Bride of the Baja (6 page)

A brilliant flash illuminated the deck. Lightning! The flash, gone in an instant, was followed by a crack of thunder that seemed to rend the sky. In that moment of intense light, Alitha had stared in horror at the shambles of the once-proud
Yankee
—the mizzenmast was gone, carried away. Rigging and sails hung over the port side in a jumble of ropes and spars. Forward, near the forecastle, she had seen men in black oilskins and sea boots straining to free the ship's boat from beneath a tangle of debris. Were they abandoning ship?

She waited until another wave crashed across the main deck. Then, holding the rail with both hands, she inched her way forward, slipping and sliding on the wet, pitching deck. Her hair was soaked and her dress clung to her legs, the cold of the water sending chills coursing through her body.

Lightning flickered in the distance. Seeing a man looming ahead of her, Alitha took him by the arm. He turned to her with an oath.

"It's Alitha Bradford," she shouted.

When he recognized her, he leaned toward her and bellowed in her ear. "Get thee to the starboard side. We'll soon have the boat ready for launching."

So they did mean to launch the boat—they were abandoning the
Yankee
. Alitha couldn't imagine her father giving up this ship, his ship, without more of a fight. Could they have been swept closer to the shore than she realized? Had they fought the sea and the storm and lost?

She tensed, waiting for her chance to let go of the rail so she could cross the deck to the starboard side. The ship pitched and tossed, the sea rougher than she had ever known it. Now? No, the
Yankee's
bow rose high on the next wave, and she had to wrap her arms around the rail. If only we had a full crew, she thought, even now we could outrun this storm and save the ship. If only the cholera hadn't—

She gasped. She had forgotten the men in the forecastle. They probably lay huddled helplessly in their bunks, deathly ill yet confident the ship would ride out this storm as she had so many others. After all, the
Flying Yankee
had faced the worst of the Cape Horn gales and survived.

When the ship steadied, Alitha clambered up the sloping deck, pushed open the door and climbed down the ladder into the terrible stench of the forecastle. A lamp, swinging with every rise and dip of the
Yankee
, burned dimly overhead. All around her men lay groaning in their bunks. The deck was aslop with sea water and vomit.

"You have to get out," she cried, steadying herself in the doorway. "They're abandoning the ship."

None of the men seemed to hear. Lost in their misery, they lay curled on their bunks, some dead, others unconscious, the rest heedless of all but the extremes of their agony. Alitha sloshed across the forecastle deck to Jenkins's bunk—he had been more alert than the others that afternoon when, together, they had prayed for his recovery. She looked down into his unseeing eyes. Jenkins was dead.

She returned to the ladder, recalling a phrase from Shakespeare. The men were "past hope, past cure, past help." After one last despairing look around the forecastle that burned the scene into her memory forever, she climbed to the main deck. The ship still raced forward, but the wind had lessened and the
Yankee's
pitching had abated. They'll launch the ship's boat now, she told herself. When lightning flickered again, she looked to where the boat should be.

The deck was empty, the boat and the men were gone. Only the litter of sails and rigging remained. She looked ahead—during the lightning's flash she thought she had seen something from the corner of her eye--and saw a line of white to starboard only a cable length from the ship—the white line of surf. A grinding crash shook the ship. The deck tilted and she heard a pistol-like crack from above and a thudding from behind. A yardarm must have splintered, she told herself, and come hurtling to the deck. The ship no longer plunged ahead. She had grounded on rocks and, listing at least thirty degrees to port, offered no resistance to the waves thundering over her stern. For the first time Alitha felt gusts of rain pelting against her face.

She froze. She should stay with the ship, she told herself, until the storm abated and she could reach shore. Surely the crew had abandoned the
Yankee
too soon. No, she argued with herself, the waves would surely break the ship apart on the rocks. She should lower herself from the side into the sea and try to swim to shore even though she was a weak swimmer. Undecided, she felt a quiver of fear for the first time since she had fled from her cabin.

Fighting down her fear and hopelessness, she pulled herself along the rail, making her way aft. She would go to her father's cabin. Only there would she be safe.

A roar filled her ears as the ship shuddered. Water cascaded over her and she grasped for a rope, found none and was swept forward and over the port side into the sea. Fighting her way to the surface, she gasped for air. When she tried to swim, her dress tangled around her legs, so she held her breath and went under as she frantically unbuttoned the front of the dress and shrugged her arms out of the sleeves. After long moments she felt her legs kick their way free, and she surfaced once again.

She couldn't swim in the strong current. Time after time she struggled to the surface and gulped air into her lungs, only to be pushed under again as she was borne forward by the sea. An object struck her arm and her fingers closed on a board as she dimly realized it must be planking from the ship or a piece of crating wrested loose from the hold by the waves. Wrapping her arms around the board, she shut her eyes, concentrating all her energy on holding fast as she let the current sweep her on.

When Alitha opened her eyes, she found herself on a rocky shelf of land with her feet entangled in strands of a brown tubular growth. Water flowed up along her legs, fell away, then rose again. Rain beat down on her back, and the wind moaned mournfully overhead. She had no strength left, her shoulder ached and every muscle in her body seemed sore. She kicked her feet free of the kelp and crawled a few yards higher on the beach, cradled her head in her arms and slept.

When she wakened, the rain had stopped. A strong wind off the Pacific sent dark clouds scudding overhead and drove menacing waves onto the rocks below. The
Flying Yankee
was nowhere to be seen. The only evidence that the ship had ever existed was the timber scattered on the shingled beach.

