Three long rings followed by three long blasts bellowed from behind her. Gosh, they were loud. A metallic groan resounded as the ship slowed and came to a halt.
She grimaced but didn’t dare to close her eyes so as not to lose contact with the raft. Footsteps thundered against the polished wood of the deck. More orders were yelled and repeated until a lifeboat was dropped into the sea with a few sailors on board.
Gripping the rail with both hands, Maddie breathed heavily. People pressed against her from every side. Minutes passed, and the boat seemed miles away from the raft. In fact, it looked like it wasn’t moving at all.
Why did it take so long to cover the short distance? The boat floated up and down with the waves, disappearing from view. She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth and scratched the glossy surface of the rail. For God’s sake, couldn’t they speed up and row faster? The sun would set before those sailors reached the raft. What if the person wasn’t dead and needed medical attention?
“Quick, quick,” she muttered under her breath.
The wind picked up speed, raising the water. Great. Now both the boat and the raft weren’t visible, hidden by the growing waves. Maddie shifted her weight and bit her lips. No one panicked, so probably she overreacted. The sailors next to her seemed perfectly calm, as if the situation were normal.
A few passengers had lost interest and left, returning to their game of pétanque, while she dug her fingers into her palms. A wave lowered, and the boat swept into view again. But was it sailing towards the raft or the ship? Bother. Nothing made sense in the sea. She could have sworn the raft had been barely a few yards away.
She released a breath when the boat appeared again. There was no mistaking the direction. It rowed towards the ship, and she spotted a slumped figure among the sailors. Lord, they got him.
The commotion returned to the deck. The passengers talked in excited tones and pointed at the boat. The raft floated up and down, empty. She swatted the anonymous hand of one of the pointing people away from her field of vision.
Faster. Faster.
When the boat was close to the hull, she leant over the railing, rising on her tiptoes. A man, wrapped in one of the blankets of the ship company, lay on the boat. Aside from a leonine mane of dark-blond hair that hadn’t been cut in a while, she couldn’t see anything. It took another good half an hour for the boat to approach the hull and for the sailors to haul the man up with ropes.
“Give them space.” A sailor urged the passengers back until he formed a wide circle of space.
She stepped away, clasping her hands together.
“My goodness,” Verity said next to her.
Blimey. Maddie hadn’t realised Verity stood so close to her.
“A doctor,” one of the sailors shouted. “The man is alive.”
Alive. The tension lifted from her shoulders.
Now that he was closer, she could see the man clenched a bundle in his arms and when a sailor tried to take it from him, he growled, his tanned skin wrinkling under the curtain of his hair and thick beard.
“I’m a doctor!” A short man hurried forwards, opening a path through the crowd. “Out of my way.”
Maddie tried to see what was going on, but too many people were gathered on the deck. The doctor exchanged a few words with the sailors. She stretched her neck to catch a glimpse of the castaway.
As the man was carried away by the sailors, she lingered after the passengers lost interest again. Alive. How could anyone survive on a raft in the middle of the ocean? What had happened to him?
The wind carried the torn page of her sketchbook with Hector’s face to her. She snatched it before it fell into the sea.
seven
ABED. A proper, soft bed was under Hector’s sore body. Not the rough pallet made of palm leaves he’d slept in for the past few years. He wasn’t sure how many. Unless he was wrong in his calculation, it should be eight years since the damn storm had sunk theObservatory.
He blinked his eyes open. They hurt after two weeks spent on the raft under the glaring sun. Everything hurt.
Someone had found him. It wasn’t a hallucination induced by a sunstroke and exhaustion. A ship had found him. At least he hadn’t been wrong about his calculation on the ships’ journeys across the ocean. He’d hoped one of the ships sailing in front of the island where he’d been stranded would have spotted him.
After his sight adjusted to the blissfully dimly lit room, he gazed around. Yes, he was in a cabin, all dark wood and pristine floor. Polished wooden wainscoting covered the walls of the cabin, giving him a sense of calm. The pungent smell of carbolic acid and paraffin teased his nostrils. He touched the area around him, savouring the softness of the bedsheets and their scent of soap. But where was his book? Panic seized him.
He bolted upright, wincing as his back muscles shot pain through him. He couldn’t see his precious diary anywhere. There was a cabinet with a lamp on its top, a narrow wardrobe, a water basin, and...there. He sagged against the pillow when he spotted his bundle in a corner. Hopefully, no one had touched it.
He breathed the stuffy air in and out. It was the first time in years that stale air had filled his lungs. The porthole showed only a portion of the sea, a small, deceitful portion because the sea wasn’t the placid giant the view portrayed. It was a sleeping monster, ready to swallow lives without mercy.
Somehow, he wore a clean white shirt and a pair of breeches. The fabric felt soft on his hardened skin since he hadn’t worn any clothes for a long time. He propped himself up on his elbows, grimacing at the pain stinging his body. Then he waited. But no emotion, tears, or shudders came.
