The Atlantic seemed almost offensively peaceful that morning. Sunlight spilled across a clear blue sky, and the sea rolled in long, easy swells—enough to make a ship rise and settle beneath a man's feet, but nowhere near enough to trouble an experienced crew.
Through that calm steamed the Black Pearl, a three-year-old American-built freighter constructed for the two things merchant shipping cared about most: weight and profit. Her holds were packed almost to their limits with iron ore bound for Britain, where expanding shipyards, steelworks and armament factories seemed capable of swallowing every ton placed before them. Europe had become a hungry household, and Britain was increasingly willing to pay handsomely for anyone capable of keeping its table full.
Captain Jack Ashcroft had always liked hungry customers.
Hunger meant profit.
Inside the captain's cabin, sunlight slipped through the portholes and stretched across clothes abandoned upon the floor and sheets that had suffered considerably during the night. Jack lay sprawled across the mattress, tall and broad-shouldered, his body hardened less by deliberate exercise than by years spent working in mines, docks and ships before fortune had finally decided to stop kicking him in the teeth.
Beside him lay Eleanor.
Her copper-red hair had spilled across the pillow in a tangled blaze, while the sheet had long since surrendered any serious attempt at modesty. She slept upon her stomach with her bare back exposed to the morning light, waist narrowing before widening into generous hips beneath the crumpled linen. The position pressed her breasts against the mattress, their soft weight visible along either side as she breathed slowly, looking thoroughly satisfied with both herself and the night behind them.
Jack admired the view for several seconds before deciding that passive appreciation was insufficient.
His palm slid over the warm curve of her hip and settled possessively against her backside before he gave it a firm, playful slap.
Eleanor inhaled sharply.
Rather than recoil, she shifted against the mattress and pushed herself back toward him, one leg bending lazily beneath the sheet. Only then did she turn her head enough for Jack to see the sleepy smile pulling at the corner of her mouth.
"You are insatiable," she murmured.
"Only when presented with compelling circumstances."
His fingers wandered once more along her waist, enjoying the warmth of her skin and the lingering mixture of salt, perfume and last night's exertions still hanging in the cabin.
Eleanor pushed herself onto her elbows. Her red hair tumbled over one shoulder, framing bright amber eyes that already carried entirely too much mischief for such an early hour.
Jack seriously considered abandoning the remainder of the morning.
Unfortunately, he owned a ship.
With considerable reluctance, he gave Eleanor one last appreciative squeeze and climbed from the bed. Behind him she stretched luxuriously across the sheets like a cat occupying a patch of sunlight, perfectly aware that he was still watching her.
That, Jack thought, was how a civilized man ought to begin his day.
He pulled on his trousers, buckled his belt and shrugged into a white shirt without bothering with more than a few buttons. Boots followed, then his white captain's hat, which he adjusted before the mirror until it sat at precisely the angle he considered appropriate for a man who owned both the vessel and nearly everything presently aboard her.
A few minutes later he stepped onto deck.
The Atlantic air was clean and warm. Jack paused beside the rail, struck a match, lit his cigar and drew deeply as the wind caught his dark hair. Smoke curled lazily around his face while he surveyed the freighter with the satisfaction of a man looking upon something he had acquired through an unlikely combination of luck, violence and excellent financial judgment.
His fingers brushed the rail affectionately.
The Pearl was more than steel and cargo.
She was proof that Captain Jack Ashcroft had finally beaten the world at one of its own games.
Three years earlier he had possessed little besides ambition, a talent for surviving poor decisions and an apparently supernatural ability to end up in tavern fights. Then, during one particularly enthusiastic brawl in New York, fate had presented itself in the form of a crumpled People's Welfare Lottery ticket lying beneath a table.
Jack had been on the floor at the time, bleeding from the nose while two men attempted to drag him upright so they could hit him again.
He had noticed the ticket.
He had taken the ticket.
Then someone had thrown him across the bar.
Several days later, he discovered that the ticket was worth enough money to change his life.
