Marie Brennan: Voyage of the Basilisk

My thoughts were not on such matters that day, but even then I knew it might be difficult to keep me informed. I sighed, saying, “It will be difficult to write to me regardless, as I shall be rather peripatetic for a while.”

“But what of the dragons?”

Even had I possessed the courage to defy that unnamed gentleman of the Synedrion, I could not change our itinerary now. Although there was room for diversion in it—as this account will demonstrate—we could not divert all the way to Bayembe, just so I could look in on the dragons in the rivers. “I’m afraid there is very little I can do from where I am, sir. If they are healthy, then surely that is enough.”

He looked dissatisfied. Had I given the Yembe such a high opinion of my knowledge that they believed I could resolve this question over lunch in a distant country? Or had they expected me to come to their aid in person? If so, it pained me to disappoint them. But there was nothing for it: too many things prevented me from going.

As a sop to Wademi, I said, “I anticipate a great expansion in my knowledge of dragons, thanks to this expedition. It is possible I will learn something of use to you.”

Which, as it happened, was true—albeit in a roundabout way. But that was no comfort to him at the time, and so we both left our meeting in less than good spirits.

This was my third time departing from Scirland, and by now the process was beginning to feel familiar. I had put my affairs in order and packed everything I anticipated needing to the point where I could not do without—as packing for shipboard life requires great thriftiness when it comes to volume. I had bid farewell to the family members with whom I was still on good terms, which is to say my father and my brother Andrew, and (less warmly) my brother-in-law Matthew Camherst. Leaving Natalie in Falchester, Tom, Abby, Jake, and I went down to Sennsmouth, where our vessel awaited the start of our great adventure.

For the sake of the maritime enthusiasts among my readership, and also so that my story may be more clearly understood, I will take a moment to acquaint you with the Royal Survey Ship Basilisk, which was to be my home for most (though not quite all) of my voyage.

It had, during the Nine Years’ War, been constructed as what they call a “brig sloop,” which is to say it had two masts, both of them rigged with square sails. Following the conclusion of the war, some enterprising shipwright transformed it into a bark by refitting it with a third or mizzen mast, lying astern of the first two, with a sail rigged fore and aft—for what reason, I am not sailor enough to say. The captain tried to explain the addition to me on more than one occasion, but my head was full of dragons and other such matters, leaving not much room for the finer points of nautical engineering. (And nowadays, I fear, my memory is not what it once was. Whatever understanding I once had is long gone, as I did not see fit to record it in my journals.)

She was a pretty thing, the Basilisk was, though perhaps my opinion is coloured by the memories of my experiences there—which, though not without their dark spots, are still on the whole pleasant. She had seen little action during the war, and therefore had taken little damage, so her railings and hull were bravely painted in white and green. Her measurements were seven or eight meters from one side to the other, and nearly thirty from stem to stern.

This sounds impressive, and when I first approached the vessel, I indeed found her enormous. Of course, what is spacious when seen from the dock or on a first tour rapidly becomes much smaller when it is your entire world. Before the first month was out, I felt I knew every last inch of that boat, at least from the deck on down. The rigging I left to others, except when my observations could not be made without a higher vantage point.

Her captain was Dione Aekinitos, and it takes some restraint on my part not to refer to him as “the mad Dione Aekinitos” every time I write his name. He certainly had that reputation before we came aboard, and did nothing to persuade me it was undeserved during my time there.

At first he seemed perfectly ordinary. To begin with, he lacked both peg-leg and parrot, which certain childhood stories had convinced me were the necessary accoutrements of any dashing captain. He kept, or attempted to keep, his dark, curly hair confined in a tail at the nape of his neck, but strands were forever escaping to blow in the wind. How they did not drive him mad, I cannot say, for I was more than once minded to cut my own hair off entirely and save myself the irritation. (Though in the end, the choice was not mine to make.) He was tall enough that he could stand fully upright only in the open air—the interior of a ship being rather a cramped place—and he had both a laugh and a bellow that could and did carry from the stern to the very tip of the figurehead’s nose.

His madness lay not in outward appearances, nor even in daily behaviour, but simply in the fact that he considered the sea a challenge . Like all sailors who survive for longer than a year, he had a healthy respect for the dangers the ocean poses… but “respect for” and “fear of” are not quite the same thing. One had no sooner to tell him a thing was difficult than he would immediately begin formulating plans to test himself against it.

As you may imagine, this gave him certain troubles in the keeping of crew. But over the years since the war, he had, by a cycle of attrition and recruitment, driven away all those who were not willing to tolerate his eccentricity and put together an assortment of men who did not mind overmuch. Very few of them were married, though most if not all availed themselves of the hospitality to be found in ports the world over, and I have no doubt that between them they could crew another ship with the natural children they had sired. The notion that their captain might get them killed in some doomed attempt to navigate an unnavigable channel or outrace a lethal storm was one they accepted with philosophical resignation. So long as they were paid on time, all was well.

These souls—some sixty-five in number—were to be my companions for the next two years. To that list I added Tom Wilker, Abby Carew, and my son, plus others encountered along the way. My social world had been restricted before, but through solitary hermitage, not confinement among a group of people whom I could not escape. I had my cabin, but I shared it with Abby and Jake, and furthermore I—who had enjoyed so much of the natural world in my past—could not endure being cooped up in it for long. I had no desire to escape into the rigging, however, as Jake habitually did (my son having taken to the ropes with the ease and confidence of the monkey he sometimes resembled). The best I could do, when the company became too much, was to seat myself in the bow of the ship, as far forward as I could go, and pretend there was nothing in the world but myself and the sea.

But I get ahead of myself. It was a bright Graminis morning when we arrived on the dock in Sennsmouth, baggage in tow, to get ourselves situated aboard the Basilisk . The captain had sent the jolly-boat to collect us, while a larger tender waited to take our gear; the ship’s draught was too great for it to come right up to the docks. We therefore had what seemed like all the time in the world to survey our new home as the sailors rowed us out.