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

careen – The practice of using the receding tide to ground one’s own ship, in order to expose a side of the ship’s hull for maintenance and repairs below the waterline. At high tide, the ship is refloated.

VHINGFRITH LOOKED AT the timepiece in his hand, and thought, That isn’t right. The device showed forty minutes past five o’clock in the morning. It was a curious dilemma, but understandable. They had all gone without much sleep, and so he may have forgotten to wind the thing properly. He looked out his cabin’s single window and saw naught but dark sea behind him, the oily calm disturbed only by the white foam in their wake. He looked back at the timepiece. The small portrait of his father, painted a year before his death, and which had been fastened on the inside face of the timepiece, seemed over the years to have taken on a disapproving air. The small painting had always astounded Benjamin. The artist had somehow captured his father’s exact aspect, a most severe countenance, a face that was, by turns, quizzical, reproving, mischievous, mistrusting, and daring. Benjamin could almost hear the old man now, chastising him for forgetting to wind his timepiece. If you do not know your time, you may as well not know the tide, he had been fond of saying.

When at sea, keeping up with the time was as paramount as keeping up with the weather and the stars. One needed to measure his speed against the time to calculate how far he had gone. But even Isaac Newton had said that while at sea timepieces were not very reliable. “The variation of wet and dry, hot and cold, and difference of gravity in different latitudes, will play hell with the devices,” he wrote. “To combat these problems, such a device hath not been made.”

And yet it ought not be that far off, and Vhingfrith was certain he had wound the timepiece, not more than an hour before setting out from the cove where he began their pursuit of the Nuestra.

The Spanish galleon was only hours behind them, and yet Vhingfrith feared its ghost. He was haunted by the memory of Lawrence Burr’s outburst, and the look the men had given when Vhingfrith shot him. I was too harsh. He had the knife in his hand, surely, but perhaps a better captain would have given him no cause to consider carrying it, or talked to him more respectfully, giving him an alternative to violence. Presently, he paced his cabin. He had shut and barred the door hours ago. If Jacobson or someone else sought to remove him forcefully, right now would be the time, while he was tired and the rest of the men were elated about their new prizes and filled with rum. And feeling invincible.

And one or two of them angry about Burr’s execution.

And upset about the dangerous gambit their captain had forced them into with the Ladyman.

Now was the time if any.

It was normal to give extra rations of rum after a successful battle, but Vhingfrith had almost withheld it out of fear of the men’s exultations going to extremes, giving cause to rethink their loyalties, and granting their hearts courage to act on it. But in the end, he decided to let them have the rum, because withholding it might only make them more wroth with him.

It was one of a dozen difficult decisions he’d had to make post-battle.

So maybe I forgot to wind the device, he thought, tossing the timepiece on his bed and forgetting about it for the moment. I’ve had enough on my mind. Indeed, he had more pressing matters now. By sunrise, he might not be alive.

Vhingfrith paced his cabin, still fully clothed and with his sword belt buckled tightly around his waist, staring at the door. He had primed and loaded a brace of pistols, which sat on his desk. The pistols were weighing down the charts of the Bocas del Dragón, which he had been going over intermittently to take his mind off the disaster he had so narrowly avoided.

And all for his sake. His fingers lightly touched the locket around his neck. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The cabin smelled of oak and old books and the sea. It was cool—unseasonably cool, in fact—and that coolness put a chill in him like the Devil’s fingers.

Was it love that made him obey John’s wishes, a sense of loyalty, of honouring the friendship between John Laurier and Benjamin’s dead father? It could be. It very well could be. Or it could be the thing hiding in the corner, in a patch of his mind he dared not look upon again. In that corner, he knew, were tousled sheets, and two beings lying naked and entangled like lovers. No, he daren’t look there, best to keep it in that dark corner of his mind.

The room was lit by two lanterns. The single window was open, a beguiling breeze turned pages on a book laid open on his desk, like a ghost hand thumbing through brittle paper. The book was a rutter, an account of the seas, written by various captain-pilots who had been through this region before. In its pages were magnetic compass courses, accounts of the colours of deadly waters, accounts of headlands and capes, ports and channels, tides noted throughout the seasons, notes on rough shoals, and reports of known havens for both good Englishmen and pirates. Benjamin had pored over them incessantly these last few weeks, looking for the direction two Spanish merchant ships might have taken: the Santo Domingo de Guzman and the León Coronado. The two ships plagued his sleep. He had a letter of marque to take them both, and both had evaded him for half a year.

