image [https://i.imgur.com/15eGPa6.jpg]

beat to quarters – To summon a crew of a sailing man o’ war to their stations for battle.

tide over – To make a small amount of food and supplies last. When there is no wind to fill the sails, the ship is “becalmed,” and sailors must float with the tide. They are said to “tide themselves over."

image [https://i.imgur.com/sXLpOjz.jpeg]

ANY MAN COULD SEE these waters were unsafe. It wasn’t just that the waters were choppy—they were, and very—but there were several Spanish ships floating somewhere in all this vastness, and there had been shots fired and chases given, but either storms or unlucky winds had allowed their quarry to backtrack to safer waters. About the only boon the crew of the Lively had received lately was that the sun had returned, and along with it the proper moon and stars. With the heavens in order—that was the new phrase seamen were using when things were the way they should be, “the heavens are in order”—it became easier to navigate. All the normal charts and rutters became relevant again, distances were not as distorted, and the Leviathans were not as active.

Ishmael Fuller sat huddled in the ward-room with Captain Vhingfrith and Mr. Dawson, the ship’s pilot. They all surrounded the desk like they meant to attack it. Fuller thought the other two men looked haggard, and imagined he looked very much the same after almost two days without sufficient sleep. As soon as he would pass out in his hammock, he would be roused by men on dog-watches, saying they might have spotted the enemy ship on the horizon, only to have it be a false alarm.

The captain and the pilot kept checking the charts, then looking at Fuller. He had been the ship’s navigator for over a year now, had almost decided against sailing with the Devil’s Son again, but things had gotten strange in Port Royal recently and events demanded he find more work, and soon.

Fuller had family back in England that expected some of his wages sent home, to help pay the barristers representing his son, Job, who was in trouble with the law again for theft and deceit. Following in his old man’s footsteps. Much of Fuller’s body had started to fail him in recent years, gout was in his joints and his hip hurt at all hours, but at least his mind had not yet gone to fog, and his eyes were sharp enough to read the heavens and seas. Sharp enough that he was still highly valued at sea, despite not being able to do much other work.

“Well, Mr. Fuller, your thoughts?” said Vhingfrith as he sipped wine.

Fuller looked the captain in his cat’s-eye. It always made him feel just a little bit uncomfortable, feeling as if the cat’s-eye allowed him to pierce the flesh as well as it did the night. Some in Port Royal said it did. Some on this ship said it had.

“I’m certain the cays we passed yesterday were these here,” Fuller said, sliding his magnifying glass over to a part of the chart where some cartographer had sketched in the details of the island chain twenty years ago or more. “See that teardrop-shaped one there…that’s the one that was to starboard. And this triangular one? That was to port. I sighted the stars last night through the sextant, and I’m certain of their distance to the horizon. And our last check of the seafloor shows very little loose shale. We are right here,” he said, tapping his finger in an empty patch of sea. “Since the heavens are now in order, we can safely assume the winds were no different for our quarry than they were for us.”

“But when last Conroy spotted them from the nest, they were heading two points off our starboard bow,” said Dawson, scratching at the beard he’d been growing these last months.

“Aye, and if I’m not mistaken, I saw the glint of an anchor through the spyglass, just before they passed over the horizon. I believe they used the same club-hauling trick as last time, and rode the winds nor’nor’east, to here.” Fuller moved his finger along the open water. “Know why, Captain?”

Vhingfrith smirked. “I’ve a guess.”

“Then will you two gents clue me in?” asked Dawson testily. “I mislike your games o’ secrecy.” Lack of sleep and a near constant attendance of the steering had made him ornery.

“We lost them at night,” the captain said, smiling and clapping the pilot on his shoulder. “And with the sun’s return, they could reasonably expect the sea to cool. And we all felt that warm, moist wind rolling in when they disappeared. No doubt the León Coronado’s captain noted it, too.”

Dawson winced in consternation. To Fuller, it looked like the answer was slowly dawning on him. “The fog we saw?”

Fuller nodded. “That’s my guess.” This morning they had seen, at the very limits of the spyglass’s reached, a cloudy line drawn thinly across the horizon, distorting everything. There were phenomena that could cause such mirages, but both Fuller and Vhingfrith had agreed it was likely no mirage at all. “They went straight into that fog.”

“But that would lead them straight back into English waters. Into Captain Rogers’s ship.”

“Indeed,” Vhingfrith said. “Which means, if Mr. Fuller is correct, we must’ve hit them harder than even we believed. Perhaps they were taking on water, and feared being in irons if the wind turned against them. Their captain predicted the fog, which is common this time of year, and he sailed that way when it became dark, hoping we would keep chasing along her last known course. So then, they club-hauled themselves and spun along a different trajectory. Or tried. They were at the mercy of the wind.” The captain tapped his chin, thinking.

Dawson sighed and pushed himself away from the desk. “Shall I bring her about, set a course?”

“Yes, I should think so,” Vhingfrith said. “And beat to quarters. Let’s have Serjeant McCullough and his marines ready for boarding action, should we get lucky. And an extra ration of rum for the man that spies the Coronado first. Tell them I’m proud of them so far and—what’s funny?”

Fuller was laughing.