Most men would have squandered the winnings on women, drink, gambling and increasingly inventive ways of becoming poor again. Jack had certainly allocated a respectable portion toward the first two, but the majority went into something considerably more useful.
A ship, his ship.
The Black Pearl had been earning ever since, and if Jack had his way she would eventually become only the first vessel in a merchant company bearing some magnificent name he had not yet managed to invent.
He took another pull from his cigar and looked across the deck.
"Right then!" he barked. "Eyes up, lads! My girl is three years old, not thirty. I want this deck clean enough that the bloody King could eat his breakfast off it!"
A broad Scottish deckhand paused with a brush in hand and stared meaningfully at the black dust coating the planks.
"Captain, we're carrying iron ore. How in God's name are we meant tae keep her spotless while there's a mountain of dirt sittin' beneath our feet?"
Jack pointed the cigar at him like a duelling pistol.
"Through determination, McBride. A remarkable quality you might discover if you ever stopped complaining long enough to look for it."
McBride snorted.
"I didn't win the People's Welfare Lottery and buy this magnificent creature just so she could resemble a coal barge dragged behind a whale for twenty years. Scrub her. Polish her. Make her shine. If she doesn't gleam, nobody eats."
The crew groaned, but several were already laughing.
Jack barked like a tyrant when the mood took him, yet he paid better than most captains, shared bonuses when voyages went well and had never once hidden in his cabin while his men fought a storm above deck. He was arrogant, shameless and frequently intolerable.
But he was their intolerable bastard.
A voice called from below.
"Cargo's tight, Captain!"
Jack brightened immediately.
"Now that is the sort of language I enjoy hearing. How's my baby sitting?"
First Mate Hale appeared at the hatch, looking irritatingly neat despite the heat.
"Packed firm. No shift during the night."
"Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful."
Before Hale could answer, the bridge door flew open and Sam O'Rourke came charging onto the deck with a wireless slip flapping in one hand.
The young Irishman was freckled, red-faced and moving with such enthusiasm that he nearly collided with a ventilator.
"Captain! Captain!"
Jack turned with studied slowness.
"What catastrophe has discovered us now, Sam?"
"London!" Sam waved the message triumphantly. "Wireless just came through. Britain's declared war! Germany's answered! It's proper war now, Captain—the whole damned Empire's in!"
The deck seemed to freeze.
"War?" someone repeated.
"Aye! Britain and Germany. France and Russia already in it. The Empire's at war!"
Silence lasted perhaps half a second.
Then the deck erupted.
"God save the King!"
"About bloody time!"
"The Germans won't know what hit them!"
One sailor raised his brush like a rifle. Another began loudly predicting that the Royal Navy would have the German fleet sunk before the month was out.
Jack merely stood beside the rail with his cigar between his fingers.
War.
The others heard glory, uniforms and victory.
Jack heard steelworks doubling their orders.
He heard shipyards demanding plate.
He heard artillery factories consuming iron by the trainload.
Most importantly, he heard prices climbing.
A sailor grinned toward the others. "Royal Navy'll be recruiting. Could enlist when we reach port."
"You?" another laughed. "You couldn't stay sober long enough to salute an officer."
"Admiral Rum Barrel!"
Laughter rolled across the deck.
Jack finally raised one hand.
"Oh, magnificent. Suddenly I'm transporting admirals. Heroes of the Empire, every one of you."
The cabin door opened behind him.
Eleanor stepped into the sunlight.
She had apparently decided that dressing properly could wait. A thin white nightgown clung loosely to her figure, doing very little to conceal the generous curves beneath it, while her copper-red hair fell wild around her shoulders. Amber eyes moved across the assembled sailors with complete confidence. Eleanor had long ago learned that a deck full of men would stare at her regardless of what she wore, so she had simply stopped pretending to care.
Most merchant captains would never have allowed a woman aboard.
But Eleanor was not merely a passenger. She cooked, assisted with navigation when needed, knew enough about wireless procedure to make herself useful, and possessed the remarkable ability to keep Jack motivated whenever commercial ambition alone proved insufficient.
She stopped beside him, pressing close enough that her hip brushed his.
