Gervase instructed Leah on how to rub the wooden ship with the oil stored below. She carried a large container of oil to the galley and began working it into the wood. After several hours, Leah sighed. Her arms and hands ached. Standing up, and rubbing her back, she glanced up, out of the galley at the sunshine on deck. Would anyone notice the flag? Then she returned to her chores, wondering what to do next. When Gervase went topside, Leah retrieved a paper and inkwell. She quickly wrote a note to Captain Rigley:
Captain Rigley, you must beware. A plot against you is planned by Radbert and Wade and possibly others. Imminent danger! They plan to sink the Charity and her crew. One Osmont also implicated, but not sure how.
Your seafaring friend.
Leah rolled up the note as soon as it dried, replacing the inkwell, feeling certain no one would suspect a cabin boy of being able to write. She put the note in her pocket and went down the storage hold to retrieve more oil per Gervase’s instructions. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness below in the hold, she noticed an open barrel. One of the boxes containing goods for trade with the natives had fallen over in the storm, so she tried to straighten it. The top slipped off. The box was very heavy. Leah gasped when she looked inside and saw what it really contained. Instead of harmless tools and trinkets, she saw guns. Lots of guns!
Leah quickly ran back up to the galley and then to the deck. The Charity was coming closer. Her heart raced as she glanced around. Still no one on board her ship had seen her signal.
Gervase stood next to Leah. “Come out for a bit of air, did you? That oil gets heavy after a time.” She nodded, reaching into her pocket to check on her note.
“Now what do you suppose they are doing?” Gervase said, as he realized the Charity was approaching. Soon a shallop was being lowered into the water and coming towards them. To Leah’s dismay, her father was not on board. He stayed on the Charity, sending instead his first mate whom Leah didn’t know.
The mate yelled up to the crew of the Unity. “What’s your distress?”
“Distress?” Gervase asked.
The mate pointed to the flag. Leah knew she must act now. The mate was climbing aboard with two of his crew. Gervase was puzzled and the two were talking. “Perhaps it blew down, or tore in the storm,” he offered, assuring the mate there was no problem, but obviously perplexed about the attached red flag.
Leah approached one of the crew and slipped the note into his pocket without his noticing. The sailor glanced at her for a moment and then turned back to the flag. Soon the shallop and her crew returned to the Charity. Gervase ordered a sailor to repair the flag, and he scurried up the mast to do so.
Gervase glanced at Leah. “You got oiling to do, boy.” He was obviously perturbed by the whole incident. Leah went below after one last glance at the Charity. The sailor she had given the note to was now aboard with the others, and she could see conversation. She could only hope he would give her father the note. They were looking in the direction of The Unity.
As Leah rubbed the oil into the wood around the galley, she wondered what was happening aboard the Charity. She didn't have to wait long. Soon she heard a commotion on deck and hurried up, hiding behind the mast where she could watch. Her father and several of his crew had come aboard. He was holding the note. Leah watched, wanting to run to him, but afraid to so she listened.
“Gervase, what does this mean?” Captain Rigley demanded in his booming voice, holding out the note.
Gervase read the note, the color draining from his face. “I have no idea, sir. I never saw this before.”
“One of your crew slipped it to my mate, here. He thinks maybe it was your cabin boy.”
“That’s impossible. He’s totally uneducated. I must teach him everything. Why, he barely talks, much less reads or writes,” Gervase answered.
Captain Rigley waved his arm. “Where are Radbert and Wade? Bring them here! Check the cargo hold.”
Gervase ordered the crew to find the two men, and soon they stood before the captain. Both men looked down in fear. Another man—Osmont, Leah concluded—was dragged aboard from the Charity. The three men stood with their hands tied behind them as Gervase and Captain Rigley conversed. One of the crew came up from the storage area and whispered to Gervase. He and the captain went below and returned carrying two of the guns Leah had seen in the boxes.
“Planning to sell these to the natives? Or perhaps to the pirates?” Captain Rigley demanded. “And you thought you could sink the Charity and her crew, too.”
The captain stood back and instructed Gervase to stand the men on the deck. Leah watched, wide-eyed. Surely he wasn’t going to shoot them.
“Your choice, Radbert: the sword or the sharks?” Captain Rigley raved.
“No, please, captain,” Radbert cried, falling to his knees.
“It’s no worse than the fate you planned for my crew!” The captain motioned to two sailors nearby, and Radbert was tossed overboard.
Leah was horrified. From where she stood, she could see the man slowly sinking in the water, thrashing about, unable to swim with his hands tied behind him, screaming. Leah gasped and turned her eyes away.
The other two men stood on the deck, and she could see they were shaking. She looked at her father who stood beside the other two men as they began to cry, begging for mercy as they watched the fearful scene below. He repeated the same choice he’d offered Radbert to Wade— “The sword, or the sharks?”
Wade’s long stringy hair stuck to his moist face and he cried, “Please, Captain. Spare me, please!”
The captain nodded to the two sailors, and Wade joined his co-conspirator in the dark waters of the ocean.
Captain Rigley turned to Osmont. Gervase had stood silently beside the captain during the procedure. Gervase whispered something to Captain Rigley, but the captain shook his head. There were angry whispers between the two as they argued about something. In the end, Gervase moved behind the other sailors and put his hands over his eyes. Leah could see he was shaking, but no one paid any attention to him. The captain looked intently into the frightened young man’s eyes.
“You, Osmont? Of all my crew, I thought you could be trusted. You have betrayed your own ship—your own shipmates. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Osmont was a young man, Leah noticed, with blond curls much like her own framing his fair face. He looked down when the captain spoke, too ashamed to speak, trembling with fear. Captain Rigley shook his head and stood back as the traitor was thrown overboard with a final terrified scream.
Sickened, Leah went below in the galley and curled into a ball on her hammock. Her father was correct—the sea was no place for her.