In a world of steamships and Progress, no one who sails due south across the Wild Sea ever returns.
No one knows why.
Dale Mortensen intends to solve the mystery. With the help of an old sailor and a reformed playboy searching for his missing sweetheart, he locates a captain and crew ambitious—not to mention crazy—enough to undertake the journey across the Wild Sea.
The Infinity and her crew sail south, but the truth of what really lies on the other side of the horizon is more amazing—and terrifying—than anything they can imagine.
It’s the adventure of a lifetime—and it may just get Dale and his friends killed.
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Click here to start from the beginning. Or if you want to read it at your own pace, buy the ebook for $7.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HORIZON
E. R. PASKEY
SIXTEEN
DALE FELT AS THOUGH A WAVE OF icy water had reared up out of the sea to drench him. Then he jumped with a sudden jolt of understanding. The boiler room was on the port side. If cold sea water hit those hot boilers…
“The boilers!” he blurted, before dashing out into the rain. He slipped and slid in the water-soaked deck, but fiercely kept going. He fell more than climbed down the intervening ladder-stairs separating him from the boiler room. Within a few steps, he was sloshing through ankle-deep water.
His heart sank. This is not good. We’re taking on water, fast.
As he rounded the corner, he met Mr. Inzin coming back the other way with Manji in tow. The first mate’s face was stark and grim beneath his beard. He caught Dale’s arm and attempted to drag him back up the passageway. “It’s no good, lad. Water’s going to reach the boilers at any moment and when it does—” he broke off, his mouth thinning.
“We have to stop the water!” insisted Dale, shaking the first mate’s grip off.
“You don’t understand! We’ve struck rocks and they’ve ripped a hole in the hull the size of a man! There’s no patching that! It’s right beside the boiler room!”
Horror suffused Dale. “That bad?”
“Aye, now run!”
Dale started to move through the cold water already numbing his toes, but he stopped short in renewed horror. “Garr’s in the engine room.” There was not time to explain why.
Inzin seemed to understand. His mouth tightened again. “I’ll get him.”
“Sir—”
“Don’t argue with me.” Inzin’s voice was as resolute as his face. “You two get back topside and warn the Captain that we’re about to be blown to hell. I’ll get that idiot.”
“Aye, sir.”
They all knew how dangerous it was. Dale was not about to cheapen Inzin’s potential sacrifice by disobeying a direct order and wasting his life too, but it was with a heavy heart that he raced off through the ever-increasing water level. Manji headed topside, while Dale took a detour to swing by the galley.
“Minh!” he shouted. “Minh! Get up topside!”
The Infinity shuddered, as another mighty wave rammed them up against the rocks. Caught off-guard, Dale crashed into the nearest bulkhead. Minh all but fell out of the galley into the passageway. The ship was listing badly now.
“What is going on?” Minh picked himself up out of the water, his eyes wide.
“Boiler’s about to blow!” Dale grabbed the shorter man’s shoulder and propelled him forward. “Come on!”
They were only a deck below topside when the water pouring into the ship finally reached the boilers. The resulting explosion blew a gaping hole in the side of the ship, causing an even more prominent tilt to the decks beneath their feet. A violent spray of wood splinters and other detritus rained down on the deck.
Even as Dale looked over his shoulder for a glimpse of the first and second mates, he knew it was no good. That had not nearly been enough time for Inzin to convince Garr to leave the engine room and for them to make it out of the blast zone in time.
No time for grief.
He and Minh hauled themselves up onto the top deck, which was now tilted at a crazy angle. Yutha clung to the mainmast like an overgrown monkey, his brown eyes wide with terror. When he caught sight of Dale, he shouted and pointed down the steeply sloping deck at Manji, who was hanging onto a rope for dear life, perilously close to the angry waves sucking the ship down into the depths.
Launching himself across the deck, Dale caught hold of a rope extending up to one of the sails and wrapped his arm around it. With his other hand, he grabbed Manji’s lifeline. Slowly, he began to haul the other man up to relative safety.
“Where’s Mr. Kyle?!” shouted Yutha from the mainmast. “We’ve got to get him!”
“He’s gone, lad!” Dale shouted back.
“No!”
“Yes!” interjected Manji at the top of his lungs. “There’s no way he survived that blast!”
“NO!” Yutha started to climb down the mast, intent on heading back down into the wrecked bowels of the ship to find his adoptive father.
Dale hauled Manji up faster, the muscles in his arms bulging with every movement. He could not release the rope and let the man die, but someone had to stop Yutha from going back down there.
Someone did.
Raphael emerged from the pilot house and skidded down the slanted deck to the mainmast and Yutha. For a split second, Dale was afraid his friend would miss his mark, but Raphael slammed into the mast and locked an arm around Yutha’s chest.
“He would not want you to throw your life away!” he shouted over the rain and wind.
“You don’t know that!” Yutha bucked and wriggled, trying to break Raphael’s hold. He seemed to have forgotten that their grip—now just Raphael’s grip—on the mainmast was all that kept them from plunging down into the waves lapping the bow end of the ship.
By now, Manji was close enough for Dale to lock his hand around his crewmate’s wrist. He did, and they all swayed as the Infinity shook again—and cracked right down the middle. The Infinity’s list became more pronounced and Manji looked up at Dale, his eyes wide with horror.
“ABANDON SHIP!” bellowed Captain Ruben from the pilot house. There was no saving his beloved Infinity. Even he knew that.
