Page 23 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)
Twelve
I t took all of Caspian’s powers of concentration not to display how happy he was to have found a comfortable island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Despite his years of travel and multifaceted experiences on foreign shores, he felt most at home in exactly the sort of spot where he and Elias found themselves now.
On the island, where they could have space of their own and find privacy from the others who would take them to task for the love that had been growing between them, the two of them could truly explore what it meant for them to be together.
That would inevitably involve a full confession of all the things that had Elias tied in such tight knots, but as daunting as the prospect of the first revelation was, Caspian was confident that he could explain himself thoroughly enough that Elias would accept him for who he truly was.
In the meantime, it was necessary for him to feign far more concern over the situation the survivors of the Fortune found themselves in so as not to offend men like Brunning, who truly believed their lives might still be in danger.
“She’s listed hard to starboard,” Brunning said with a far more serious countenance than he had worn on the island as they approached the wreck. “There’s no telling whether the lower decks have been flooded or the hull has been breached at any point.”
“Would the iron cladding not prevent the hull from springing leaks?” Woburn, who had insisted on coming with them, though he had no great experience with the sea, asked.
Brunning grunted as he gave the oars one last pull, then let the boat drift toward Fortune’s side.
“It’s hard to say. There could be a crack above the cladding.
The way the mainmast broke could have damaged the integrity of the hull where it is anchored.
Or the ship could simply have taken in more water than it could hold during the storm. ”
“Let’s climb aboard and find out,” Woburn said, standing as the boat bumped against the ship’s hull and reaching for a rope that dangled over the edge from the main deck.
“Wait!” Caspian said, reaching out and grabbing the man’s trousers to keep him from climbing the rope. “We need to ascertain whether the ship is stable before we climb all over it.”
“Agreed,” Brunning said seriously. “And we need to determine whether Tumbrill or Dick or any of those bastards are still aboard.”
Woburn sat down again hard. His expression reflected Caspian’s thoughts.
Caspian had never stopped to consider that men like Dick or Tumbrill might have weathered the storm on the ship.
Since the Fortune did not go under during the storm, but rather ran aground on the shoal, there was as good a chance as not that some of those villains were still clinging to life and the ship.
“I’ll swim once around the ship to see if I can hear voices or anything else that might tell us whether the others are still aboard,” Caspian said, standing and shifting to the side of the boat.
“How do you plan to hear voices through the hull?” Brunning asked with a confused frown. “The wood and cladding are inches thick.”
“Wishful thinking?” Caspian said with a winning smile, then dove overboard before he could be asked any other questions he did not have ready answers to.
As always, the feeling of the water racing past his skin felt wonderful.
With the others so close, he had to kick and paddle to swim rather than removing his trousers so he could speed through the depths, but that hardly slowed him down, and it did not affect his ability to stay below for long enough to seem unnatural.
He deliberately surfaced after a minute, though he did not need the breath, waved to the others still in the boat, then dove down again and circled around to the far side of the ship.
The Fortune was silent. No matter how hard Caspian listened as he rounded the vessel, he did not hear a single thing that could be considered human.
There might have been a rat or two still skittering around the middeck, but the lower deck was completely silent, telling Caspian the ship had been flooded.
He could also see clearly that it had, indeed, rammed hard into a sandy shoal that now held it fast.
That was something to be grateful for. The Fortune was not going anywhere, one way or another, for a very long time.
Despite the sharp angle it now rested at, the survivors would likely have weeks or months to salvage from the wreck before it sank further or capsized entirely.
Unless there was another violent storm, they would be able to take whatever supplies or belongings they needed from the ship, and they would not have to rush to do so.
Caspian told the others in the boat as much once he had swum all the way around, then resurfaced in the opposite direction from where they were looking for him.
“She’s as stable as could be for now,” he said, swimming up to the boat but not pulling himself back up into it.
He was perfectly happy where he was, most of his body surrounded by the salty water.