“I’d like to know, too,” said Dawson.

“Hear this man! Months ago he was despised by almost every man up on that deck.” He gestured upwards. “And he despised them just as much. Oh, no, don’t go denying it, Captain! We all know it’s true. Just like we also know something dearly has changed. Where that change stems from, and how long it’ll stay that way, I don’t know. But it’s a good change, and I’m glad to say most of the men see it that way, too.” He shrugged. “They love you. Hero of Port Royal!”

Vhingfrith shrugged on his coat and pulled on his tricorne. “I’m at least glad to have surprised you, Mr. Fuller,” he said. “You have all surprised me, as well. Half the men on this vessel will never be allowed to set foot in England as free men ever again, yet you all fight for her as I do. You see her relevance. Her importance to the world.” He nodded approvingly. “How happy that the Lively can serve England so richly, and has sons such as you to defend her.”

Fuller glanced over to Dawson, and they shared a look. He doesn’t understand, Fuller thought. He is such a strangely naïve man—clever, yet naïve. They don’t fight for England. The men of the Lively fight because he helped bring down a Spanish nao during the first days of the Cataclysm, and because, after the Cataclysm, when all of Port Royal almost burned, he and Woodes Rogers rallied the people of Royal and fought off two invasions by the Spaniards, who sought to take control of Royal after the monsters tried to end it all.

The men don’t care about England. They care only about glory and treasure. But let you dream, Captain Vhingfrith. Just let you dream of a world that fits more suitably to your estimation of honour and righteousness.

“Well, I’m glad we’re decided on a course,” said Dawson. “Makes me feel a lot better.”

“Aye, me too,” said Fuller. “ ’Specially with these seas filling up. We’ll need that eye o’ yours, Cap’n, make sure we don’t fall afoul of the Villain or his like.”

“No fear of that, Mr. Fuller,” said Vhingfrith. “He’s never been known to plunder out here.”

“The Villain?”said Dawson, gaping at them both. “He’s out here?”

Fuller sighed and shrugged. “The people we met back in that fishing village on Cat Island, they said they’d heard from a sloop’s captain that anchored there that Oddsummers was floatin’ around out here somewhere, that he had some crew with plague helping him raid small ships.”

“I hadn’t heard that.” Dawson suddenly looked troubled.

“I shouldn’t worry, Mr. Dawson, it’s only a rumour,” said Vhingfrith. “If the Villain is indeed out here it must mean that he’s desperate, and fleeing. He’s cheated death enough times, the ground is now shrinking beneath his feet. I shouldn’t think he would risk popping his head up to interfere with us, not with the Duke on our side.” The Devil’s Son headed for the door. “Now, come along, Mr. Dawson. Let’s you and I see about setting that course. Mr. Fuller, I leave you my rutters, which Captain Morgan thoroughly annotated to include ocean currents in the area. I hope you’ll be able to use those to more accurately deduce the Coronado’s precise position.”

“Aye, Captain. I’ll do my best.”

Vhingfrith left through the door.

Alone inside the ward-room, Fuller got to work. He was momentarily distracted when a spray of seawater came in through the open window. He turned, just in time to see the large tail of a Leviathan whipping up out of the water and splashing back down into the sea.

Captain Vhingfrith popped his head back in. “Oh, and Fuller?”

“Sir?”

“If you find the time, put the inkbottle to use, and sketch out the scars on the back of that Leviathan.”

Fuller shrugged. “Of course, sir. But…why, may I ask?”

“I want to know if it’s still Charley chasing us, or a different creature altogether.”

____

The Leviathan had been following them for eight days, and it could do at least eleven knots, about the same as Lively when she was running. Vhingfrith had been keeping assiduous notes on the beast. He had been the first to spot it during the Long Night, his cat’s-eye catching the undulating black form out on the black waters. He had assumed it was a pod of whales, until it had gotten closer. Then he assigned two men to the crow’s nest, one to watch for the León Coronado and the other to monitor the Leviathan. What they had discovered was every splash was a separate limb extending from a single, great, terrifying monstrosity. And so far it had not attacked them, only followed them. No man had ever seen its like before, and it was therefore generally considered to be a creature spilled from the firmament.

Vhingfrith presently stood at the quarterdeck beside Dawson, looking up at the Captain of the Mizzentop, Khol Landry, who kept the spyglass fastened to his face. Vhingfrith allowed his eyes to move along the flapping sails. Each sail was pulled about a quarter of the way in, putting them at close reach. Landry shouted to them to let the mainsail three-quarters out.

When it was done, the Lively suddenly surged eagerly.

That puts us at broad reach, thought Vhingfrith. Now let’s see if our friend…ah, and so he follows.

The Leviathan was already adjusting its path, splashing and rolling in the water in the way that it did, almost like some composite of whale and squid, to change course suddenly. Vhingfrith walked to the railing and leaned on it. He checked his timepiece. Mr. Fuller had come and made noon, so he had been able to reset his clock to match that of the “true time” of heavenly-order.

True time. Heavenly-order. Are these new nautical terms to be a permanent fixture in a seaman’s lexicon? He asked the question of the waves, of the sky, of his father’s portrait inside the timepiece, but he knew the answer.