"What about you, Jack?" Eleanor asked, her voice warm with mischief. "You've talked about glory since the day I met you. Don't tell me you wouldn't enjoy a uniform and a medal or three."
The suggestion earned approving murmurs from the crew. A few men nodded eagerly, already imagining polished brass, naval uniforms and victorious parades. Jack scratched his chin as though seriously considering the proposition, while Eleanor pressed herself comfortably against his side and curled her fingers into the open front of his shirt. Sunlight caught her copper-red hair and turned it almost aflame, while her free hand drifted absently across her stomach—a small, unconscious gesture Jack did not yet notice.
"Well," he said with great theatrical dignity, "obviously I would make a magnificent admiral. The Royal Navy would improve overnight. The Germans would probably surrender out of sheer admiration."
The deck erupted in laughter.
Jack allowed it to continue for a moment before his grin sharpened. "But no. None of us are joining the Navy."
That quieted several of them.
Eleanor tilted her head. "Why not?"
Jack drew slowly upon his cigar and exhaled toward the open Atlantic, watching the smoke disappear into the breeze. For a moment he appeared almost philosophical.
Then he smiled.
"I can smell it."
Sam blinked. "Smell what? Smoke?"
"Food?" someone else called.
"No. Not smoke, not food, and not your perfume either, love—though that remains magnificent." Eleanor rolled her eyes, and Jack flicked ash over the rail. "Opportunity. War needs everything, lads. Rifles, shells, ships, railways, factories—and more bloody steel than Europe has ever dreamed of using."
He pointed his cigar toward the cargo hatches.
"And what, gentlemen, are we carrying?"
"Iron ore!" came the answer.
"Exactly. The moment nations begin killing one another, they need mountains of it. They'll pay through the nose for every ton and thank us afterward for taking their money."
The mood changed subtly. Patriotic excitement remained, but now greed began creeping into the smiles around him.
"Money," Jack declared, opening his arms to the sea. "I can practically smell the damned stuff in the air."
"Money!" someone shouted.
"That's right! Keep sailing with me and soon you'll be rich enough to retire, buy yourselves houses and perhaps even find women willing to stay longer than a single night."
"Captain, that's impossible!"
"Then pay more!"
The deck exploded again.
Eleanor leaned closer. "And you, Captain? Weren't you planning to become governor of Inverness?"
Jack puffed out his chest. "Governor, mayor, lord—I'm flexible. Although being king of somewhere with good access to the sea would naturally be preferable."
"King of Ireland!" someone called.
"That's the spirit!"
Jack turned toward the horizon. The Atlantic remained beautiful beneath the summer sun, with only a thin belt of haze resting upon the distant water. Nothing disturbed the view. Nothing suggested danger.
"We've a long voyage ahead of us," he said. "Seems criminal to greet a European war sober. Break out the bottles."
A cheer rolled across the deck. McBride immediately began murdering some patriotic Scottish song, while Sam nearly broke his neck tripping over a coil of rope in his enthusiasm to find the alcohol. Even Hale allowed himself the smallest smile.
Jack slipped an arm around Eleanor's waist and raised his fist.
"To war!"
"To money!" Collins answered.
"To iron!"
Eleanor laughed and raised her hand with them. "To the Black Pearl!"
Far beyond their laughter, however, something grey was approaching at twenty-seven knots.
The lookout saw the smoke first.
He narrowed his eyes against the glare, watching a thin dark smear appear along the horizon. It did not resemble the thick, filthy plume of an elderly coal-burning cruiser. This smoke hung lower, narrower and strangely restrained as the wind flattened it against the sea.
"Captain!" he called. "Smoke off the port quarter! Warship, I think!"
Jack turned lazily, cigar still between his fingers.
"Royal Navy, I'd wager. Probably off to remind the Germans who owns the water."
The lookout raised his glass.
His expression changed almost immediately.
"No, Captain…"
Jack's smile faded.
"I think she's German."
Everyone turned toward the horizon.