“JUMP, LADS! JUMP!” Belly Skoog hollered across the deck for good measure.
Dale flexed his muscles once more and heaved Manji up to the railing. Then he looked at Raphael and Yutha, who were still clinging to the mainmast—which was rapidly becoming horizontal. Bracing himself, he held his free hand out to them. “Jump! I’ll catch you!”
He never got the chance.
A smaller explosion wracked the ship and Dale lost his grip on the railing. The jolt sent him backwards over the side. He was airborne for five sickening seconds before he hit the water.
The first sensation he felt was cold. The next was a spike of dull panic. Which way is up?
He figured it out quickly enough and fought his way up to the rolling surface of the sea. He barely had time to gulp in a much-needed breath of air before a wave crashed over the top of him, submerging him once more.
Choking, Dale struggled back up to oxygen. Something hard smacked into his side; he grabbed it with both hands and held on tight. Wreckage. Not good.
The storm raged on. Rain lashed the surface of the sea, threatening to drown Dale almost as easily as the towering waves. Bobbing up and down violently in time to the waves, he shook water out of his eyes—a useless endeavor—and peered desperately through frightening gloom for any of his shipmates.
Every time he saw something that could have been a human being he tried shouting, but his bellow was lost in the roar of wind and water. Eventually, a dark shape that looked like a man clinging to a chunk of wreckage passed within twenty feet of him—twenty feet that might as well have been a mile, for all the difficulty of crossing them. But even through the gloom and the sheets of rain, Dale could see the man was in danger of losing his tenuous grip on his makeshift buoy.
“Hold on!” called out Dale, before striking out in his shipmate’s direction. He gritted his teeth as another giant wave attempted to tip him over and kept swimming. After a moment, the waves seemed to oblige him and swept him closer.
He reached the piece of wreckage just as his shipmate slipped beneath the dark water.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Dale lunged over the side of the planks and grabbed the man’s collar. With a grunt and a supreme effort, he hauled the man back up out of the water and locked an arm around him. His heart turned over in his chest.
It was Raphael.
His friend was barely conscious, still bleeding from where a spar had glanced off his temple. His dark, curly hair was plastered to his face, his eyes closed. When Dale shook him, trying to get him to come back to reality, Raphael only mumbled something in Selendrian.
Gritting his teeth again, Dale struggled to hang on to his piece of wreckage and keep Raphael’s head above the water. He wondered what had happened to Yutha, but within seconds it became clear he could only concern himself with surviving this wave, and then the next, and the wave after that.
Raphael did not regain full consciousness, but continued to mutter brokenly, repeating one name over and over in between words Dale did not understand. “Elena. Elena. Elena.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, thought Dale numbly. This can’t be how the story ends.
He did not know how long he and Raphael floated in the storm-tossed waves, surrounded by debris from the Infinity. Time seemed to stretch; each second taking an eon to pass. At one point, he thought he heard a gurgling scream, but between the wind’s howling and the roaring of waves and rain, he decided he must have imagined it. His fingers grew stiff and numb, but still, he held on for dear life.
Let us reach land, Dale prayed. Please, let there be some kind of land out here. An island…something…anything to get them out of the sea for just a few moments. Never in his life had he wanted to be on dry land as much as he did now.
Gradually, Dale became aware of a dark mass rising out of the sea ahead of them. It took him a moment to realize the mass was getting larger—the wind and waves were driving their bit of wreckage toward it. Hope sprouted wings inside his chest, gave him renewed energy. He began to kick his feet harder, hoping to paddle them along even faster.
It has to be land, he thought blearily. It has to be. What else could there be in the middle of the Wild Sea?
The thought did not bear considering—he lacked the energy to even try. Besides, if he gave up now, both he and Raphael were well and truly lost. That’s not an option.
They had not survived the Infinity’s explosion just to drown now.
With every wave, the mass grew larger and began to sharpen in focus; details emerged through the still-pouring rain. It looked like an expanse of rain-lashed beach leading up to a tangle of trees. A sound caught in Dale’s chest, not quite a sob—he would never admit to that. Please be real, please be real.
The waves were becoming more violent. Dale recognized that violence as the behavior of waves beating up against the shore and relief flooded through him. He spared a brief thought for possible riptides before casting it out of his mind. Let the waves carry you in, he told himself. Don’t think about what could go wrong. Just let the waves…
A particularly large wave crashed over their heads and he lost the thought. He came up sputtering; Raphael remained unmoving and unaware. Dale began struggling to touch bottom. If he could touch sand—gain even a hint of footing—they would make it. We have to make it.
Another wave bowled them over again before Dale’s foot brushed something solid. Sand! With a final burst of renewed energy, he began to swim harder, towing Raphael along with him. He had no idea what this place was, but it was land and that would do.
Ten breathless, waterlogged moments later, Dale stumbled up onto the beach hauling Raphael’s limp body with him. He staggered further up a few paces, enough to take them clear of the tide line, and collapsed. Every muscle in his body screamed in agony. Coughing, he rolled over on his back to blink up through the raindrops hitting his face. Thank you.
They had made it.
Dale roused himself enough to make sure Raphael was still breathing before he flopped back on the wet sand. Ignoring the gusting wind, he rolled over and promptly passed out.
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Or if you want to keep reading right now, buy the ebook for $7.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
Copyright © 2013 E. R. Paskey