The Leviathan was twice again as large as the Lively, which herself was one hundred sixty-five feet long, putting the beast at around three hundred thirty feet. The creature distorted and frothed the waves when it altered course, and sometimes it would thrash violently like it was being attacked by some invisible foe, and in those times Lively would heel. The men had been afraid those first few days when Mr. Hewett sighted the creature barreling towards them from the east, but so far it seemed to have brought good luck, even going so far as to attack the Coronado when she fired upon the Lively.

Do we have a guardian angel now? Is that a new bargain God made with the minions of Hell when he allowed the planet to pass through the firmament, that England shall have a Protector at sea? Vhingfrith was out of theories on the matter. He had spent those first weeks in Port Royal trying to understand it all, but now it only presented a new facet of this ongoing war, one more kernel to consider when making plans.

“Old Charley’s keepin’ pace, Cap’n,” said Dawson.

“Indeed, he is, Mr. Dawson.”

Both of them shared a special fascination for Old Charley, and at times they personified him as a babe, or a foal recently birthed into sea with limbs he had not quite learned how to use yet. They even assumed him to be a male, when in actual fact the Leviathan could be female, or both, or neither.

The creature itself was described in Vhingfrith’s notes, where he scribbled even the minutest detail:

Charley has about him that quality of a shark’s skin, slick and grey.

Fins along his length, each one-half to three-quarters the size of Lively’s mizzenmast.

Four (possibly six) spherical protuberances along his middle (possibly eyes?)

Distended portion near his tail, like a potbelly, red at times, jade at others.

A hammer-shaped prominence where his head ought to be, were he a fish, yet no mouth.

Moves with labourious grace, sometimes thrashing, almost as if he is fighting against the water, trying to break free of it.

It has a mind, I am sure. Twice now I have stood at the bow during a Long Night and gestured to it, and the Leviathan has paused—I have never seen a sea creature able to simply pause in mid-swim, with no forward sloshing of momentum—and it turns on its side, pitching and rolling, until I stop waving. Because of my cat’s-eye, I am the only one to have seen this. I hope this behaviour indicates Old Charley is friendly.

Presently, Vhingfrith had his journal propped on the binnacle, leafing through the pages with one hand, pen in the other hand. He was looking for any new markings or scars to add to his sketches. He noted Charley’s mossy underbelly, and walked the length of the ship as the Leviathan did long, slow laps around them. Charley beat the water with his fins, sending out huge, arcing sprays. Such savage swimming, like he’s fighting it. Yet there is grace to his form—

“Your tea, Captain,” a voice said at his side.

Vhingfrith stirred. “Thank you, Mr. Maxwell.” He put his pen in his journal as a bookmark and accepted the cup and saucer. Maxwell had returned to Lively on the condition of a promotion. Seeing as how they were all now flying the Union Jack again, and with Royal Marines aboard, Maxwell wanted to be all official—a ship’s steward.

After the Cataclsym, Vhingfrith had been approached by Maxwell at The Dashing Inn, and had kept his emotions in check at the time, but was secretly glad to have so many former crewmen returning voluntarily. Maxwell’s cooking was usually a little spicy, yet always plentiful and never overcooked, and the men loved him. And, as it happened, it was Maxwell that gave Old Charley his name, and Vhingfrith was now curious as to why. “Tell me, why Charley?”

Maxwell winced. “Sir?”

Vhingfrith nodded. “Our friend out there.”

The ship’s steward looked out at the labouring beast, still fighting the waves. “From the song, sir. ‘O Charley, Fighting the Deep.’ ”

Vhingfrith brightened. Of course, how could he have been so stupid? “Our boy does seem to never be at peace with the waters, isn’t that right?”

“Seems to straight despise the briny deep, I’d say, sir. Even whales go for deep dives. Stays well out of the deep, that one does. A wonder he doesn’t fly up out of it. I wonder if he will, if he ever finds shore. Will he come crawling out of the briny?”

“Well, I wonder what he makes of us.”

“Perhaps he’s wondering if he can fetch a ride with us,” Maxwell chortled, and walked away.

Vhingfrith laughed to himself, sipping his tea. He called out to the cook, “Mr. Maxwell? Let’s have a meal at eight bells. What do you say? Is that possible?”

“Aye, sir. I’ll have Mr. Corswaine heat the stove and wake me at seven.”

“Excellent, Maxwell, just excellent.”

Vhingfrith watched the ship’s steward dip below, then looked about his ship and saw the many working parts moving, saw the water breaking before Lively like she was a knife. A few marines were up in the sails, having a chinwag with the reefers. It almost seemed like a dream. Vhingfrith did not know what to do with a ship so full of men all cooperating and with a single mind towards a goal. No more enervating arguments with men who held grudges at obeying a half-Negro captain. Or so it seemed.

Be wary of all of them, he could hear his father say. The voice came on the wind. And yet Benjamin thought, It isn’t all of them, Father. It cannot be. Things could not be going so well if it were all of them.

He set the tea on the railing, reopened his journal, and started to sketch when Old Charley suddenly breached the surface hard, exposing several man-sized tendrils that had ensnared four sharks and was squeezing them bloody. My God. He heard other men on the ship cry out in surprise, and Vhingfrith got to sketching furiously, watching as Charley plunged back into the water and thrashed about angrily, then began his slow, slow circuit around the brig. Almost like a patrol around the ship. The water all around them was red with blood.

