Ross King - Ex Libris

'The bilges, Captain.'

He had been joined by Pinchbeck, who was holding a begrimed handkerchief over his nose. The two of them were picking their way carefully across the littered boards. Water had surged through the gunports, and the floor, a litter of quoins and soaked cartridges, was a half-inch deep. Quilter could hear the cries of the sick men in the cockpit.

'Stirred up like a soup, I should think,' the bo'sun added in a muffled voice.

'Never mind that,' Quilter snapped. 'Get a team of men down to the pumps. And fetch some canvas from the sail locker. Also a hawsebag, if you can lay your hands on one. If there's a leak it'll have to be fothered fast or we're drowned.' The bo'sun shot him an alarmed look. Quilter waved an impatient arm. 'Go on-quickly now! And find every man you can spare,' he called after Pinchbeck's retreating figure, 'and send him to the hold. The cargo will have to be shifted!'

Quilter clambered down the next ladder alone. The steerage and the wardroom both were empty, their jungles of hammocks dangling limply from the beams. When he reached the orlop deck he was surprised to see that it, too, was deserted. He had been expecting to find his three mysterious passengers here-frightened out of their wits, no doubt-but they were nowhere in sight. So far they had kept to themselves; not once had he seen them on the upper decks. Greengills, he had reckoned to himself with some amusement a few hours earlier. But now he saw that their cabins were empty.

Not until he reached the ladder into the hold did he hear any signs of life. The stink from the bilges was stronger now, bile rose in his gullet as he descended the ladder. Voices from below. There seemed to be some sort of dispute in progress. He snatched one of the oil-lamps swaying from a deck-beam and picked his way down the ladder one-handed.

The cargo deck had suffered the worst of all. The trembling light showed Quilter a promiscuous litter of pelts among the scattered dunnage and crates, several of which had been upturned against the bulkheads. Other crates had broken apart and were sliding back and forth with the motions of the ship. He took a few faltering steps, straining to hear the voices at the other end of the hold, not wishing to think about the damage done to his furs. The way was blocked by a couple of crates, out of which a half-dozen books were spilling.

Books? He gave them a kick to clear his path, then hoisted the lantern and picked his way forward, feeling water seep through his shoes. Why should the firm of Crabtree & Crookes have been sending books to England? And why such secrecy about them? He had carried contraband a few times before, but never had a book crossed through his lading-ports. He peered at the scattered volumes in the wavering light. A few had already been damaged by the water, he saw. Their pages, sodden and swollen, looked like the pleats of a lace ruff.

He raised his eyes. Perhaps a dozen shapes were visible at the far end of the hold, their shadows quaking and darting across the dubbed planks.

'You there! What's happening?'

No one turned. He picked his way through the obstacle course towards them. More books. As he searched for footholds on the deck he felt his gut tighten. Was this some mutinous congregation? If so, Quilter had snuffed out more than a few kindle-coals of mutiny in his time aboard the Bellerophon .

'Get to work,' he growled at the motionless shapes. We've been bilged. Do you not hear me? The load must be shifted. The pumps must be rigged. Quickly now! Before we sink!'

Still no one moved. Then he saw a sword glint in the lamplight and heard a voice.

'Stand back, I say!'

It was a moment before Quilter realised that the command was not directed at him. The wall of figures shifted a few steps backwards amid unintelligible murmurs of protest. Quilter was close enough to see their faces in the arc of light: the three strangers had been backed up against the wall by a good ten of his crewmen. One of the strangers, the larger of the two men, had raised his sword. What sort of strange business was this? He took another step forward, gripping the edge of a bulkhead, but then recoiled with a gasp. What in the name of-?

His foot froze in mid-air. Beneath his shoe, spilling from its splintered crate, was what appeared to be an enormous jawbone, one the size of a crossbow, with a dozen teeth glowing wickedly in the lamplight. Quilter lowered the lantern, blinking in confused alarm. Where the devil had that come from? He stepped over it only to recoil again, for beside the jawbone lay an even more startling sight, the corpse of a two-headed goat, complete with four horns. The creature was emerging from the wreckage of a shattered jar whose liquid, puddled on the floor, gave off a worse stench than the bilges. What, in the holy name of God…?

Soon other strange creatures appeared, hideous monsters that his disbelieving memory would construct only much later and then weave into his nightmares for years to come. They spilled from their crates as he lurched towards them, their coils and tentacles askew, their mouths toothsome and horribly leering. Still more were represented not in the flesh but by carvings-grotesque and menacing creatures with two heads and dozens of flailing limbs-or in an enormous book whose pages were riffling back and forth with each heave of the ship. As he passed the spreadeagled volume, Quilter caught sight of a demon with horns the size of a bull's raping a young maiden with its enormous black pizzle. Then, as the ship rolled, a hag with shrivelled breasts biting the neck of a naked figure, a man, prostrate beneath her. He stared at the page, aghast, feeling his nape prickle under his soaked tarpaulin. Another roll. The demon reappeared.

But worst of all these sights by far-the image that Captain Quilter would carry with him through his tormenting dreams and into his grave-was a corpse-like creature that lay supine in one of the boxes nearest the wall, a man with a mask for a face whose stiffened limbs were jerking and thrashing as if the brute were attempting to rise from its coffin. Even the doll-like eyes were rolling frantically and the head was twitching and cocking like that of a curious bird. Several of the midshipmen were staring back with expressions of stupefied wonder, one of them was crossing himself repeatedly as he muttered a prayer under his breath. Quilter stood rooted to the timbers as if spell-cast. Why, even the grinning lips were moving as if the creature were attempting to speak, to deliver some ghastly threat!

'Ah! Captain! You choose to join us at last.'

The voice startled Quilter to life. He raised his eyes from the creature's mad gesticulations to see the man with the sword bow and then, straightening, inscribe a few initials in the air with the point of his weapon. The ring of crewmen edged a skittish step backwards.

'Do please call off your men, won't you, Captain? Otherwise I shall be obliged to cut their throats.'

'Devil,' sneered one of the midshipmen, Rowley, a veteran dockside brawler. He had armed himself, Quilter saw, with a bodkin from the sail-locker. What was happening? Several of the others were also gripping improvised weapons-priming irons, a serpentine, even a couple of broomsticks-that they now raised in menace like a pitchfork army of angry villagers cornering the local vampire. Rowley took a step forward. 'Have you not killed enough men already?'

'I assure you I have done nothing of the sort.'

'Sorcerer!' someone piped up from the back of the pack. The powder-monkey. 'Murderer!'

'How very like a play,' retorted the stranger with a kindly smile, whetting his blade on the fetid air. 'But do you think we might perform it later? In another place? You heard the Captain. Our ship is-'

Rowley interrupted, lunging forward with a guttural cry, bodkin out-thrust. But the ship chose that second to lurch wildly to starboard as more water flooded into the bilges. The crewmen tottered sideways into the crates and the luckless midshipman, unbalanced by his leap, fell to one knee, his bodkin uselessly plying the empty air. When he tried to rise he discovered the tip of the blade at his collarbone.