“I am.” Despite his situation, the man seemed to take pride in acknowledging his identity.
Ryan gave him a half smile, recognizing the fact that the man faced them without fear and that he’d be a dangerous enemy. “Get your people off that boat and we’ll take you aboard.”
“Boat’s salvageable,” Donovan said.
“Not by me,” Ryan replied.
“Save me, save my boat. Like you pointed out, I’ve got the option of swimming to shore.”
“There’s some deadly mutie fish in this river,” Elmore called out loud enough for Ryan to hear. “He goes in, there’s a chance he won’t be coming back out.”
“You got any bilge pumps aboard that boat?” Ryan asked.
“Two. Both of them gasoline powered. Neither one of them working right now. Pirates saw to that when they scuttled the boat after taking our cargo. They’d have opened bigger holes in her if we’d let them. But after we saw they meant to chill us anyway, we fought back. If we’d tried to fight back any earlier, we couldn’t have done it.”
“Why?”
“Mister,” Donovan said, “there were a lot of bastard pirates here. And they aren’t going to take too kindly to you people chilling the ones you did, or destroying their transport. Salvaging one of those predark watercraft is hard, even up here where water activities seemed to be pretty big.”
Ryan glanced farther downriver, “If there were so many pirates, mebbe it’d make better sense if you got off that goddamn boat and came aboard.”
“No way,” Donovan said. “This boat’s my life. Spent more time aboard her these past ten years than anywhere else in my life. Leaving her is not an option.”
Ryan tried staring him down across the expanse of dirty water as a corpse floated between them. He didn’t think it was one of the bodies of the river pirates they’d killed, so it was mute testimony to the fate the Heimdall Foundation people had ahead of them if they stayed with Calypso.
Donovan showed no signs of giving in.
“Fireblast,” Ryan swore. Then he turned to Morse. “Get us alongside so we can tie on.”
Morse clearly wasn’t happy about the prospect. “That boat will drag us under with it. She’s near twice as big as mine.”
Ryan glared at him. “I didn’t say you had a choice. Get it done. Now.”
ONCE RYAN’S COMMITMENT to help the stricken ship became definite, the crew aboard Calypso galvanized into action. Ropes from both boats were used to tie the bigger ship behind the smaller one. Jak and Dean helped the Morse boys bring up the hand-crank bilge pump from belowdecks and transferred it to the Heimdall Foundation craft.
Within twenty minutes, they were ready to attempt to move the boat. The borrowed bilge pump didn’t equal the amount of water flooding Calypso belowdecks, but at least it managed to slow the water it was taking on.
Morse looked at the lines lashing them to the other boat with disgust and vehement hatred. “Junie’s going to handle like a fucking fat-assed mud turtle trying to haul that bastard boat.”
“Get it done,” Ryan ordered.
“I am, I am.” Morse surveyed the ropes himself, then called out new orders to Calypso’s crew to trim their sails the way he wanted. “But you better hope those pirates don’t come rushing back with reinforcements. Even without that boat tied to us, we couldn’t outrun them.”
Ryan knew that, and he hoped it as strongly as he dared.
Chapter Thirty
“Bring up the sails!” Morse bawled.
His sons, working with sailors from the Heimdall Foundation boat, pulled on the lines and sent sailcloth spinning up Junie’s masts. They filled at once, sucking in the breeze with greedy need.
Ryan stood in the prow, clear of Calypso so he had a view downriver. Donovan stood beside him, a couple inches shorter and moving with a seaman’s gait as Junie’s deck bowed and shivered in protest of the load she was taking on.
Donovan had pulled on a sleeveless light blue shirt decorated with scarlet-and-green parrots, but Ryan suspected it was more for the shirt’s ability to hold his pipe and tobacco than for any creature comfort. The Heimdall Foundation man looked as if he could weather any elements. Scars crisscrossed his body, mute testimony to the rigorous trials he’d been subjected to.