«Ahh!»
Deciding to delay his therapy a little longer, he looked back down at the dock. A procession of Guardsmen dressed in the colors of Nakja-Mur’s clan had arrived and Nakja-Mur himself was ascending the gangway with Alan Letts and Jim Ellis. Despite the mess and the chaos on deck, Chief Gray managed to assemble a side party to receive them and the sound of his bosun’s pipe twittered from below. A few moments later, the two men and the rotund Lemurian leader were admitted to the bridge. Out in the open air, salutes were exchanged and Jim and Alan extended their hands in heartfelt relief. To Matt’s surprise, Nakja-Mur enveloped him in a crushing embrace.
«Ah!» Matt said again, clenching his eyes shut.
«I am so glad you and your ship did not die!» the High Chief exclaimed in much improved English. He was oblivious to the pain he’d accidentally caused.
«Me too,» Matt agreed, once he could trust his voice. «Nerracca wasn’t so lucky.»
Nakja-Mur nodded grimly. «A terrible thing. I am deeply grieved and angered by its loss. As I am for Revenge.» Matt remembered that almost the entire crew of Revenge had come from Baalkpan.
«Revenge died wchine, the damn Japs got my spice locker! The last black pepper in the whole wide world’s just. gone! Sneakiest stunt they’ve pulled since Pearl Harbor!» Lanier’s tone began to return to normal as he seethed. «Bastards!»
Tabby was surprised by the cook’s priorities, but Isak and Gilbert both nodded solemnly. «It’s a hell of a thing,» Isak agreed. «How’s your gut feelin’, Earl?» Lanier glared up at him.
«None of your goddamn business, snipe!» He straightened up on the stool as best he could and pulled his shirt closed over his grimy bandage. «Now you’ve stolen the best sammiches I had left, why don’t you quit goofin’ off and get back to work! I can’t fix the whole ship by myself!»
They crossed the deck and ducked under the bridge beside the radio shack. Clancy was inside with the hatch open. His earphones were on his head and he nodded as they passed. Who knew what he was listening for. Going through the hatchway that led onto the foredeck, they emerged into sunlight again. Finally they’d found a place that hadn’t been damaged the night before — beyond a few dents and scratches from shell fragments — and so, for now at least, it was probably the quietest place on the ship. They crawled up under the splinter shield of the number one gun and stretched out in the sparse shade beneath it.
«Laan-yeer is a strange man,» Tabby observed at length. «He think whole ship — just so he have galley.»
«Yeah,» Isak agreed from beneath his right arm, which rested across his eyes. «But we’re sort of the same way, I guess. Nothin’ really matters except our boilers. Spanky has it tough. He has to worry about the boilers and the engines. Other stuff too. Chief Gray’s like that with the topsides. But that’s just the way it is. Everybody has a particular part of the ship that it’s their job to take care of. Nobody could do it all.»
«Except the cap-i-taan,» Tabby said thoughtfully. «He have to worry about everything. Not just all ship, but everything.»
They lay quietly for a moment, listening to the racket from aft.
«Yeah,» Yager breathed at last. «I sure wouldn’t want his job.»
MAELSTROM
Coming from Roc in February 2009
There was a new rumbling sound below, but it went unnoticed by the eight-year-old girl swaying in the sailcloth hammock. Her slumber was already filled with the incessant rumbling and groaning of the working hull and the endless, hissing blows of the pounding sea. Then came another rumble and another, each more insistent than the last. Still she didn’t stir from her dream. In it, she’d been swallowed by a leviathan, just as she’d dreaded since before the strange voyage ever began. Every night, as soon as the lids closed over her large, jade-colored eyes, the same terrible dream came again. She was in the very bowels of the leviathan and the rumbling, hissing roar was the sound of its belly digesting the ship. The voices came — there were always voices — excited, urgent. Voices in a tone entirely appropriate. Of course there would be dreadful voices in a dreadful dream. She knew what would happen next.
She was facedown on the thundering deck and only her tangled bedding protected her delicate nose from the fall. Her eyes were instan feet.
«We must put her in a boat this instant!» he cried. His voice had returned to what was surely a more normal growl.
«My thanks, good sir,» Kearley replied. «I appreciate your assistance.» The man spared him an incredulous glance. Now that he recognized the girl, there was no question he would die to save her.
The girl was oblivious to the exchange. Around her in the darkness there was no longer any doubt: her terrible dream had come to life. Helpless canvas flailed and snapped and the once fascinating scientific intricacy of the rigging was a hopeless mare’s nest of tangled lines. A constant, deadly hail of blocks and debris fell from above. Beyond her immediate surroundings, she dimly saw the bow, twisting and bent, jackknifing ever upward until the bowsprit pointed at the sky. The fragile paddle wheels on either side, amidships, resembled twisted flowers, shorn of their petals. Steam and smoke jetted from the funnel. In the center of this catastrophe, the deadly sea coursed into the ship.
Then, past the bow, coal dark against the starry horizon, she saw a monstrous form. It was clearly the great leviathan that had destroyed the ship — possibly entirely by accident. It may have simply risen from the depths, unknowing and unconcerned, to inhale a cavernous lungful of air. Perhaps only then did it discover the water bug on its back. No matter, it noticed it now. Even as the girl watched with unspeakable dread, the island-sized creature completed its leisurely turn and came back to inspect the wounded morsel in its wake. The big man saw it too.
«Into a boat!» he bellowed, carrying her to the larboard rail, where a dozen men frantically tore at the quarter-boat tackle. «Make way, damn ye! Can ye not see who I bear?» A wide-eyed young officer motioned them through the gathering throng that regarded the boat with frantic, greedy eyes.
«Are you a sailor?» the officer demanded of the big man. «You are not one of the crew.»
«I was a sailor once,» he admitted. «And a soldier. I’m a shipwright now, bound for the yard at the company factory.»
The officer considered. «Right. Take her aboard under your protection. As soon as you launch, you must hold the boat close so we may put more people aboard.» He cast an appraising glance. «You do look strong enough.»
Before the girl could form a protest, she was hoisted over the rail by the man’s powerful arms and deposited in the boat. Quick as a goat, he followed her and turned to accept the bundles hastily passed to him. A sailor jumped aboard too, encumbered by a double armful of muskets, which he quickly stowed. The girl found her voice.
«Master Kearley!» she wailed. «Master Kearley, you must come too!»
«I will, my dear,» came a muted cry beyond the desperate mass.
«Lower away!»
The boat dropped swiftly to the water and struck with a resounding smack.
«Fend off, you lubbers!» came the cry from above. «Hold her steady, now! I will send them down two at a time on the falls!» The big man looped a rope around his powerful forearm and pulled with all his might while the seaman pushed against the hull with an oar.
«Let ’em come!»
The girl gave voice to such a sudden, piercing, gut-wrenching shriek of terror that for an instant, in spite of their own fear, everyone froze to look. A massive