by Dana Fredsti
“Full steam ahead!” he yelled.
The ferry lurched away from the angle of attack and began to speed off, but it wasn’t out of the line of fire yet. Blasts of chain shot—iron balls joined by links of heavy chain—screamed high over the deck of the ferry. They ripped both of the ferry’s auxiliary masts in two, splintering and toppling them. Other hits slammed into the funnel. The smokestack rung like a bell and crumpled at the points where the balls impacted, but its steel held.
The pirate captain bellowed more orders and the next thundering volley peppered the air with lethal shrapnel. The salvo hit the ferry like bursts from giant shotguns. It scoured the wall of the bridge, shattered the windows, and tore apart those unlucky enough to still linger on the wrong side of the deck.
From the sheltered side of the bridge, Harcourt watched in horror as the windows exploded out above his head in a spray of shards and splinters. Nearby passengers dove for cover. When the rain of debris ended, Harcourt raised his head and risked a peek inside the wheelhouse. The first mate still manned his station, his mangled corpse clinging to the ship’s wheel.
The battered ferry boat continued to limp along its new heading, even as it was hit by another barrage. The cannonballs beat against the aft hull like a drum, the boat bucking like a kicking horse under the onslaught.
When the awful sound of hammering stopped, Harcourt lifted his head to quickly take stock. Twisted corpses were strewn all over the slick red deck. The ferry had carried four hundred and fifty passengers. Of those who had been up top, less than a dozen remained, all huddling for cover with him.
They stayed low on the deck, not daring an attempt to move to the relative safety of the cabin below. The young American couple lay beside him. The three of them exchanged desperate looks. Then, with sickening anticipation, they watched helplessly as the busy pirates prepared to fire yet again.
When the next barrage came, the American woman screamed. This time, however, the bombardment merely sent huge spouts of water into the air as the cannonballs landed in the sea short of the ferry. The steamship had managed to pull itself just out of range, but the galleon turned to pursue. The stragglers left outside raised themselves up off the deck, cautiously optimistic that they had a chance now.
“Can they catch us?” the American man asked.
One of the surviving seamen rubbed his jaw, and shook his head.
“I shouldn’t think so, sir,” he replied in a broad Cockney accent. “But I don’t rightly like the sound of our screws. I think those cannons may have knocked them about a bit.” He went aft and leaned over the rail to take a closer look for damage. A small crowd of the survivors gathered to watch. He whistled appreciatively and another crewman joined him.
“‘Ow’s she look, then?”
“Well, the hull’s taken its licks and it ain’t very pretty, but no real damage, I reckon. We best take a look amidships to be sure there’s no breach there, either.”
“What are we to do now?” Harcourt asked, cradling his traveling case in his arms like a newborn. “Return to the harbor?”
“Aye, and as fast as we can, for as long as the boat holds together.”
“What is your name, sailor?”
“Hixson, sir.”
“Well, Mr. Hixson,” Harcourt said, slipping on an air of authority to conceal his own fear, “you appear to have been promoted to captain of this vessel.”
The sailor started to respond, but then blinked, gulped, and nodded without a further word.
The remaining sailors and several of the male survivors helped clear the wheelhouse of debris and arranged the bodies of the dead in tight rows along the rail. Harcourt preferred to accompany Hixson while he took a quick inventory. The ferry’s hull had been pummeled mercilessly, but remained seaworthy. Most of the instrumentation on the bridge, however—including the ship’s compass—lay in ruins.
“Bloody ‘ell,” Hixon swore. “We’ll ‘ave to navigate by sight as best we can.”
The ferry forged ahead through alternating sunlight and banks of fog, each hand keeping an eye on the galleon tracking them, hungry to close the gap again.
Harcourt made a station for himself in what remained of the wheelhouse, along with a few of the crew and the American couple. The young man hunched in the corner next to him, arms wrapped around his legs. The woman curled up in her black-and-white checkered Scotch ulster long coat and cap, and had closed her eyes, using her leather gripsack as a pillow.
