Read Chapter 33: The Wreck of Hope

The lagoon water lay flat and green, the color of bottle glass, and the *Leviathan* listed against a sandbar like a drunkard against a wall. Her masts were snapped—the foremast clean away, the main a splintered stump—and her hull had opened along the starboard seam where the storm had driven her onto the coral. Each wave that slipped past the lagoon's mouth pushed her a little deeper into the sand, a little further from ever floating again.

Hooke stood at the rail, his left arm bound tight in a strip torn from his own shirt, the harpoon wound a dull, throbbing burn beneath the linen. The crew had gathered on the beach—what was left of them. Twenty-three men, counting the wounded and Pettigrew, who lay on a stretcher rigged from a sail, his face grey as ash.

Silas's body had gone over the side in the storm. No one had spoken his name since.

Hooke turned from the rail and walked down the gangplank onto the sand. The men looked up at him—some with the old deference, most with that new, hard look that had crept into their eyes since the gold came up from the cave. Baker stood apart, arms crossed, his jaw set. Obadiah sat on a rock near the waterline, whittling a stick with a knife he'd sharpened to a razor's edge. He did not look up.

"Take stock," Hooke said, his voice hoarse from shouting orders through the gale. "Provisions, fresh water, tools. Anything we can salvage. Pettigrew needs shade and rest before anything else."

Baker spat into the sand. "And the gold? You want us to take stock of that too?"

Hooke met his gaze. "The gold goes where I say it goes."

"Which is nowhere," Baker said. "Because you've decided it's yours."

"I've decided nothing," Hooke said. "I've decided we're alive, which is more than most of us deserve after last night. The ship's done. We're not. So we think about what comes next, and we do it with clear heads, not the fever that's been gripping this crew since we pulled those bars from the cave."

He let the words settle. A few of the men shifted, glancing at one another. The fever was still there—he could see it in the flicker of their eyes, the way they looked at the cabin where the gold sat locked in Vane's strongbox. But the storm had worn them down. The sea had taken Silas. What remained was exhaustion, hunger, and the simple animal need to survive the day.

"Davies," Hooke said, pointing to the youngest hand, a boy of nineteen with a mop of red hair. "You and Clarke take the longboat inventory. Oars, sail, lines, what's left of the stores we didn't lose. We need to know what we can put to sea."

"Aye," Davies said, and moved off with Clarke, looking almost relieved to have a task.

Hooke walked the beach slowly, taking the measure of the island. It was small—maybe a mile across—ringed with palms and scrub brush, a low hump of rock rising at its center. No sign of fresh water from where he stood, but the vegetation was too green for there to be none. They'd survive here if they had to. But surviving wasn't the same as being saved.

He stopped beside Obadiah, who still hadn't looked up from his whittling.

"The log," Obadiah said quietly. "You told me it had my brother's name in it. You told me it said he died in a mutiny."

"That's what it says."

"Obadiah Cross."

"That's the name."

Obadiah's knife bit deep into the stick, splitting it clean in two. He stared at the pieces in his hands. "My brother's name was Samuel."

"I told you what the log said."

"And I'm telling you the log is wrong. Or you're lying. One of the two."

Hooke crouched down, putting himself eye-level with the man. His arm screamed at the movement, but he didn't let it show. "I have no reason to lie to you about that. Whatever else you think of me, I didn't write that log. Vane did. And whatever Vane wrote, he wrote for a reason."

Obadiah's jaw worked. "My brother shipped out on the *Meridian* out of Nantucket. He wrote to our mother twice before the letters stopped. She kept them. She read them to me when I was old enough to understand. He said he was working cargo runs to the Indies. He never said anything about gold. He never said anything about a mutiny."

"Then perhaps he didn't know what the ship was really carrying," Hooke said. "Perhaps none of them did."

"And the name?"

Hooke hesitated. He had thought about this—the discrepancy nagging at him since he'd first read the entry. "The log says the mutiny was led by a man calling himself Obadiah Cross. If your brother was Samuel, then perhaps the man who led the mutiny used a false name. Perhaps he chose Samuel's name for reasons we'll never know. Or perhaps Vane made an error."

"You don't believe that."

"No," Hooke said honestly. "I don't. But I believe the log is the closest thing we have to the truth, and there's something in it that's connected to the gold ship. I haven't figured out what yet."