At first there was only a silhouette. Then, as the distance closed, details emerged: a long grey hull, angular superstructure and three great centreline turrets. She was far too large for an ordinary cruiser and moving with a speed that seemed wrong for something so heavily built.
She did not push through the Atlantic so much as cut it apart.
Jack lowered his cigar.
"Bloody hell."
A signal lamp began flashing from the German bridge.
Hale was already reading it.
"Morse. They're ordering us to heave to immediately. Stop engines and prepare to be boarded."
Silence settled across the Pearl.
Jack's arm tightened slightly around Eleanor.
"Why would they want to board us?" Collins asked.
"How the hell are they even out here?" Sam demanded. "Britain only joined the war yesterday!"
"Where's the bloody Royal Navy, then?" Collins snapped. "They're supposed to stop Germans from wandering around the Atlantic!"
The lamp flashed again.
HEAVE TO. STOP ENGINES.
Jack stared at the distant warship.
Then his jaw hardened.
"To stations! Get everything you can out of the engines! Full speed!"
Men scattered.
Below decks, stokers tore open furnace doors and began shovelling coal as quickly as exhausted arms permitted. Steam pressure climbed, and the Black Pearl began vibrating beneath Jack's boots.
It changed almost nothing.
She was a heavily laden merchant freighter with holds packed full of iron ore. On a good day, under favourable conditions, she might scrape ten knots.
The German ship was making nearly three times that.
The signal lamp went dark.
For several seconds nothing happened.
Then one of SMS Moltke's forward triple 343-millimetre turrets began to turn.
Jack watched through narrowed eyes as the enormous structure settled upon its bearing. Three great barrels pointed across the water toward his ship.
Only one fired.
The muzzle flash was enormous.
For an instant the horizon beneath the German battlecruiser seemed to turn orange-white, followed by a rolling concussion that reached the Pearl seconds later like distant thunder.
Jack's expression emptied.
Then came the sound of the shell.
A deep, rushing howl grew across the sea with horrifying speed.
"DOWN!"
The 343-millimetre projectile struck the Atlantic only a few dozen metres ahead of the Black Pearl.
The ocean erupted.
A towering column of white water exploded upward beside the bow, high enough to dwarf the merchant ship's bridge. The shock of the impact seemed to strike the hull itself. The Pearl rolled violently as thousands of litres of seawater crashed across the forward deck, sweeping loose equipment sideways and sending men sprawling against rails and bulkheads.
Eleanor screamed as Jack caught her around the waist and dragged her against him.
For several seconds there was nothing but water, shouting and the terrified groaning of the ship.
Then the spray fell away.
The Black Pearl was still there.
Jack slowly looked toward the German battlecruiser.
One gun, one shell, a warning, and it had nearly put an eight-hundred-kilogram projectile through the ship he had spent three years building his life around.
"Holy Jesus…" McBride gasped, soaked through and clinging to the railing. "They're actually going to sink us."
Nobody laughed at him.
Across the water, Moltke continued closing with calm, mechanical certainty. Von Spee had no need to fire a full broadside at a merchantman. One barrel from one triple turret had made the point perfectly clear.
A second shot would not have to miss.
Jack stared at the ship beneath his boots.
Three years.
Three years since a bloody nose and a forgotten lottery ticket lying beneath a New York tavern table had changed everything. Three years of freight contracts, storms, repairs, wages and risks. The Pearl had turned him from another wandering bastard with good stories into Captain Jack Ashcroft, owner of his own vessel and, one day if fortune continued cooperating, founder of his own merchant company.
If she sank now, he would lose more than steel.
He would lose the bridge beneath his boots, the name stitched into his hat and the freedom of waking each morning with another horizon ahead of him. He could buy property ashore, perhaps. Invest in shops. Pretend bricks and ledgers excited him the way engines and open water did.
But that was not him.
He did not want land.
He wanted the sea.
Beside him, Eleanor's hand slipped instinctively across her stomach.
"It's all right, Jack," she said, though her voice trembled. "Just stop. We'll let them board us. Whatever happens to the ship, we'll still have each other."
Jack looked at her hand.
