Yet it was possible he still lived. The sea had all but frozen his flesh; any bleeding would be extremely slow, even were he alive.

Continuing to trace the wound, she discovered that it curved inward, angling down and across the man’s stomach. She couldn’t see further than the side of his waist, but a gut wound… if he had one, he was almost certainly dead, whether he’d already died or not.

Lying as he was, the pressure of his body combined with the effects of the icy sea might have held the wound closed, inhibited the usual bleeding.

She glanced at Brandon’s face, then at Will, alongside her. Chester was hovering at her shoulder. “I need to check the wound across his stomach. I need you to help me ease this side of him up-enough for me to look.”

The boys eagerly reached for the man’s left shoulder, his side. Settling on her knees, Linnet placed Brandon’s hands on the man’s shoulder, positioned Will’s hands beneath the left hip, set Chester ready to help support the shoulder Brandon would lift. “All together, then.” Linnet licked her lips, said a little prayer. She was too experienced in matters of life, death, and the sea to allow herself to become invested in a stranger’s survival; she told herself it was for the boys’ sake that she hoped this stranger lived. “Now.”

The boys heaved, pushed, propped. As soon as they had the man angled up and steady, Linnet ducked down, close to the heavy body, peered beneath to trace and follow the wound-then exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she’d held. Easing back, she nodded. “Let him down.”

“Will he be all right?” Chester asked.

She couldn’t yet promise. “The wound is less deep over his stomach-no real danger. He was lucky.” A scenario was taking shape in her mind-a picture of how the man had received such a wound. It should have been a killing, or at least incapacitating, slash. He’d escaped death by less than an inch, just before his ship had wrecked.