“They’re waiting for us to lower our cutter and row ashore,” said Rose.
“You can hear them?”
She gripped the rail. “No. But they’re getting nervous. We need to let them know we’re friendly.”
“How? We don’t have a cutter.”
The men on the jetty muttered impatiently to one another. Their leader kept his eyes trained on us. Meanwhile, parents were pulling their children away from the walls, as though they didn’t want them witnessing what was about to unfold.
We’d only just arrived and yet I could already feel the threat of what might happen if we didn’t act fast.
I climbed over the rail and dived into the murky water. I sank low, then kicked to the surface and began to swim. My tunic weighed me down, but I concentrated on one stroke and then another.
Finally, I reached the jetty. I grasped one of the wooden stilts and caught my breath. Then I raised my hand in greeting.
In response, I heard a series of clicks. When I looked up, five slender metal barrels were trained on me.
So Dare wasn’t the only one with guns.
CHAPTER 10
Who are you?” The man standing over me sounded scared rather than angry. He wasn’t as old as the Guardians, but had the weathered face and wrinkles of someone who spent every waking hour outdoors. “What are you doing here?”
The guns were only a yard or so from my face. “We heard your message,” I said quickly. “The one telling refugees to come to Fort Sumter.”
He exchanged glances with his companions. They seemed intrigued, surprised even, but didn’t move their guns. “And so you came,” he said. “Lucky for you the message was broadcasting that day. Sometimes we need the solar generators for other things.” He ran both hands over his bald head, then pulled them down, stretching the sun-damaged skin around his mouth.
“Put your guns down now!” An older man, maybe sixty, strode across the grass and onto the jetty. “What are you doing, Kell?” he shouted.
“We have guests,” responded the younger man flatly.
“And what kind of host are you?” He pushed Kell aside. “I’m Chief,” he told me. “It’s what everyone’s always called me, so you may as well do the same.”
“Thomas,” I answered.
Chief crouched down. He flicked his head at the ship behind me. “Where’s the rest of your crew, Thomas?”
I looked over my shoulder. From here, it looked almost like a ghost ship. “There aren’t many of us. Some of the adults are weak.”
Chief’s expression shifted. The guns edged closer.
“It’s not Plague,” I added hastily. “Just injuries. Hunger.”
“What about the body you threw overboard this morning? We saw it, you know.”
Everything came rushing back: Eleanor crashing onto the deck, her broken body, the blood. I shivered. “There was a storm last night. She fell from the top of the mast.”
He sat back on his haunches. “I’m sorry. How old was she?”
“Eighteen.” The word caught in my throat.
“And you, Thomas?”
“Sixteen.”
“Sixteen,” he repeated. “You’ve never known another world than this, you poor thing.” He offered me his hand. “Come on. I may look frail, but I can still pull you out. Especially as my men seem to have forgotten their manners.”
True to his word, he was surprisingly strong. His biceps bulged as he strong-armed me out of the water and onto the jetty. “So you’ve come as refugees, I assume.”
I nodded. “We need your help.”
He cast an eye over me. I was taller than him and some of the other men, but I must have cut a pathetic and bedraggled figure, dripping onto the sun-bleached wooden jetty. “I can see that,” he said.
He flicked his wrist and the men who had continued to point their weapons retreated. “Listen, son. We have almost fifty men, women, and children here on Sumter. We are Plague-free and self-sufficient. And the truth is, the state of your crew has me nervous.”
“It’s not Pla—”
He raised a hand to stop me. “I heard you the first time. I believe you too. You’ve got an honest face, and I’ve seen plenty of men over the years that don’t. But I need to protect these people, Thomas. They were refugees too, once. So I’m going to need to inspect your ship.” He let the words sink in. “Would that be all right with you?”
The answer was no. My father’s injuries weren’t the kind you got from an onboard accident. And locked inside Dare’s cabin were books and maps we couldn’t explain. But I knew what I had to say. “Yes. Of course.”
Chief clapped his hands and waved his men toward a cutter on the other side of the jetty. Now that the situation was resolved, faces reappeared over the battlements—not just eyes and noses, but heads and shoulders.
“Coming, Thomas?” asked Chief, motioning toward the cutter.
“Yes.” But my eyes remained locked on two faces in particular: a boy about my age, and a girl who was a few years younger. They regarded me with serious expressions, their dark skin standing out against the collection of white faces. One eye closed, the boy raised a finger and then pointed it at me as if he was taking aim. When he jerked it upward suddenly, I realized what it meant. He was pretending to shoot me, as though I was as good as dead.
»«
The cutter slipped through the water. I sat at the stern and watched Kell watching me. He hadn’t dared to cross Chief, which emphasized how powerful the older man was. It didn’t mean he trusted me, though.
Everyone except my father had gathered beside the ship’s starboard rail. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming party; more like a sign of how desperate they were to get off the ship. Griffin lowered a rope for us, and Chief removed a rope ladder from the cutter’s hold. He tied it to Griffin’s rope and shouted for Griffin to raise it. Griffin couldn’t hear, though, so I signed that he was supposed to pull it up. Chief watched the interaction with interest. I figured he’d never met a deaf person before.
Once the rope ladder was tied to the rail, I climbed aboard. Kell and Chief followed me and explained to everyone what was happening. Finally, three other men boarded the ship. Watching them standing there, I began to worry. If they decided to take control of the vessel, we wouldn’t be able to stop them.
Or was I just being paranoid? After all, if that was their plan, they would have brought their weapons.
They inspected the deck quickly but thoroughly and went below. Splitting up, they made their way along the corridor, stopping in every cabin.
“My father is in this one,” I said.
Chief nudged the door open but didn’t enter straightaway. I could tell he was anxious from the way he peered around the door before pushing it open completely. I waited for the inevitable questions about what had happened to my father, but Chief just bowed his head. “I’m sorry for his injuries,” he said. “Voyages take a toll on all of us.”
He closed the door behind him and leaned in close. “Is he the worst off, Thomas?”
“Yes,” I said. “Everyone else is just exhausted.”
As Kell caught up to us, he shifted his weight from foot to foot like a tethered animal straining against a rope. With a single nod, Chief unleashed him, and he continued his inspection of the rooms to either side of the corridor.
Finally, we reached Dare’s cabin. The door was locked, of course, and Kell didn’t force it. “What’s in here?” asked Chief.
I didn’t want to jeopardize our situation, but if I let him in, the others would know what I’d been hiding from them. How would Rose respond? Ananias?
“We don’t know,” I answered.
Both men responded with quizzical, doubting looks. “It’s at the stern,” said Chief patiently. “It’s likely to be the captain’s cabin. But you’ve never seen it?”