Chapter 32 Crossroads
Wind—harsh, heated, and thick with salt—blasted over Caleb, lashing his coat against his legs and whipping hair into his eyes.
“Orders, Captain?” Alden asked from beside him, voice steady as an anchor in the squall.
That calm only stoked Caleb’s fury. How could the man stand so tranquil when death itself bore down upon them? Montverre would never grant mercy. The marquis might spare them long enough to seize the Ring, aye, but once he held it, he’d send the Sentinel to the depths without a blink.
After all, was that not where Desi had found her, in ruins at the bottom of the sea? Mayhap his fate was already chiseled in stone. Yet… Desi had found the Ring with the wreck, not in Montverre’s hands.
“Lay aloft and loose all sail!” he bellowed. “I want every inch o’ canvas to the wind!”
Liam scowled but repeated the order, his brogue rough as gravel. “Aye, Cap’n! Hands aloft! Brace up, ye dogs, or we’ll feed the fishes afore noon!” He leapt for the shrouds, joining the four topmen who swayed like ragged ghosts against the billowing sky.
Canvas cracked and thundered overhead. The Sentinel groaned under the strain, her masts singing as the sheets snapped taut. Without the sick men at the braces, they could not hope to match the frigates’ speed, but perhaps they could buy time.
Caleb vaulted down the quarterdeck ladder, boots thudding on soaked planks. “Think,” he muttered. “Think, man!”
Then he felt it, heat blooming in his pocket, pulsing like a heartbeat. The Ring.
He drew it forth. A shaft of sunlight speared the jewel, setting it afire with red and gold. Power. Promise. Salvation. Could it heal the crew? Or summon storm and tide to their favor?
Alden’s hand clamped over his, startling him. “Do not.”
“I’ve no choice.”
“You’ve every choice.”
Desi descended the ladder, her skirts snapping in the wind, curls whipping across her pale face. Fear and faith warred in her eyes. He could not let harm come to her. Nor to his ship. Nor to the men who’d followed him through hell and storm alike.
“You can call on Almighty God, Caleb,” Alden said, his tone firm yet gentle, like a rope cast to a drowning man. “He is mightier than any cursed trinket. There’s naught impossible to Him, or to them who believe. You know this.”
The words struck like thunder through his heart—sharp, clarion, divine. Were they not engraved on the wall of his cabin?
Trust Me, son.
That Voice. The One he’d longed to hear these two bitter years.
But trust? An elusive anchor he’d sought to regain. Too oft had he cast it into the deep, only to find the chain unmoored when tempests came.
Gripping the Ring, he strode to the bow. Spray lashed his face. Warm sunlight broke through torn clouds as the Sentinel plunged into the rollers. Each pitch of her prow sent white plumes of sea bursting over the rail.
At the edge of the bowsprit, Caleb spread his arms to balance, wind clawing at his coat.
The Ring gleamed in his hand, fire and blood within its depths.
It could save them. He knew it could. But at what cost?
Would the sliver of faith he still clung to be devoured in its darkness?
Lord, help me. I’m weary of facing life without You.
The Ring had never failed him. But God, aye, God had never failed him either. Not even on that one night on ?le Du Crane… the night Caleb buried his trust with the dead—his trust in himself, that he could hear from the Almighty, that he could be used by Him.
The ship rose over a wave then dropped into the trough, spraying a mist of seawater over him as he balanced on the heaving deck.
He was at a crossroad between power and faith, pride and surrender.
The air quaked with a distant boom. He turned. One of Montverre’s frigates had fired another warning shot, smoke curling from its side like dragon’s breath.
He raised the Ring high in one hand, the other reaching toward heaven. “I could trust this,” he shouted, voice breaking. “Or I can trust You!” Yet he knew the choice he had to make, the choice he longed to make. “I’m sorry, Father. I’m sorry I drifted far from You. Forgive me.”
Then choose Me now.
He nodded. And warmth flooded his soul, pure, radiant, steadying. The storm inside him stilled.
Pocketing the Ring, he returned to the starboard rail where Alden, Brandt, and Desi stood. The frigates loomed, vast and terrible, their gunports black and hungry.
Alden met his gaze and smiled, as if he already knew.
“Pray with me, my friend,” Caleb said.
Liam swung down from the ratlines, panting. “Yer goin’ to do what? Pray? When we’re about to be blown to bits?”
Brandt groaned, gripping his cane for balance. Desi’s eyes shimmered, torn between terror and hope.
Caleb and Alden bowed their heads together. The wind howled, ropes creaked, and the ship trembled beneath their feet. Then Caleb’s voice rose—not as a man, but as a captain of faith.