He added to his notes,

Ship’s Steward Roderic Maxwell made an excellent joke. He suggests Charley is trying to fetch…

“A ride,” he said aloud, lifting his pen from the page.

Vhingfrith lifted his tea from the rail just in time before the ripples from Charley’s play hit Lively, and made her sway. Fetch a ride, he thought, watching the Leviathan’s four (or six?) protrusions roll out of the water and aim (gaze?) in their direction.

He seems to be fighting with the water. Does…does he wonder how we’re doing it? Is that why we fascinate him? Does Charley not understand how we’ve mastered these waters? Does he not have water where he comes from? If not, through what medium did Charley swim through before he came here? Where does he come from?

Having thought himself quite beyond theories, Benjamin Vhingfrith suddenly found himself fascinated by these new questions.

Why did he help us, in our first fight with Coronado? Why did he pick sides? Is it because we were the first of our kind he found out here? Are we his favourites, like lost kittens discovered in the rain? Are we under his protection?

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Fog ahead, sir,” said Osterholm, walking up. Of all the people to return to his crew, perhaps none surprised him more than his quartermaster. Osterholm had been a questionable part of the mutiny months ago—though, he claimed to have only been neutral, and said he’d never sided with Jacobson completely. Still, as soon as he was released from custody and gotten his part of the Nuestra’s treasure, he had walked Port Royal alone and not spoken a word to Vhingfrith ever since. But, like many, the Jew had been changed after the Cataclysm, after all those Beasts invaded Port Royal. Perhaps he sought safety with a familiar crew? “You’re certain she’s in there, Captain?”

Vhingfrith looked past the bow. “Yes, indeed, Mr. Osterholm.”

“Maybe Coronado was only pulling a feint when she tacked—”

“Do you doubt Mr. Fuller’s seamanship? Or mine?”

The Jew sighed and ran a hand over the old axe wound on his face. “Reckon not, sir.”

Vhingfrith clapped him on the shoulder. “Worry not, old friend. We’ve got Lively on our side, and the Duke is our guardian angel.” He nodded to the dot on the horizon behind them. The Duke was currently captained by Woodes Rogers—a great warship and a true captain of the seas. Lively was acting as her scout, moving fast and nimbly through the sea to harass the Coronado, possibly wound her before the Duke could roll in and finish the job. That was the strategy Vhingfrith and Rogers had come up with. “We nearly nabbed Coronado in that first go-around and she’s been winged. If I was her captain, I would’ve tacked this way to find safety in the concealment of fog.”

“Aye, sir. As you say.” Osterholm gave a look at Old Charley, now swimming around to their stern, plunging hard into the water and vanishing for a moment before rising again to their starboard and thrashing about. Seawater sprayed all over the ship. Osterholm glanced surreptitiously back at Vhingfrith.

But Benjamin caught the look. There’s still doubt in him. He still wonders if I’m bad luck, if I somehow caused these Long Nights, if I summoned Charley and all his ilk. Benjamin never forgot John’s warning, which underscored his father’s warning about these men. But Osterholm was a good ship’s purser, invaluable at sea. Osterholm at last turned and went belowdecks to attend duties.

Dense fog seemed to form a wall, cutting off the world ahead. Soon it began to congeal around them. Vhingfrith decided it was time to pull Serjeant McCulloch to one side and lay the planning for any boarding actions done in fog. And then he would need to speak to his navigator again. For soon, the light of day would dim behind a caul of fog, and if another Long Night fell the crew would be relying on naught but his seamanship and Mr. Fuller’s.

____

These charts are damp, Fuller thought. Someone’s spilt rum all over them. He gave them a sniff. Smelled like wine, which meant it had happened when the Devil’s Son had been in here toiling late at night, unwilling to wait till morning to confer with his navigator. Sighing, Fuller strained his eyes to differentiate between true islands and dark stains.

Wafting up from the companionway, the singing of a contented and excited crew. Infernal racket. Fuller did not like the men singing, not while they were still searching for the Coronado. If they got unlucky, they could pass right by the Spaniards in the foggy night, and their singing could give them away.

Apparently, Vhingfrith thought the same thing, because now Fuller could hear the captain lightly scolding some of the men in the galley.

Infernal noise, at any rate. Hardly one of them can carry a tune, and not one bloody fiddle among them. What sort of crew forgets to bring a fiddle on board?

By his feet, Micky, the ship’s cat, scurried after a mouse.

Fuller fumed, straining his eyes and senses by candlelight. The rutters were open beside him, as was the calendar and the sextant and the divider and every other device or paper he would need to calculate the course of the León Coronado. It was possible to predict an enemy’s movements, even if they had not been spotted in more than a day, for the same winds and the same ocean currents that drove the Lively would also have driven the Coronado. Fuller had to look at all the notes he had made these last two days and cross-reference them with his own knowledge of the sea, as well as the recordings of other captains that had been in this area this time of year. He must consider the Coronado’s size, estimate her weight, her draught, compare it to the islands in the area, the underwater seamounts, the—

“As much an art as it is a science,” said Vhingfrith, entering the room with two mugs. “Don’t you agree?”

