Knight's Cross (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 3) by Christine Kling

Author:Christine Kling [Kling, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781503944633
Published: 2015-12-08T08:00:00+00:00

Aboard the Ruse

Grand Harbour, Malta

June 9, 1798

Fortune was in his favor, Alonso thought, as the wind in the harbor was moderate and from the southwest. He had never sailed his vessel entirely alone, but he cast off from the wharf and sculled his ship out past Fort Saint Angelo and into the main channel. There, he unfurled the lateen sail on the foremast and tied it off. With the wind behind him, he would clear the harbor entrance in no time.

As he rounded Ricasoli Point, Alonso got his first view of the sea beyond Grand Harbour. Even with only starlight and the lanterns aboard the ships, the view of the French fleet was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The masts and hulls overlapped in his view in such a way that it looked like a wall of ships, less than half a mile off the harbor entrance.

Alonso spun the wheel and backed his sail. He tied off the helm and ran forward to reset the sail. Then he raised the larger sail on his main mast and set that by tying it off. The Ruse was slowly turning up into the wind and starting to head for shore. He ran back to the wheel and set his course to skirt as close to the shallows as he dared.

And that was very close indeed. When he’d first bought the Ruse, two of the features he’d liked most about the xebec were her small size and shallow draft. Many times he had thwarted a pursuer by crossing over shoals where his enemy could not follow. Now he sailed so close to the island’s cliffs he knew only a very sharp eye could discern the outline of his sails. The French would not be interested in him, in any case. His smaller boat would make him appear to be a fisherman out trolling for fish along the coast.

The night was unusually quiet. He heard nothing but the occasional call of a bird on shore and the gurgling of the water as his wake closed behind the Ruse. She certainly was a fast boat, and this night the conditions were perfect, with the wind blowing off the shore. Every other time he had sailed his little ship, he’d had his full complement of crew. Men were loud, even at night—snoring, talking, playing cards, telling tales. If he had known how peaceful it was sailing alone at night, he would have done it sooner. But the truth was, eventually he would need to sleep, so he could not continue alone for days. And he intended to travel far from his island home. He needed crew.

Watching the coastline fly past, he calculated his speed and started to make his plan. The island of Gozo lay about four leagues to the northwest. Mgarr, a small fishing port, lay just across the channel that separated the two islands. Alonso had anchored there several times when he had needed to find shelter from a sudden weather change. He supposed he would arrive several hours before dawn, given the speed his boat was making.

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