Obadiah tossed the split stick aside. "And you expect me to trust that you'll figure it out? While you sit on ten bars of gold and tell us what to do?"

"I expect you to survive," Hooke said. "That's what I expect. And if you want to argue about the gold, you can argue about it when we're not stranded on an island with no ship and no water except what we can find in the morning."

He stood, wincing at the pull in his arm, and walked back toward the wreck. Behind him, he heard Obadiah rise, felt the man's eyes on his back, but he didn't turn around.

By midday, the inventory was done. Davies reported the longboat was sound—the storm had carried it over the side but it had survived, wedged against the far end of the lagoon with only a cracked gunwale. The sail was patched in two places, the oars intact. Provisions were thinner than Hooke would have liked: hardtack, a barrel of salted pork, a keg of water that had almost emptied in the storm. Enough for a small crew to make a long passage, if they stretched it.

Enough for six men. Maybe seven.

Hooke gathered them on the beach under the noon sun, the shadow of the wrecked *Leviathan* stretching long across the sand. He had the strongbox at his feet, and he could feel the weight of every man's gaze on it.

"Here's where we are," he said. "The ship's not going to sea again. We all know it. This island won't support us for long—there's fresh water somewhere in that rock, but not enough for a full crew through the season. So we need to get help."

No one spoke. He could see the suspicion in their faces. The calculation. They were waiting for him to say something about the gold.

"The longboat can carry six men and enough stores for three weeks, maybe four if we ration hard. We're not on the main shipping lanes, but we're not so far off that a determined crew couldn't reach them. I'll lead the boat myself."

Baker stepped forward. "And leave us here? With the gold?"

Hooke turned to him. "You think I'd leave the gold behind? You think I'd sail away from ten bars of bullion and trust that the men I leave behind will still be holding it when I return?"

Baker's face reddened. "Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I take the gold with me," Hooke said. "I take it to London, I settle the shipowner's debt, I pay the crew their shares, and I come back for whoever's left on this island with a proper vessel and a full accounting. That was the plan before the storm, and the storm hasn't changed it."

"The plan," Baker repeated. "Your plan. The one you made without us."

"I made it because I'm the first mate of this ship and the captain is dead and someone has to make decisions. If you want to challenge that, you can do it here, on this beach, with the whole crew watching. But you'll have to do it with more than talk."

Baker's hand drifted toward his belt, where a knife hung in its sheath. Hooke didn't move. He didn't flinch. He just stood there, meeting Baker's eyes, and for a long moment the only sound was the surf against the lagoon's mouth.

Then Baker's hand fell away. "You're going to sail off and leave us to rot."

"No," Hooke said. "I'm going to sail off and bring back a ship to take you home. The gold is the only thing that ensures I have a reason to return. You want to see that as betrayal, I can't stop you. But I'd rather you see it as an investment."

He reached down and opened the strongbox. The bars caught the sun, throwing back light that made the men squint. Hooke lifted one, felt its familiar weight in his hand, and closed the box again.

"I'm taking five bars. The other five stay here, under guard, with the crew. If I don't come back, the five here are yours to divide among the living. That's the deal."

"Who guards it?" Obadiah asked, stepping forward for the first time.

"Whoever the crew trusts," Hooke said. "That could be you, if they'll have it."

Obadiah's eyes narrowed. He looked at the men, then at the box, then at Hooke. "And if you don't come back, who's to say the men I'm guarding it from won't just take it anyway?"

"You'll have to answer that yourself when the time comes. I've given you what I can. The rest is up to you."

The sun was dropping toward the horizon, painting the lagoon in shades of amber and rose. Hooke looked out at the water, at the place where the open sea lay beyond the reef, and felt the weight of the decision settling into his bones.

"Davies, Clarke, the four strongest of you—check the longboat again in the morning. We sail at first light." He looked at the crew spread across the beach. "The rest of you, gather what we need to make this island livable for a while. We'll be here longer than any of us want, no matter how this plays out."

He turned and walked up the sand toward the wreck, the strongbox heavy in his one good hand, the wound in his other arm throbbing with each heartbeat. Behind him, he heard the low murmur of men talking, arguing, planning. He didn't need to hear the words to know what they were saying.

He'd made his offer. The gold was the bait. Whether the crew would take it, or take each other, was a question for the days ahead.