Fuller sighed, and removed his spectacles to let his eyes relax. He blinked and rubbed them. “And a bit of guesswork, aye, sir.”

Vhingfrith handed Fuller one of the mugs. Sweet rum from the most recent resupply in Port Royal. Good rum clears cobwebs, his mentor once told him.

“Now, Fuller, give yourself more credit. It’s more than guesswork. Do you have a fix? Whereabouts are we?”

“Here, sir.” Fuller ran a finger along an imaginary line. “But we’re still running, and with this fog I’d suggest reeling in some sail. Slow down and reliably drift southwards, let the current take us half a day—to about here—then open all sails and tack northward.”

Vhingfrith always liked to see the particulars, so it wasn’t a surprise when he said, “Show me.”

Fuller walked him through it, not skipping any steps, advising on the timing of each push, and letting the captain know when he was only using intuition. “I believe Coronado is somewhere out here,” he said, pointing to another patch of open water. “She’s damn close, sir, I can feel it. Currents may have been thrown off a bit following the Long Night, but it seems like just all the other times. The seas and the stars go right back to their proper order.”

“Then we follow our plan, and never stray from tried-and-true tactics while the heavens are in order.”

They had agreed on that much from the start. With the heavens now in order, and having been that way for two days now, they expected a return to normalcy, as had happened each time a Long Night ended. And here in the Northern Hemisphere, predictable winds blew from east to west, just above the equator. They were so reliable and essential for commerce that they were known as trade winds. Those winds dragged along the ocean’s surface, pushing the water to create predictable currents. Those currents reliably bent northward. However, at about thirty degrees north latitude, a different set of winds, called the westerlies, pushed the currents back east, creating an endless clockwise loop. Barring any storms, this loop made sailing easier for merchants and warships alike, but it also made them a slave to the cogs in Nature’s great machine. Any ship attempting to break free of this loop, therefore, would have to commit to a series of arduous, and predictable, maneuvers.

But oceans are big places, and currents are not as narrow as any town road. Currents can be dozens of miles wide, which means any ship along them can be just over the horizon from one another and neither ship would ever even know the other was passing by.

Especially in a fog. At night.

But the Lively had an advantage no one else did, and few even knew about. Fuller looked at that advantage now—the cat’s-eye. The Devil’s Son possessed a power few knew Spaniards knew about, and those who did typically thought it merely superstition. But Fuller had seen it at work. Captain Vhingfrith could see preternaturally well in the dark, and it was he that spied the Coronado that first night.

And the cat’s-eye will allow us to sail through darkness, without having to light candles or torches, making our quarry visible to us, and rendering us invisible to them.

The ship pitched side to side suddenly, and a few books fell off the captain’s shelves. Fuller caught a rutter and divider before they fell off the desk. “Old Charley must be having one of his fits,” he said.

“No doubt,” said Vhingfrith, almost disinterestedly. Fuller had noticed Vhingfrith’s fascination with the Leviathan, had even snuck a peek at the captain’s notes and drawings on it, but he had also noticed how the captain seemed to barely give the Leviathan any thought when he wasn’t topside and actively looking at it. Fuller realized, belatedly, that part of Vhingfrith’s strength, and part of what had kept him from suffering mutiny all these years, was his ability to look unflappable even when the world was going topsy-turvy. Fuller’s respect grew for the man each day, as well as his pity.

If only he’d never joined his cause to the Ladyman at times, who knows where he would be now? Fuller thought, watching the cat’s-eye glitter in haunting moonlight as it scanned the charts. How long did his reputation suffer unfairly? How much did his relationship with the Ladyman stunt his growth?

“I’ll have the maintop signal the Duke, let them know which course we intend to take.”

“Aye, sir.”

“I admire your diligence and skill, Mr. Fuller,” said Vhingfrith. “And I agree with your assessment. I took a sighting with the sextant not an hour before the fog completely cloaked the stars, and I sighted a cay I believe to be this one here,” he pointed. “I think you’re right. We cut sail half a day, then open her up again and see what’s what. If this fog lingers—”

He stopped talking when the ship pitched again, this time a bit more heavily.

“If this fog lingers,” he continued, “then it’s a boon for Coronado and her crew. But if God alleviates this burden from us, I imagine we will sight them…here. Along the main stretch to—what the devil is going on up there?”

Another heeling, this one much harder than the last two. Almost every book fell from its shelf and the boards all moaned like the whole ship was being squeezed by a giant’s fist. And then they heard a single, sharp crack, like a musket shot.

“What in Creation is—?”

A moment later, the door flung open and Averill, the first mate, exclaimed, “Captain! We need your cat’s-eye up top, sir!”

“What the bloody hell’s going on, Mr. Averill?”

“It’s Charley, sir, something’s wrong with him! He’s splashin’ almost side by side with the keel, and slappin’ them fins o’ his against our transom! He’s in a bloody fit, sir, and one man’s already fallen into the water!”

“What was that shot I just heard?”

“Malloy took a shot at Charley, sir—”

“He did what?”

“Don’t be mad at him, sir, please! One o’ Charley’s tentacles nearly took off his head—sir?”

