From the lacquered cherubic detailing of the ruined deckhouse, once the Charlotte's broadest beam but now its highest remaining vantage point, Danae faced ferocious winds so heavy with sea spray they became an extension of the waves below. The ship had broken in two, and the half which once housed the crew and captain now was gone, scattered into tumbling sea polluted with shipwreck debris.<br/><br/>A musket had been fired from within the ship, the shredding of ruined balcony just below was evidence to Danae's eye. Jangling tatters of the tender boat pulleys remained, having been shot to pieces. It was an uncommon steadiness afforded the one who fired the musket, no peer of a trained soldier. A hunter, perhaps- one with the knowledge to brace and aim a musket, and to reload in pouring rain and rocking ship.<br/><br/>In the gap below Danae the second tender boat pushed onto the water. There was a brief exchange, and one of the Cocoa House girls dropped into it, pushed.<br/><br/>Corinne followed, and Zoe after. With each body dropped inside, water from the lapping waves breached over the tender boat's wall and pooled at the feet.<br/><br/>The fourth woman onto the tender boat was Margaret Hotspur, scholar of the Society of Antiquity. A musket tossed down from her hands for Corinne to catch, and immediately she fluttered a good ankle-twisting drop in the drenched hunter green of her chosen club.<br/><br/>Michelle of the White Egg Ornithological Society scrabbled down the slick wood after her and fell into the crowd of bodies. Now five to a tender boat, there was no more space to land, only to crush and pile together. A boat could hold eight in the most dire of circumstance, but already water from the storm was finding its way inside.<br/><br/>Seaworthy or not, the waves began to carry the last tender boat. The window to lash one's fate to that overpeopled vessel would soon close, as the paths of storm-tossed dinghy and sunken wreck diverged.<br/><br/>Yvonne began to ease from the gap, holding to the pieces of broken balcony like rungs of ladder. She was too cautious, and by the point of no return, the tender boat had lurched twice in the waves. There was a moment of wide-eyed panic, and Yvonne dropped into the raging water. Where she went next in the dark of night, none could say for certain.