Isle of Swords (43 page)

“Now, Claudio—” Ramiro started to say. His mouth remained wide open, but his voice failed. He heard a sound like the echo of a thousand cannons. And off the starboard rail, the ocean fell away.

Down it went as if sucked into the depths by some gigantic beast.

A hundred-foot chasm opened up, and Ramiro could not see the bottom. A monstrous shadow fell over the ship. And dead ahead, another wave had gathered strength and height. It towered thirty feet above the
Bruce
's highest mast and threatened to slam them into the chasm that yawned open beside them. Ramiro didn't need to see what Stede was doing.

“Port! Port! Port!” he screamed. Enrique pulled the pins out of the gooseneck. But as he jammed one into its appropriate spot, the other pin slipped out of his hand. It flew backward and rolled along the deck. The ship started to turn. Stede was doing his job, but it was not enough. The
Bruce
was sliding over the edge. It began to lean toward the roaring gulf.

The pin bounced around on the deck until Cat dove on it. He snatched it up and clawed against the slippery deck. Finally, he slammed the pin into the gooseneck in exactly the right hole.

“Now, Claudio!!” Ramiro screeched. Claudio pulled a different halyard, and the huge triangular sail rose from the bowsprit to the mast and snapped full of wind. The
Bruce
hugged the edge of the wave upon which it rode. The wind held it up and began to push the ship to port. But the oncoming wave curled and came smashing down. It clipped the highest spar on the foremast, but that was all.

The
Bruce
sailed safely behind the monster wave, which crashed over the chasm like a gigantic lid.

The sun rose over the
Bruce
and found the ship's deck teeming with activity. They'd survived seven miles of the most unimaginable peril.

Sails had been torn, spars cracked, and a few barrels had broken loose and gone overboard. But no lives had been lost. The crew took turns working on repairs and running to the rails to be sick.

Even Ross, who had spent most of his life at sea, felt a little queasy. “We're through,” he said to Stede. “That's another lifetime of friendship I owe you.”

“Six now, and countin'!” Stede replied.

“What are the shards?” Cat asked, looking at the map.

“In about sixty miles you'll see them for yourself,” said the captain. “But Padre Dominguez described them as hundreds and hundreds of sharp rocks and coral thrust up through the surface like blades—hence the name, Isle of Swords. This waits for us at the bay and is the only access to the island.”

“It's a good thing we have the map,” Cat said.

“Yes, my lad, it is.”

42
THE ISLE OF SWORDS

T
horne pointed over the bow. “What do you think of that?” he asked.

Anne squinted, still adjusting to the morning sun after long captivity in darkness. Then she gasped. In the distance, not more than a few miles away, a massive plume of cloud shimmered in an otherwise cloudless sky. Like a fountain, this mist ascended from some unseen central point and arced down toward the water below. Like a curtain, it undulated and made brief, curving shadows from the sunlight. And like a mountain it loomed before them, dwarfing all other sights that could be beheld.

“A curtain of mist and ash that surrounds the island,” Thorne explained just as a deep rumble emanated from the scene before them.

“Thunder?”

“Yes,” said Thorne. “But thunder churning in the molten belly of a volcano. Arrojar del Fuego, he called it. We will soon walk at its feet.”

A cool wind blew from behind, and the
Raven
's sails filled. Anne shuddered. As the ship moved ahead, she looked in its wake. “What happened to your fleet?” She had no idea how many ships there had been, but whatever the number, there were far less now.

“During the first watch of the night, we entered a calamitous rolling sea. I warned all my ships' captains how to navigate those treacherous waves. Some clearly did not listen and so were overwhelmed. But others—their ships—simply could not handle the strain. Eighteen ships survived. The loss is grievous, but expected. I still have what I need.”

Wavering shadows fell on the
Raven
as it passed under the canopy of mist. And then, all was gray and wet. Tiny droplets of water clung to Anne's skin. She put her fingers to her face. When she drew them away and looked at her fingertips, they were smudged a murky white. She looked at Thorne, and upon his dark coat there were innumerable flecks, like snowflakes—only these were gray and left ugly trails as they ran.

The shadow lifted, and some sunlight returned. The gray curtain parted, and they looked upon the Isle of Swords for the first time. The island looked as if it had once been a huge mountainous mass of earth and stone, but all of its gentle slopes had been cut away by a great and terrible blade, leaving a high sheer wall of unassailable rock.

