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No one ate or slept. Emma coaxed the girls to take sips of fetid water. She could not even brew a cup of tea in the tiny galley without setting fire to the ship or herself. The incessant clanking of the pumps pounded in her head, penetrating the babble from the main steerage compartment. Children screamed. Men grumbled. Women moaned and prayed.
Emma thought the noise would drive her mad.
Until it was replaced by something worse.
Silence.
Emma hurried in search of Matron and met her own fears reflected in the other woman’s eyes.
“The leak in the hold has put the fire out.” Matron’s broad, country voice was sharp and raw. “There is no steam to drive the pumps. We’re done.”
The word tolled like a church bell at a funeral: Done, done, done…
Emma’s mouth went dry. She wet her lips. “Has the captain—”
“Captain gave orders to abandon ship.”
Emma braced on the rolling bow, light-headed with terror, struggling to keep her huddled girls together and upright. The wind lashed her skirts and tore at her bonnet. Her wet boots sucked at her ankles. Waves buffeted the ship’s sides, washing over the stern. Spray shot halfway to the masts and fell like cold, hard rain.
Abandon ship?
Abandon hope, more like.
The lifeboats tossed on the towering waves, insubstantial as the paper boats with their cargos of pebbles and sticks that schoolboys sailed from the riverbank. Fragile. Perilous.
The heavy seas rendered the ship’s ladders useless. The boats could not come near without crashing into the ship’s sides. So the passengers had to be loaded in baskets, swung over the angry water and lowered by rope thirty feet to the rising, falling boats. Women first, in groups of three or four, and their children after them.
Emma held her breath as Mary Jenkins stretched out her arms for her youngest son and pulled him into the rocking basket. Her husband’s pale face ran with spray or tears. His fists clenched at his sides.
“Careful, Mary!” he shouted.
The ship rolled, the stern wallowing in the water. The girls shivered and wept. Emma hugged fourteen-year-old Alice tight. Giving comfort. Taking courage.
“We’re lost,” one of the waiting men groaned. “All is lost.”
All. The word struck Emma’s heart. Keepsakes and clothing, the little package of books wrapped in oilskin to protect them for the journey, the few belongings she had salvaged from her former existence, everything she possessed to launch her new life, all gone, all lost forever.
“Lord, Lord, I don’t want to die,” Alice sobbed.
Emma got a grip on herself. “Well, of c-course not.” Her teeth chattered. “Everything will be all right. Our turn is coming.”
“One more,” a sailor shouted from below.
The officer on the bow, a boy not much older than Alice, beckoned to Emma. “You, miss.”
Alice clutched her. “Don’t leave me.”
Emma did not think. “No. No, I won’t.” She pried the girl’s fingers from her cloak. “Here, sweetheart, you go first.”
“But—”
Emma thrust her at the young officer. “Go!”
Alice stumbled forward, toward the waiting ropes.
Emma watched, her heart in her throat, as the basket bearing Alice was lowered jerkily by bowline along the side of the ship.
Was she…? Emma strained over the rail to see the girl caught and pulled safely into the boat.
