the water like a small wooden bubble. Lightning cracked, terrible as fractures in the hull—she couldn’t see it but she smelled it, caustic and electric—and now and then her arm hairs tingled at the tips. Waves boomed from all directions. Molly gripped the rope that held her in the cot and tried to pray, using prayers she invented on the spot. Closing her eyes made the nauseating movement more pronounced, and the unrelenting storm began to wear her out. Eventually she slept. She dreamed of swirling darkness.
When she woke and looked around, Nicholas was gone. His safety rope dangled from the cot. She fought her own wet rope; the knot was tied correctly but refused to come loose. She tried to see if Nicholas was lying on the floor; half a foot of water sloshed against the wall.
Finally the rope came free and Molly stood. The water chilled her feet, cold as winter rain, and then a wave hit the Cleaver and the ship fell aslant. Molly slipped back, grabbing at the air, and struck herself senseless on a beam of solid oak.
Later, coming to, she remembered having fallen. She could not remember getting up and climbing into her cot. She was shivering and soaked but safe beneath her blanket with the rope she had loosened re-secured around her body.
Had the storm begun to weaken? She was swaying less dramatically. Her skull ached dully and her thoughts wouldn’t stick, and looking around the room left her dizzy and depleted. There was Nicholas, however, safe within his cot again, motionless and quiet but observing her attentively.
“How?” Molly wondered, but she couldn’t form the word and went to sleep again, falling into fathomless relief.
* * *
“Mrs. Smith,” came a voice.
Someone shook her arm—Mr. Knacker at her side. He wore a cloth around his forehead, pink with rainy blood, and held a lantern up to see her.
“There you are. Up and at ’em.”
“Nicholas,” she murmured.
“Beg pardon?” Mr. Knacker asked.
She realized she had used her brother’s real name, but before she had a chance to remedy the slip, Nicholas himself answered from the corner. He was sitting on the trunk, leg crossed above his knee, more alert than she had seen him since they left Umber Harbor.
“Nicholas was her childhood friend,” he said to Mr. Knacker. “You were dreaming, my dear,” he told her with a smile.
“Jacob,” Molly said, straining at her rope.
Mr. Knacker freed the knot and helped her sit forward. Her vertigo returned and the cabin seemed to warp. Blood pounded in her temples and her stomach felt wrung, but after several slow breaths, the symptoms went away and Molly focused on her brother, comforted but dazed.
He looked like a boy freshly risen from a nap. His head was high. His eyes were warm. His face was calm and supple. Only now did Molly recognize the quiet of the cabin. Gone were the shrieking winds and urgent hollers of the crew. The ship, still ascending and descending with the waves, had a trustworthy rhythm and a balance in its rolls.
“The storm…,” she began.
“Did its worst,” said Mr. Knacker. “We were beat to pulp and splinters but the captain fought us through.”
“Your head,” she said.
“’Twas nothing but free-swinging tackle.” With the rag around the wound and his eyes so askew, he seemed to be a man long familiar with concussions. “Quite a few of us was battered, though. Mr. Darn has a bone jutting from his thigh, Mr. Shivers got his foot crushed flatter than a sheet, and poor McGiverns slipped off the mainmast and landed on his noggin. He’s been knocked out solid with a dent ever since.”
“How awful!” Molly said. Only yesterday McGiverns had provided her with rope and he had smiled at her and told her not to worry, not a jot.
“What’s more,” said Mr. Knacker, lowering the lantern, “Mr. Fen has disappeared.”
Molly gasped and looked at Nicholas. The lantern swung light over his face and made him younger, swung away and left him shadowy and old, unfamiliar.
“We’ve searched from top to bottom, stem to stern,” said Mr. Knacker. “He must have ventured up and fallen overboard. The captain’s all a fury, raging to and fro. The two of you was right to stay in your cots.” He slumped and shook his head, bulging out his eyes. “What on earth possessed him? God be with him in the deep.”
He pondered so long, Molly worried that he was addled, that the tackle had perhaps hurt him more than he believed. She