A Siren at the Helm

Chapter XIV: The Great Escape

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There was the swish of air as someone ran past him and suddenly Esteban was being pulled towards the stone structure.

Amina tugged him forward by the arm of his coat. She climbed the staircase with surprising speed, dress or no.
"What are you doing?"
"Shut your grog hole and run!" She yelled back at him. He thought to himself that she wasn't giving him much of a choice.
Behind them Esteban could hear the thundering footsteps of his men combined with the roar of half the British navy chasing after them.

They slipped into a hallway and ran blindly down it. This time Esteban was certain that Amina had no idea where they were going. They rushed through corridors, up various flights of stairs and down a few again. Everything looked the same. Stone walls, a stone roof and unchanging stone floors that winded on without end.

Without warning they suddenly turned left. Amina practically ripped a door off its hinges and they were spat out into the open. Esteban blinked against the merciless midday sun that at once invaded his eyes. They were standing on top of the wall that surrounded the fort. On either side of them a waist high wall was the only thing that could keep a person on the path. On the other side was a drop straight down into either the fort's courtyard or the Jamaican jungle.

For a few seconds Amina searched for something before her face split into a smile.
"There," she pointed "I remember noticing it when they brought me in".
Esteban squinted into the blinding light and turned to the direction she was pointing in. Men in the courtyard were hauling monstrous planks of wood over the side of the fort's walls and into one of the watchtowers.
"I am going to need more of an explanation," Esteban wished that Amina would, just once, voice her ideas before madly following her own head. In the background he could hear the horde of navymen getting ever closer as they spoke.

Amina however, apparently did not deem an explanation necessary as she proceeded to drag Esteban towards the tower. Even in the midst off all this madness he could not help but notice that she had not once let go of him as they ran.

Upon reaching the tower they burst through the doorway and were met with shocked exclamations from the construction workers busy there. To their right Esteban spied the window through which the wood was being brought in and to their left was a staircase that no doubt led down to the courtyard. Quite unceremoniously, Amina gathered the workers and pushed them onto the staircase, slamming the door shut and locking it behind them. At that moment Esteban's men bumbled into the watchtower as well. He gulped as he saw the river of soldiers running behind them. Just as the first man reached the entrance Fish shut the door and there was a thunk as the navyman ran into it.

"Get on," Amina's voice came from the other side of the room. Esteban spun around to see her holding a rope that was fastened to a hoisting contraption in the corner. The other end was tied around a gigantic plank of wood that hung out the window. It registered with him that she wanted himself and his men to step onto the wood. The wood that was precariously suspended above a fifty foot drop.
"That," he pointed to the plank, "is about as safe as what is waiting for us on the other side of that door." Guards were now ramming something against the door that Fish had closed.
"Since when do pirates care for safety?" Amina smiled her brightest smile.
Esteban huffed and pulled the rope from her hand as he boarded the questionable wooden plank. It swayed slightly with his movements and he gripped the rope tighter as his vision swam at the sight of the ground. The ground that was so very far down.