Storm Fury! by Anthony Barton

Author:Anthony Barton [Barton, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bulmer Press
Published: 2019-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

CORRIE knew she was running out of time. The fresh water was a great help, but it was not enough to save her or her vessel. A storm like this could rage for days, and the fight with Troude had left her poor Swift sorely wounded. Corrie had to be here on deck, bound to the foot of the mast lest she lose her footing, for she dared not miss a change in the weather or the chance to spy some sign of land. Her crew, huddled below decks, were trusting her. Tom had saved her life, as she had saved his. That was important. It was just possible that she and Tom had something going for them, for she was feeling close to him in mind and body, and their exchange of affection had been moving, but their affair would continue only if they could survive this raging tempest, and time was slipping away fast. The cold was biting deeper and deeper. More troubling, she was finding it more and more difficult to think.

‘Corrie?’

‘Everything is happening to us all at once,’ she replied quickly, when an opportunity to speak arose. ‘The Swift. This fierce gale. Being captain. You and me. Troude waiting to pounce.’

‘Blanchard and Jeffries felt much the same way,’ said Tom, playing with the soft parts of her ears. ‘They were in their hot-air balloon, trying to cross the English Channel for the first time. They were close to the waves and losing height, out of ballast, and had to lighten their load, so they tore off all their clothes and threw their clothes in the ocean, and then, when they reached dry land, stepped out of their gondola as naked as the day they were born.’

Corrie stared at Tom. Why was he chattering such nonsense? Was he trying to keep her awake?

Of course he was! Good for him! She had to stay awake.

She was the captain.

The next moment she was asleep. She dreamed that she was swooping through the air, skimming across the surface of a wide expanse of violet sea, the wind caressing her limbs, and the air teasing at her hair. Lower and lower she flew, nearer and nearer to the violet abyss, while voices in the wind called out to her. She landed as soft as a feather on a round smooth rock. ‘Now I shall fly again,’ she thought. ‘I shall fly and fly and fly, and I go up so high that I shall vanish into the sky.’ Still dreaming, she faced the wind and spread her arms but, try as she might, she could not take off. She felt trapped. Everything in her dream stopped: the wind, the voices, and the waves. She grew frightened. She woke with a start to find that time had passed, and although she was still bound to the mast and bound to Tom, the world around her had changed while she dozed.

She looked up. She was roofed in by innumerable stars.

‘Tom! Wake up! The wind has stopped!’ she cried, suddenly recalling her ship and her people.

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