For him, Nuestra’s greatest prize had not been the silks and spices and coffee they took from her hold, nor the slaves, nor the wine. No, the nao’s truest prize was taken by Jacobson, at Benjamin’s orders, from the Spanish captain’s quarters: muster-books, slop-books, complete-books, sick-books, reports on trade done at sea and on other islands, accounts of hard-tack traded for other supplies, dozens of other quittances, and, prize of all prizes, the Nuestra’s rutter and log. Like a madman, he turned the pages and read every word, deciphering every set of initials in the margins. It was not enough to be able to read Spanish, which Benjamin could do very well, but one had also to be familiar with the strange way the Spaniards did their notations, with a series of dots, dashes, loops, and curls, which was a language only their sailors used. Benjamin’s father had taught him the Spanish notation style. He was now searching for any mention of—

Benjamin heard shouting. Sounded like it came from the galley. It could have been an argument, but just as likely it was raucous laughter and roughhousing. Someone started playing a flute.

He looked back down at the charts, comparing them with the entries and timelines in the Nuestra’s captain’s log. To remove his thoughts from things he could not control and refocus them on something he could, he lifted the dividers and the parallel rule and applied them to the map. He began tracking the nautical miles they had traveled thus far, using the last of the cays they had passed as reference.

If the Coronado traveled west upon her last sighting, and assuming she remained mobile—for it is unlike the Spaniards to stay away from the open waters this time of year—and following the trade winds, then she ought to be circling somewhere…around here. With his finger, he drew an imaginary circle around the waters southwest of St. Lucia. If it was true, and the León Coronado was there, then her captain was getting bolder. The nao was encroaching on English waters that had been thoroughly patrolled by King George’s—

More shouting. This time he was sure it was laughter. As always, it did not include him. It was Vhingfrith’s ship, but it was never his crew, not truly. At the best of times privateer captains had a rotating roster of seamen willing to join them, but the number of souls willing to serve under a Negro captain, or even a half-one, was infinitesimal. It will always be this way, my boy. His father was somewhere in this cabin with him, still warning him. And one day, one of them will come for you.

Benjamin knew this. That was what the brace of pistols was for, primed and ready.

His eyes flickered over to the lanterns.

One lantern was more than enough light to see by, but the second lantern served another purpose. He knew the Hazard’s captain would be looking for it, and he had very nearly denied John Laurier the satisfaction. God help me, I’ve rarely denied him much else. He and the Hazard’s captain had not met during the entire action against the Nuestra, and that was by design. For if he saw John Laurier again, Benjamin Vhingfrith might have occasion to look to that corner of his mind again. He may feel the urge, with which he could not be entrusted.

More laughter. And now singing. A lively fiddle cued up, and there was clapping and the sound of dancing.

Bloody fools. It grated on him. Despite his usual ability to accept his spot in the Universe without grief, Benjamin was only too acutely aware of the source of his present melancholy. The revelers had, without saying it, made their position clear with their jocularities, and he could not but acknowledge that none of it was for him. The men were now far richer than they had been yesterday, and it had been his operation and his execution, yet his name would not be on any of their tongues, he would never be mentioned in any of the celebrations, and no credit would ever come to him.

Indeed, he would have to tread carefully now if he wanted to live long enough to reach port.

Vhingfrith had lived his entire life in the Caribbean, while most of his crew had been soldiers once, or seamen that served England during the War of the Spanish Succession. They had known glory on a scale he never could, championing the cause of their nation, held close (however shortly) to England’s bosom. Some of them had even been celebrated in parades. Many of them had known each other long before coming aboard Lively or even before coming to the Caribbean, and brought with them their pride at vanquishing Spain’s great armada and receiving the King’s favour in written form. But then the winds changed, England had had little need for them afterward, and now they were brought low, cast into a winter’s gale without direction and well acquainted with the idea of mutinying against their leaders. Divested of previous honours, their scarred souls now worked by command of a man that had never once bled for England, and was only gifted a sizable brig by Hell’s grace, to hear them tell it.

And he had heard them tell it, at night, when they thought he was asleep and couldn’t hear. But these planks had holes, gaps, and sound carried just fine most nights. Benjamin had heard exactly what most of them thought about him.

You will have to find other reasons to live, m’boy, and other reasons to sail besides fellowship and love. For you shall have neither. You will do well just to keep yourself from being sold into chains. But I see you wish to sail.

So be it.

But if ever you see that rebellious glint in their eyes, worry not for this ship, abandon it, make for Massachusetts Bay Colony and find the rest of your family there. I’ve already sent them a letter to receive you. And if they will not take you out of shame, shape yourself a noose—I taught you well how to tie knots—and step through the doorway to Death and come find me. For it is better than bondage. Your mother and I will be waiting for you there. I have great affection for you, and will receive you in a world that makes more sense than this one.

A bottle of Haut-Brion was in the drawer of his desk. The wine was of French origin, taken from a Spanish merchantman a year ago near Hispaniola, but never opened. Benjamin poured himself a glass, and then another, and after his third one he sat down and stared at the barred door, waiting for Jacobson. Or perhaps Galbraith, if he had found the courage first. He waited for someone on his crew to come and kill him.

No, it won’t be Galbraith. Not alone, at any rate. If anyone made a move against him tonight, Euric Jacobson would be leading them, of that he was certain.