Fuller watched as Vhingfrith leapt over the desk and pushed Averill aside and dashed out into the companionway.

____

“Malloy! Stand fast, there!” Benjamin boomed as he came upon the deck, which was soaked with water running into the scuppers. By the time he’d reached the top of the stairs, Old Charley had begun thrashing like never before, and it was as though a storm had come upon them. Through the fog he saw many scared faces lit by lanterns, and panicking men aiming their pistols at the Leviathan. “Stand fast there, I say! Master-at-arms?”

“Sir?” said Steilar, the young Oxfordshire boy stepping forward from his place by the forward hatch.

Benjamin ran to the ship’s waist and pointed at Malloy. “Clap this man in irons! And give him only half rations until I say otherwise! And no rum!”

“Aye, sir.”

“And that goes for any other man who fires on this creature without my order!”

“But, sir,” someone cried from up in the ratlines. “Lookit! Just lookit! Charley’s gone mad!”

Indeed, he could not argue that the beast had churned up a storm without clouds, for the sea beat angrily at them and Lively heeled as water ran shin deep across her deck before shedding. Vhingfrith closed his right eye, and ran to the portside railing and focused his cat’s-eye on Charley, just as the monster was rolling back into the deep, his oblong tail thrashing at air and parts of it slapping at the railing so hard it caused part of it to splinter. God’s wrath, what’s gotten into him? Was he only sizing us up, toying with his meal before he ate it?

“What do you see, Captain?” someone else shouted.

They meant what did the Devil’s Son see with his cat’s-eye.

Vhingfrith held fast to the rail as Lively heeled and squeezed through the next row of waves like an angry newborn fighting to break free of the birth canal. Cold foaming waters soaked him almost to the waist and spilled over as she corrected. And then Charley leapt out of the water and bellyflopped back into it, sending out salty rain before plunging into the depths.

For a long while, nobody saw anything.

“Crow’s nest! Anything?” Vhingfrith called.

“Nothing, sir! No sighting!”

Vhingfrith ran around the ship, from one rail to the other, leaning over, searching the fog. And he saw something. Something spinning in the water, almost beyond his sight. He was sure no one else saw it. No one else could. Whatever it was, it was about fifty yards off their port, and refracted what little moonlight penetrated the fog. And he saw something floating amid strange debris. Something flailing. “To the gunnels! Grab some lines!” he called. “Men overboard!”

Lively’s men leapt to obey.

Benjamin ordered half-sail immediately, and had Dawson bring her about. The crew got to work with the sheets and lines, and nobody second-guessed the captain. They knew he’d seen something with that eye of his.

“Signal the Duke,” Vhingfrith said, as he paced the quarterdeck. “Let them know we’re changing course. Give the signal for lost souls.”

“Aye, sir,” said Averill. “Signal! Signal!” The first mate made sure the cry went up to the crow’s nest and three lanterns were lit, hopefully bright enough to be seen through the mist.

And when they came alongside the scene, Charley was there, swimming tamely for a change, amid a ghostly revelation. It was evident the broken planks had once belonged to a sailing vessel, but it was impossible to tell how large a one. Charley orbited them, gently, disturbing the waters only just noticeably, so that the two men clinging to the single barrel bobbed up and down like a child’s toy in a tub. Vhingfrith shouted for lines to be thrown out, while Bartlett, the second mate, and three other men climbed down the rope ladder to extend their hands.

Half-naked and wretched, the two castaways stood on the deck and collapsed as though they’d forgotten how to use their legs. Vhingfrith helped one of them to his feet, a black-bearded fellow with red, cracked lips, who pushed himself away from his fellow castaway, almost like he couldn’t wait to get away from him.

“Hold on, brother, we’ve got you,” said Vhingfrith. “Easy there, easy. Someone bring them some blankets! Mr. Maxwell, bring these men some water!”

The bearded man looked surprised to see a Negro captain, but then whispered, “Bless you…bless you…” He clutched the captain’s lapel. “Bless you, bless you, bless you!”

Water was brought out at once, but Scarecrow reminded the captain that dehydrated men should not drink too much. “It’ll only make them sick, sir,” said the surgeon. And, indeed, after only a few gulps, the other castaway, a blond-haired boy with a large birth mark covering the right side of his face, vomited most of the water back up.

“Thank you, God! Thank you!” wept the other fellow, a carpenter who introduced himself as Henley. “Bless you, boys! Bless you for this! Oh God, I thought we were meant for Davy Jones’s locker for sure, along with the rest of ’em!”

“Rest of who?” asked Benjamin.

Men crowded around like gawking children: “How did your ship founder?!” and “Was it the Coronado?!” and “Was it the Leviathans?!” and “Who was your captain?!”

“Step back, everyone! Step back!” Vhingfrith ordered. “Let Scarecrow be about his ministrations. Mr. Averill, signal the Duke again, let them know we found two lost souls and that we’re getting back underway. Mr. Dawson, to the helm. Mr. Fuller, help him sight the waters. Linemen, toss out your ropes. I want to know what sort of seabed is underneath us, we don’t want to crash into whatever these poor men did that made them founder.”

“Aye, sir!” they all replied.

