Then there is a sickening pop.
I know it is the sound of Sin-Kay's lower spine snapping.
"Hughie! Get back to the boat!" I plead, shaking him by the shoulder. "Go now, Mister's done!"
Confused, Hughie steps back, releasing his hold. Sin-Kay slumps to the deck, his legs flop around, all useless now. And—Oh, Lord—there is a spreading red stain on the front of Hughie's shirt. I choke down a sob and shove him back toward the boat. He goes.
"...seventy-eight ... seventy-nine..."
Sin-Kay raises his torso by pushing up with his hands. Sheer terror is writ large on his face, as he knows full well that he is now a dead man.
"Enjoy your time in Hell, Jerome." I sneer down at him, and staying well clear of the clutch of his hands, I turn to go to the boat. I wish I could be more gracious in victory, but I can't.
On my way over the hatch top, I see that the crew's boat is filled to overflowing, and, wonder of wonders, there's Nettles, staggering out of the hatch, holding his head and moaning. We didn't kill him after all—the scumbag just went into a coma and he woke up just in time. Glory be ... He lurches forward and falls into the boat, just as it pulls away from the side.
"...eighty-one ... eighty-two..."
Time to go. Farewell, Bloodhound.
I see that Hughie has gotten the boat down to the water, and I'm almost to it, when I find that things ain't over yet. Captain Blodgett has come out of his cabin, and aside from a crazed look on his face, he bears two pistols in his hands.
Uh-oh...
"Katy, get your girls in! Cathy, pull away and lay off! Pick me up in the water! Do it, now!"
Katy sends me a sharp look, but she follows orders, and I turn to confront the Captain.
"...eighty-six ... eighty-seven..."
There's still time for him to get down and pull the fuse, and I can't let him do that. I run back over the hatch to face him and he levels a pistol at me and fires. I fall on my back and the bullet whizzes harmlessly across my chest. I drop my sword and roll over and over across the deck. He fires again, and again he misses, for it's hard to hit a moving target, no matter how close. Seeing me down, he lunges for the hatchway.
I scoop up Persephone and beat him to it, holding the point of the sword next to his neck.
"Whip me, will you?" I say as I thrust, but he brings his heavier sword up and deflects it.
"...ninety-two ... ninety-three ... Jacky, come on!...ninety-our..."
Captain Blodgett knows he has no more chance at getting at the fuse. All he wants to do now is kill me, the cause of his ruin. He snarls and raises his sabre and comes at me. I crouch down and assume Position Four and wait for it. When he brings his sword down, I drop the tip of mine and entangle his blade in an envelopment parry, ending up in Position Six.
"...ninety-six ... ninety-seven..."
He recovers, pulls back, and thrusts, in Four. I try a beat parry by knocking his blade to the side, but I don't have the strength to do it, so I don't knock it out of the way far enough. The point of his sabre goes into my left thigh, high up.
Yeeow! Damn!
I fall back, clutching my leg. Son of a bitch!
"...ninety-eight ... ninety-nine..."
I've had enough.
"You've won this duel, Captain, but you have not won the war. Now, witness your judgement!"
"...one hundred!"
With that, I dash to the side and dive over, leaving the astounded Captain Blodgett looking helplessly after me.
The explosion comes as a tremendous, dead thump! when I am in midair, and after I penetrate the warm, clear, blue-green waters of the lower Atlantic, I open my eyes and look back upon the death throes of the Bloodhound.
The blast had opened up the middle, and the ship was already headed down. Even in the space of one held breath, I saw the nose go under and then the stern and then the entire ship.
Go down, Bloodhound, you vile and filthy thing, go down. Go down, you purveyor of human flesh, you destroyer of men's souls, go down, go down, oh yes, go down to the very depths of Hell, itself. Go down...
It is strangely quiet now, down here under the waves, after the tumult of the past few minutes. Strange, too, is the aspect of the Bloodhound as it sails down to its watery grave, for sail down it does, all its rigging and sails perfectly set as it goes farther and farther down into the deep blue-green sea, leaving a trail of oddly beautiful sparkling bubbles as its last wake.
It leaves some other things as well. I see Sin-Kay, clear as day, holding his breath and trying to claw his way back to the surface with his still-good arms. And I see as well a layer of dark and sinister shapes down below the fast-disappearing Bloodhound, a layer of gray that begins to move and separate and become the individual, massive sharks that follow ships like these for whatever they can pick up. They come up to feed.
Sin-Kay almost makes it to the surface before one of the brutes, which has got to be twenty feet long, comes up and goes at him. Considering the shape he's in, I don't know if he can feel anything when the first shark takes off his leg ... Maybe not, but I guess we'll never know that. The second one takes off his right arm, and then another cuts him off at the waist, and from then on it is all just guts and plumes of blood in the water. The last thing I see is his face, which bears that look of complete and total surprise that many men wear when the unthinkable, their own end, becomes certain.
Captain Blodgett fares no better. He struggles, but the sharks, now in a frenzy, take him apart piece by piece, and then turn to the still forms of Dunphy and Chubbuck and Carruthers, floating arms-and-legs out, like leaves in a gentle breeze, putting up no fight at all.