With the window open behind him, he heard the soughing of the water in their wake. The same cool breeze as before paid him visit again, caressing his cheeks. He looked out the window, and shut his right eye. The left eye took some time to focus in the dark, but once it did, the details of the sea and clouds almost glowed. Vhingfrith often wished he had an eye that allowed him to see into men’s souls the way his left eye could penetrate the dark. Then he might know the secret to Jacobson. To Galbraith. To John Laurier…

There came the sounding of six bells. Six o’clock. When it became obvious neither Jacobson nor Lawrence Burr’s brothers nor anyone else was going to make a move against him, Vhingfrith corked the bottle and put it away. Something naggled at him, though. He did not know what it was. Maybe it was the two Spanish ships that had so far eluded him.

Benjamin turned back to the charts. He thumbed through the Nuestra’s captain’s logs, searching for sign of the León Coronado and the Santo Domingo. The Coronado was supposedly injured, having been hit by pirates some eight hundred miles east of here—the rumour said it had been Black Caesar, the African slave that once served under Blackbeard, and the same rumour said she was bouncing around the islands, looking for a safe place to careen. Vhingfrith’s theory was that something had gone wrong on board, either the Coronado’s captain was inept and had become lost, or else many of the officers had died in the attack or from some malady, and she was undermanned. He ran his finger around a few scattered isles and cays, trying to imagine where the Coronado had gone. She’ll be hiding in whatever coves she can find, hoping to find some sign of—

More shouting. There was a loud thump. Someone cried out.

Then there came a scream. And a hush. The whole ship seemed to cast a pall, and went eerily quiet.

Then came sudden bursts of shouting, arguing. The fiddler had stopped playing.

Vhingfrith was only half aware of all this, but his father’s ghost told him it presaged something dire. His eyelids began to feel heavy, and all he wanted was to sleep.

Santo Domingo had his attention now, because the merchantman was reportedly being used to patrol many of the Spanish colonies in the area, but had become overly aggressive, and had gotten outfitted with better cannons and was now attacking ships outside of Spanish waters. Her captain was a man named Diego Morales, famous of the attack against the fort at St. Kitts seven years ago, which he battered nearly to dust. The fort still had not seen repair, and remained in shambles and was ripe as a grape for another attack. Perhaps he’ll go back there.

Benjamin had been tracking the Santo Domingo through the Bocas del Dragón four months back, confident he was on Morales’s trail, but he lost the ship due to a navigational disagreement with Fuller, his navigator. There had been a delay due to a loss of longitudinal fix—longitude was famously more difficult to fix than latitude (so much so that Parliament had recently passed the Longitude Act, offering twenty thousand pounds to anyone that could invent a reliable system by which to fix longitude), so Fuller could hardly be solely to blame. As it stood, all seamen were forced to rely on dead reckoning, gauging time using hourglasses and measuring speed by counting the knots in the ropes that were pulled into the sea.

Fuller had struggled to make the final call, and missed. A pity. Morales had slipped the noose. Santo Domingo’s captain was a fiend badly wanted by the Crown, and was also responsible, as it happened, in a roundabout way, for the death of Benjamin’s father, though Benjamin tried not to let that—

Something banged hard against a bulkhead just outside his door. He heard raised voices, and recognized them for what they were. Sounds of panic.

Vhingfrith grabbed one of the pistols on his desk.

Then, for no reason at all, it occurred to him that the lanterns were still on. Both of them. Because if he did not have them lit, the room would be dark.

Too dark.

He recalled the sounding of the bells. Had it been six? Yes, six peals of the bell.

Benjamin looked out the window. The dark sea still rolled behind him, the foaming waters that trailed them were visible by clear, silvery moonlight. He picked his timepiece up from his bed and looked at it again. Almost twenty minutes after the hour.

That isn’t right.

He pocketed the timepiece and pulled on his full brace of pistols—four pistols were strapped across his chest now, each one primed and loaded. He grabbed his cutlass before unbolting the door and stepping out into the dark companionway.

The first thing he noticed when passing forward through the small galley and thence through the companionway leading to the main deck, was that the men were all in some kind of eerie trance. Their faces were lined by distress. Vhingfrith’s blood ran cold. Some were huddled in a corner, holding a wooden cross up to their foreheads or else kissing them. One of them, a carpenter named Gibbons, lay in his hammock with hands over his eyes—he appeared to be sobbing. A dozen others were standing about, pacing, some of them weeping. Three men injured during the attack on the nao were lying on tables, covered in blood, their bodies wrapped tightly in bandages and poultices applied by Tyndall. Of Tyndall himself, there was no sign, which was odd because Vhingfrith had specifically ordered the surgeon to stay with the wounded throughout the night.

“What in hell is going on?” he said.

Benjamin looked around at the floor, empty cups strewn, their alcoholic contents forgotten in puddles running along the swaying planks. The man playing the flute had dropped it, and was on his knees now, hands together, praying in whispers.