Something in his expression changed.
"…Eleanor."
She followed his gaze.
"You're not pregnant, are you?"
Her amber eyes widened.
"I… don't know for certain." She hesitated. "But I think I might be."
The admission struck him harder than Moltke's warning shot.
For one strange heartbeat, the German battlecruiser disappeared from his thoughts entirely. There was a child, his child in her.
"Captain!" Sam shouted from behind him. "They're still gaining! What do we do?"
Jack closed his eyes for half a second and drew a slow breath.
Then he looked toward the German battlecruiser again.
"Stop engines."
Sam stared at him. "Captain?"
"You heard me. Stop the damned engines. Heave to."
The order travelled below. Steam vented from the Black Pearl in a long, mournful hiss, and the familiar vibration beneath Jack's boots slowly faded as the propeller lost its urgency. Within moments the heavily laden freighter had surrendered her forward motion and settled into the Atlantic swell.
Relief passed through the crew almost visibly. Some men slumped against rails and bulkheads as though their legs had only now remembered how close they had come to dying. Others laughed too loudly from nerves, grateful simply to still be standing on a deck rather than floating among wreckage.
Jack felt considerably less grateful.
He remained at the rail, seawater dripping from his clothes, his cigar ruined between his fingers while humiliation burned hotter than fear. Across the water, SMS Moltke continued steadily toward them.
"Damn Royal Navy," he muttered. "What the bloody hell are they doing letting Germans get this far?"
Eleanor stepped behind him and slipped her arms around his waist, pressing herself gently against his back.
"It may still be all right, Jack. If they truly wanted us dead, they could have hit us."
Jack glanced sideways at her.
"That is an extraordinarily optimistic interpretation of being fired upon with a gun large enough to demolish a house."
"Well, they warned us first." Eleanor looked past him toward the approaching warship. "And unless I'm mistaken, that is Moltke, isn't it? The same ship that helped save the people from the Titanic."
Jack studied the long grey silhouette.
She was right.
Only two years earlier, that same German battlecruiser had carried hundreds of Titanic survivors toward safety. Newspapers across Britain and America had praised her officers and sailors as heroes, and the name Moltke had briefly become associated with rescue rather than war.
Jack found himself clinging rather desperately to that memory now.
"I sincerely hope," he murmured, "that they remain fond of rescuing people."
Moltke did not come directly alongside. Roughly a kilometre from the Black Pearl, the battlecruiser slowed and settled upon the sea, maintaining enough distance that her guns could still dominate the merchantman without risking collision or unnecessary exposure.
Then activity began along her side.
Jack narrowed his eyes.
"What are they doing?"
Boats were being lowered.
Two compact motor launches descended toward the water, each crowded with armed men. The instant they were released, their engines came alive and the craft accelerated away from Moltke, throwing white wakes behind them as they raced across the gap.
The speed alone unsettled the crew.
These were not ponderous ship's boats being rowed across the sea. They came quickly, low upon the water, engines buzzing as they bounced across the swell. Men sat or crouched inside them with weapons held close against their bodies.
Strange-looking men, very strange-looking men.
Jack's stomach tightened.
"All hands on deck," he ordered. "Everyone. And make damned sure your hands are visible."
The crew gathered quickly. Eleanor's younger sister emerged with the other women who worked aboard, all of them anxious and uncertain, while the men formed loosely around them. Nobody carried a weapon. Nobody wanted the Germans to mistake anything for resistance.
The launches were coming fast now.
Jack watched the figures aboard grow clearer.
Then he made another decision.
"Lower the boarding ladders."
McBride glanced at him. "They're the ones boarding us."
"Yes, and I'd rather not make thirty armed Germans improvise their way onto my ship while they're already irritated with me. Ladders, McBride. Let's be welcoming."
Rope ladders went over the side.
The first German launch swept alongside moments later. Its helmsman matched the Pearl's drift with practiced ease while another marine seized the ladder and began climbing.
The deck went silent.
When the first man's helmet appeared above the rail, several of Jack's sailors simply stared.
