Thunder rumbled ominously overhead and the rain fell harder. This rising storm was the second one of the day. In early afternoon, thunderheads had piled up on the western horizon, and lightning had split a tree on an island a quarter of a mile away.
Bess felt uneasy as flecks of foaming waves struck her cheeks. Ants had warned them of the dangerous passage around Cape Hatteras. Moving sandbars and treacherous currents made the blue-green waters a graveyard for ships when thunderstorms whipped out of the west to lash the sea into churning fury.
“They’s islands that only show at high tide,” Ants had said that morning, “and wreckers what will lure ye ashore with lanterns and cut yer throat quicker than ye can say ‘scat.’ I’ve run the cape day and night fer twenty year. I’ve seed hurry-canes and squalls that would raise gooseflesh on the devil hisself. I lost one boat roundin’ the cape, and I swum to safety on a whiskey keg when the Nancy Jane capsized in a thirty-foot wave. It’s a bad place, I tell ye. And I’ve heard stories . . .” He’d broken off to take a sighting of they nearest island with a rusty spyglass. “Some say,” he continued when he was satisfied of his location. “Some say ‘twasn’t our Lord made the cape, but some Injun demon. These coasts is haunted, that’s fer sure. Too many good men went to the bottom here. No place fer God-fearin’ white folks.”
“Nor black,” Rudy had added. He was a small, muscular man with tribal scars on his chin. “Best not talk about wrecks and squalls, Ants,” he’d said sharply. “It’s bad luck.” He’d scowled at Bess. “We’ve trouble enough sailin’ with a woman.”
Lightning flared in the growing darkness, a bolt that struck so close Bess could smell the brimstone in the air. She hunkered down on the deck and wrapped a canvas around her shoulders to keep off the rain.
“Maybe you’d be better off in the cabin,” Ants said. He and Rudy were furling the sail to a storm rig. “We’ll run before the wind and she may get a bit choppy. We’d not want ye to fall overboard.”
“She’s good where she is,” Kincaid said.
Bess noticed that he’d slung over his shoulder the oilskin bag containing one of his pistols and her silver-inlaid one, her grandfather’s skean, extra powder and shot, and their store of coin. Her saddlebags were stuffed into an empty wooden brandy keg at Kincaid’s back. He’d taken the precaution as soon as they had sailed out of the mouth of the first river. Bess’s jewelry, including the little golden jaguar with the turquoise eyes, was sewn into a pocket she’d fashioned inside her stays.
She was too keyed up to be hungry. She’d never had any trouble with seasickness, not even in rough weather, but she didn’t like the lightning. They’d eaten nothing since morning. The meal then had consisted of salt fish and damp cheese with French brandy to wash it down.
They’d anchored the night before off an island and waded ashore to dig clams and hunt up seabird eggs. At Bess’s insistence, they’d built a fire long enough to cook the eggs. Ants hadn’t wanted to advertise their presence to passing boats or natives of the area.
“A man in my trade,” he’d said, “is best to figure every soul his enemy until he learns better. If the Crown don’t catch ye and hang ye, pirates will take yer cargo and leave ye for the gulls.”
Ants was bound for Charles Town on his own business, and he’d agreed to carry Bess and Kincaid that far. Kincaid had told her that it would be easy for them to find passage for the Caribbean from there. So far, despite the hardships, Bess had enjoyed the rough captain and crew and the voyage. She had to admit to herself that the prospect of seeing new country and being treated as a dangerous mercenary’s woman, instead of as the heiress of a great manor, was strangely exciting.
The captain leaned hard on the tiller as the sloop fought wind and water to hold a course. The Irishman had gone below with the boy, and Rudy crouched near the bow and listened for the crash of the surf. Kincaid had explained to Bess that it was too dark to see sandbars, so the crew had to depend on the different sounds of the waves to tell where the bottom turned shallow.
“Some of these sandbars run out a quarter mile,” he said to her in his deep burr. “An easy drop makes for small surf, but a steep drop can double the wave height.”
