The first few days of travel had been uneventful and Jaime tried to stifle his disappointment while studiously scribbling the oceanography information onto his draft. But on the fourth day, Beau called down from the lookout point.
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“Captain! Looks like a storm formation on the horizon.”
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His father stepped to the bow of the boat and pulled out his telescope, peering into the distance.
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“Should we drop the anchor and ride it out?” Boursin asked.
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“No, looks like light rain at best.” He said, handing over the telescope to the first lieutenant.
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“Keep an eye on it, but stay the course!” The Captain bellowed.
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Jaime gathered up his maps and stashed them away in case of sudden rainfall. By evening, the water had grown choppy and precipitation was falling from the sky. No one seemed to be particularly concerned and Jaime was safely ensconced in his tiny cabin.
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And then the world shifted sideways.
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Jaime was thrown from the bed, tumbling to the floor and sliding to the opposite wall. The ship paused in its movement and shifted the other direction. He fumbled to hold on to his bunk and pulled himself to a wobbly standing position. Above his head, the deck crew was yelling back and forth.
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By the time Jaime made his way up to the deck, the rest of the crew was already scrambling around. Emory was leading a group of men around the rigging, trying to rapidly save the sails from the gale force winds that had descended upon the boat. He heard Gabriella curse, but couldn’t make out her location against the rain that blew sideways into his face.
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Jaime grappled his way to the bow where Milton, his father, and Boursin were trying to steer the ship away from the storm.
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“What happened?!” He cried out.
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“It came out of nowhere!” Beau answered from behind him.
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Boursin turned and yelled at him, but Jaime couldn’t make out the words over the sudden crack of the sails expanding in the wind as one of Emory’s men lost his grip. It was followed by a horrible ripping noise. Jaime turned to look at the damage, but his heart stopped when he saw the soaring wave towering behind the boat.
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Boursin was screaming at him again and now so was Milton, but Jaime couldn’t register their words in the face of his terror. The only thing that dragged him out of his paralysis in the face of the tempest was the sudden pain in his shoulder joint. Boursin had grabbed hold of him and yanked violently. Jaime tried to fight him off, pulling back. The first lieutenant gritted his teeth and lunged forward, tackling Jaime, and sending them both sprawling to the deck below. His head slammed into the wood and stars sparked in his vision.
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And then he saw more of the rigging above him snap and break against the force of the wind, smashing a hole into the deck where he had been standing. Boursin was yelling again and Jaime looked up at the darkened sky. And then the remainder of the light disappeared as the blackness crept over the edges of his vision, consuming his consciousness.
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~
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As the storm clouds mellowed, Alek surveyed the damage, clutching his ribs. Gaby and Emory stood a few steps away next to the captain with grim expressions. Derrand was still unconscious on the deck with the doctor hovering over him, examining the injury.
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“Bloody compass!” Milton cursed, banging the object on the railing, “Let me see yours.”
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Alek pulled the compass out of his pocket, cringing at the sharp pain that shot through his side. Milton took it and looked at it with a wrinkled brow.
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“It’s just spinning. Same as mine. We’ve been thrown way off course and I don’t even know what direction we’re facing.”
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Alek looked up at the sky hoping to pinpoint their position based on the sun, but the sky was still entirely overcast. It was impossible to determine the source of the weak morning light through the veil of gray. The storm had raged through the night, causing immense damage to the ship and costing them a couple of the petty crew who had been thrown overboard in the chaos.
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There were eleven of them left on the boat including the officers and Derrand. A good measure of food and water had been lost in the storm. The doctor was so busy triaging injuries that he had roped in the cook, Peters, to bandage lesser injuries while he attended to the more severe cases. Alek would have to wait to have his ribs taped and from here, he could see that Gaby and Emory were both sporting horrific rope burns on the palms of their hands.
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“What the hell?” Beau mumbled to himself, peering through a telescope over the side of the ship.
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Alek saw him shake his head as if dismissing an image and looked through the scope again into the distance. He lowered it and looked at the captain, before changing his mind and approaching Alek.
