“Yes, the skiff is gone,” I say. “Is there another lifeboat? Another way off the ship?”

Both shake their heads.

“Can you swim?” I ask Nicolas.

He gives a harsh laugh. “I swim as well as I walk. But this is the North Sea. We would perish of the cold before we made it to shore.”

I squint over the railing. I can barely see the shore. When I turn, the lights of Whitby are fading to my left. The abbey looms on the hill. We have passed the town already.

I’m turning back to Nicolas when I see another light. This one is behind us. At sea.

“A boat!” I say. “There is a boat right there. A night fisherman.”

I start to make my way back to the rear of the ship. Nicolas grabs for me, but I wave him off and keep going. The small boat is no more than a hundred feet off the stern.

“It is following us,” I say. “It sees we are in distress. We need to let the fisherman know there are people aboard. Then we can descend the rope, and they can pick us up.”

Nicolas says something, but the wind whips away his words. I stand at the railing and wave my arms over my head. The small craft is even closer than I thought. And there is a man on the front of the ship, arms crossed. I wave more.

He gestures back. A gesture that even I know is a rude one.

I stare, my breath catching. Then my cheeks heat in shame.

“That is not a night fisherman, is it?” I say as Nicolas moves up beside me. “It is not a fishing boat.”

“Non, chérie.”

“It is the men who set us adrift. Which they did not do accidentally while you were aboard.”

“Non, chérie. They knew I was here.” He turns to look behind us. “Andrés? Are you there?”

“He is,” I say as the boy runs over.

“Are these the men who boarded the ship?”

Andrés leaps onto the railing, nearly giving me heart failure until I remember he is no longer bound by the limitations of our world. He leaps again, this time onto the stern.

When he returns, he nods and gestures.

“He says, yes, it is the boat he saw beside the Temerity, and two of the men are the ones he saw onboard. The one in front is not.”

“Because he sent his lickspits to do his bidding. As he always does.”

“That is Lord Norrington, is it not?”

“It is.”

I squint out at the man. It’s the one who made a rude gesture to us. At first, I thought he was elderly. Now I realize his white hair is a wig. We are in a time when men, particularly those of noble birth, wore them. The other two wear their hair long and pulled back, like the two who confronted Nicolas in Hood’s Lane. Are they the same men? I cannot tell from here.