A shower of hailstones clattered across the deck, and Bess ducked her head to avoid the stinging bits of ice. Closing her eyes, she wondered if her crops on Fortune’s Gift had been hurt by the unseasonable wet weather. If the gardens and fields failed to produce, both men and animals would go hungry come winter.
Would she be home by then? She knew how far Panama was on a map, but actually going there was different. Would it take months? Her grandfather’s journal had said that Morgan had crossed Panama in a matter of days. Would she be days in the jungle, or weeks?
And most important, would the gold be there waiting for them when they reached the spot where it had been buried?
She lifted her head and glanced at Kincaid. He was facing into the storm, seemingly impervious to wind and rain and hail. Another flash of lightning revealed that his eyes were shut, and his mouth was a hard, stubborn slash across his chiseled features.
Could she trust him? Her gut feeling was that she could, but her head said no. Kutii had told her that Kincaid was a good man, but doubts still troubled her. And Kutii had been conspicuously absent since they’d come aboard the sloop.
Sweet Lord in heaven! What would Kincaid do to her if they reached the shores of Panama and she had to tell him that there had never been a map? That she was depending on a specter to tell her. where to dig?
She shivered. Kincaid had agreed to come with her for the price of his freedom and a share of the gold. She could still give him his indenture, but if she couldn’t produce the treasure . . . She had a terrible feeling that she could end up as fish bait herself.
“Bar ahead!” Rudy shouted above the wind.
Bess didn’t know how he could tell. The sail was snapping like a bullwhip, the sloop’s ribs and planks were creaking, thunder was booming, and the water was crashing all around them. She felt deafened by the storm.
Strangely, she wasn’t afraid anymore. If Kincaid could sit there so calmly, he must have faith in the boat and the captain. And hadn’t Ants said he’d sailed these waters for years?
She choked and sputtered on a mouthful of salt water and pulled the canvas tighter around her. Nothing could have made her go below and miss this magnificent war of wind and water. The elemental splendor of the lightning was exhilarating. The sloop rode the swells like a cork, plunging down until she thought they’d strike the ocean floor, then rising gallantly to challenge the next wave.
“Surf ahead!” Rudy cried. “Hard alee!”
The sloop rose and dove, slamming so hard into something solid that the shock knocked Bess flat on her face. The boat heeled and the mast cracked and toppled. Rudy’s scream rose above the crash of the waves, then was cut off abruptly.
Stunned by the blow to her head, Bess began to slide across the tilted deck. Water was rolling over the gunnel, and it seemed to her as if sky and sea had suddenly changed places. Then she felt an iron hand close around her arm, and she heard Kincaid calling her name. Before her mind cleared, the shock came again. She looked back toward the stern, where the captain had stood a moment before, but all she could see now was dark, tumbling water.
“We’ve got to jump!” Kincaid yelled.
But when she tried to rise, she found that her leg was tangled in twisted rope and canvas. “I can’t!” she screamed. “I’m caught!” A heavy object rolled over her back and shoulder, but she felt no pain, only numbness. The world had turned to water. It filled her mouth and nose and ears, muffling the claps of thunder and blinding her.
She knew what had happened. She knew the boat had gone down to the bottom of the sea and she had gone with it. She knew she would never see trees or earth or sky again. Then the impossible happened. The sloop rose again from the depths and she sucked in lungfuls of air. And with the life-giving oxygen, some semblance of reason returned, and Be
ss realized that she wasn’t alone. Kincaid was still there, holding her against him and sawing at the thick line that tangled her with his knife.
The boat shuddered under her, and she heard the snap of timbers. Then she was free and Kincaid was dragging her across the deck. This time when the sloop rolled, they leaped off into the water. And in the midst of that jump, his hand slipped out of hers and she sank into the churning waves alone.
Instinct bade her swim toward the surface, but the tide pulled her down. Her skirts and the weight of her jewelry worked against her. By sheer will, she reached the crest of a wave and took a single breath before water closed over her head again. She rolled over and over; once, her hands touched sand, and she knew she was on the bottom. Her mind was going black; her lungs felt as though they were ready to explode. Her arms and legs ached from struggling against the force of the ocean. Then, without warning, the sea flung her upward again, and as her head broke water, lightning lit up the sky.