“In the mighty name of Jesus,” he thundered, “I command this vile curse of death to leave every man aboard this ship! You are rebuked and made impotent in the name of Jesus Christ!”
Minutes passed with naught but the mad dash of water and groan of timbers and masts.
The very air seemed to pause, the sea holding its breath.
?
Desi shook her head and spun to face the sea, heart hammering as Montverre’s ships closed the distance between them.
Praying? They were praying now, when death charged upon them from both horizons?
Her pulse thundered in her ears. Maybe God existed, but surely He was far too busy to stoop to something so small, so specific.
He hadn’t answered her cries when her mother lay dying, nor when her father vanished into the sea.
Heaven had been silent then—defiantly silent.
As she was certain it would be now.
And yet… perhaps prayer was Caleb’s way of clinging to hope in the face of the impossible. A man like him needed something—anything—to believe in.
After he uttered his powerful prayer that sounded less like a plea and more like a captain giving orders to heaven itself, she turned and found him staring at her.
Gone was the wild desperation she’d seen before, the haunted resignation.
In its place shone something radiant, quiet, and unshakable.
Peace. The kind she’d sought her whole life and never found.
He smiled. Just before the deck erupted with commotion.
The main hatch burst open.
Keg appeared first, blinking and scratching his head. Then came Spike, Rourke, Haines, and Edwin, followed by Levi, Craden, and a dozen others, climbing into the light as though from a grave. They stretched, yawned, and stared at one another, bewildered, their once pale faces now flushed with life.
Brandt uttered a rare curse and stumbled toward them, cane thudding on the planks.
Desi’s breath caught. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t think.
“Praise be to God!” Alden shouted, slapping Caleb’s back. Liam muttered something sharp and joyful in Gaelic that made the men around him laugh.
“Reportin’ fer duty,” Keg declared, voice booming across the deck.
Brandt elbowed through the gathering crowd, tugging at shirts, pressing fingers to wrists, examining eyes with the fervor of disbelief. “By the powers…” he stuttered, shaking his head. “Never saw the like in all my years.”
The color drained from his face, and he leaned hard on his cane, staring at the crew as if they’d sprouted wings.
Caleb lifted both hands to the wind. “Thank You, Father!”
A sudden shout came from the helm. “Closin’ in on the Devil’s Mouth, Cap’n!” Shorty called, fear scraping his voice thin.
Desi shook her head. “What… what just happened?”
Alden turned, his weathered face alight. “God happened, Miss Starr.”
Before she could respond, Caleb was before her, his arms warm, steady, wrapping her in a strength that stilled her trembling. “He heard me, Desi,” he said. “He cast away Ayida’s curse. The men are healed.”
He took her hands, kissed them, then pressed them against his chest. “He’s real. And He loves you.”
She blinked up at him, unable to speak. No… He couldn’t. And yet Caleb’s eyes shone with a light she couldn’t deny, a joy that defied reason.
More men poured from below, laughing, clapping shoulders, their limbs strong again.
“I don’t understand,” Brandt stammered, stumbling as his knees weakened. “They were half-dead not an hour past.”
Caleb caught him just in time, easing him onto a barrel. “Steady, Doctor. Breathe deep. The battle’s not yet done.”
“Both ships bearing down, Cap’n!” Liam shouted from the quarterdeck rail, spyglass pressed to his eye. “They mean to trap us between their guns!”
Darting to the railing, Desi glanced off their stern. The sea rolled beneath her—living, breathing, fierce—as two French frigates spread wide, one veering starboard, the other larboard, their hulls slicing the foam like twin blades.
“Not if we take the weather gauge first,” Caleb returned, his voice clear and commanding. “Alden, bring her up into the wind. Hands to the braces! Haul taut!”
“Aye, Captain!” Alden barked, spinning toward the crew. “You heard the order! Haul, lads, haul for your lives!”
The crew moved as one, running lines, shouting to one another over the roar of the wind. Bare feet slapped the planks, tar-stained hands strained at the ropes. Above, topmen swarmed the shrouds, loosing the reefs. Canvas thundered open like the wings of seraphs catching heaven’s breath.
The Sentinel leaned hard to starboard, her timbers groaning, the deck alive beneath Desi’s feet. She clung to the railing as wind tore at her hair and skirts, salt spray stinging her lips.
They were inside the portal, she could feel it. A subtle hum in the air, a shimmer at the edge of vision. Two worlds brushing together.
If she could just get her hands on the Ring…
Her heart slammed against her ribs. If she dropped it now, she could return home, back to her time, back to Daria. She could retrieve the relic from the seabed and save her sister’s life. But to do so would mean abandoning Caleb.