He did not resemble any naval boarding party they had imagined.
A smooth blackened steel helmet covered his head, with dark protective goggles hiding his eyes and cloth drawn across the lower half of his face. His uniform was deep Prussian blue, close-fitted and practical rather than ceremonial, while a heavy black vest covered his chest and abdomen. Sections of rigid armour seemed to be sewn or strapped beneath it, surrounded by rows of ammunition magazines, equipment pouches and webbing.
Black gloves covered his hands, while kneepads protected his knees, and heavy boots protected his feet. A pistol sat against one thigh and a fighting knife rode at his belt.
Across his chest rested a short German M1 carbine.
To Jack's eye it barely resembled a proper rifle at all. It was too compact, too mechanical, its detachable magazine projecting beneath the weapon while additional magazines filled the man's vest.
The marine climbed over the rail without hesitation, immediately stepping aside and sweeping his gaze across the deck.
He did not shout or threaten anyone. He simply positioned himself where he could see them all.
A second German appeared behind him, then a third.
Soon both launches were disgorging men onto the Pearl. Perhaps sixteen in total climbed aboard, each dressed in nearly identical equipment and moving with the same unsettling discipline. Some wore goggles pushed onto their helmets; others kept their faces almost completely hidden. To civilians accustomed to sailors in caps and soldiers carrying long wooden rifles, the effect was deeply unnatural.
McBride leaned slightly toward Jack.
"Captain…"
"Yes?"
"What the fuck are those?"
Jack watched another marine climb aboard.
"I was rather hoping you knew."
The Germans immediately spread across the ship. Two moved toward the bridge. Another pair headed toward the wireless room. Others watched the engine-room access and cargo hatches while several remained with the crew, carbines held low but ready.
There was almost no conversation between them, only gestures, maybe a single German word said, followed by a nod, then movement. They behaved less like sailors boarding a merchant ship and more like parts of some machine performing a familiar operation.
Eleanor reached for Jack's hand and held it tightly enough that he could feel the tremor running through her fingers. She was frightened, whatever brave face she was trying to maintain. Jack glanced at her, gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and managed a small smile that he hoped looked considerably more confident than he felt.
Then the final German came over the side.
Judging by the rank insignia upon his shoulders and the immediate change in the other marines' attention, Jack assumed this was their officer.
He was enormous.
Jack had never thought of himself as a small man, but the German stood several inches taller and seemed almost as broad across the shoulders as the doorway behind him. The black protective vest over his dark-blue uniform only added to the impression, turning an already powerful frame into something resembling a moving wall. Unlike most of his men, he pushed his goggles onto his helmet after stepping aboard, revealing pale eyes set beneath a square, hard face.
The officer surveyed the deck once. His gaze passed over Jack's crew, lingered briefly upon the cluster of women standing behind them, and paused for half a heartbeat as though their presence aboard a merchant freighter surprised him. A faint frown crossed his face, but he offered no comment. He simply walked forward with the quiet certainty of a man who already regarded the ship beneath his boots as secured.
"You," he said, stopping before Jack. His English was understandable, but thick with a hard German accent, each word clipped and deliberate. "You are captain, yes?"
Jack felt an absurd flicker of relief simply because the man spoke English at all.
"Yes. Captain Jack Ashcroft."
The German nodded once.
"Good. I am Leutnant Ulrich." His pale eyes remained fixed upon Jack. "I ask questions. You answer truthfully. You answer quickly. If you cooperate, you go home. If you make trouble…"
He glanced toward Moltke, still waiting across the water with her enormous guns turned in their direction.
"…then journey ends here."
The crew went very still.
Jack forced himself to hold the man's gaze. "Understood. We'll cooperate."
"Good."
Ulrich looked toward Eleanor and the other women.
"They are crew?"
"Yes," Jack answered quickly. "Cooking, cleaning, general work. They're with us."
Ulrich gave another short nod. No judgement, no reassurance; merely another fact established.
"What cargo?"
"Iron ore. We're merchants."
"Iron ore," Ulrich repeated.
