Donald Moffitt by Deadly Passage

Author:Deadly Passage
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-06-05T14:36:49+00:00

Lucy was up at the crack of dawn to take a sighting. The sea was flat and calm, and a gentle breeze blew in from the east. A blazing tropical sun was just perched on the eastern horizon as she raised her sextant and adjusted the vernier. She had already seen the dead reckoning estimate that Dawson had entered in the log, and she was anxious to see how closely her reading matched it. Though the sails were all reefed, the steady pressure of the southeast trade winds against the bare poles, and the assistance of the South Equatorial current, had brought the Mary Small, she was sure, at least twenty miles closer to China during the night. Potts, of course, had lost another twenty miles of headway. Eban, poking his head out the companionway door, nodded to let her know that he had jotted down the chronometer reading at the appropriate moment.

She was about to join Eban when a flutter of movement across the way caught her eye. The two ships had drifted farther apart during the night. They were beyond speaking distance now, but Lucy could see that the bark was hoisting a signal flag aloft, a red X on a white field. “I need assistance.” And a single-letter signal meant it was urgent. Could Mrs. Potts’s time have come prematurely? No. A medical emergency was a blue and white bordered red rectangle.

Eban came hurrying to her side. Dawson dropped what he was doing and began scanning the bark’s deck with a telescope.

“A lot of activity on deck, Captain. I can see Potts in his top hat, waving his arms about. I don’t see any evidence of a fire, or any working of the pumps that would indicate a leak!”

“What the devil kind of emergency can it be?” Eban said. “Try to find out, Mr. Dawson. Get a line on what kind of gear we need to bring over to them.”

Dawson sent a sailor scurrying to the flag locker. A minute or two later, a yellow and blue flag was climbing to the main truck, the letter K used as a single-letter signal.

They waited several minutes. There was no response.

Dawson squinted through the telescope again. “He isn’t even bothering to look toward us. Wait a minute. Somebody in a pea jacket is dragging a sailor to him by the scruff of the neck. He just gave him a backhanded swipe that knocked him flat. The fellow’s triced up. Now he’s hauled him to his feet again and he’s frog marching him ‘midships. They’re out of sight. The captain’s yelling at the other sailors. It looks like the whole crew’s on deck. They’re milling about like cattle.”

“No more flags?”

“No.”

Eban sighed. “Get a boat crew together, Mr. Dawson. We’ll have to go over and see.”

Lucy spoke up. “I’m going with you.”

Eban shook his head stubbornly. “Not a chance. We don’t know what’s going on. There may be danger.”

“I’m going with you, Eban. That’s settled. Whatever’s going on, Mrs. Potts may need a woman.

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