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“Come here and look at this. Make sure I’m not hallucinating.” He said quietly.
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Alek stood with a groan and hobbled over to the railing with Beau, who had remained remarkably uninjured. He looked through the scope and focused it.
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“Is that an island? Did we get pushed back toward Devonelda?”
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“It’s forested.” Beau pointed out.
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Alek looked for a second time. Beau was right. The land in the distance looked nothing like the rocky outcrop that they had departed from.
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Regardless, they were drifting toward it.
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~
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Jaime awoke with an aching head. He groaned and reached up to touch it. His fingertips landed on bandages.
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“What happened?” He croaked.
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“Well, look who’s awake.” The doctor declared.
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Jaime sat up and found that he had been laying on the deck. The officers sat nearby in a circle.
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“Sorry about the accommodations. The captain sent the rest of the crew below deck to rest while the officers met. I would have put you in the infirmary, but he insisted I stay. So I’m observing you here instead.”
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Beyond the railing of the deck, Jaime could see a treeline. His vision spun a bit, blurring the green into a swirl of color. He pressed his fingers to his eyes. Where were they?
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“So we’re anchored off the coast of…?” He queried.
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Boursin let out a strained laugh.
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“We’re not anchored.”
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“What?”
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“We tried to drop the anchor, but it won’t catch on anything. We’re just drifting toward that island.”
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Jaime wasn’t a sailor, but he knew enough to know that statement didn’t make any sense.
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“What do you mean it won’t catch anything? We’re right next to land right? Shouldn’t we be in the shallows by now?”
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“The anchor is fine. We checked it. But it’s like we’re still in the open ocean. There’s nothing for the anchor to hold onto below the ship.” Gabriella said.
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His father sighed.
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“We can’t worry about that right now. It’s better that we’re drifting that direction anyway, it’s our only chance of repairing the ship.”
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Boursin spoke up, “We lost a good deal of our food and water rations in the storm.”
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“The medical supplies are fine. The infirmary got tossed around a bit, but nothing serious.” Robert said.
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“The hull seems mostly fine, but the sails…” Gabriella trailed off and Emory made a pained expression.
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Jaime glanced around the deck. There were holes in the wood where heavy materials had crashed through, thrown about by the wind and waves. The lookout point had miraculously survived, but the sails were devastated. It also looked like there were splinters and cracks in the wood that held them upright.
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The island was approaching quickly. As they drew closer, it became obvious that they were being pulled into a river that ran through the center of a copse of trees.
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“I’ve seen many a river that runs to the ocean, but I’ve never seen one that begins there.” Milton commented.
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“There are only a few places in the world where it happens. It’s extremely rare.” Jaime replied.
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Everyone on the deck looked up at the copse of tall trees surrounding them as the boat entered the river. It looked like a swampland.
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“Let’s try the anchor again.” The captain ordered.
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~
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Alek and the rest of the crew were flummoxed. They were in a river and still the anchor wouldn’t catch. How this was possible was a mystery to everyone on board. There was no way the river could be deep enough for the anchor not to reach. Was the sediment so loose that it dragged through? But they were surrounded by trees on either side, there should have been large roots underneath them.
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One of the petty crew volunteered to dive down and take a look while they hauled the anchor back to the surface. Gabriella suggested that they wrap it around one of the massive trees to halt the boat temporarily. It worked.
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Out of an abundance of caution, they wrapped a rope around the man’s waist so he didn’t drift too far downstream. This way they could pull him back up onto the deck if anything happened. He jumped into the river and dived under the water. Hopefully, he would have visibility and not be blinded by silt.
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They waited.
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After a few minutes, he did not re-emerge. By ten minutes, everyone was making nervous eye contact. By fifteen, the captain ordered them to pull up the rope.
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Alek stood at the front and helped reel in the rope. It felt unnervingly light. If the man were drifting on the other end, he would expect it to be pulled taut against the current but it was loose and easy to pull. The end of the rope was empty and frayed. The man was simply gone.
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They waited for hours to see if his body would emerge and float to the surface. It didn’t.
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There were now ten crew remaining on the ship.
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