Something in his expression suggested the answer had confirmed exactly what he expected.
"Iron makes steel. Steel makes ships, guns, shells. War."
Jack immediately tried to defend himself. "We're only carrying the bloody stuff. We don't decide what Britain does with it."
Ulrich interrupted him without raising his voice.
"Does not matter. In war, raw material is weapon also."
There was nothing dramatic in the statement. That somehow made it worse. Ulrich spoke as though he were explaining arithmetic rather than condemning Jack's livelihood.
"For this reason," he continued, "you abandon ship."
Jack stared at him.
"…Abandon her?"
"Yes. You take food, water, blankets, navigation equipment. Whatever personal things you carry quickly. Then everybody goes into lifeboats."
Jack's chest tightened.
"Wait. You're taking my ship?"
"No."
For the briefest instant hope appeared.
Then Ulrich killed it.
"We sink ship."
Jack's face went pale.
"You're going to sink the Pearl?"
"Yes."
The answer came with almost insulting calm.
"Sir, this ship is everything I own. Three years of my life are in her. My money, my men's work, my—"
Ulrich stepped closer. There was no anger in the movement and no need for intimidation. His certainty was enough.
"This is not negotiation, Captain. We do not need your ship. We need Britain not to receive cargo."
Jack looked around at the German marines already positioned across his deck, then back at the enormous officer standing before him.
"You're serious."
Ulrich's expression barely changed.
"Very."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you stay aboard."
Jack stared.
Ulrich gave a slight shrug.
"Ship still sinks."
That settled the question more effectively than any threat could have.
Jack's hands curled into fists. The Black Pearl was only three years old—his beautiful girl, his livelihood, his proof that a lucky bastard with a stolen lottery ticket and enough nerve could build something for himself.
Behind him, Eleanor pressed closer.
"Jack…"
Her voice was barely above a whisper, but he understood.
The ship was steel.
These were people.
And perhaps one of those people was carrying his child.
Jack swallowed his anger.
"All right," he rasped. "We'll leave."
Ulrich nodded.
"Right move, Mister English."
Jack very nearly corrected him.
Scottish.
The word reached the back of his teeth before he decided that correcting a heavily armed German built like a stone wall was perhaps not the hill upon which Scottish national pride needed to die.
Ulrich had already turned away.
A string of sharp German commands followed, and the marines moved immediately.
The evacuation proceeded with almost offensive efficiency. Jack's crew were permitted to gather coats, blankets, water, emergency food, navigation instruments and whatever personal possessions they could carry without delaying the operation. German marines supervised every movement, allowing people into compartments only until those spaces had been cleared. Nobody was struck, nobody was robbed, and nobody was permitted to argue.
The women went first. Eleanor helped her sister onto the ladder before following her down, while German sailors below steadied the lifeboats against the swell. The other women came after them, frightened hands gripping rope as they descended. Jack remained above until he had seen every one of them safely aboard, then watched his crew follow.
Only when almost everyone else had left did he return to the bridge.
For several seconds he simply stood there.
His hand rested against the rail he had touched every morning for three years.
"Sorry, girl," he whispered.
Then Captain Jack Ashcroft climbed down into the lifeboat.
From the water, the survivors watched the Germans finish.
Several marines remained aboard while others returned to the motor launches. Men disappeared below decks into the machinery spaces, opening sea connections and preparing the freighter so that once water began entering there would be little chance of stopping it. The work took only minutes.
Then the last Germans came over the side. The launches pulled away.
And for a while, nothing happened.
The Black Pearl remained exactly where Jack had left her, rocking gently beneath the sun as though the Germans had changed their minds.
Jack almost allowed himself to believe it. Then her stern began to settle.
At first the change was so slight that the eye resisted it. The waterline crept upward across the hull, centimetre by centimetre, until the angle of the deck could no longer be dismissed as the movement of the sea. Water reached openings that had never been intended to meet it, and from there the sinking accelerated.
Jack watched without speaking.
The Pearl groaned.
Somewhere deep inside her, steel complained as weight shifted through the hull. The stern sank lower while the bow slowly lifted, loose equipment sliding across the deck before disappearing into the water.
