He stopped, his throat closing up, paralyzed by the dawning realization.
“Pirates,” said James, who had already had sufficient time to process that which Thomas was only now just grasping—including the immensity of their situation. He was rummaging through other materials in the cargo. “This store of wine, from another merchant vessel that was raided. There’s no telling how long some of this has been down there.”
“They sell or trade as need, and live off that which can be of use to them,” said Thomas.
“What do we do? What the hell do we do?” said James, and then he froze, his eyes widening.
Thomas realized immediately that James was looking behind him. He turned and saw, standing on the ladder that led down into the hold, Rackam. Despite the rocking of the ship, which was becoming increasingly violent as the storm built in intensity, Rackam was standing perfectly still. Still as death. He was holding a pistol in his hand, and it was leveled at Thomas. Despite the extreme jeopardy of their situation, Thomas could not help but be impressed by the fact that he kept staggering this way and that, fighting not to be thrown off his feet, while Rackam remained unperturbed.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Rackam said in what was almost a purr—like a lion studying helpless prey and enjoying the anticipation of a kill—“we were likely as not going to dump you over the side tonight anyway. You are, after all, rather well-funded young men, and there’s no earthly reason to deliver you to your destination with your wealth intact, let alone with your lives still within your bodies. But Master Skeleton here made the decision that much easier for us. Not just easier: pleasing.”
“All right, now you’re just getting my name wrong deliberately simply to annoy me, aren’t you?” said James.
“I’ll be having your money now,” said Rackam. “All of it.”
James stared at him levelly, and then said with what seemed to Thomas absolutely supernatural calm: “What money?”
Rackam was clearly in no mood for trading words with James. “I was hoping you would cooperate and then head up to the deck on your own, so that my men wouldn’t have to haul your dead bodies topside. But”—and he shrugged—“we will do what must be done.” And he shifted the gun so that it was now aimed squarely at James. The cocking of a hammer on a gun produces a sound like none other in the world, and that singular noise was like an explosion in the cargo hold.
The sound of it catapulted the dog from the shadows nearby. The dog, which had been relatively meek in fighting to defend her own life, was unstintingly, unhesitatingly vicious in responding to a direct threat to James. With a snarl, she leaped through the air, bounding once off a crate, and clamped her jaws on Rackam’s extended arm a split second before he fired. The shot went wide, exploding harmlessly against the bulkhead. The gun tumbled from Rackam’s hand, and the pirate captain roared and cursed and tried mightily to shake the dog off his arm. But the distraction was enough to cause even the seasoned pirate to lose his footing, and the dog managed to drag him off balance, the animal given additional sure-footedness by dint of her being on all fours. Rackam went down, pounding furiously on the animal, who resolutely refused to let go of Rackam’s arm.
“Go! Go now!” shouted James, gesturing frantically for Thomas to head up the ladder while Rackam was distracted. Then he turned toward the weapons and grabbed up a cutlass, a large, fearsome-looking blade. With a roar, he charged straight at Rackam, who was on the ground, wrestling with the dog.
The instant he drew within range, Rackam lashed out with one booted foot, catching James directly in the pit of the stomach. James doubled over, staggering, falling against the ladder that Thomas was already halfway up. Briefly distracted, the dog’s hold on Rackam’s arm loosened, and it was just enough for Rackam to yank his arm free and then shove the dog away. He grabbed for his fallen pistol, reached it, swung it, and fired it into the shadows into which he had thrown the dog. There was a pained yelp from the darkness, and then Rackam turned his attention back to the boys.
They were gone.
Thomas and James sprinted back to their quarters, quickly gathering up their gear. “What about the dog?” said James, but the look Thomas gave him immediately quieted him. Thomas knew he should be angry with his friend for bringing up something as relatively trite as an animal when their own lives were at stake, but he really couldn’t blame him. The dog had saved their lives just then against Rackam’s weapon. Certainly that should have entitled the animal to some loyalty on their part. Perhaps James was the one with the right idea, but in any event, Thomas was hardly in a position to discuss it just then.