Bess’s heart leaped. There, not ten feet away, a hatch cover floated in the trough of a wave. In the thrill of hope, her exhaustion was forgotten. Nothing mattered but reaching that small square of planking. Using every ounce of strength she had left, she swam toward it.
The light was gone and she was surrounded by darkness. Foam and water crashed over her head. She swallowed another mouthful of ocean. She forced herself to keep going, to raise one arm after the other, to kick and kick until her legs felt as though they were going to fall off. And when the next bolt split the heavens, the hatch cover had vanished.
Not knowing which way to go, she held her breath, trying to keep above the surface, straining her eyes to find the debris again. Then something solid bobbed up beside her and she reached for it without thinking.
Her hands closed around cloth and human flesh, and she screamed as she realized that what she’d grabbed was a dead body. She flung herself backward and was caught in the next swell, and when she came up weeping and sputtering, she heard a familiar voice in her head.
“Do not fear; this is not your time to cross over.”
She blinked, and through the salt and the spray she saw Kutii standing chest-deep in the water with his arms extended. “I can’t swim anymore,” she said.
“You can.”
“I can’t. I’m tired.”
“You carry the blood of Star Woman. Without you, my people will be lost.”
“Let me be,” she gasped.
“Come, little one. I will carry you.”
She thought how strange it was that he could walk through seas so deep and rough, and how odd that the lightning should flicker around his shoulders in a blue haze, but his arms were strong and warm. Gratefully, she lay back against his chest and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, Kutii had vanished, and she was only an arm’s length from the hatch cover. Somehow she swam the short distance and locked her arms around the water-soaked planks. And then the blackness that had threatened her for so long became overwhelming, and she sank into a deep and dreamless sleep.
It was daylight when Kincaid rolled over onto his stomach and began to choke up seawater. Painfully, he opened his eyes. They burned with salt and grit. Wiping his face, he sat up and looked around the low barrier island.
As far as he could see, there was nothing but sand and low scrub pines. Foam washed against the beach, but the fierce breakers of last night had gentled to rolling whitecaps. Sea gulls and shore birds skittered along the water’s edge and circled lazily overhead, and the telltale bubbling holes showed where sand fleas burrowed under the wet sand. A few fiddler crabs scurried from tidal pools toward the sea, but there was no sign of human life.
Kincaid got to his knees and wiped his eyes, trying to get the sand out of them. He coughed again and cleared his throat, then struggled to his feet and stared up and down the deserted beach. “Bess!” he called, cupping his mouth with his hands. “Bess! Where are ye?”
The only answer was a sea gull’s harsh cry. He stripped off the remains of his shirt and waded barefoot into the sea, dipping the torn cloth in the clean, cold water and using the shirt to bathe his aching face and eyes. The salt stung, but he continued to splash water in his eyes until they were free of sand. Then he straightened his back and ran a hand through his long hair.
Shading his eyes, he stared eastward out to sea. No islands broke the surface of the rolling waves. From where he stood to the place where gray, overcast sky and water met, there was nothing but the occasional splash of a fish. The wind that had lashed the sloop’s sail and whipped the ocean to fury was gone. Now only a cooling easterly brushed his face and bare chest.
“Bess!” he shouted again.
A whoosh and a pair of sleek backs sliding through the water just beyond the breakers showed the passing of a pair of dolphins.
A frisson played down Kincaid’s spine and his throat tightened. “Bess!” he called. His stomach twisted, not from salt water but from the sickening thought that the red-haired lass was dead. As dead as the sloop that had cracked her ribs on the sandbar in last night’s storm.
Shame washed over him. He’d had Bess by the hand when they jumped free of the boat. He’d had her, and he’d let her slip away. For the first time in his life, his strength had failed him.
By the sweet tears of Mary Magdalene! If Bess was lost . . . He inhaled deeply and tried to clear his head as his eyes clouded with tears. He dashed them away and tried to swallow the huge lump in his throat.
