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The Spindrift was fifty yards away.
Gillander beckoned to Scuff to go back to him where he was standing at the ship’s wheel. Monk watched as Gillander placed Scuff’s hands on the wheel and saw as his body stiffened to hold the violent pull against him. He threw his weight into it. The ship came into the wind again and righted itself.
Gillander gave a tiny gesture of salute, looking at Monk over Scuff’s shoulder.
Monk went forward. He touched Scuff lightly in tacit approval, and felt him tense with pleasure.
“Go below to my cabin and get three cutlasses from the cupboard under the bunk,” Gillander ordered Monk. “And be quick. You’d better take that pea coat off. You can’t fight with your arms tied up in that thing.”
The distance between the ships was closing fast. There was no time to argue. If he failed, Hester would never forgive him for this. And for taking Scuff! But if he failed he would be dead, so he would never know.
He gave one of the cutlasses to Scuff, sliding it through the side of his belt while his two hands were on the wheel.
“Only if someone boards the Summer Wind!” he said grimly.
Scuff grinned. “And if you an’ Gillander get killed, I’m going to sail this back home by myself?”
“Don’t be impertinent,” Monk snapped back as him, suddenly appalled at the idea of his being terrified…hurt…alone.
He forced the thought out of his mind. Loving anyone made him such a hostage to terror…and pain.
He gave the second cutlass to Gillander and kept the third. It felt strange in his hand, unfamiliar.
They were only twenty yards from the Spindrift now. He could quite clearly see Clive on the deck, and one other man. There could be more, with at least one at the wheel. They would have weapons, too, maybe cutlasses, or—far worse—guns. Although one would need extraordinarily good luck to hit anybody on the pitching decks of either ship.
Gillander had the cutlass in his belt and a grappling iron on a long rope in his hands. He clearly meant to come close enough to the Spindrift to hurl it, so it caught on the rail and the two ships could be lashed together. The maneuvering would have to be precise. If they were going in opposite directions at more than a few yards a minute, the rope would snap and recoil back on whoever threw it, possibly dragging them into the sea.
Monk strode forward to Gillander. “You steer,” he ordered. “It needs more than luck to do this. I’ll throw the grapple.”
Gillander stood still for a moment. They were fifteen yards away and closing. The wind had dropped and the sun was rising fast.
Ten yards.
Gillander took the wheel and Monk held the grapple, watching carefully where the length of its rope lay.
“Keep back!” he ordered Scuff. “Right over there!”
Scuff blinked, then realized that Monk was talking about standing on the rope coiled lying on the deck, which would take him over with it. He obeyed instantly.
Ten yards. Five. Monk threw the grapple and it hooked on to the rail. He lashed it to the deck stanchion and threw his weight against it, tying it fast.
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Gillander ordered Scuff to take the wheel, then he leaned sideways and grasped the lines to lower the sail yet farther. Immediately the ship lost way. The two were no more than a couple of yards apart, then crashing sides, and locked together.
Gillander leaped aboard the Spindrift, cutlass in hand. Monk tightened and lashed the ropes again, and jumped to the deck of the Spindrift himself. He landed heavily as the roll of the deck dropped it down, then up again.
There was a man not a yard in front of him, saber high. He lunged forward. As if it were second nature, Monk sidestepped and parried. All the aches of exhaustion fell away from him like a discarded garment. The blood surged in his veins and he was almost dizzy with energy. All the fights he’d ever had were unrolling inside him now, memory in the muscle and the bone. He swung round and slashed at the man, altering his weight, moving easily, striking and defending, seeing blood where he had scored a mark. Next moment his own arm stung and he saw a thin red streak on his sleeve. There was little pain, only irritation that he had allowed it to happen. He knew better than this!
He swung, jabbed, and then swung the other way. The man yelled in fury, lunging forward, blood all over his shoulder. Monk sliced the opposite way and the man fell.
Gillander was on the other side of the deck, facing the other crewman, fighting hard. Even as Monk watched, the two of them moved dangerously, almost elegantly, around the closed deck hatch, every step closer to the rail and the sea.
Monk could not intervene; the blades were sweeping and striking, clashing and then disengaging. They were both good, clever, desperate. Life and death were the prizes.
Monk glanced at the Summer Wind. Scuff was still clinging to the wheel, his face white in the cold dawn light. Gillander leaped over the hatch cover, swung around like a dancer, and sliced open the other man’s chest. He staggered back, jackknifed over the rail, and plunged into the sea.
Gillander turned back to face the deck, and saw Monk. There was no one else there. Clive and Miriam must be below—if Miriam was still alive. This was the moment of knowing.