He checked his rifle to make sure it was loaded, then slung it over his shoulder and grabbed his other weapons and supplies as well. James whipped his newly acquired cutlass through the air once or twice, nodded approvingly, and then shoved it through his belt. From outside, they could hear the howling of the wind and deafening roar of thunder. “Now what?” James called, trying to get above the noise that was surrounding them.
“We grab a lifeboat!”
Going topside seemed unthinkable, but waiting around in their cabin for Rackam or his crew to come after them wasn’t exactly an option either. James nodded and then followed Thomas.
They emerged into chaos.
Sawkins was at the wheel, lashed to it so that the huge gouts of water wouldn’t knock him over the side. The night sky was black as pitch, the moon afraid to show its face, and lightning ripping across the roiling clouds providing the only illumination. The sails were furled since they would have done no good under the circumstances. When Sawkins saw Thomas and James emerge onto the deck, he shouted at them, gesturing wildly for them to get back below since he was unaware of what had transpired belowdecks. They ignored him, instead trying to stagger across the deck to get over to the lifeboat. Sawkins screamed at them, demanding to know what they thought they were doing, but the wind carried his words away . . . not that it would have made any difference even had they heard him.
Thomas made it to the lifeboat first, grabbing on to the ropes that were holding it in place, but before he could loosen them, a blast of water slammed over the side and hammered into him, lifting him off his feet, crashing into his body with the force of a thousand blows. Thomas had no chance and was thrown backwards, and the only thing that prevented him from being knocked clear to the other side and off the boat was James, clutching onto the main mast for dear life while making a desperate, all-or-nothing grab for Thomas as he hurtled past. James snagged Thomas’s wrist, and Thomas felt a sharp pain lance through his shoulder as the force of the sudden stop nearly yanked the arm from its socket. He shoved the pain away into the furthest recesses of his mind, figuring he would deal with it later should there actually happen to be a later.
They both clutched onto the mainmast for a few seconds, hoping that the furious seas would subside long enough for them to take refuge in the lifeboat and get clear of the ship. Thomas knew that the odds of their survival in a small vessel in these waters were minimal, but if they stayed on the ship, their chances were nonexistent.
Then their hearts sank because suddenly the deck was awash with far more than vicious waves.
Rackam had emerged from below, murder in his eyes, and the rest of his crew was following him. Even that old sailor, the one that Thomas had been talking to, was among them, waving a sword in a threatening manner and looking as ready to deal death as any of the others were.
Thomas and James were still closer to the lifeboat than anyone else, but with all the pitching and rocking that the ship was undergoing, it was impossible for them to release their grip on the mainmast without risking being hurled bodily off the side. Rackam’s men, far more practiced at dealing with vicious pounding from the environment, were making their way toward the boys. Rackam had obviously reloaded his pistol because he was gripping it tightly in one hand while wielding a sword in the other, maintaining his balance like an expert tight-rope walker as he advanced on the boys, with his men
following him.
Thomas would not have thought it possible for the ship to lurch more violently than it already had, but he would have been wrong. The ship abruptly shuddered with such force that even the sure-footed Rackam and his men were thrown down, and the vessel rose partly out of the water, as if another wave were lifting it up. It did not, however, slam back down again. It seemed, at first, as if the ship had run aground on some manner of atoll or reef. Perhaps it had even struck another vessel that had been long ago sunk and now existed only to be an obstruction.
But then the ship slammed back down into the water, apparently rolling off whatever it was that it had run into. Rackam and his men looked around, confused. Then they dismissed it from their concerns, focusing instead on their reason for having ventured onto the deck during the worst storm in memory.
Abruptly, the ship shuddered again, as if the subsurface reef had somehow pursued them. Perhaps there was indeed a derelict ship beneath the waves that was being pushed around and used as nature’s battering ram to continue pounding the pirate vessel.
