It reassured my master to watch the men work with such loyal efficiency as they removed the water by hand held bucket.
By the end of the day, the senior engineer approached my master.
“We are ready master.”
“Excellent. We leave at once.”
It had been three weeks since we had first started carrying the Godforsaken ship. The land was terribly dry and unforgiving. I was starting to question the wisdom of my master’s decision to naively cross an alien land in the hope that it was a narrow body of land with a northern ocean nearby.
But still we pressed on through both day and night with carrying teams rotating constantly. We numbered fifteen hundred men, and it required nearly a thousand at any one time to lift the ship. Teams of ten on each carrying oar would rotate further down every half an hour until they reached the end of the ship and were thus allowed a break.
In doing so, each man would obtain a four-hour break throughout a twenty four hour period.
By the end of the third day and the death of ten men who literally pushed their bodies to death, my master realized that carrying the ship through the night was going to be impossible.
The days continued on, and we traveled a little less each day.
By the end of the second week we no longer had enough healthy men to rotate the carrying shifts through the day. For a while the men succeeded in maintaining the ship’s movement with a twenty-minute break in the middle of the day. Then, their ability to carry it became less, and they were no longer able to carry the ship throughout the entire daylight hours.
By the third week, my master accepted that the ship could only realistically be moved for four hours each day. The rest of the time the men would be required to gather provisions and prepare the land in front of them, which often required the felling of many trees to allow the movement of the great ship.
As we reached the start of the fifth week, our numbers had dwindled to the point that the entire ship could only be moved every other day and even then for only a matter of hours.
With my master’s encouragement, the men were able to maintain this effort until the eighth week when they were no longer able to move the ship more than twenty or so feet in the day.
“We’ll rest here for a week if we have to,” my master said. “You have all honored me with your effort, but to go on further at this pace would be to ask for failure. We shall rebuild our health and then continue. Surely, the sea must be close. I can smell the salt in the air.”
I have an unusually sensitive nose, and I was certain my master was merely encouraging the men.
The men rested for an entire week and then commenced again.
But the rest time hadn’t improved their condition.
If anything, it had made things worse. Prior to the break, men had continued to work with injuries. Now, those injuries had been allowed to fester.
Over the course of the next week, more people died and many more became no longer capable of carrying heavy weights.
Again, my master ordered a meeting with his most trusted advisers and again, he requested my attendance — although for what purpose, I did not know. I certainly didn’t have any expertise in the area to offer.
This time, he did not ask for our opinion on how to solve the problem, but instead demanded each person to identify equipment and materials on board the ship that could be discarded.
It then took another week to decide on which provisions to discard and which equipment could be done without.
This time our efforts appeared to have been worthwhile, and the ship continued to move in a northern direction for a few hours each day. But within a few days we were back to removing more items from the ship’s complement.
It was on our ill-fated crew’s eighty-ninth day that, despite my master’s encouragement and his orders, the ship was no longer capable of being moved.
It sunk into the mud-soaked land.
Each day, she seemed to rest lower, her new master gaining an unmovable strangle hold.
This time, the Mahogany Ship had found her final resting place.
I was prepared to die so that my master may succeed, but had no intention of leaving my master to ruin.
Over the next three weeks it became overly apparent to everyone involved that the new land, rich in beauty as it was sparse and desolate, had no means of providing for the remaining men. Working parties had been sent out in all directions to fend for themselves.
As each leader returned, only one thing was certain.
The crew of the Mahogany Ship must abandon her and disperse if anyone was to survive. And survive we must, because we had discovered the most powerful weapon the world had ever known. If only we could reach our homeland.
“The master wants to speak with you,” said the chief navigator.
“Just me?” I asked.
“Just you.”
“Where is he?”
“In his master cabin — where else?” The navigator shook his head disloyally. “He spends hours each day inside there, just looking at it — you know? I think it’s driven him quite mad. Power does that, you know, and we’ve all witnessed just how much power that thing yields.”
Ordinarily I would have reprimanded even someone as senior as the chief navigator for attacking my master. But I could see what was happening and knew that now was not the time to overplay my master’s authority. I could feel that there would be mutiny before all persons succumbed to starvation.
“I’ll go to him immediately.”
I climbed the steps up and into the master cabin at the aft of the grand ship. It was larger than the average house back home and fit for a king. In this case, it housed my master, a would-be king, and wielder of the most powerful weapon mankind had ever built.
“Rat Catcher — have you come alone?” my master asked immediately.
“Yes, Master.”
“Good. Very good.” In the middle of the room stood the magnificent weapon, its sparkling gems glistening in the dim light of a candle. My master spoke, but at no time did his eyes look away from the evil weapon that had driven us to our current state. “Five weeks ago, I believe every single man aboard this ship would have happily given their lives if I asked them to. But as you know, a lot has changed in that time. Hungry men will do many things they never would have previously dreamed of if they are hungry enough.”
“Master…”
“Wait… I’m not finished. I cannot maintain command of the Mahogany Ship for much longer, and I cannot risk losing my master’s great weapon. So I will tell you what must be done.”
“You will always be my master!” I protested.
“Of course I will. You always were a fool, and a foolish man alone dies serving a master who cannot provide for him basic sustenance.” My maser’s hand almost touched the precious stone, but then withdrew it as though it were poison.