Chapter Seven
Instrument of Navigation
I kept running, panting with the effort and with the leather case banging against my side, winding me with every pace. I fled down the stairs so fast that I swear I left part of my insides behind. As I drew closer to the corridor between the stairs leading up and the stairs leading to the engine room, I could see with horror that my way was blocked by the fire that had now engulfed my room and Gaston's. The whole corridor was thick with smoke. No…
I heard weak coughing and crying. "Maria?"
The crying stopped, but the coughing continued. "Piastol? Piastol! Maria!" I cried for the girls in the thick smoke, but it was as indistinct as looking into a foggy night sky. I took off my coat and began to beat away the smoke as much as I could, but I knew my lungs were filling with it and soon I would begin to asphyxiate. I dreaded Maria and Piastol meeting the same fate. I swore the coughing was coming from the other side of the smoke.
Then before my eyes, Maria appeared. She must have fought through the fire. Her blonde hair and nightdress was singed, and she was coughing as if she wanted to expel her lungs along with the smoke. I picked her up, bundling her in my coat. She gasped with shock, and then her face turned to me. "Doc," she choked.
I shushed her, cradling my head. Where was Piastol? It was a miracle that Maria made it through that death-trap of a corridor, was I pushing my luck in hoping that both girls had made it?
"Piastol?" groaned Maria, breathing in through the fabric of my coat and coughing some more. I clutched her tighter. "Piastol gone up, she's gone away."
"Gone up?" She must have meant to the upper deck. My bones seemed to turn to liquid. If she had left her sister and gone to the upper deck, I hadn't seen her in the carnage while I was up there.
I took Maria straight back up. By now, the ship was almost abandoned. I screamed for Piastol as her sister lay pressed against my chest, shivering with coughs and sobs. I shouted as much as I could bear, ignoring the smoke and the flames and the still swinging broken mast, remembering my promise to the Admiral. I looked down at Maria in my arms. I couldn't stay here just to doom her to the fate of her father.
Luckily there were still lifeboats near the back of the ship left that hadn't been taken or destroyed. I heard more shouting, more activity on the port side of the ship, but I ignored it nobly; my quest was to save the life of the little girl I had in my arms. I swung the case (I still had it, miraculously, slung by the strap over my shoulder) into the first boat I could find, and tried to lower Maria in but she refused to let me let go of her. I sat on the side of the ship's railing and dropped gently down. The boat rocked treacherously under our combined weight. Carefully I lowered us down with the rope, which was thankfully disentangled.
We set off shakily into the night. There was no light at all. I threw open the case and found the telescope lens blinking back at me in the light from the burning ship, and thankfully the sextant. I knew I'd had a reason for picking it up.
Still cradling Maria, I set the little machine up. It whirred around its own cogs as if it were just waking up, before pointing at a 45 degree angle from the direction we were heading. I picked up the oars and started to row. Bit by bit, we were moving away from the ship.
I couldn't think what we'd do next: where we would go, what we would do with ourselves once we made port somewhere, whether or not we could actually survive a night in the treacherous skies. Luckily, the flames and wreckage had scared off any scavenging creatures in the vicinity. I just knew I had to keep rowing in that direction.