Harcourt turned to the man.
“Dreadful breach of protocol, I fear, but there’s no one to properly introduce us.” He extended his hand. “Professor Winston Harcourt, at your service.”
The other gave a weary smile and shook hands.
“Likewise. I’m Tracey Greaves. My indisposed companion is Elizabeth Cochrane.” The woman glanced up, managing a weak smile and a wave, and lay her head back down again.
“American?” the professor asked, rather unnecessarily.
“Yes, from New York. I’m the London correspondent for The World. Miss Cochrane is my colleague. You’ll have to excuse her. She’s barely slept since Wednesday.”
“I daresay you’ll have quite a story to report when we get back. Perhaps I should give you my card, in case you care to interview me for my account of the incident.”
Greaves had no chance to answer.
“Look there!”
As the sailor on watch pointed, a surreal sight appeared dead ahead. The cliffs of Dover, a massive wall of dazzling white chalk miles long, jutted straight out of the gray-green sea.
“Cor! We’ve overshot Folkestone!” Hixson exclaimed, turning the wheel hard to starboard. Harcourt and the American joined him at the helm.
“What does that mean?” Harcourt asked.
“We can’t turn around and make it to the ‘arbor without putting ourselves back under their guns, sir. They’d blast our topside to pieces. If we want to keep out of range of their guns, we ‘ave to keep feeding the coal and push the engines for as long as we can up the coast, just until we come to the nearest port or run into help.”
Hixson swallowed, and wiped his brow.
“It’s not so bad as it sounds, though,” he added. “We’re in a busy shipping lane, so we can’t be far from the closest Navy or Coastguard ship. We’ll send up a flare just as soon as we spot one. Those bastards won’t last two minutes against a proper vessel.”
The others nodded. It was a good plan. And yet…
Greaves bit his lip, looked up.
“Have you seen any other ships?”
The sailors exchanged uneasy glances, but said nothing.
26
“…so once I’d realized that we had overshot the harbor, and advised the mate, I did my best to dispel the fear of my fellow passengers and help keep the crew focused on our survival.” Harcourt paused, coughed, and cast a longing glance at the water bucket over by Cam, then loudly cleared his throat.
“If I could perhaps trouble you for some water, dear boy? I find I’m still quite stiff from my exertions on my journey here.”
Cam didn’t respond and Harcourt frowned.
“Remember, he doesn’t speak English,” Amber reminded him gently. “He does speak a little Latin, if that helps.”
“Indeed? Well now, why didn’t you say so? Naturally I have more than a passing knowledge of Latin!” He turned to Cam, using the voice of a kindergarten teacher speaking slightly too loudly to a particularly slow student. “Quo vadis, homo adolescens? A priori, bibendum aqua pura ex post facto, etcetera.”
Cam looked up and stared at him, baffled.
Harcourt looked around uncomfortably and cleared his throat.
“It appears the savage lacks a firm grasp on the language, so I shall fetch it myself. Unless…” He paused, looking hopefully at the others. None of them moved, so Harcourt lurched to his feet and went over to the bucket. He grimaced in distaste, pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the wooden rim before taking a gulp of water. Despite his
best efforts, some dribbled down his chin and onto his shirt.
“Really,” he muttered, “you’d think they would have included a ladle.”
Simon gave a mocking laugh. “Because they take such care seeing to our comforts and well-being.”
Alex nodded. “We’re lucky to have it at all. I suspect our girl Nell had more than a little to do with it.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Harcourt said reluctantly, then he brightened. “Didn’t I see a loaf of bread change hands?”
“Now that you’re up, you might as well bring it over here,” Simon said with an insolent smirk. “There’s a good chap.”
“I’ll get it.” Amber wanted to make sure Cam got a share of the bread, and didn’t quite trust Harcourt to divide it evenly. She scrambled to her feet, uncomfortably aware that Simon was checking out her legs as she tried to keep her skirt from flying up.
