Go to sea, they said. It'll be fun, they said.

You're wet. No – that's too kind of a word for it. Bedraggled. Yes. Yes, that much rather suits how intensely sodden you are. Everything – right down to your skivvies – is wet through. You're also cold. Again, a too pedestrian word, but as the most literate on the Hope, from whom should you borrow a Thesaurus? A harsh Northerly is scouring the deck, blisteringly cold (is that an oxymoron? Never mind – now is hardly the time). It feels like ice-shards are tearing at your insides. The sou'wester and waxed cape are doing nothing to keep the water from both above and below reaching you; doing nothing against the wind either.

You think there'd be salt in your nose, if your nose was warm enough to supply olfactory senses. But you can still remember the smell of the briny deep, from a calmer day than this, when Nehalennia wasn't so angry. Bright ozone, sharp salt, and wet-green bladderwrack. You can taste it though, as each collapse of the swell brings spray into your mouth, gushing over the side of the Hope.

A rope bites your hand, the coarse fibres like a hundred little kitten-claws sharpening on the frozen flesh of your palm. The pain of it brings you back from maudlin thoughts and unpleasant sensations, back onto the pitching deck, back to the First Mate hollering at you, his face pink and wet with spray.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Hold fast, there, lad!" he bellows. "Hold fast to the Hope! She'll not let ye drown. Not so long as ye hold fast!"

Your feet slide, skitter-scatter as the deck rises steeply against the crest of an onrushing wave. It's impossible to stand your ground, sure footing a distant dream on the slick, dark timbers. But you hold, as instructed, tight as you are able against the clawed rope and the tug of gravity, inevitable as death.

For interminable moments you hang, ragdoll against the false twilight, swallowed by the intense blue darkness. You would wonder if you've finally drowned, floating between the inky deck and swollen charcoal clouds, if it weren't for the way all other colour – the brass of the fittings, the white of your shirt – glows with a holy luminosity. Perhaps the Chaplain was right. Perhaps God is in everything. Perhaps this is St Elmo come to ferry you with wings of green fire to your eternal rest. Perhaps- 

Your thoughts are rudely curtailed by the ship cresting the wave and the deck rising to meet you. It's no small wonder that you don't shatter, every frozen bone jarring against the dark wood as you land. You lie there, coarse rope still clutched in hand, and think: should you find him again, you'll knock the block off the rotten sod who said this would be fun.