“What is the meaning of this?” Vhingfrith asked them. “You all look as if the King has died.” Most of the men never even looked at him. It was as if he was not there. This angered him. Vhingfrith had long ago become accustomed to being hated, and had learned to deal with it—indeed, he often was able to use it as fuel for the men’s labours, since their hate was often derived from fear of his queerness, and fear was just fine as a motivator—but indifference to him? Ignoring him? That could not be borne. “Your captain asked you a question! What is the meaning of this?! Why is my crew not in order?!” he roared.

A few of them jolted like reprimanded dogs. Some cast their gazes on him, and Vhingfrith suddenly had the feeling of being a lamb in the water, sensing the crocodiles beneath the surface. They seemed to be contemplating what to do with him.

Something told him to pull one of his pistols. He had that sense. Vhingfrith had never dealt with mutiny himself, but he suspected he would know the signs. A general malaise of the spirit, an overlong torpor of the crew, and a large enough group of malcontents who stopped talking whenever the captain entered a room, and began whispering once he left.

But this was not that.

These men were not even talking. Well, not about him. A ghostly pall had sucked them all dry, left them bereft. The ones in the corner kept muttering to each other. McCullough was one of them, and he said, “It’s possible Fuller got it wrong! Don’t shake yer head at me! All’s I’m sayin’ is that it’s possible—”

“What’s possible?” Benjamin demanded. He walked over to them. “Tell it to me. What is it that’s got you—?”

“Cap’n!”

Vhingfrith whirled as Galbraith approached. His second mate had panic etched all over his features, and his eyes were wide as saucers. Is this it? Is this the ambush? Is this how it starts? “Mr. Galbraith?”

“Cap’n—you’d better come topside! Come topside and have a look!”

“What is it?”

“Just come look.”

“Say it now, Mr. Galbraith! Or so help me God I’ll—”

“The sun’s not up, you stupid fucking son of a bitch!” a voice cried.

Vhingfrith turned on the man shouting it. It was Hoyt Burr, huddled in a corner at the far edge of the galley with his brother Gordon.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

“Say that again, Mr. Burr,” Vhingfrith said softly. “Say that again, calmly, slowly, and without the venom.”

The two Burr brothers said nothing.

Is this how it begins? Madness sets in with some of them, and then mutiny commences? But this seemed strange. It had happened so fast. What spell could have come over them so quickly. They had all just been singing and dancing moments ago, he was sure he had heard it.

The Burr brothers glared at him. Vhingfrith braced himself. He had killed their half-brother. They’d let it go earlier because the crew was not on their side at the time, not during a dangerous gambit to obtain Spanish gold, and they had never truly loved their half-brother, but they could not let the insult go forever. But Vhingfrith had hoped to deal with them back in Nassau or Port Royal or anywhere on land.

Bernhardt, the gun captain, stepped out of the crowd. His unblinking eyes were set on the captain, and his upper lip twitched. “Sir,” he whispered, “what has happened? The lads are saying the sun’s late. What is happening?”

Vhingfrith’s nerves were more rattled than they had been when attacking the nao. “What is all this talk? It’s madness. What are you saying? Are you listening to yourselves?”

“Captain,” said Galbraith slowly. When Vhingfrith looked back at him, he saw the man’s lower lip was trembling. He’d never seen his second mate behave so cravenly. “It’s twenty-five minutes past the hour, sir. Come up top, please…and…well, just see for yourself.”

“What has happened, Mr. Galbraith?”

Coming up behind the second mate was the first mate. Euric Jacobson materialized from the ladder with an expression gloomy even for him. His green eyes shone by the flickering light of the lantern in his hand. His wounded arm was in a sling.

“Mr. Jacobson, what is the meaning of all this? Who’s been telling these men tales?”

Jacobson looked almost faint. There were bloody bandages wrapped tight around the hole in his flesh where a lead ball had ripped through his arm. He set the lantern down and put one hand on a bulkhead and leaned there, but said nothing.

Hoyt and Gordon Burr muttered something else behind his back.

Vhingfrith pretended the Burr siblings were now beneath his concern, and strode away with all the confidence his father had used to quell malcontents on his crews. It was important now to show no fear.

He followed his first and second mate up top, and stepped into a wind more chill than the one that had crept through his cabin window moments ago. Benjamin looked across the somewhat choppy waters, all black as ink except for the reflection of the gibbous moon. It was then he noticed something else. The moon. It was setting a little too low on the horizon. At that height, one would expect it to be midnight. What the devil?

All at once, Vhingfrith became aware of what had driven most of his men belowdecks, for he felt it himself. A whole tangle of things was wrong, so many that he could not account for them or name them all at once, but he felt them viscerally, and suddenly he wanted nothing more than to hide. He felt like a child again, afraid of some monster hiding behind a door or a snake in his closet, and if he looked in its direction it would snatch him by his legs and drag him to someplace dark. He wanted out of the sight of this unnatural sky. Something’s wrong, he thought, gazing at the stars. Something’s frightfully wrong. But a captain holds his crew together by his own example, his own will, and Benjamin Vhingfrith would not let this phenomenon unman him. Indeed, he would use it to underscore his unshakability.