Smiling at Cam, she knelt down, pulled the loaf of bread out from under Alex’s raincoat, and tore off a portion for him. His fingers brushed against hers as he accepted it. Then she handed out fair shares of the bread to the others, keeping a slightly smaller piece for herself. Some habits were hard to shake, like those developed by years of living with entitled siblings.
As they ate their meager fare, Harcourt continued his story. “Where was I? Oh, yes, so we sailed past the white cliffs of Dover…”
* * *
From Dover to Ramsgate and around the point to Margate, the ferry continued to crawl up the coastline as if in a dream. The survivors kept their eyes peeled, but it was always the same story. The coast was devoid of any sign of civilization, and the waters seemed deserted. Not a ship, not a tug, not a fishing boat, not so much as a dinghy—only their implacable pursuer.
“None of this makes any bloody sense,” Hixson murmured for the hundredth time since he’d taken the wheel. “This can’t be the right coastline. Where are the lighthouses? Where are the docks? Where are the bloody people?”
“Where are we now?” Harcourt asked, instantly regretting the question. The sailor shook his head.
“Damned if I can say, sir. We should be coming up soon to the Thames Estuary, but there’s no landmarks I can recognize, and we’ve no instruments to guide us any better.” He pointed at the coastline and added, “It should be right there.” In response, the professor picked up their late captain’s spyglass. He scanned back and forth.
The mouth of the Thames?
Impossible.
It was a wilderness on every side. They might as well have been steaming toward the mouth of the Amazon, for all he could tell. He snapped the telescope closed and turned to the steersman.
“See here, I’m certainly no mariner, but I do know, most categorically, that by no means can this possibly be the mouth of the Thames!”
“It has to be!”
“Look for yourself, man!” Harcourt held out the spyglass. “Do you see any royal shipyards? Do you see Southend-on-Sea? Do you see anything?”
The sailor shook his head in frustration.
“I don’t understand ‘ow it can be… but… you must be right, I think, sir. Right then. We’ll keep heading north until we find the Thames, or anything of help.” A thoughtful look crossed his face.
“Or until the props fail, or we run out of steam.”
As they continued, waves of fog came and went, hampering their navigation even further. Behind them, still just out of cannon distance, the pirate galleon kept pace with its prey. Each time the mists cleared, they could see the ship still dogging their trail.
Leaning out over the bow, one sailor kept sweeping the horizon with the spyglass, looking for any sign of the Thames Estuary. Back at the wheel, Hixson, Harcourt, and the others waited anxiously for news. Finally, the lookout turned and gave them the thumbs up. Hixson and the others broke out in smiles of relief.
“It’s a miracle our coal ‘eld out,” the man sighed, “let alone our poor screws and rudder.” Turning, the ferry steamed toward the middle of the wide estuary, the shore on either side barely visible in the mist, like a watercolor of a landscape. Hixson exhaled happily. “We’ll be ‘aving lunch by a roaring fire before you…”
His eyes grew wide and his voice trailed off.
He stared at the land that lay dead ahead.
“Oh Christ… It’s the Isle of Mersea.”
“It can’t be.” Professor Harcourt shook his head. “Mersea is miles to the north—”
“Don’t you see?” Hixson cut in. “That was the Thames we passed, you bloody fool!”
“Impossible!”
“All of this ‘as been bloody impossible!” Hixson shouted. “All of it!” He spun the wheel hard about. The ferry groaned as it banked into a sharp turn to starboard.
“‘ang on! We’ve got to get out of here!”
But that was no longer an option. This was the moment the pirates had been waiting for. The ferry was hemmed in, and the galleon closed the trap, turning hard to starboard and bringing all of its guns to bear. The pirates opened fire with another thundering barrage.
Cannonballs rained down on them. One bounced off the ceiling above their heads, eliciting a shriek of terror from Harcourt. Another smashed into the deck a few feet from the wheel, cratering it with a spectacular crash of flying timbers and splinters. Still more hammered away at the hull.
As the dust settled the survivors lifted their heads, only to see that the pirates were lowering their longboat into the water, packed with a boarding party armed to the teeth with swords, pistols, and muskets.