Anne searched the contours of the crescent-shaped island from right to left, beginning with its inhospitable rocky tail. These twisting slate-gray clumps formed a series of high coves and rested on a scarce bed of sand, the only shore Anne could see. Beyond the sand and rocks rose a massive cathedral of dark stone, pitted and crevassed, reminding Anne of a certain type of coral she'd once carved. A thin tree line gradually thickened into dense forest as it curled left, almost to the base of a pyramidlike mountain.
No . . .
Anne realized.
A volcano, not a mountain
. Gray vaporous smoke puffed out from its mouth and rose high in the sky. There, sheered by wind, the ashen mist spread outward like the spokes of a wheel, feeding the curtain that enveloped the island.

The volcano sloped into an unseen valley. And a menacing cliff rose up on the left side of the island. “There is our destination,” said Thorne lustily. He pointed with the bleeding stick, and Anne saw a stone castle at the cliff's edge. It was spare in its design. Three towers, a gabled roof over a square keep, and only one window that looked out over the sea from its blank wall.

But before it all, guarding the mouth of the island's bay, jagged blades of glistening stone thrust up out of the water. How many there were, Anne could not tell, but it was as perilous a gauntlet as any ship-killing reef in the world.

“The shards,” Thorne muttered. “The stone blades that you see are only a tenth of the danger. Beneath the surface, sharp ridges of hull-splitting coral wait for careless captains and their crews. We shall be anything but careless.” He turned and called, “Mister Skellick, raise the death's-head!”

Anne watched the dark flag rise high on the
Raven
's mainmast. Following the signal of their commander, the captains of the rest of Thorne's fleet began to sail into the shards. The first ship, a schooner with one tall mast and one short, slipped between the rocky blades with little difficulty. A larger galleon went slowly next. Both navigated with no incident.

“Padre Dominguez charted this peril for us well,” said Thorne. “Honest fool. He could have misled us. It might have cost me half my fleet to figure out the safe passage through.” He laughed.

“I'd have sent your ships into the teeth of that coral,” Anne whispered.

“Would you?” Thorne asked. He smiled. “So would have I.” His smile faded as, within the shards, one of his ships drew too close to another. This large brigantine could not stop—not without plowing into the galleon in front of it or turning. Its captain chose to turn.

The ship went left when, according to the map, it should have remained straight.

“Idiot, what is he doing?” Thorne croaked. But to everyone's astonishment, nothing happened to the brigantine. The captain had seemingly found another route through. Several of the other ships' captains, tired of waiting in line on the approved paths, veered off in the direction the brigantine had taken. Some even turned to strike new ways themselves.

Thorne was beside himself with wrath. He slammed his bleeding stick against the rail and tore out a chunk of wood. Then they heard a tremendous
crack!
The brigantine had struck something. Anne watched in horror as the waves and current drove the impaled ship into the unseen fang below. Its bow began to crumble, and the foremast toppled into the water. Men began to dive overboard. Some of these never returned to the surface. Others were smashed against the rocks.

“Leave them!” Thorne ordered.

Within moments, the brigantine had split apart and sunk. The other ships that had gone off course met the same fate. Any sign of the men or the ships having existed now rested deep below the surface.

“Fools,” Thorne muttered.

“You heartless beast!” Anne yelled.

“Save your energy for the swim,” he said.

At the same time, still fifty miles from the island, the
Bruce,
with

Stede and Ramiro at the helm, gathered speed and sailed north.

Declan Ross was at a desk in his quarters. He held a large magnifying glass over the map.

Cat rapped softly on the already open door.

“Ah, I wondered if you'd come.”

“There was a bit of repair work to do,” Cat said, “after the ride we had last night.”

Ross nodded. They stared at each other in silence for a moment.

“Sit,” said the captain.

Cat did as he was told and looked down at his hands in his lap.

“I wish I'd realized sooner,” he said. “Might have saved us all a lot of trouble . . . and time.”

“Has it all come back?” Ross asked.

Cat shook his head. “No. Just bits and pieces. And it's still not my own. It's still like I'm watching scenes from someone else's life.”

Ross leaned forward, his hands clasped on the desk. “Padre Dominguez told us there might be another map. He told us who might have it.”

“Captain Ross, I can explain—”

Ross held up his hand. “You don't have to say another thing.

You are a member of my crew. I trust you.”

Cat stood to leave, but Ross urged him to wait. “I've been thinking a lot about how we came to have you with us.”

Cat nodded. “I guess . . . I'm just lucky.”

“Are you?” Ross asked. “I wonder about that. I'm beginning to wonder about a lot of things. See, I used to hold to luck. We pirates are a superstitious lot.” He laughed. “Never set sail on Friday, don't bring a woman aboard—why, I bet old Ramiro has a gold coin in the keel and a silver coin under the mainmast.”