Vhingfrith stood over the younger castaway. The young man was sitting on a barrel, shaking and weeping, a cup of water in his hands. He looked out at the water and saw something that visibly frightened him. Vhingfrith followed his gaze, and saw Charley up to his antics again, this time farther out.

____

The story of how the Alexandria sank was as harrowing as anything Benjamin had ever heard, though, as it turned out, it had nothing to do with either Spaniards or Leviathans or shallow waters, and everything to do with a storm. A storm that, according to Henley, set itself on them four days prior. They’d been floating on six different barrels as five of them slowly became filled with water and sank. They’d been taking turns clinging to the last one, and become so thirsty they drank seawater and made it worse for themselves.

There were terrible sores on their hands, blisters all over, which Scarecrow treated with a vinegar and olive oil salve.

Henley told the entire story himself, for so far the boy—who Henley said was a cabin boy named Swanson—had yet to say a word, and stared vacantly at all the faces assembled around him.

Henley began to tell his story while on the main deck, but when one of the Lively’s crewmen hollered, “There weren’t no storm four days ago, though!”, that was when Vhingfrith brought the castaways below, to his cabin, under the guise of an invitation to enjoy real rest in a real bed. But in truth Vhingfrith had ulterior motives. He’d seen the looks on the men’s faces when Henley insisted it had been four days ago, during the Long Night, when the Alexandria sank.

Presently, Vhingfrith, Averill, Bartlett, Osterholm, Serjeant McCulloch, and Major Halleck stood inside the ward-room, waiting for Scarecrow to exit the captain’s quarters. When the surgeon finally emerged, he said, “They’re resting now. But Mr. Henley says he would like to see you about something.”

“What is it, Scarecrow?” Vhingfrith asked.

“He says it has to do with Swanson, who still hasn’t spoken. Seems the boy has a case of the horrors. I did notice the shaking of his hands, the uncontrollable quiver of his lower lip. He occasionally jumps as if someone is sneaking up on him.”

Everyone in the companionway exchanged glances. They had all seen men afflicted with the horrors—men who survived war often had blank stares, like a doll’s, and their hands were known to tremble uncontrollably. But the boy was too young to have been in any war, and if it had not been the Spanish that sank the Alexandria then what could have horrified him so?

“What would Henley need to tell me about it?” Benjamin said. “I understand the poor lad has suffered. What else is there to know?”

“It’s what Henley saw while they were out there alone.”

“What did he see?”

Scarecrow looked disturbed, and waved for the captain to follow him back inside. Benjamin gestured the others to remain in the ward-room. Inside his cabin, Swanson slept fitfully in the captain’s bed, while Henley stood at the captain’s desk, poring over the charts, a blanket over his shoulders and a cup of hot tea in his hands. “Mr. Tyndall says you wish to speak with—”

“Your Mr. Tyndall has informed me that you experienced no storm in the last four days,” said Henley. The man had a bushy black beard with shocks of grey, with cracked red lips and at least half his teeth missing, no doubt from scurvy, if his gums were any indication. “Is that so? I heard someone shout it on your deck, that you saw no storm. Is that so?”

Vhingfrith presented himself calmly, but already he knew where this was headed. “It’s true, sir, we experienced no storm. It’s possible it could have been localized to the area you—”

“You could not have missed this storm, Captain. Red lightnin’, clouds coming down like sharpened spears, sometimes touching the waves. And Leviathans…Leviathans falling from the sky, like angels cast out of heaven, their wings all a-flame!” He spoke almost in a whisper, eyes flitting around the cabin as though to make sure the walls were real. Henley nodded to Swanson. “The boy there…he’s…” He never finished the thought. “When we foundered, all our oil…the whale oil…it must’ve been a misplaced lantern that caught fire. Explosion like nothing I’ve ever heard. And the Alexandria, she went up like a match.”

Vhingfrith started to say something, but just then the Swanson lad began to snore, and jerked in his sleep. He walked over to look at the boy, and sent out a prayer to God to have pity. “You were whaling? Out here?” he said back to Henley.

“Not at first, sir, no. We were…” He trailed off again, hands wringing his blanket into knots. And he kept wringing and kept wringing until a piece of it tore and he didn’t notice. “We were merchants. Captain Roth, he got him this nice brig, we sailed her for two years delivering spice and sugar for his business connections in Antigua. He was a good man, his sailing master top-notch, everyone on his crew were solid men. Solid men, indeed, sir. They never wavered, not in any circumstance or dilemma.

“But then a storm—a different storm, not this one that foundered us—it hit us months ago and we were so off course…and then…the sun just didn’t return. Not for weeks. We sailed to what we thought was the east, but we found no islands. Captain Roth and his navigator saw no familiar cays for days, and when we finally did come across some, they wasn’t where they was s’pposed to be. Like…like someone misplaced them.” He laughed and cried. “We were soon starving. We cast our nets but caught no fish, but we did reel in these little monstrosities that…well, some men ate them. And those men died shitting blood.”

Henley sobbed and sipped his tea. Vhingfrith offered him a handkerchief.

