Kage Baker - Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

When John opened his dazzled eyes he saw the rock, the only black and steady thing in that churning surging white nightmare. There it was to starboard. The Harmony seemed to dance round it. There it was to larboard, and then the Harmony struck, with a sound louder than the thunder or the wind, the loudest sound John had ever heard in his life, the rending splintering crunch that meant it was over.

He was choking under water in the scuppers. He rolled over into air, peering up the deck which sloped above him steep as a mountainside. He began to scale it, hand over hand, past other soaked and struggling men. A wave the size of a house came over them, scouring down the deck. John caught hold of the edge of the companionway and held on. When he came up for air and drank in breath, he found himself staring into Mrs. Waverly’s gray eyes. Her face was white, her hair down around her shoulders, streaming like amber seaweed.

“I will not die in there,” she said, inaudibly but John read her lips. She looked beyond him and John turned to see what she was staring at.

Sejanus and the mulatto were working at the ship’s boat, unlashing it from its cradle. No one was attempting to stop them, or help them; every man left on deck was making his slow determined way hand over hand to the companionway, shoving past Mrs. Waverly as they flopped inside.

“Anslow!” roared John, as Anslow slid past him. “The boat!”

Anslow shook his head, with a sick grin. “The rum,” he said, and vanished below, to get as drunk as he might before the sea got him. Mrs. Waverly screamed and John half-rolled to see another wave coming at the Harmony , charging at her bows, spume high as a cathedral, a white cliff looming. It took forever to break, but when it did it lifted the bow of the Harmony, tilting her on her beam-end before dropping her with a crash as it flooded over the deck. Sejanus, the mulatto and the boat all vanished in a confusion of shattered water and noise; John looked up and saw the prow of the boat coming at him. He grabbed it and shoved it away. The water receded and the Harmony settled again with a grinding lurch. The boat lay in the scuppers with Sejanus rolling in it. He looked stunned, struggled feebly.

Mrs. Waverly pushed herself from the companionway and slid down the deck to the boat. John let go and slid after her. He could hear planks splitting now, and a crack as the fore topmast broke and came crashing down, trailing all its rope and blocks. Mrs. Waverly scrambled nimbly over the gunwale into the boat and John hauled himself in after her. He lay there exhausted a moment, looking at her wet bare legs. She screamed again but the wave broke before he could raise his head to see it, a ton of white water smothering and blinding him, and he felt the boat pitch as the wave sluiced it clean off the deck and into the sea.

The motion changed at once. John opened his eyes and found the boat swamped and wallowing. Mrs. Waverly and Sejanus had risen to their knees and were baling with their cupped hands. John followed their example, there under the high black shadow of the Harmony . The oars had gone; he saw one floating away, nearly close enough to reach but not without pitching himself out of the boat. A bucket did go bobbing by and Sejanus was able to grab it, and resumed baling.

Another sharp crack, and a rending noise. John glanced over his shoulder and saw the Harmony ’s mainmast going over, falling toward them. It seemed to be shrieking as it came. John spotted Mr. Tudeley, clinging until the impact of the fall shook him loose like an insect. He dropped into the water and sank. A moment later his bellarmine jug, and then his head, broke the surface and he was yowling and spitting, flailing in the water. John and Sejanus put out their hands and hauled him into the boat. He sat huddled on a thwart, shivering, glaring at them.

A sudden beam of flaming light shone all around. The falling rain looked like drops of fire. They in the boat raised their heads, bewildered, and saw the red band of light at the far horizon, where the sun was setting in blood. It illuminated the wreck of the Harmony , on whose vertical deck not a man could be seen: her trailing tattered sails, her snapped yards and cordage all hanging down abandoned. She rolled like a dying animal, groaning. Her bowsprit stabbed into the wet air.

The boat bobbed aimlessly a moment and then began to move away from her, as a current took it. They were pulled around, circling the rock, and away. The sun winked out and for a little while there was a glow that marked where it had been, like a bed of coals. Then it was dark, unrelieved by any star. They were adrift on the wide night ocean, ascending mountains and descending valleys of sullen black water.

FOR A WHILE THEY took turns baling, until the rain stopped at last. John’s hearing returned by degrees, as the ringing faded from his ears. They rode the surge up and down.

“Have we any rum?” said Mr. Tudeley at last.

“No,” said Sejanus.

“What about food or water?”

“No.”

There was a lengthy silence, and at last Mr. Tudeley said: “I have read, in some books, that savages in the tropics will leap from their canoes into the water, when they spy a great fish swimming thereunder, and stab it with their knives and wrestle it back into the canoe. Would you perhaps give that a try, sir?”

“I was born in Massachusetts,” said Sejanus wearily. “I can dig for clams. If I have a clam rake.”

“Oh. I see.” Mr. Tudeley sounded petulant. “Well. Perhaps it won’t be necessary. Perhaps we’re near land. I descried land off to the west, at least I think it was the west, shortly before we wrecked. Had anyone listened to me and steered for it, I daresay we might now be at a secure anchorage in some pleasant harbor. May I say, Mr. James, that you owe me an apology for your contemptuous dismissal of my suggestion?”

“Oh, shut your mouth,” said John. He couldn’t make out the change in Mr. Tudeley’s features, in the dark, but he felt the lurch as Mr. Tudeley sprang to his feet.

“Damn you, sir! I shan’t be spoken to in that manner, do you hear me?” Mr. Tudeley screamed, and sprang forward with his fists raised. “Not by you nor any other grinning ruffian, ever again!”

Perhaps he meant to fling himself on John. John thrust out his open hand, with rather more force than he had meant to use, and caught Mr. Tudeley square in the chest. Mr. Tudeley teetered back and stepped with both feet on the gunwale of the boat. There he danced a long second, his arms windmilling frantically as he tried to regain his balance while the boat tilted dangerously to that side. Both John and Sejanus threw themselves forward to grab him, and collided. Their combined weight was enough to capsize the boat. John heard Mrs. Waverly say a word he hadn’t thought ladies knew, before he went under the dark water.

He broke the surface with a harsh gasp and looked about frantically for the boat. It glimmered faintly a little way off, keel upmost, and if it hadn’t been painted white he’d have missed it. He swam for his life and caught hold, dragging himself up its side just as a pair of white arms appeared from the other side, clawing and grasping. He nearly yelled in horror, thinking it was a sea-phantom; but it was only Mrs. Waverly. She caught hold of his hands.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” said John.

“Here I am,” said Sejanus out of the near darkness, and after a moment’s splashing he found them and grabbed hold of the keel. “Did we lose Winty?”

“Good riddance,” growled John.

“Damn your eyes, you whoreson dog,” said Mr. Tudeley, who had swum up beside him.