavy beam lay across Prissy's chest—too heavy for them to budge. Nathaniel attacked it with the axe, but the wood was old and seasoned and nearly as hard as iron, and the frontiersman was quick to realize that it would take hours to cut through. They didn't have hours. The groan of the ship was loud in their ears. At any moment the
Liberty
would surrender to the sea and break apart. It was as inevitable as death.

"We've got to get you out of here," he told Rebecca.

"I won't go. Prissy's still alive."

Christopher felt the flutter of a pulse in Prissy's wrist. She was unconscious, and blood leaked out of the corner of her mouth.

"He's right, Mother. There is nothing we can do for her. The ship is breaking apart . . . "

"I won't leave her while she lives!" cried Rebecca.

Christopher tried to lift her, hooking his arms beneath hers. She fought him. "Prissy!" she wailed. He got a better hold around her waist and pulled her away, but then another wave struck the brigantine, spewing through the gaps in the cabin wall, and with a tremendous wrenching sound the deck shifted violently and he fell. When he looked up the fallen beam was gone and so was Prissy, and there was a jagged hole where half of the cabin floor had collapsed. A geyser of water spewed up through the hole, temporarily blinding him. The
Liberty
was moving again, lurching soggily sideways, then tilting at a sickening angle to starboard.