Arabella of Mars(61)

Mills glanced at her quizzically. “How?”

Arabella peered with trepidation across the vast open expanse of deck between her and the two guarding airmen. Once she and Mills emerged from the shadow of the hatchway they would be in plain sight of every mutineer. The only alternative route involved the aft ladder, which emerged immediately between the two guards.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, then looked behind and below herself in case some other mutineer might be approaching from behind. At the moment no such threat was imminent, but that situation surely could not last.

Binion’s harsh high voice caught Arabella’s attention then. “Where’s Westphal?” he called.

“He went below to roust out the last of the fish,” someone replied.

Arabella and Mills exchanged a worried glance. Westphal must be the topman they’d crushed with the water cask.

“He’s been gone too long,” Binion said. “Bates, Parker—go follow him up. Take truncheons.” Two burly airmen immediately separated themselves from a group and launched themselves through the air toward Arabella and Mills.

“We need to hide!” she hissed to her companion, and quickly scrambled back down the ladder.

But the upper deck, though dark by comparison with the cloudy day above, was well illuminated by lamps at this hour, and with all the hammocks taken up it was essentially one large open space. Cargo and bags of charcoal, lashed firmly in place against the hull on each side, offered no hiding place. Scrambling down the ladder to the lower deck would leave them just as trapped.

At least during the battle with the French, Arabella thought with grim humor, she’d known that every one on the ship was on the same side.…

Suddenly she had an idea. “The gun deck!” she whispered, and leapt down the length of the deck. Mills immediately followed, the great strength of his legs propelling him so quickly that he reached the gun deck hatch first, undogging it just as she arrived. They slipped through and dogged the hatch behind themselves just as the sound of voices announced the arrival of the two airmen on the deck they’d just vacated.

The closing hatch cut off the lamplight, leaving Arabella and Mills in near-darkness. “What now?” Mills whispered. “Sure they find us here, and no exit.”

“There is an exit,” she replied, and pointed. “Three of them.”

There, beyond the vague bulking forms of the three cannons, gleamed three square outlines: the gun-ports.

Moving as quietly as they could, they made their way forward and eased the number one port open, letting in a rush of air and light that made Arabella squint.

Cautiously, she poked her head through the port and peered around. Directly ahead, in the path a cannonball would travel, she saw roiling clouds and a flash of lightning; other than that, her view was largely blocked by the bowsprit and its rigging. But what little she could see revealed no mutineers, or indeed any men at all. “No one’s about,” she said as she ducked her head back inside. “We’ll make our way along the keel and enter the great cabin through the window.”

“Tight fit,” muttered Mills. Thunder rumbled low without, as though in agreement with him.

Indeed, the port was not much more than one foot square. “I’ll help you through it,” she said.

Arabella, with her lean boyish frame, slipped easily enough through the port—the wood of its frame stank of gunpowder and hot iron, even more so than the rest of the gun deck—but it refused to pass Mills’s broad shoulders. “One arm at a time,” she said, but though he tried first the right and then the left, the bulk of his chest was still too great, no matter how she tugged and Mills pushed. Cold, heavy drops of rain had begun to spatter her back and hair, but the small lubrication they offered was not sufficient. “We could get some grease from the galley.…”

Suddenly the eyes in Mills’s straining face snapped open. “They’re here,” he said.

Behind him, they could both hear the gun deck hatch being undogged.

She had never before seen the stoic airman’s expression so grim. She was sure her own face bore a similar look of anguish and dismay.

“Try to hide in the shadows,” she said. “I’ll come back for you as quick as I can.”

Though his eyes were filled with misery, Mills nodded. Quickly he pulled his head and arm back through the hatch and shut it, leaving Arabella clinging to the bowsprit rigging and breathing hard. The rain was coming quite hard now, and she wiped it from her eyes. Lightning flashed again, and then the thunder rolled, much closer now.

Then, through the hull, she heard the gun deck hatch open. She held her breath.

A shout: “You there! Both hands in sight!”

Another voice, equally loud: “What’re ye hiding from, laddie?”

Mills’s response was inaudible over the patter of the rain on the thick hull. Arabella tensed, preparing to spring away if the port opened.

“Ye’ll be coming with us, laddie,” came the second voice, followed by the loud smack of a truncheon on flesh.

Arabella hung, shivering with cold, in the rigging. Mills had been captured, for certain. Perhaps he had been struck; perhaps that sound was only a prod or a threat. Would he give her up?

She pressed her ear to the hull, stopping her other ear with her hand against the sound of the rising storm. Only silence from within.