I felt frozen, unsure what to do. Should I turn and run back the way I’d come and hope I could find the ladder to the top deck in the dark? Or should I charge through the flames after the Butterfly? The damage was done, though, I realized. It was too late. Even if I caught the Butterfly now, this entire ship was going to go up in flames. There would be fatalities as the Sons of Liberty leaped into the sea to escape. Not only that, this ship was moored dangerously close to other ships. Ships that were also made completely of wood. On a night like this one, with the cold December wind pushing at the flames, the harbor would ignite. The entire town of Boston could go up in flames, for all I knew. I might be foggy about my history, but I knew what a fire could do in this time period, and it was devastating. What was supposed to be a violence-free protest would turn into one of the most horrendous events in America’s history. If America even existed after this, I realized, remembering the vital importance of this very night to the United States gaining its independence.

I’d just made up my mind to turn and run for help when a bucketful of ice-cold water hit me in the back, drenching me and knocking my hat off as it hit the crackling wall of flames. They sputtered for an instant, and some of them even went out, but the old wood of the ship was too flammable, and it quickly regained momentum. I turned to see who’d thrown the water just in time to catch the second bucketful right in the face. Elliot didn’t even pause to acknowledge me. He ripped off his coat and began beating hard at the last of the flames that were still valiantly trying to spread. Within moments they were out and the passageway plummeted into a smoke-filled darkness.

“Which way did he go?” Elliot asked.

“How did you—” I started, but my words were choked, and I bent over, hacking hard as the smoke tightened in my lungs. Elliot asked the question again, and I pointed down the passageway. He charged past me, using the sides of the narrow passageway as a makeshift crutch as he hobbled on his bad leg. Still coughing, I followed him, my wet hair hanging in soggy ropes around my face. I made a half-hearted attempt to find my hat in the dark but gave up almost instantly and stuffed my hair haphazardly into the neck of my shirt. It would just have to be enough.