For several agonizing minutes she seemed to resist simply because ships were made to resist the sea.
Then gravity won.
The stern vanished first. The bow remained above the Atlantic for one final moment, sunlight gleaming across wet steel, before it too slipped beneath the surface.
The sea closed over the Black Pearl. Foam remained. Then scattered wreckage, then nothing.
Jack sat completely still.
Tears had gathered in his eyes, but he made no effort to wipe them away.
Three years of his life had disappeared beneath the Atlantic.
There was no celebration aboard Moltke. The German launches returned exactly as they had come. Davits lifted the boats from the water, the marines disappeared back into the battlecruiser's enormous hull, and soon the deep vibration of her turbines strengthened once more. The grey giant turned west, already searching for another target.
Jack watched her diminish against the horizon.
"Bollocks," he whispered.
Then, with considerably more feeling:
"Bloody useless Royal Navy bastards."
Nobody answered him.
For several minutes he remained where he was before finally forcing himself upright. He suspected that if he stayed seated much longer, grief would pin him there permanently.
Several lifeboats now carried everything that remained of the Black Pearl. Eleanor sat beneath a blanket beside him, her sister pressed close against her. The other women huddled nearby while the men stared silently at the patch of ocean where their livelihood had disappeared.
Jack looked around at them.
"Well," he eventually said, attempting a grin that failed somewhere halfway onto his face, "that just happened."
A few hollow laughs followed.
One sailor cautiously raised his hand.
"Captain?"
Jack turned toward him.
"…Are we still getting paid?"
Jack stared at him for several seconds with an expression suggesting he was seriously considering reducing the number of survivors.
"Paid with what?" he snapped. "Seawater?"
The hand disappeared.
Jack rubbed both palms down his face.
"Right. We can discuss my bankruptcy after we've stopped floating helplessly in the middle of the bloody Atlantic."
He squinted toward the horizon.
"Iceland should be… what? A couple hundred kilometres?"
Hale's expression was not encouraging.
"Depending upon exactly where we are."
"That is not the confidence I was hoping for, Hale."
"It's the confidence available."
Jack sighed.
"Wonderful."
He pointed vaguely northward.
"Well, gentlemen, unless someone had the foresight to pack another merchant ship beneath the emergency blankets, I suggest we start rowing."
McBride stared at him.
"Row?"
"Yes, McBride. Ancient maritime technique. You take the wooden stick, place it in the water and suffer."
Nobody laughed very much.
Nevertheless, the oars came out.
The men settled into the miserable rhythm of pulling across an ocean far larger than any of them wished to contemplate, while the women distributed water, biscuits and blankets between the boats and tried to keep spirits from collapsing altogether.
They were extraordinarily fortunate to have the boats at all.
Only two years earlier, Titanic had shown the world what happened when enormous ships carried too little lifesaving capacity and emergency preparation was treated as an expensive inconvenience. The disaster and the investigations that followed had begun changing expectations across Atlantic shipping. More lifeboats, better emergency stores, regular drills and stronger wireless watches were no longer matters that responsible captains could dismiss quite so easily.
Jack had still complained. Extra boats took space. Emergency stores cost money. Drills wasted working hours.
Inspectors seemed almost divinely gifted at discovering new things for him to purchase.
He had cursed the regulations, cursed the inspections and cursed every invoice that accompanied them.
Then he had paid.
Now he sat inside one of those expensive lifeboats with Eleanor pressed against his side, staring at an empty stretch of Atlantic where his ship had been.
For the first time, Jack understood exactly what that expense had purchased, not convenience, not bureaucracy, but life.
The survivors of the Black Pearl rowed north, tiny shapes upon an immense blue-grey sea, carrying food, water, exhaustion and whatever hope remained to them.
Far beyond the horizon, SMS Moltke continued searching for another merchantman.
And Jack finally understood something that the sea had spent centuries teaching sailors in the cruelest way possible.
Safety regulations might be written in ink.
But they were always paid for in blood.