Alitha pushed herself to her feet, her body aching, her legs and arms blackened by bruises. The torn white chemise, which came only to her thighs, clung wetly to her body and she shivered in the cold wind. Climbing in her bare feet to the top of a rise behind the beach, she looked around and saw that she stood on a point of land thrusting into the sea. A few hundred feet inland the ground rose to twin hills. There were no trees, only the barren, black rocks along the shore and the fields of April-green grass on the hillsides.

She walked along the water's edge—the clouds hid the sun so that she had no idea of the direction she was taking—and found nothing except more timbers and shattered crates washed up on the shore. Overhead, gulls screamed at her, the birds hovering almost motionlessly above her as they fought against the force of the wind. When she had walked about a mile, she stopped and began retracing her steps, passing the place where she had come ashore during the night.

At first she thought the black mass ahead of her on the beach was just another rock. When she realized it was a man with one arm outstretched, the other curled under him, she ran toward him. One of the crewmen, she thought, thrown onto the rocks as she had been. When she drew near, she saw the fingers of the man's huge hand spread out on the black of the rock and knew it was Malloy.

She put her hand on his chest and felt the slow rise and fall of his breathing. He was alive! She stood up and looked both ways along the beach, glanced inland and then out to sea as though seeking help while knowing she would find none. When she looked down at Malloy once more, she remembered his hands on her body and the taste of bile rose in her throat.

A few feet away she found a large boulder. Lifting it, using all her remaining strength, she returned to stand next to Malloy, holding the rock above his head. She would dash it down on him, kill him. She raised the boulder to her chest, then higher, to her chin. Now! she told herself.

She swung around, staggering away and letting the rock fall from her hands. No, she couldn't kill him. The day before, in the cabin, she could have shot him and felt little remorse. Here, with Malloy helpless at her feet, she found it impossible. She lowered her face into her hands.

"You meant to kill me."

She looked down to see Malloy's brown eyes flick away from her face. He raised himself on one arm, then sat with his arms around his knees, staring at the ground between his legs.

"Why didn't you kill me when you had the chance?" he asked. "You had cause enough."

"I don't know," she told him. "I couldn't."

He looked to sea “They managed to get the boat away," he said slowly. "I stayed with the
Yankee
until she broke up on the rocks."

"Do you know where we are?" she asked.

"No. On the California coast, surely, but just where I can't say. Not within a hundred leagues. I thought the ship was far from shore. I was wrong."

She had never seen Malloy so humble. The loss of the ship, his ship, must have come close to destroying all his faith in himself.

"We have to join forces," she told him. "We can't afford to be enemies, not here. We'll do much better with two pairs of eyes to look for ships, with two of us instead of one to search for food and water."

"Have no fear, I'll not harm you."

For the first time he looked at her, and she followed his glance down to her bare arms and legs, to the damp chemise outlining her breasts and hips under its thin cloth. Instinctively she folded her arms over her breasts as she saw the sudden glint in his eyes. When he pushed himself to his feet, she drew back.

"I'll not harm you," he said again.

He walked from her and stood at the top of the beach looking about him.

"Can you recognize any of this from the charts?" she asked.

"No, none of it. I'd best climb one of those hills and have a look."

"I'll come with you."

"There's no need."

"I want to. You lead and I'll follow."

He shrugged and made off with his rolling sailor's gait across the rocks toward the grassy hills, with Alitha a few steps behind. She felt the wind change--a warm sun came out from behind the clouds.

After a time, without looking back at her, he said, "Why do you hate me, Miss Alitha?"

"I don't hate you. I don't hate anyone. It's not Christian to hate."

They walked on in silence. Did she hate him? Was he right? Yes, he was, admit it, she told herself. "You—you tried to force me," she said.

"I mean even before. All during the voyage from Boston. Is it my hands?"

"Of course not," she said quickly. "How can I explain? There are some men, when I first meet them I know I don't want them to touch me, ever. I can't explain why. Perhaps they remind me of someone who hurt me when I was a child. I can't give you reasons, Mr. Malloy. It has nothing to do with the man, how good a man he might be or what he does to earn his livelihood."

"You think you're too good for me." He sounded sulky, like a small boy.

"No, I don't. When I marry, it might be to a laborer or a sea captain or a farmer or a merchant. How well-to-do he is will have no bearing."

"I thought your intended was a missionary."

She stopped in confusion, realizing she had forgotten about Thomas. Of course she meant to marry Thomas. After all, she was betrothed to him.

"I was speaking in a general way," she said. "Not about myself." She looked to see if Malloy had noticed her white lie. Seemingly not, for he was walking quickly ahead toward the sheltered side of a rise of ground.

"Look you." He pointed near his feet. When she stood beside him, she saw the wet, charred remains of a fire. "We're not the only ones here," he said.

"Another shipwrecked sailor?"

He poked at the dead fire with his toe. "I don't rightly know; he's left no other signs. They do say there are savage Indians in these parts."

They resumed their climb, going more slowly now, stopping often to glance around them. When Malloy reached the top of the first of the twin hills, he looked about him and then turned to face her as she came up the last slope.

"I feared as much," he said, swinging his arm in a circle.

Shielding her eyes from the sun, she gazed down and saw the sea crashing against the rocks to her right, saw a small sheltered bay ahead of them, the open sea to her left and behind her. They were on an island. This wasn't the coast of California at all but an island. Though she peered across the sea, vainly searching for the mainland, low clouds prevented her from seeing more than a few miles.

"There's isles all up and down the coast in these latitudes," Malloy said. "The Santa Barbaras, they're called." His shoulders seemed to slump.

"We'll find a way to the mainland. We'll hail a passing ship or build a boat of our own. There must be a way."