What was he coming to, to weep over a woman? Was she the first wench to die before her time? The shock of near drowning must have hurt him worse than he’d thought, if he took her loss so hard, he reasoned. After all, she was nothing to him but a means to gain his freedom and a new start. Cursing his own softheartedness, he turned and splashed back toward the shore.
He held to the lie for nearly two minutes before the truth broke over him with the brilliance of the rising orange-gold sun.
Bess Bennett was more to him than a rich Englishwoman who had hired him to guide her on a treasure hunt. For the first time in many years, he’d allowed a wench to get under his skin. And if he lost her, he’d never find her match in this world or the next.
He cupped his hands once more around his mouth. “Bess! Bess, can ye hear me?”
It made no sense that he was alive and unhurt and the other four had drowned. Doubtless, he reasoned, they were washed up somewhere else along this island shore. He couldn’t have swum far last night, so the wreck had to be close. He looked out to sea again, shading his eyes against the ever-brightening dawn. But, try as he might, he could see no sign of the sloop.
Determined to keep searching for Bess and the others, Kincaid began walking north, up the beach. He was unarmed, having lost his knife and pistol sometime during the night. The only clothing he had left was his breeches and his weapons belt. His breeches had come through the ordeal without a single tear.
Thirst plagued him as he strode along, but he ignored it. There would be plenty of time to dig for fresh water. Utilizing an old soldier’s trick, he sucked on a pebble as he walked, and that kept his mouth from drying out.
Ten minutes up the beach, he came upon a section of broken mast and the largest part of the mainsail. He dragged it up out of the water, unrolling the canvas so that it would dry, and continued on.
Not a hundred yards farther, he saw something bobbing on the surface of the waves and waded out to retrieve the wooden cask containing Bess’s belongings, weapons, powder and shot, and other necessities that he’d sealed inside. When he broke it open, he found that the keg had leaked, but there was nothing that couldn’t be salvaged by careful drying.
He stuck her grandfather’s knife in his empty sheath, put the cask on his shoulder, and went on. But after only a few minutes, the island curved to the west. Across a wide channel, he could see land with more low trees. He tried calling Bess’s name again, but the only answer he got was the echo of his own voice. Discouraged, he turned south once more
and retraced his steps.
When he passed the place where the sail lay, he was tempted to stop, erect a shelter, and seek fresh water, but he didn’t. With each passing moment, he knew the chances of finding Bess alive were growing weaker. If she had made it to shore, the increasing heat and lack of water could easily finish her off. She was, for all her bold spirit, only a woman.
A woman who had depended on him . . .
Over and over, the desperate moments after the sloop had struck the bar were replayed in Kincaid’s mind. He could smell the scent of her hair as he lay over her, trying to protect her from the force of the waves. He could hear the crash of the water and feel the death throes of the dying boat under him. He could see the flash of lightning across a storm-blackened sea and taste the bite of salt on his tongue.
He’d cut her loose from the tangle of sail and rope, and he’d had her hand when they jumped. Involuntarily, he groaned softly as he remembered the desolate feel of her small hand sliding away.
God’s teeth! He’d give his right arm to have her here now, alive and sassy, giving him hell for failing her.
An osprey screamed overhead, and Kincaid looked up. The magnificent bird soared on outspread wings, a fish clutched in the powerful talons.
Kincaid spit out the pebble and started south down the beach at a jog. He’d never been a quitter, and he’d not believe Bess was dead until he saw her cold face. He’d keep on looking, and when he’d covered this island, he’d swim to the next and search until he found her. Until he found—
A splash of Lincoln green against the white sand caught his eye. With an oath, he threw down the wooden keg and ran down the beach. And as his long strides closed the distance, he clearly saw the waves lift and wash through the long chestnut mass of a woman’s hair.
“Bess! Bess!” he shouted.
His heart was racing as he splashed into the shallows and lifted her in his arms. Her eyes were dosed, her long, thick lashes dark against her unnaturally pale face. Her skin was cold to the touch.
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