Henley accepted it. “We saw whales…and we thought, ‘That don’t make sense now, does it? Huge pod o’ whales in these waters, this time o’ year?’ But we went after ’em anyway. We were so hungry. Most men didn’t know how to hunt whales, but Mr. Clarkson—he was our quartermaster—he done a trick with the East India Company’s ship, the Gloria, and so he knew how to throw the spears, how to wear out the whale, keep it from goin’ under.

“We had whale meat, least for a little while. But all the while, the sun…it just wouldn’t come back. And the cays we saw…they weren’t where they was s’pposed to be.” He sat in the captain’s chair without asking, and Vhingfrith allowed it. Poor soul. He went through an Altered Night. “And then the storm hit. The big one I was tellin’ you about. Like nothin’ you ever saw. But just now I told your surgeon here all about it, and he said what I experienced was a, uh…what did you call it, sir?”

Vhingfrith answered, “An Altered Night.”

“Yes, that’s it. What does it mean?”

“That is what I’ve started calling any experience like the one I and the Hazard’s crew went through when all this started, just before the world experienced the Cataclsym.” Vhingfrith pulled up another chair and sat across from Henley. It felt strange being on this side of his own desk. “An Altered Night is a little different than a Long Night. A Long Night is just that, a prolonged darkness when the heavens are out of order and the sun won’t come up. But the seas still make sense in a Long Night. You’ll know you’re in an Altered Night by the way no charts corroborate what you’re seeing at sea, and there seems to be no way out of it except to wait it out. And once it’s over, only a day or so may have passed for everyone outside of it. Long Nights are shared by the whole world, whereas Altered Nights appear to be experienced locally, solely by whatever persons or vessels happen to get trapped in them.”

Henley stared vacantly, then shook his head. “How…how is any of this possible?”

“It is the phenomenon known by many names. The Catholics call it the Cataclysm. The Spanish call it La Crisis del Firmamento: the Firmament Crisis. We English simply call it the firmament. Perhaps you heard about it before you set sail? Some parts of the world seem slow to experience it, and I’ve heard of people thinking the rest of us have gone quite mad. Until, that is, they experience it for themselves.”

Henley seemed uncomforted.

“Myself and my crew recently experienced a Long Night.” Benjamin crossed his legs, rested his hands on his knees. “Something is happening, Mr. Henley. A changing of the natural order. No one is sure what’s causing it, apparently it is causing much chaos for all the nations’ leaders, but all men like us can do is adapt, and hope this is all passing event. Hopefully this phenomenon will eventually pass and in years to come we will all look back on these days and shake our heads, and treat it merely as a story to tell our children.”

Henley leaned back in the captain’s chair and gaped at the ceiling. No longer sobbing, he just seemed spent.

“Mr. Tyndall here says you have something to tell me. Something about Mr. Swanson over there?”

Henley blinked, looking nonplused, like he was just remembering. “Swanson…he’s the only real swimmer between us—I can tread water a very little while, but that’s it. Once or twice, we thought we felt our toes touching the seabed. We said, ‘That ain’t possible!’ So we figured it was sandbars. Thought we’d gotten lucky coming upon something like that. Somethin’ we could stand on, you know? Then we lost the feeling, couldn’t touch the sand nummore. So, Swanson says he’s going to swim down deep, see if he can see anything—he was getting desperate, hopin’ to find fish to eat, or a turtle to swim with. Poor lad, said he’d once heard a story about a man lost at sea that grabbed hold of a giant turtle and let it carry him home. He was delirious. But I let him go. I hadn’t the strength to stop him. He was gone for an hour.”

Benjamin blinked. “What do you mean? You lost sight of him?”

“No, Captain. He went under the water and he was gone. Gone for a whole hour, maybe longer. But I know how to tell time in my head. Learned how to count. I was countin’ the whole time he was gone, just to have somethin’ to do. And when Swanson came back up, his birthmark was on the wrong side of his face.”

Vhingfrith looked over at Scarecrow. The surgeon shrugged back. “You’ll have to explain that riddle, Mr. Henley.”

“No man can stay underwater for that long,” he said, and sipped his tea. “No man that ain’t secretly a fish. And Henley was gone that whole time and when he came up he looked different. He’s also got a front tooth now that he was missin’ before, and part of his left little finger, which I saw get ripped off by a snagged line, has grown back.”

Vhingfrith shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Glanced over at Swanson. The boy was still sleeping in the captain’s bed.

“And when he returned to me,” Henley went on, “he was just starin’ at me. Just starin’. He wouldn’t speak. At first I thought it was only the horrors, but now I know it’s somethin’ else. A Judas or…or…”

“Mr. Henley, what are you saying?”

“I’m trying to tell you, goddamn it. Whatever this shit is—the firmament you call it?—it doesn’t just take. I think sometimes…sometimes it swallows things, and then sometimes, just sometimes…it coughs it back up.”

“Mr. Henley—”

“The man in that bed over there ain’t Swanson,” he hissed. “I don’t even think it speaks, or can understand anything. You need to clap that creature in irons and keep it down in the bilge. Better yet, tie chain-shot to its ankles, and throw it overboard.”

It. Vhingfrith suddenly became aware of the silence in the room. No more snoring. He looked over and saw Swanson lying on his side, still as a stone, and staring at both of them wide-eyed.