And then there was a scream. Despite the pounding of the surf, despite the roaring of the lightning and shrieking of the wind, still was that scream heard. Even though it had been produced by a human throat, it sounded inhuman, likely because the situation that was prompting it was beyond human ken.
It was one of the crewmen, and something had grabbed him around the middle. Because of the darkness, it was impossible to discern what it was at first.
As near as James could determine, it was some sort of snake. It was pale, incredibly pale, wrapped around the sailor’s middle, and the sailor was continuing to scream and pound at it in a vain effort to make the huge reptile let go. Some sort of serpent that the wave washed up onto the deck, Thomas thought, and that seemed to make sense.
It stopped making sense, however, when the sailor was lifted off his feet and yanked skyward. Ten feet high, then twenty, and that was impossible, just impossible. How in the world could a snake, even a serpent, hoist the man in the air like that? How long and powerful was this creature, anyway?
“Hellllllp!” shrieked the pirate, his terror-filled voice once again carrying over the cacophony of the storm, and then he was gone, just gone. Yanked downward abruptly by the serpent and under the surface.
There was no sign of either the man or the snake.
Rackam froze where he was, unable to comprehend what he had just seen, the boys seemingly forgotten.
Then came an explosion of water. Not a wave leaping over the side of the wildly rocking vessel but an actual detonation of something violently displacing it, and suddenly there were serpents crawling all over the deck, slithering across it, seeking out contact. Their coils were everywhere, and most insane of all, Thomas couldn’t see their heads. Their bodies just seemed to end in points.
That was when he realized. That was when they all realized. If they hadn’t been distracted by everything that was going on—the boys’ attempted escape, the tempest tossing the ship, the hammering waves—it would likely have come to them sooner. As it was, even experienced sailors could find themselves in situations where there was too much happening to readily grasp.
Now the serpents were grasping them. Except they weren’t serpents at all.
It was the old man, the elderly sailor, who was the first to give voice to what they had all come to understand. “Kraken!” he shouted, and, oddly, there was no fear in his voice. Instead, there was almost a sort of twisted satisfaction, as if he was faced with death but felt it was utterly worth it in order to be proven correct. Thomas couldn’t be sure under the circumstances since rain was pounding in his face, but it even seemed as if the old man was smiling.
The ship shuddered violently yet again, and it shook Thomas and James from their temporary paralysis. Thomas screamed in James’s ear, “Go! Go for the lifeboat!”
“That thing is in the water! You want us to get closer to it?”
Once more the ship trembled, and then there was a sound, a terrifying sound. When one is chopping down a tree, there is always that moment when the point of no return is reached, an earsplitting cracking and snapping that indicates the tree is about to give way to the demands of gravity and begin its death-fall to the ground. That was the sound they heard at that moment, towering above the fury of the storm because it was so much closer.
Thomas grabbed James by the shirtfront, and shouted, “It’s breaking apart the ship! We’re going to be closer whether we like it or not! We might as well be floating!”
There were sudden screams. The tentacles—not serpents, obviously—were seeking new victims.
“Good point!” yelled James.
Sawkins had been snagged around the leg, and, his arms pinwheeling, he was hoisted high into the air, howling for help that wasn’t forthcoming. Those pirates who were armed with pistols were firing everywhere, and their shots were rebounding harmlessly from the kraken’s hide. Rackam, shrieking curses at the beast, had pulled out a sword and was hacking away at one of the monster’s limbs. He was screaming incoherently, telling the creature to get the hell away from his ship. Even though the sword wasn’t penetrating, the force of it and—perhaps—the pure fury of the ship’s captain, caused the tentacles to recoil for a moment, as if trying to determine the true nature of this harassing creature.
Then the tentacles lashed forward, as quick as the huge snakes they resembled. One of them wrapped around Rackam’s ankles and the other around his upper torso before he had time to react, and then Rackam was lifted up, up, struggling, writhing in the creature’s grasp.
