Chapter 26: Shared Humanity

Three more days and not another word from Jack, at least as far as she knew. Sands, who rarely came topside, would sometimes talk to himself, especially when he appeared to be sleeping. She guessed he took naps on and off because he never seemed to be still for more than an hour at a time. Because of this, she found herself sleeping very lightly out on the main deck. Would he manage to find his guns? She kept his Webley on her hip, just in case. She didn't want to hurt Jack, but to shoot at Sands was a temptation she had to suppress every day.

Currently it was going on night, but the sunset looked far less friendly than usual; grey clouds made dark blots on the horizon like dark ink running into the pastels.

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Sands lay in the bunk below deck, listening to the creaking of the wooden hull. At first he'd thought the noise was annoying, but as time wore on -slow in the darkness with nothing to do- he came to understand what certain sounds meant. He'd been trying to collect information for the last 3 days, only interacting with the native when he couldn't help it. She insisted on calling him Jack, which he responded to coolly with Girly, which usually made her huff and leave him alone. Every so often the voice would intrude, but usually not for long and only after he slept. At first he tried to stay awake, but his injuries and the morphine (which she now left up to him to administer) made this very difficult, so he'd taken to only sleeping for short periods to avoid dreaming too deeply.

The sounds tonight were ominous. The creaking was too loud, the changes in direction too sudden. Something was wrong. If he went on deck now, he knew he'd smell rain. The heat would be dropping, the breeze coming off the land for the night fighting against the coming gale.

The sails cracked overhead, he could hear them even through the door at the top of the stairs. He'd deduced by now that they were not, I fact, at sea, but moored somewhere. He couldn't tell if they'd moved at all since he'd been brought on board. The boat seemed too large for one person to man anyway (a forty footer?), and if there was a third person on board they had to be the quietest person on the planet. He neither heard more than one pair of footsteps overhead nor any conversation. But then, he didn't know much about sailing. If they were moored, how far was it to land, and in what direction? He could tell the direction if he stood outside at sunrise or set and feel the breeze. But distance? He could hear gulls, but they could fly miles from shore. As far as overpowering someone… he was still not in the best condition for hand to hand combat, as if he ever would be again. Besides, he didn't know if she was armed. And there was Jack, the voice, who kept urging in the back of his mind that Lucia or whatever her name was, was somehow on his side. This of course, could only be bullshit. That's what he told himself. But every so often he would feel it, an instinctual trust alien to him. It was like being the only two humans in a strange world, drawn together simply for the shared humanity.

The sway of the boat became more dramatic. Sands sat up. The shit would hit the fan soon. He stood, glad he didn't suffer from sea sickness. The rocking did make him stumble a little though. He caught himself and cringed at the pain in the thigh of the leg he'd used.

"Baton down the hatches," he muttered as he made his way to the stairs.

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On deck Anamaria made sure all the sails were secured down. She'd moved farther from the land two days before to find better fishing and to avoid attention from anyone on land, if there was anyone. Now she wished she'd sailed back to the shelter of the inlet. The boat wasn't big: a wooden sailing yacht that would be tossed dangerously in a strong storm. She looked up at the two masts with a grim expression, then glared at the clouds beyond them. "Be kind, Calypso. I beg you, do not make our situation more dire."