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oar around. The oars creaked and groaned as they battled once again with the furious waves. Kora bellowed orders, while Myrina stayed silent as she struggled down toward the prow, ready to help when they neared the stricken vessel. Iphigenia threw them a rope from the stern, and as soon as the two vessels were lashed together prow to stern, Myrina started pulling her friends aboard. The women from the Artemis swarmed over the gunwales, wildly grabbing the offered hands of their friends in the Apollo . Suddenly, another lurch of the damaged vessel sent the broken mast crashing through the thwarts so that the wild waves rushed in, and in no time the lower middle deck was filling up fast.
    “Where is Iphigenia?” Myrina cried.
    “There!” Kora yelled and pointed.
    Myrina’s heart sank when she saw that Iphigenia had gone back to the prow to check that there was nobody injured who might need help.
    “Come down here now!” Myrina screamed at her. “Curse her dutiful ways! You must come now!”
    But suddenly with another crash the heavy broken mast appeared to split the deck completely in two and Iphigenia was trapped on the far side and carried down into the dark swirling water.
    “No! No!” Myrina howled.
    Coronilla was at her side, the two of them still holding the rope that had lashed the broken Artemis to safety.
    “We must let go!” Coronilla shouted at her.
    “No! No!” Myrina cried. “I cannot lose her!”
    The broken half of the Artemis that was still fastened to the Apollo filled with water fast, the weight of it dragging the Apollo over dangerously to the side. Myrina’s hands were bleeding and torn, but still she clung to the rope that held the sinking, smashed stern of the Artemis . She stared out into the wild darkness after her friend.
    Kora strode across the deck and put her own strong hands over Myrina’s clenched fists. “You must let go, or we shall all be lost.”
    Coronilla let go of the rope and then at last Myrina opened her bloodied hands and let it tear through her palms into the sea.

Chapter Six
The Inhospitable Sea
    “C OME, TAMSIN NEEDS her mother.” Akasya took hold of Myrina and pulled her away from the gunwales, dragging her along toward the greased-felt tent they’d rigged up on the lower deck to give some small shelter. Tamsin was crouching there with Phoebe; both girls were silent, their eyes wide with fear. Myrina crumpled down between them as they both put their arms about her. She lay there, clinging tightly to them both for a few dreadful moments, but then she tried to struggle to her feet again. “I am captain, I must give the orders!”
    “No,” Akasya told her. “Kora is captain for now. You rest. Kora has seen that we are close to land!”
    Myrina felt as if her head was full of wool. “Then we have crossed the sea?”
    “So it seems! There’s land on either side of us! We struggle through a narrow passageway and Kora will try to run for the shore.”
    The ferocity of the storm continued and the ship swung violently through the darkness. The decks were crowded now with those who’d been saved from the Artemis . The women crouched together, quietly gritting their teeth against the wind and rain, each one trying to hold onto the thwarts or the gunwales. To the west for a few moments they glimpsed the distant lights of a city, but the Apollo was soon carried violently away from that glimmer of hope on into the wild darkness beyond.
    Kora’s sharp orders kept them calm, but at last, as they struggled to hold a course, one huge wave sent the Apollo lurching sharply up and then down, shaking the mast loose from its base. There was another sickening crack, as the mast and yardarm crashed down through the deck, just as it had on the Artemis ; it caught Myrina a sharp blow on the head. Black darkness flooded her mind as raging water swamped them, flinging women and girls wildly in all directions, sucking them down into its depths.
    Myrina became aware that she was