Forty minutes later, the three youngest Andersons found the small bay where the Maiden Anne was still anchored. Warren’s crew had captured her with the pretense of an official boarding by the harbor master, and there’d been little Conrad Sharpe could do since he didn’t know whether Bridgeport had jurisdiction over this area of the coast or not. Fortunately, no one had been hurt. The deceit had worked perfectly in getting enough of Warren’s crew transferred over from the Nereus to the Maiden Anne for them to then take control of the unsuspecting ship. And since Warren hadn’t given his men orders to bring either the ship or crew into Bridgeport, his men had simply locked the Maiden Anne’s crew in their own hold and left a small contingent of men to guard them and the ship. The Nereus hadn’t even remained behind, but had returned to Bridgeport with most of her crew.
With the whole thing having been accomplished from ship to ship, Georgina was hoping there would be a skiff somewhere along the shore that James had used to land, and they could use to get out to the ship. But after ten minutes of searching, it appeared that James had merely been dropped off.
“I hope you know I hadn’t figured on a midnight swim being part of this crazy scheme. It’s the middle of October, if you hadn’t noticed. We’re going to freeze our…you-know-whats…George.”
Georgina flinched at the new name both her brothers had been ribbing her with since she surprised them by coming downstairs dressed in her old boy’s togs, which James had so thoughtfully returned to her. Drew had gone one further to really embarrass her in remarking, “I really don’t like you in those breeches, now that your Englishman has pointed out what parts of you can be so easily admired in them.”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about, Boyd,” she said testily now. “Imagine how much more difficult this would have been had they brought her into the harbor where we’d have the watch on every nearby ship to contend with, not just Warren’s men.”
“Had they done that, little sister, you’d never have gotten me to agree to this business in the first place.”
“Well, you did agree,” she said testily. “So get your shoes off and let’s get it over with. These men do need some sort of head start, just in case Warren gets really ridiculous and decides to go after them.”
“Warren might be feeling justified where your captain is concerned,” Drew pointed out, “but he’s not suicidal. Those aren’t toy cannon poking out of those gunports on yonder ship, sweetheart. And the Hawke says he’s retired?”
“Old habits die hard, I imagine,” she said in James’s defense, which was becoming a habit she ought to break. “Besides, he was sailing in the West Indies, where pirates do still roam.”
That piece of logic brought chuckles from both brothers, with Drew remarking, “That’s rich, an ex-pirate worried about attack from his old buddies.”
With memories reminding her how true that statement was, Georgina only said, “If you two don’t show a leg, you can stay with the horses. I’ll go on without you.”
“Clinton was right, by God,” Drew told Boyd as he hopped on one foot to get the boot off his other. “Bossy, that’s what she’s become, plain and…Now hold on, Georgie, you aren’t going up that anchor cable first!”
But she was already in the water, and they both had to scramble to catch up with her. As they were strong swimmers, it didn’t take long, and soon the three of them were gliding smoothly across the bay. Ten minutes later, they neared the ship and swam around to the anchor cable, which they would now have to use to climb aboard.
The original plan had included the use of James’s skiff, to just brazenly approach the ship in it and claim they’d found another of the Maiden Anne’s crewmen in town and had brought him out for safekeeping with the others. Georgina would have done the talking and stayed in front, since she was the least likely of the three of them to be recognized. Drew would have kept behind them, and Boyd was to be the “prisoner” in the middle. Then as soon as she got close enough to one of the guards, she was to duck and let Boyd bash him. Very simple. But since they weren’t likely to swim out to the ship with a prisoner in tow, those plans had to be abandoned, at least until the deck was secured. And neither Drew nor Boyd was about to let Georgina participate in that, which left her twiddling her thumbs in the water while they both disappeared over the side of the ship.
She waited, but none too patiently, as the minutes passed and she had no way of knowing what was happening above. The lack of any noise was heartening, but what might she really hear with the water lapping in her ears, and her ears covered by the woolen cap which completed her disguise? And with nothing to distract her, it wasn’t long before her position in the water began to work on her imagination.
Were there sharks in the area? Hadn’t one of her neighbors caught a shark just last year when he’d gone fishing up the coast? In the shadow of the ship, she couldn’t see anything on the surface of the water, much less anything swimming around under her.
Once the question arose, it was less than a minute before Georgina was out of that water and climbing the anchor cable. Not to go all the way up, though. She’d been told to wait with an added “or else,” and had no intention of getting Boyd and Drew angry with her after they’d been so obliging to help her. But intentions didn’t take into account that her hands weren’t made for dangling from a thick cable. In fact, she only just barely made it to the top rail before her hold gave out. And considering that she would have gone splashing back into what she was now absolutely positive was shark-infested water, she was pretty relieved to pull herself over the side—until she saw the dozen men standing there ready to greet her.