And yet still.

“What has happened, Mr. Jacobson?” he said, fighting to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Tell me all that you know.”

It was Galbraith who answered, for Jacobson only stared at the captain, as if daring him to answer for something.

“I can only say what I’ve seen.” Galbraith was a tall man of middle age, with hair the colour of fire and a bushy beard he kept in braids. A fashion he had picked up from some of the privateers in Jamaica. The man had fought at sea on half a dozen English ships, had faced his death countless times, and was very nearly consumed by plague three years ago but pulled through it. During that time, he dreamt he was given a tour of Hell by Saint Peter himself, and was warned that if he did not change his ways, Hell was where he would end up. Gabriel Galbraith had told this story multiple times and everyone knew there weren’t many things that shook the second mate, and yet now he held up a tremulous hand and pointed to Collins, a young seaman who stood near the bell and hourglass.

“Col—” The second mate’s voice caught in his throat. He cleared it. “Collins, sir. He’s the one made me aware of…this.” He waved to the sky. The night sky.

Vhingfrith looked at the stars. There were thousands of them out, and something about them frightened him. A feeling crept down his neck, one he could not immediately identify. Cold fingers moved all over his arms and legs and groin. After a moment he realized this was a species of dread, akin to a time when, as a boy, he had sensed a creature hiding somewhere in his chest-of-drawers. His mother had pulled him by the hand into his room, practically dragging him across the floor towards his chest-of-drawers in the middle of the night to show him there was no one hiding inside.

God’s blood, what is this feeling?

The night became colder as he stared at it. Whereas moments ago all he’d been worried about was mutiny and murder, Captain Vhingfrith now had an unutterably strong sense that inimical forces surrounded him, and were tugging at the fronds of his coat. Yet he could not have pointed it out exactly, he could not have described it the way a professor would, he could not outline the details because it was the totality of everything being “off” or “tilted” as his father used to say.

Vhingfrith nodded. Ah, I am dreaming. Yes, that must be it. Uncanny feelings like these were perfectly ordinary in that realm. Dreams were saturated with them, and no man or woman was free of those kinds of illusions. But dreams are visions of the past, his mother used to say, and visions of the future, both. Never ignore what they’re telling you.

So that settled it. And so, like a man in a dream, Vhingfrith obeyed the logic of the reality he was presented with, and played his part in the tale. He cleared his throat, if only to ensure it did not crack when he spoke. “Where is Fuller?”

It was gloomy Jacobson who answered. “At the bow, Captain. He’s got that, eh…what’s it called? Your fancy device—”

“The sextant. Good, good. Come with me, and we’ll clear this up.”

Vhingfrith now walked ahead of Jacobson and Galbraith with all the air of a man of temerity and confidence, though worry bore a hole through his stomach like a drill. This isn’t right. This is all wrong. This is all so, so wrong. He wanted to keep himself of a mind that this was a dream and that he had control of it, but that was already slipping away.

He found his navigator at the stern’s railing, sitting there with Dawson, Osterholm, and Miller at his side, all of them holding up lanterns so that Fuller could better see the dials of the sextant in his hand.

“Mr. Fuller? What is the matter?”

They all turned and looked at the captain coming up the steps. “The matter, sir?” said Fuller, as though it was all self-evident. Perhaps it was. The old sailor brushed his stringy grey hair from his face, and spoke through a mouth of wooden teeth. “Do you not see?”

Vhingfrith’s sangfroid expression fell on all of them. “I see a black sky and black waters, and Mr. Galbraith has informed me that there is a delay of the sun. But since I know that no such event is possible, I come to you to see how it is that Mr. Collins managed to mis-time the bells, which has put my crew in quite a quarrel. Were you up here with him, Mr. Dawson?”

“I was, sir,” said the pilot. “I…I cannot account for it. It makes no sense, but—”

“Mr. Miller? Were you still in the crow’s nest at the time of the sounding?”

“Aye, Captain.” The lookout was ashen-faced and almost small in his childish expression of fear.

Good God, what is this?

Vhingfrith maintained his composure. “And did either of you notice when Collins turned the glass too soon?” He pointed to the hourglass, which was currently still spilling its sand, slowly. Each turning marked a half-hour’s passing, and currently its bottom was a quarter full.

“No, sir,” they said in unison.

“No? Hrm. Strange that you did not see it, Mr. Dawson, since it is your job to be a second set of eyes on—”

“Beg your pardon, Captain, but there was no premature turn of the glass,” Jacobson said, in an almost-whisper. “I was here on deck myself during Dawson’s trick.” Trick was a term used by men of the Royal Navy to describe a man’s allotted time at the helm. No one used the term if they had been born and raised in the Caribbean. Was it a subtle jab, even at this critical moment, from Jacobson? A reminder that Captain Vhingfrith was the true outsider here? Was he, Vhingfrith, looking too deeply into the word? “I watched Collins turn the glass at exactly the moment the top emptied out.”

