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Holmes

Friday, April 27, 1821

H olmes hit the water as a gunshot rang out. His body slipped under. He kicked and kicked, flailing his arms, cursing the weight of his wet clothes. He tore off his shirt, being careful not to lose the diary, though he wondered, now, how well the oilskin pouch would work against such complete immersion.

He swam a few paces. The cold water, despite leaving him short of air and on the verge of panic, had all but numbed the injury to his knee. For this, he was grateful.

Another gunshot. He spun around in the water. On the main deck, Quinto aimed a revolver toward him. He pulled the trigger again and again.

Holmes took a deep breath and slipped beneath the water again. Blindly, he swam as hard as he could, just as he’d promised Imelda. But at the hollow crack of another shot, he winced.

Quinto had shot him in the lower right leg.

Holmes did his best to keep propelling himself forward, but it was no easy task with one leg all but useless. Unable to hold his breath any longer, he had no choice but to surface. He felt sure this was it: Quinto would spot him, fire the gun again, and this time he’d be going for his head.

Surfacing, he turned to look back at the Aquila heading eastward. Quinto stood there, trying to reload his gun.

Suddenly, the Aquila listed sharply, as though some enormous wave had just pummeled her larboard. Quinto hit the deck, the gun falling out of reach.

Holmes made a quick circle, frowning: the rest of the sea—including where he tread water now—was relatively calm. He eyed the horizon; there were no whitecaps to be seen. The revolving turbulence seemed confined to a small area, precisely where the Aquila now listed.

He continued to pull himself toward shore, but he swallowed a mouthful of seawater, coughing and sputtering. He glanced again at the Aquila . She had righted herself, but the water around her churned viciously, and her bow now faced Holmes. She’d turned one hundred and eighty degrees. The brig groaned loudly, her hull audibly straining against something invisible.

It made no sense whatsoever. He must be imagining it all.

He considered, briefly, that perhaps he’d already died.

Holmes closed his eyes, drifting with the current for an untold amount of time while the Aquila faltered in the churning sea. Several times, her masts swung almost parallel to the water.

The brig’s spinning hastened, and then came a loud crack as a fissure in the bow split open. The sea made quick work of filling it, and Holmes thought of Imelda in the second mate’s cabin.

The Aquila continued to break apart, spinning and bobbing as he looked on. The brig lurched starboard, and the foremast snapped in two. Ropes and rigging swung from the snapped mast.

And then he heard the screams.

The men had begun to leap from the doomed vessel. Presumably, they thought they could make their way to land, but it was clear these efforts were futile, for just as the vessel could not resist the maelstrom, nor could they.

By jumping from the front of the brig when he had and swimming northward, Holmes had managed to escape all of this.

The other men began to drown one by one, Holmes’s last sight of them nothing but an arm, a hand, reaching for the early morning sky.

He could not stand to watch it. Yet just before he averted his gaze, he spotted Quinto in the water. Accustomed to his menacing countenance, Holmes hardly recognized him now. He looked like a child—a little boy, flailing in a pond too deep for his tiny legs. With his mouth agape, Quinto gulped for air and cried for help. “ Aiutami ,” he shouted. “ Aiutami! ” Over the clamor of snapping wood, his cries were unmistakable.

Holmes felt no pity.

Moments later, the sea swallowed the Aquila whole.

There were no more shouts. The sound of splitting wood had ceased. Treading water, Holmes could still see a strange swirling maelstrom where the brig had gone down. Flotsam began to drift toward him: fragments of splintered oak, a canvas sack, a rope ladder he recognized from inside the second mate’s cabin.

And then, a bright blue scarf.

Imelda .

Holmes reached for it, knew he would never let it go. He wasn’t sure what had just befallen the Aquila , but he ached for Imelda, who had shown him so much kindness.

In a state of shock and fatigue, he did what one must do when they cannot swim any longer.

He turned on his back. With a great deal of effort, he tied the scarf around his knee to slow the bleeding of his gunshot wound. Then, he surrendered to the sea and let himself float.

He had escaped the Aquila and whatever had happened to her, but he thought it very unlikely he would make it to shore in this condition.

He felt himself grow dizzy, warm.

Just moments before he lost consciousness, he smiled to himself. The Aquila and its men had gone under. Matteo had gone under. The Mazza brothers—they were both dead.

At least , he thought, they will not get to my Mari, nor the other women…

He closed his eyes and began to sink.