“Bugger me,” Hixson muttered.
“Do we have any weapons on board?” Greaves asked.
The helmsman shook his head. “We’re a ferry boat. We’ve a signal pistol. The stoker’s got a shovel. I have a pocket knife.”
“How many flares do you have for that pistol?” Miss Cochrane asked.
Before Hixson could answer, another booming crack came from the pirate galleon, followed by the terrible sound of breaking timbers and men screaming. The masts of the galleon shuddered and then fell in opposite directions, taking the rippling sails with them. Seamen tumbled from the rigging.
No more than a second later, the galleon was torn abruptly in two, both halves sinking fast. The pirates in the longboat were struck dumb, staring uncomprehendingly as the remains of their ship—along with their crewmates—sank below the waves in a froth of bubbles.
Aboard the ferry, the survivors stared at their terrible miracle in disbelief.
“Good lord,” the professor gasped. “What could do that? Some kind of a submarine warcraft?”
Unspoken notions of Jules Verne and the Nautilus ran through his head, but there was no time to dwell on such thoughts. While they looked on, a colossal shape suddenly erupted out of the water, moving at tremendous speed.
It looked like a massive shark, but was the size of a whale. It seized the end of the longboat in its jaws and tilted the entire craft up out of the water. Then it crunched down once, twice, three times. In just three horrific bites it had completely consumed wooden boat and screaming pirates alike.
No one spoke. It was Miss Cochrane who first collected herself enough to point at the deck.
“Look,” she said softly. The men then saw what she did—the rivulets of blood flowing from the bodies stacked against the rails, slowly dripping off the deck and down into the water.
Harcourt looked at the steersman in horror.
“Surely the creature can’t tear this vessel in half,” he whispered, as much to himself as the first mate.
“I don’t think so,” Hixson replied slowly. “The ferry is made of steel, not wood like those poxy bastards’ ship. But… we’ve taken so much damage from the cannons…” He paused. “If belowdecks has taken anywhere near the same beating as the bulwarks—” He shook his head. “It might not hold.”
“Can we outrun it?” Miss Cochrane asked as swirls of red rose to the surface of the water. “Head up into the river?”
Hixson cons
idered this. “If we go in too far, we’ll run aground.”
“Yes,” she replied urgently, “but if we run aground, the water will be too shallow for that thing to follow. Sharks can’t swim in the mud, after all.”
“A shark?” the professor sputtered. “The size of that monstrosity? It’s a physical impossibility.”
“Well, whatever it is,” she shot back, “it looks like it’s finishing up with those cutthroats.”
Hixson turned and took the wheel again. “All ahead full!” he bellowed. “Quickly now. Our lives depend on it!”
The battered ferry lurched forward, picking up steam as they made their desperate run up the river. Harcourt, Greaves, and Miss Cochrane stayed at the railing, watching for signs that the monster was following.
“It’s coming,” Miss Cochrane said. Her voice was surprisingly calm. Harcourt and Greaves followed her gaze. As they watched, the water stirred, then parted as something large headed their way.
“Faster!” Harcourt yelled. “Can’t you go any faster, man?”
Hixson didn’t answer, all of his attention focused on navigating the fog-shrouded river ahead of them.
“There!” Greaves pointed off to the right. “There’s land over there! It has to be too shallow for that thing to—”
With a thundering crunch, the deck pitched violently, sending Harcourt and the Americans reeling. The professor nearly flipped over the railing to the water below. More screams came from the cabin below deck.
The ferry lurched forward again, driven by the collision, gaining a few more yards toward land. The engine sputtered, but still held. Hixson stayed at his post, holding onto the wheel with a death grip, grim determination on his face.
The gigantic monster rammed the ferry a second time, tossing everyone to the deck again. The creaking sound of buckling, crumpling metal struck terror into the professor’s heart.
“We’re taking on water,” a crewman hollered. As if to prove his words, the ferry lurched, listing sickeningly to one side.
“We can still make it,” Greaves shouted as the land drew closer.