Vhingfrith looked at his first mate, lanternlight gleaming off his bald pate. “Then what, pray, am I looking at, Mr. Jacobson?” He looked out at the dark, foaming waters trailing behind them. He looked up at the mainsail, picking up a terrific draft of cool southeasterly wind, carrying them onwards to another black horizon. He looked at the low-hanging moon, and at the stars. Something was off about them, he was convinced. This is a dream. It has to be.

The icy wind whispered in his ear, telling him his mother had been lying, that there had indeed been something hiding in his chest-of-drawers that night. Lawrence Burr was there, whispering same.

He shook off the feeling, and asked Fuller, “Have you taken a sight?”

Fuller held up the sextant. “I…that is…”

“Have you taken a sight or not, Mr. Fuller?” he said impatiently. “It is a simple question.”

His navigator looked at Dawson, then at the stars, then back at the captain. “Captain, something’s not right.”

“I know something’s not right, Mr. Fuller. I have at least two men who made a misstep with the glass and sounded one too many bells, that much is plain. And that mistake has a lot of men distressed down below. I don’t mind saying, Mr. Fuller, very distressed. I don’t think I need tell you the delicate sensibilities of superstitious sailors, most of whom are only looking for a reason to believe a witch has bedeviled them if they wake up with spots on their face, or a curse has been laid on them because the wind makes an unusual shift in direction—”

“Captain—”

“That is what I’m dealing with belowdecks, Mr. Fuller. Understand?” He stepped forward, his nose coming within inches of Fuller’s. “Have you seen the looks on their faces?”

“Captain, take a look yourself,” said Fuller pitifully, and held up the sextant. The hand that held it was quivering.

Vhingfrith had both his hands clasped behind his back, he balled one of them into a fist for a moment while taking a deep, steadying breath. Another subtle trick his father had taught him for calming his nerves and maintaining composure when others were watching. Then he took the sextant and stood at the stern and sighted the heavens. (Without realizing it, Benjamin made sure to keep the other men in his right periphery, where he could see them, just in case this was all a trick to get him alone on the deck and complete the mutiny without bloodshed.)

The sextant was an extremely rare device. In his whole life, Benjamin had only ever seen two with his own eyes: one on a Royal Navy ship of the line, and the one he was holding in his hands. The handheld device was merely speculative in the mind of the great Sir Isaac Newton twenty years ago, but experimental versions had been brought into being by inventors John Hadley and Thomas Godfrey, old friends of Benjamin’s father. Held up to the face, small mirrors along the sextant’s edge allowed the viewer to observe two heavenly bodies at once—the sun, the moon, planets, or stars—and use their distance from the horizon to fix the viewer’s position at sea. Normally, taking a sight of nighttime heavenly bodies was done at dawn or dusk, when the horizon could be more clearly delineated, but Vhingfrith had never seen a more brilliant moon, and, combined with the unnatural gift of his left eye, he could see the horizon clear.

The sextant was such a rare device that only Benjamin and the navigators he’d personally trained knew how to use it. And it was so expensive that it could never be used unless it was tied to the user’s wrist by string, lest one of them accidentally drop it overboard.

As Vhingfrith very nearly did now.

The device almost slipped free of his grasp when he saw what had so alarmed Fuller. Vhingfrith held tight to his composure, betraying nothing. The first thing he noticed was Lacerta. That cluster of stars was not counted as a constellation until 1687, and most navigational charts did not include it, but he knew it well. As sighted, it ought to be between Cygnus and Cassiopeia, slightly closer to Cassiopeia. But it was now a great deal closer to Cygnus. And Cassiopeia herself was W-shaped, although now she appeared somewhat warped. The constellation had not changed shape since Ptolemy identified it in the second century. No constellation had. Because stars didn’t move like that.

Benjamin lowered the sextant, and gazed out at the sea for an answer. He knew there were phenomena at sea that could trick the eye, air-temperature changes that made a horizon seem higher than it was, or mirror-like waves that made distant ships seem to vanish. But he knew of none that warped the stars. Nor any that delayed sunrise. None whatsoever.

“Captain?” said Galbraith. “Can you…see anything?”

He means can my cat’s-eye penetrate the dark and find the source of this trick.

Benjamin continued sighting the stars a moment longer, buying time to think more than anything, and found that more constellations had been changed. He even found three or four new stars, which were immediately recognizable because of their brilliance. Then he spotted something off in the distance, and asked for a long glass, which Jacobson quickly supplied. Through it, Benjamin spied a small cay, maybe half a mile long.

Off to starboard, a hundred yards parallel to them, flew the Hazard. Like Lively, most of her sails were free before the wind.