It occurs to me then that, however oddly beautiful the scene of the Bloodhound sailing down to oblivion, I'd better be getting the hell out of there, considering that blood is curling out of my own dear leg. With regret, I drop the sword Persephone and see her sink, and hope that perhaps her namesake will pick her up when she reaches the lower depths of Hades, and then, Good God, one's comin up at me!
I forget idle thoughts and scramble for the surface. My head breaks through and I look around for the boat.
"There she is!" shouts someone, and I twist in the water and see the boat and start pulling for it. Oh, please, God, not me legs!
I reach the boat and Dolley puts an oar toward me in the water and I fairly scramble up the length of the oar and into the boat.
Just as I do, a huge black form, topped by a triangular fin, surges out of the water next to the oar, its back easily as broad as our boat. I frantically reach down and find that my feet are still there.
Thank you, God, oh, thank you.
"Set course 290 degrees," I gasp when I've recovered my breath.
"Aye, aye, Sir," says Cathy Lowell, mocking me a bit and looking down at the compass she holds in her hand. I had taken it from my seabag and given it to her this morning. She puts the tiller over.
The course takes us close to the crew's boat, which is a hive of activity. The Dianas take up guard positions to make sure the crew doesn't try anything. But they needn't have worried. All is confusion and despair on that boat. They've already discovered that I removed their rudder, most of their oars, and that all their running gear has been chopped up into useless lengths. The sails are in tatters. There is a squeal from one of them as he discovers the bloodred footprints. I'm sure the Legend of the Black Ghost will not fade quickly from their minds. It will certainly ruin their sleep tonight.
There are hissing bubbles burbling up between our two lifeboats, those bubbles being the last dying breaths of the Bloodhound as it slips even farther down into the dark at the bottom of the sea.
"Cheer up, lads," I say as we sail up to them, all shipshape and Bristol fashion, our sail tight as a drum. "You are clever fellows. You'll rig up something. I've even left you with one oar to maybe rig as a rudder. You might even survive long enough to be picked up by a passing ship. Who knows, you might even live to tell the tale of how you were bested by a bunch of little girls. But I doubt you'll tell that tale, even if you do survive. G'bye, Mick. G'bye, Keefe. G'bye, Cookie. I do hope you make it, I really do. But there's one thing I want you to do for me, in payment for all I've done for you."
They look at me stupidly.
"When it comes right down to it and things are bad, as bad as you know they can get when you're cast adrift at sea, do this for me ... eat Nettles first!"
Every head on the boat swivels to look at Sammy Nettles, who has recovered enough to gaze about at all the faces staring at him to say, "Wot?"
"You must admit," I say in parting, "it's tradition"
We pull away and we see the crew of the Bloodhound no more.
Chapter 51
I hoped that Hughie's wound would be superficial, but alas, it is not. I wished that Sin-Kay's bullet had gone through the meat on his side, but when I open Hughie's shirt, I find that it had not—it had gone straight into his chest and stayed there. A little bit of blood has already trickled out of the side of his mouth. Oh, Hughie, no...
I pull his shirt back down and sit on the seat and pull his head over into my lap and stroke his hair. He sighs, contentedly. I don't think he's in a lot of pain, and that's good. The girls near us in the boat have seen what has happened to Hughie, and Sally puts her hand on his shoulder to lend him solace. Others do the same, murmuring comforting words.
"Tell me another story, Mary," he says. "About the gang and all..."
"All right, Hughie," I say. "Once upon a time there was a boy named Hugh the Grand and he was in a gang and one day he saved his whole gang, yes, he did, and he kept them from harm, 'cause he was the biggest, bravest boy there ever was..."
"A good one, Mary," he says. "I know I'm gonna like it..." And then he relaxes, lets out his last breath, and dies.
I put my face down in his curly locks and let the tears flow. Good-bye, Hughie. I hope they have pretty little horses where you are going. You were always just the best boy...
After a while I say those words I have heard so many times before—We commend his body to the sea, and his soul to God—and we gently put him over the side. The last I see of Hugh the Grand is his white shirt twinkling down through the clear blue-green water as he sinks.
After the funeral, I shake my head to clear it of grief—time for that later, and there is work to be done. Rebecca is sick, Clarissa is nak*d, my leg is bleeding, and the sun is beating down.
I see Rebecca nestled in the crook of Annie's arm, asleep, so I take care of the Clarissa problem first.
Anyone else on this boat, 'cept maybe me, would be huddled over, trying to cover her nak*dness with crossed arms, but not Clarissa—she leans back, puts her elbows on the gunwale behind her, closes her eyes, and raises her face to the sun and purrs, "Oh, that feels soooo good after being in that hellhole for soooo long."
As I rummage through my seabag for something to cover Clarissa, it occurs to me that there are probably some on this boat that wouldn't mind terribly being back in the Hold of the Bloodhound, for the ocean sure looks a lot bigger when you're on it in a little boat like this.
"How ... how far are we from land, Jacky?" asks Priscilla. The ocean swells roll under us and they are smooth and slick and calm, but they are big, and this boat is very small.