Kira made it down far enough to fall to the deck safely and stumbled to the mast, gripping it as another wave roared past and tugged eagerly at her. Her arms shaking with exhaustion, Kira felt like throwing up, but her stomach couldn't manage the effort. Still feeling half-stunned, Kira looked to make sure that Jason had made it to the mast.

Something felt wrong, Kira realized. The ship felt more sluggish. Had they taken in too much sail? She looked at the nearest one of the crew. "Why does the ship feel like this?" she shouted to be heard over the storm.

The sailor pointed downward. "We've taken on a lot of water!" she yelled back.

Taken on water. All of those waves across the deck, the pummeling of the seas, driving water between the planks of the hull. "The bilge pumps. We need to work the bilge pumps." Kira turned to the other sailors. "Get below and start working the pumps!" She looked back at the quarterdeck, where the shape of the captain and the other two sailors lashed to the helm could barely be made out through the murk of the storm. "Someone has to tell the captain."

"I'll do it," Jason volunteered, then lunged away before she could object. Kira watched Jason stagger across the deck as it pitched and rolled, breathing a gasp of relief as he reached the base of the quarterdeck before another wave washed across the deck. She felt a sense of amazement that the boy from Urth had agreed to run that risk. What had become of the sullen Jason who had alternated complaints with a superior attitude?

Jason came back, moving frantically as another wave rose, reaching the safety of the mast just before another deluge swept across them. "The captain says we need to keep those pumps going! No letup!"

She thought of the labor involved in driving the pumps, feeling the ache of weariness already filling her. "Let's get going."

The other crew members were already below. Kira and Jason rushed to the hatch and tumbled through together, pulling it closed after them. She had a moment of realization how much she and Jason were touching each other and how little it bothered her, how much in fact that contact was reassuring.

Belowdecks offered less a refuge than a different kind of terror as they stumbled through the darkness of the hold to the dim lanterns illuminating the sailors working the pumps. Inside, with the waves crashing against the hull, the ship groaning and planks cracking under the strain, everything tossing and jerking around, and the howl of the wind still easy to hear, it felt as though the entire world was coming to an end and about to collapse about them. When Kira reached the pumps, two sailors were working them slowly while staring around the badly lit hold, the rest of the crew huddled nearby.