“Mr. Dawson, make a course to bring us alongside the Hazard. Slowly. Mr. Miller, get in the crow’s nest with a lantern, and signal them that we need to meet. The rest of you gentlemen, get below. Speak to no one as you make your way to my quarters. Do you understand me? No one.”

“Too late, Captain,” said Miller, pointing. “I think they’re a-wantin’ to palaver already.”

Vhingfrith turned and saw a light just now winking in the Hazard’s crow’s nest. “Follow me,” he said.

Moments later they were all huddled in his cabin with the door barred, with eight different charts of the area splayed open in front of them. Some of the charts were drawn by the cartographer Sampson, and others came from the books of the Spaniards they’d struck just hours ago. Someone found Tyndall, the surgeon, and ordered him to join them. The ship swayed easily while the seven men gathered round the captain’s desk and pored over the charts. Charts of the stars, charts of the seas and isles and cays, charts of nearby ports. Vhingfrith had opened his rutter and let Osterholm scan it quickly for any mention of similar phenomena being experienced by captains that had passed through this region before.

“Right, so—we’re here, soon to come to Bocas del Dragón,” said Benjamin, his finger tracing a line of latitude across the series of straits. Galbraith placed a fresh lantern at the corner of the desk for them to see by, and the light also revealed the pallor of his flesh. Benjamin noted his second mate’s lips had gone almost completely white. The man was utterly terrified, yet he was present and listening attentively to his captain. “We cannot have drifted off our course. That cay I spotted is right where it’s supposed to be. Here.” He pointed to the spot on the chart, which had been drawn up by a cartographer named Emmanuel Kroeg. Kroeg was one of the most celebrated mapmakers in the Caribbean, his charts known to be stunningly accurate. “But even if we had strayed, I cannot comprehend that it would bring us this…confusion.” He would not yet call it a predicament. A predicament was an actual physical problem, and not a manifestation of illusion, panic or fatigue.

Cold wind blew in through the window. With merely a nod, Vhingfrith ordered Collins to shut it.

Then Vhingfrith did something that had earned him what modicum of respect he had managed to prise from these men. It was something that gained all men’s respect, no matter their station—he humbly asked their opinions. “Do any of you know of any phenomenon that could account for…whatever this is? Think hard. Even a sailor’s tall tale spoken at an inn. Anything.”

“No,” said Jacobson.

“No,” said Galbraith.

The rest of them shook their heads morosely.

“Fuller, Collins, you both are certain there was no mistake in the turns?”

“Positive, sir,” Fuller said.

“I’m certain, Captain,” said Collins.

“Mr. Osterholm, you are the most experienced of any seaman on this ship. Have you ever observed an event such as this, or heard mention of one like?”

The Jew’s permanent frown deepened, as he ran a hand over the old axe wound on his head. “No, Captain.”

“No? No strange illusions after a storm like the one last night? No strange weather that would create the illusion of a delayed sunrise?”

Osterholm rubbed his heavy jowls. “I can think of no such happening, sir.” His voice was so soft it barely escaped his lips.

The room fell silent. Outside the door, they heard weeping. The ship creaked and moaned.

Vhingfrith pressed his knuckles onto the desk. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “I lack for sleep,” he sighed. That gave him an idea. “Is it possible…is it possible that all of us somehow…in our post-battle exultations and stresses, that we have experienced some sort of, I don’t know, trauma, and that we collectively fell asleep and…” It sounded absurd even as he said it, but no more absurd than having no sun at nearly seven o’clock. Still, though he was reluctant to countenance the idea, he had to exhaust all other possibilities. All other possibilities. “Perhaps we somehow slept through an entire day?” he offered as a reason. “Is that a phenomenon any of you are familiar with?”

They all shook their heads.

“Let me be more clear. I need something I can walk out there with. Something I can tell them.” He pointed at the door.

No one spoke.

Vhingfrith looked out the window again, silently willing the sun to come up and let this all just be some strange collective hallucination. He had heard of men suffering such hallucinations when they were becalmed, baking in the sun’s heat, starving and thirsting and close to death. But never the entire crew, and never had they all collectively hallucinated the exact same thing. He stared out at darkness, at the horizon, and thought, What the fuck is going on? Father, Mother, speak to me.

“Mr. Tyndall,” he said.

“Captain?” The surgeon was so tall he had to duck through every doorway, and his long, thin arms and spindly fingers had given rise to the nickname Scarecrow.

“Is it possible our food stores have been poisoned? I’ve heard lead can do strange things once in a man’s blood. Could we have eaten something that is somehow…somehow causing a mass delusion? Causing our eyes to see what isn’t there, or not see what should be?”

“I have never heard of such a malady, sir.”

“Are you sure, Scarecrow?” said Galbraith.

“Positive, Mr. Galbraith. If there be a malady like this one, it’s in no medical journal I ever read.”

Vhingfrith wiped his brow.