He had barely enough time to cry out one final time in defiance, and then the tentacles twisted in opposite directions and Rackam was torn in half, blood geysering in all directions, splattering across Sawkins, who had been close enough in the creature’s clutches to witness his captain’s fate. Sawkins shrieked at what he’d seen, and then he was gone, dragged off the ship and down into the depths.
And the old sailor who had warned against the advent of the beast stood perfectly still. He made no move, took no action against the tentacles. Instead, he remained utterly immobilized, and the boys watched with astonishment as the tentacles went around all sides of him but never came into contact with him. It was as if he were standing in the middle of a snake pit but was invisible to the inhabitants therein.
Then a splintering line that ran the width of the ship began to appear. Somewhere below, somewhere unseen, the beast was applying pressure to the ship’s underside and was systematically cracking it like a large seagoing egg. The boards beneath their feet were splitting apart, and Thomas and James were out of time. They dashed toward the lifeboat even as the boat angled against them. The tentacles were everywhere, and they dodged between them, bounding like dancers, the tentacles snapping at them and trying to ensnare them.
The few remaining crewmen tried to follow their lead, but the boat was breaking in half, and they were too far down. The angle against them, the pirates slid backwards, some of them off the boat entirely, others into the grip of the tentacles. The only one still standing was that same old man, and Thomas had a brief moment where the two of them locked eyes. The old sailor brought his arm up and saluted gravely, and then a huge wave slammed up and over the teetering aft section of the ship, and the old man was gone.
Thomas and James lunged forward and grabbed the rail of the ship just as more water pounded over them. They barely held on, and then Thomas yanked at the ropes that secured the lifeboat to the side of the ship. The knots were holding them tight, water-soaked and impossible to deal with.
“No time!” shouted James, the cutlass in his hand. He swung it around with incredible force, and it was at that moment that Thomas came to the realization that James was considerably stronger than he was. Either that, or sheer terror and a desire to survive were enough to increase anyone’s upper-body strength.
The blade sliced right through the rope, parting it effortlessly. The lifeboat tilted wildly, hanging
at a sharp angle, and then James leaped straight up to avoid one of the tentacles that was slithering across the deck. Thomas followed suit, clutching on to one of the support ropes from the rigging, and used his own knife to hack through the remaining support ropes. There was a squeal from the overhead pulley as the boat’s weight caused it to give way, and the lifeboat fell away and down into the darkness.
“Now!” shouted Thomas, and James required no further urging. He couldn’t clearly see where the boat was, but he could see where the ship was going. The tentacles were now everywhere, pulling in opposite directions as they had with the late Captain Rackam. He had been ripped apart in a matter of seconds; the ship, while far larger, wasn’t going to take all that much longer.
Thomas leaped clear of the ship, as did James. He hit the water and went under, and for a split second he had a glimpse of something beneath. It was vast beyond comprehension, and he thought he briefly saw a huge eye, and then a second. Thomas couldn’t swim, but desperation propelled him where knowledge could not. He emerged upon the water’s surface, gasping for air, and then his salvation emerged from the darkness. It was the boat, with James already in it, fumbling with the oars in an effort to draw closer to him. He needn’t have bothered; the waves were doing the job of bringing him straight toward Thomas with such force that, had Thomas been a hair slower, the prow would have crushed his skull. As it was, he was able to twist to one side just in time to avoid getting his head bashed in, and a second later he grabbed on to one of the oars as a cresting wave drove the lifeboat past him.
“Come on! Come on!” James snarled between gritted teeth, leaning on the oar and seesawing it so that Thomas was practically catapulted into the boat. The tiny vessel rocked so violently from the impact of Thomas’s forceful entry that it very nearly capsized, but James threw himself in the other direction and righted it. Water lapped over the sides, and Thomas grabbed a small pail that was tied to the inside of the boat for just this situation and proceeded to bail out the water as quickly as he could. James, meanwhile, manned the oars, necessity serving as a particularly apt teacher, using them to steady the boat and navigating the waters with impressive deftness for a beginner.