Torn-missing 4 Read Online Free PDF

captain,” Hudson said airily. “I read the winds. I read the waves. I see things no other man could.”
    Now the other men looked at each other nervously. Some in the back—the ones who’d fallen on the deck—were whispering together.
    The man with the gun glared at the whisperers, then aimed the gun more precisely at Hudson.
    “Do you see that you’re not the captain anymore?” he asked.
    Hudson looked directly at him for the first time.
    “I see that you will hang for mutiny,” he said. “You, and anyone who joins you.”
    This set off more whispering.
    “We’ll say you died a natural death,” the man with the gun said. “We’ll swear an oath together—nobody will speak the word
mutiny
. Nobody will ever know.”
    Hudson’s head shot up.
    “You’ll say you left me in the shallop,” he said. “At my request.”
    “Shallop?”
Jonah whispered. “What’s that?”
    “It’s the rowboat,” JB whispered back.” Or—kind of like one.”
    “He’s
asking
to be put out in a rowboat?” Jonah asked. “In ice?”
    “It beats being shot,” Katherine said in a shaky voice.
    “Would you deny an old sea captain his last wish?” Hudson pressed.
    Now the man with the gun stepped back to whisper with the others.
    Jonah caught bits and pieces of the argument, because the sailors weren’t very good at keeping their voices low.
    “But what if
we
need the shallop to go out fishing?” one sailor moaned.
    “Will this make us more or less likely to hang?” another yelped.
    Finally the man with the gun stepped back toward Hudson.
    “Fine,” he said. “You get the shallop. And any man crazy enough to follow you.” He nudged Hudson’s chest with the gun. “We get to keep the food you’ve been hiding.”
    “Wait—there’s not going to be any food in the rowboat, either?” Jonah asked.
    “Jonah—shh!” JB hissed.
    “Go get the others,” the man with the gun muttered to the sailors beside him. Two broke off from the groupand scurried down the stairs—Jonah had to admire the way they could walk so quickly even on the rolling ship.
    A few minutes later the men reappeared, carrying or prodding along a small group of even more sick-looking sailors.
    “Are those
corpses
?” Katherine asked. “Are they going to send Hudson out in a rowboat with a bunch of dead bodies?”
    “No, they’re not dead … yet,” JB whispered grimly. “Just very, very close. Hudson’s going to be out in a rowboat in the ice with a bunch of dying sailors.”
    Katherine sank down to the floor, sliding away from Jonah. She wasn’t trying to peek around the barrels anymore. She stared unseeingly at the dark wood of the cask before her.
    “I don’t get it,” she said. “Okay, sure, the sailors are mad at Henry Hudson because they’re ready to go home and he’s not. But those other guys are already dying. You don’t put dying people out in a rowboat in ice. You tuck them into bed and feed them, I don’t know, chicken noodle soup.”
    “When no one’s seen a chicken since they left England more than a year ago?” JB asked her. “When every bite that crosses a dying man’s lips is food that the others can’t have? When every man on this ship isalready scared he’s going to starve to death?”
    Jonah shivered. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or because JB’s words were so harsh. This ship was an awful place. It would be cold and brutal and nasty even if they weren’t floating through ice.
    Jonah poked at John Hudson’s unconscious tracer.
    “Hey, dude,” he whispered. “Don’t you want to wake up and be a hero? Fight back for your dad and all those dying sailors?”
    But of course Jonah’s hand slipped right through the tracer.
    Katherine turned her head toward her brother.
    “Jonah?” she said. “Do you think—”
    She broke off, because the sailors were screaming on the other side of the barrel now.
    “Watch out!”
    “No, no, don’t—”
    “He’s got a sword!”

Jonah sprang