He checked his timepiece again. This time of year, the sun was meant to rise at five forty-eight. It was an event clearly seen and unmistakable on the open sea. The only way they could have missed it was if they were dead.

Benjamin shivered at the thought. He would not let his mind go there. Into his mind, it would not enter that he and all his crew had somehow crossed into Death’s realm. He would not let it. Not yet.

Right now, he just needed to keep talking, keep his thoughts and good sense lubricated. He needed to gauge the mien of each of his officers and determine which ones were on the brink, and which ones were stolid. The only way to do that was to keep them talking and thinking. “These cays here…I still believe they are good to careen.” He pointed on the map. “We are still in need of repair, and perhaps there we can wait out this phenomenon.”

Jacobson blanched. “Wait it out?”

“How long could that take?” asked Fuller.

Benjamin winced. “You mean how long will it take for the sun to return? Since we are apparently the first witnesses to this phenomenon, Mr. Fuller, you cannot expect me to answer that.”

Collins leaned against a bulkhead and muttered something under his breath. Jacobson crossed his arms and stared judiciously out the window. Galbraith looked in that moment like he mistrusted everyone and everything. Vhingfrith knew they were all feeling cousins to the same emotion: that feeling of sinking in quicksand, or falling into waters too turbulent and deep to wade or swim. But also, they would be revisiting old fairy tales their grandfathers told them, and conjuring up notions of curses. Surely, some of them would blame him, or else the Negro slaves in the hold below, the ones liberated from the Nuestra. Africans were said to practice black magic…

How long before they find that explanation convenient, and begin tossing the slaves overboard?

How long before I am lumped into that remedy?

Vhingfrith had so far avoided being in the presence of the slaves. He had experienced it before—they had the look of Moors, and Moors would take one look at him and see him as the worst sort of traitor to his people. For half-breeds among whites or Negroes, trust was a sea of shallow waters.

He and his lead officers continued going over the possibilities, or the lack thereof. They checked and rechecked the charts, as though it would do any good. Vhingfrith and Fuller, being the only ones able to use the sextant, ran through the mathematical procedures, checked the globe in the corner of the captain’s cabin, and used sight reduction to draw the equal-altitude circle of the sighted celestial bodies on the globe. The intersection of that circle with a dead-reckoning track gave their precise location. They checked their findings against the charts while the others continued to debate, and some pray, while casting the occasional fearful look out the window.

What the fuck his happening? Benjamin thought, pacing, running a hand over his lips in consternation. What is this? What is it? There was no response from his father’s ghost, though Burr’s was chuckling in the corner.

“Could be them Negroes down in the hold,” someone finally said. It was Galbraith, with a look to Jacobson, who only shrugged.

Vhingfrith pretended not to hear. He consulted the rutter for a while before handing it back to Osterholm. He checked the stars again using an astrolabe. He looked at Ursa Minor, its handle too short, its spoon too wide. Other constellations seemed to be missing altogether. What in God’s name?

He checked his charts.

He looked at the star-studded sky.

Where is the sun? It was such an absurd question to be asking, and yet Vhingfrith stared at the illogic of this moment, which he no longer dismissed as a dream. He kept glancing at the window. God’s wrath! Where is it? This cannot be! Now his own panic threatened to overtake him, and he had to wrestle with his manhood to remain rooted and sane.

Outside the door, they could hear men beginning to talk. Someone was shouting. Someone else gave a wail. “Go see what that’s about, Mr. Jacobson, if you please.”

Jacobson gave him a look of irritation. He massaged his wounded arm as his eyes lingered on the captain a moment. Something passed between them, a warning that went both ways. Then Jacobson unbarred the door and left.

Fuller was praying in a corner to himself.

There came the sounds of a scuffle outside in the galley.

“Mr. Osterholm, have you found anything in the rutter?”

“No, Cap’n,” the Jew sighed quaveringly, closing the book. “Nothing like…like…”

“Keep looking.”

“I’ve perused almost all of it—”

“Then stop perusing it and read it! Thoroughly!”

The door swung open and Jacobson stepped back inside, his visage severe. There was a fresh cut upon his brow, and ample blood dripping from it, though he ignored it. “We have a problem brewing, Captain. The men are starting to fight. Some of them are throwing things, saying we are dead and have entered Hell and the others are telling them to shut up—”

“Dead!” Vhingfrith snarled.

“Aye. They say we’re in Hell. That’s why there’s no sun—”

Benjamin rose to his full height and stormed over to the door and threw it open. But he found himself face to face with Dawson, who came stumbling towards him. “Sir,” the whey-faced pilot said hastily, “we’ve docked with the Hazard, but there’s been a problem with the rest o’ the lads—”

“I know, and I mean to end these skirmishes!”

“It’s not just the fighting, sir.”

“Then what—”

There came a cry. A single word. It was the single most feared word to any seaman. “Fire!”

Benjamin and his officers ran to the main deck, shoving past twenty or thirty men, and together they tackled a sailor lighting ropes on fire with a torch.