“We should be able to climb aboard and see what has been preserved that we might use while waiting for whatever happens next.”
Brunning, Woburn, and the others stared at him for a long time without saying anything.
“You swam all that way without surfacing?” Woburn asked.
He had, but Caspian could see the suspicion in the others’ eyes. “Oh, no, I surfaced quite a bit on the other side. One of the rope ladders has been cast out over that side. Come and see. We’ll be able to climb aboard the ship easily on that side.”
He was right. One of the rope ladders that was used when the ship was anchored in a port slapped lazily against the Fortune’s side as the breezy waves kissed the hull of the ship. That made it easy for their group to climb aboard the main deck, even though the ship was askew.
“Who lowered the ladder?” Brunning asked with a frown once they’d all climbed aboard and braced themselves along the slanted deck.
“Likely the same men who took the other lifeboats,” one of the sailors who had come with them said, nodding to the stern.
Sure enough, Fortune had originally had six lifeboats. The survivors had taken four in the storm, but the other two were nowhere to be seen.
“They had to have gone adrift during the storm,” Woburn said, shifting his footing anxiously and glancing around. “We would have seen the other two if anyone had taken them to shore.”
“Not if they waited until after the storm stopped and the ship ran aground to make a break for land,” Brunning said quietly, rubbing the bottom half of his face.
He looked to Caspian, who nodded in return.
Caspian could practically see what he meant by his look.
Even though the likes of Tumbrill and Dick were not part of the group of survivors that was making a camp on the island as they spoke, that did not mean those two and their followers hadn’t survived the storm.
The island was relatively large. Caspian did not know of it specifically, but he was aware of several islands in the vicinity that were a mile or two across.
“Let’s see how much of the cargo survived intact,” he said, giving the others something more positive to contemplate instead of whether they might all still be in danger from the mutineers.
Exploring the wrecked ship was not as easy as navigating across its decks had been when it was still seaworthy.
Aside from being pitched at an angle, the main deck was littered with hanging ropes and bits of sail that had ripped and dislodged from their fastenings.
It was like climbing through some sort of vast spider’s web merely to reach the hatches that would take them to the middeck.
Brunning took a few of the men to investigate the captain and officer’s quarters while Caspian, Woburn, and the remaining men made their way to the fore hatch and climbed below.
It was nearly impossible to see the situation on the middeck, since all the lanterns that usually swung from hooks in the ceiling had been smashed and doused during the storm.
Caspian could smell the remains of fires that had likely ignited when the lamps smashed, but water from the storm must have put them out before major damage could be done.
As he’d suspected, the lower deck was submerged. They did not need light from above to see that. As soon as Caspian and Woburn wrenched open the hatch leading to that lowest deck, they saw the glimmer of light reflecting off of water that reached nearly all the way to the middeck.
“Any cargo stored down there will be ruined,” Woburn said with a sigh.
“Not necessarily,” one of the sailors with them said, scratching his head as he stared down into the watery depths. “Some things are sealed in casks and barrels with pitch and wax. We might be able to salvage them.”
“It will take a coordinated effort,” Caspian said with a shrug. Having something for the survivors to think about and occupy themselves with would likely be a good thing.
They could only explore so much of the middeck without lanterns, but they were able to determine that many people’s possessions were still intact and relatively dry.
Since there was little point in poking around in the dark, they returned to the main deck and began searching through the nicer cabins in the center of the ship.
“Lady Adelaide will be pleased to know that her trunks are perfectly intact and that her gowns have been preserved,” Woburn said with a grin as they checked through her cabin.
Most of the contents of the fancier cabins were undisturbed, except for being pushed to the side that dipped down with the ship’s angle.
Caspian found it particularly interesting that the heavy treasure chest containing the late Mr. Ferrars’s wealth was intact as well, thought its weight had caused it to smash the side of one of the beds in the small cabin Ruby had shared with her grandfather.