Neither Hannah nor Genevieve were outwardly wounded, but Hannah remained in distress, chattering from the cold water. She murmured something about the garden of Ezra as Genevieve helped her from the wreck into the lurching, storm-tossed tender boat at an awkward stumble, into the Blackwell ladies' grabbing hands. Genevieve followed with a rude tumble.<br/><br/>Eloise became mortified there at the very precipice of rescue. She made to double back for some alternative, and felt for the dagger beneath Aloisa's sash. Eyes met, Eloise's firmly set in this course of action. Her resolve steeled, knowing that she'd been caught thieving. This was necessary, she seemed to say; the dagger would see them through this accursed night if Aloisa would not. Her body followed the toss of another violent, frothing wave, backward into the tender boat. Then came the kick, and the full knowledge that if that dagger ended up in her hand as the boat flung into the mercy of the waves, it was only because Aloisa allowed her to take it.<br/><br/>"Markovia is North," Delphine Bordeaux yelled over the force of the storm. And then they were gone, shuffled into the turbulant seascape, swallowed into the dark night among so many scattered pieces of the proud ship.<br/><br/>There was no sign of Camille now. Neither Giselle who had remained in the decimated saloon nor Brigitte were to be found amid the wreckage. Cat Grosbelhomme had never returned from the now drowned and dark ship's hold.<br/><br/>But there were voices, and by a slippery climb over the deckhouse's skirt or dark grope back through the belowdecks to the ship's rudder they could be followed.<br/><br/>Margaret Hotspur was there laboring with Corinne to push a second craft into the water.<br/>"Desperate times call for desperate measures," said Mlle. Hotspur. A good six foot drop the tender boat splashed, and then without passengers to weight it, it spun like a lost leaf on the motion of the water, threatening to sweep away as soon as the current separated it from its grind against the hull.<br/>"Quickly now!"<br/><br/>Mlle. Hotspur pushed Sage, and with a scream the dilettante fell into the tender boat below.