Patrice, surely exhausted by everything that had occurred the past few days—or weeks—glared at me. That glare was piercing and had always made me ashamed. This time was different, for this choice I’d made may have cost us our lives. We were so far from shore, we couldn’t see it from our dinghy. Even though we had seen it from the ship. We sat in silence, watching the oars drift farther away from us.
“The longer I wait, the more impossible it will be to retrieve them,” Mr. Ashby said.
“What? No, you’re not going in there. Can you even swim?” I said.
“Of course I can swim,” he grumbled. “Just not very well.” His pause seemed full of uncertainty. “And…there are sharks in these waters.”
He swallowed when our eyes met. Clearly he was afraid of sharks. “Do they often…eat people?”
He closed his eyes before nodding. “I’ve seen it myself.”
“Then don’t go in.” I couldn’t bear to see another person die in front of me, least of all Mr. Ashby.
“What other option do we have? We cannot float aimlessly.” Without further discussion, he dove into the water. I reached an arm as he jumped and held my breath until he broke the surface again.
He sent us a brief nod, to reassure us, I supposed, before swimming to the nearest oar. He came back to the boat and we grabbed it from him. He went farther out for the second, and I could tell he struggled to stay afloat with the waves. I used the oar to follow him, but we went slowly. Finally, he reached the second paddle. As he swam back, I noticed a dark shape behind him. I sucked in a breath.
“Mr. Ashby!” Patrice cried.
He didn’t look back, but his pace increased. I held my hand out to him as far as I could without overturning the boat. The dark shape grew closer and a fin sliced through the water. A fin like that…it had to be shark!
“Hurry!” I urged.
Four more fins appeared, and before I could scream, one jumped out of the water fully and made a large splash when it dove back in.
Oh, thank heaven.
“They’re dolphins!” Patrice said ecstatically. We both clapped our hands and laughed. Mr. Ashby probably would have shared our joy had he not been struggling to stay afloat. Finally, he reached us and we pulled him into the dinghy. He lay at the bottom of the boat, catching his breath while laughing.
We continued laughing like we had gone mad. And perhaps we had, considering we had not eaten nor slept in days. The meager food and water we’d brought with us may or may not last until we reached land. And although this time it was dolphins, there were many things in the ocean that could overturn the boat and ultimately kill us. And yet, we laughed.
We laughed until our stomachs hurt.
Mr. Ashby let Patrice and me have turns rowing, and we rowed into the night. Our arms and backs ached. We took turns sleeping. While Patrice snored, I watched Mr. Ashby rowing. He had adopted a rhythm of breathing that seemed to work.
“You’re a wonder,” I said aloud, though I wasn’t sure I meant to.
He smiled. “Am I?”
I nodded and took a small bite of a sea biscuit before wrapping it back in cloth.
“How so?” he prodded.
“Somehow, through this mess, you’ve managed to stay sane and push forward.” I leaned back against the boat and looked up into the stars. “Without you, I certainly would not have survived this journey. How fortunate it was to run into you at that inn.”
“Fortunate? I thought you’d contrived it.”
I glanced at him. “I hoped for it.”
“Perhaps you believe those are nearly the same thing,” he said thoughtfully. It would have come across as an insult from someone else. But from him, it sounded like a compliment.
“Truthfully, Miss Findlay, I thinkyouare the wonder,” Mr. Ashby admitted.
If only I were close enough to him to read the emotion in his eyes. They were always so expressive that I imagined I could see his meaning in every word.
“How so?” I mirrored his question.
“What other woman would dare to take this journey, or handle it with grace?”
