The Ocean of the Dead: Ship Kings 4

by Andrew McGahan

  And yet for all this creeping paranoia, nothing whatever happened to hinder or disturb the fleet.

  Until the sixteenth night.

  The evening itself appeared to pass without incident, but at dawn a strange report came to Dow. It concerned the Chloe’s drinking water. Four barrels were kept on the main deck for the crew’s use. Two of these stood at the foot of the stern castle, and were lit during the night by lamps; the other two, by the forecastle, were left in darkness. Overnight, these latter two barrels had been vandalised. Someone had punctured each of them with a sharp instrument, so that their contents had flowed noiselessly across the deck and over the side.

  It was a baffling development. It could hardly have been accidental, and yet why would anyone deliberately interfere with the ship’s water?

  ‘Could it be a sign of rebellion?’ Fidel wondered to Dow. ‘An act of sabotage by one of the crew? Someone who wants us to turn back?’

  ‘Magliore?’ asked Dow. ‘Or one of his admirers?’

  Fidel nodded. ‘And yet what purpose does wasting two barrels of water serve? There’s plenty more to be gained, as long as we sail among the floating isles. It seems such a futile gesture.’

  That night, Dow ordered lamps lit about all four water barrels, and the evening saw no trouble – but only on the Chloe. Word came the next morning from the New World that someone had wreaked silent havoc on their main deck during the darkness. Not only had three water barrels been holed, but several lockers had been thrown open and rifled, and objects stolen from them. Nothing vital was missing, only some spare pulleys for the rigging, and a collection of signal flags. But why would anyone want to steal any of these things at all? And again, why attack the water barrels? Was some kind of conspiracy afoot, involving the crews of both ships? But even if an uprising was planned, how did any of these minor crimes further the mutineers’ hopes?

  The following night, the eighteenth at the oars, both ships lit themselves as brightly as they might, and kept guard. Nothing untoward occurred at first, at least above decks. But close to midnight there came, on the Chloe, a sudden report from below decks.

  A wide-eyed sailor brought the news to Dow and Fidel. Down beneath the waterline, he said, strange noises could be heard coming through the hull. Not the mere rustle and scrape of the weeds against the ship, everyone was used to that, this was rather a more purposeful series of exploratory knocks and taps, starting from the bow and moving towards the stern.

  Dow and Fidel descended immediately to the lower decks to listen for themselves, but by then sounds had ceased. Dow might have doubted that the noises had ever been there at all – that maybe this was merely some ill-conceived joke or deception – except that there was no mistaking the uneasiness in the eyes of the men and women and children who made their homes in these crowded deep levels. Something unusual had been heard.

  And then, just before dawn, during the regular exchange of rowers, one of the boats reported that they had lost two of their oars. Lost? came the enquiry from the duty officer. Did they mean lost over the side, dropped? No, replied the two rowers, looking at each other, lost because the oars had been ripped from their hands, yanked by something under the water.

  When Dow and Fidel heard of this, they summoned the two men to question them in person.

  ‘Surely,’ said Fidel, ‘your oars merely got tangled in a loop of weed. Maybe there was even an elastic property to the weed that made it seem like the oars were being grabbed, and it would be easy in the darkness to imagine the rest, but—’

  The men shook their heads, nervous but firm. ‘No sir,’ said one. ‘I’ve had oars caught in the weed before, and this was nothing like that. This was a deliberate pull and wrench, and strong, too.’

  ‘There’re things out there,’ said the other in a hushed, defiant voice. ‘Truth is, there’s been something stalking the boats these last two or three nights now, something following us in the dark – but no one wants to speak up for fear of sounding a fool. But see, now it’s stalking the ships too. Tapping on the hull. I tell you, something is out there. And it don’t like us.’

  And from that belief, neither could be shaken.

  *

  The event seemed to remove a certain inhibition from the Chloe’s crew. Rumour now ran rife across the ship. Suddenly everyone had similar tales to tell of rowing by night: oars being grabbed from beneath, hard shoves coming from below to veer the boats off course, strange noises emanating from the darkness, from things too big to be insects or fish. There were even reports of glowing eyes, similar to those Dow himself had seen.

  Clearly the fleet was being observed in some way, stalked by a presence that did not want them there. And the poet Magliore had no doubts as to who it was.

  ‘It is the Dead,’ he preached to hushed gatherings of his believers below decks – so the report came to Dow. ‘It is the drowned who are watching us from the shadows, the sunken ones, those who make this netherworld their home. We are being warned, as we have been warned all along, but now for the last time. We will not be tolerated much longer. We must flee, and not by going forward, but by going back. For our captains are mistaken: there is no southern ocean, no New World – there is only more Doldrums ahead, an eternity of wasteland, into which we advance under sentence of death.’

  His congregation was small as yet, for as everyone knew turning back would be no simple thing, and in any case it was not up to anyone on the Chloe. They still sailed under threat of the New World’s guns. Also, as long as the daylight lasted it was easier to dismiss many of the more outlandish tales told. But as the afternoon faded towards their nineteenth evening at the oars, anxiety rose, even in the Great Cabin. Be it the Dead or not out there, was it safe to keep rowing by night, with the boats so vulnerable in the dark?

  Fidel answered this. ‘Of course we must row by night. If we restrict ourselves to daylight, we’ll only double the time we must spend in these waters. Whatever is tracking us, the faster we flee its territory the better. Put extra lights on the boats, but we must row on!’

  So it was done. As evening fell, each boat was assigned three lamps instead of one. On the ships, extra lookouts were posted in the rigging, ready to cry out at any sign of trouble. And everywhere crowds lined the rails, too uneasy to go below or to sleep.

  Night deepened, and taut silence held over the fleet. But for a long period nothing happened. Out ahead, just visible in the darkness, the boats pressed on: dim pinpricks of light on the black sea, bent shapes toiling at the oars. As the hours passed, and the crews were changed over, reports confirmed that there had been no attacks at all on their oars, or on the boats. Dow’s own shift was likewise free of interruption or phenomena. When he returned to the Chloe he found that the tension there had relaxed fractionally. Midnight came and went without incident. By the second bell following, the crowd on the main deck was thinning as folk slipped below finally to rest.

  Maybe it had all been imagination . . .

  But then, at the third bell, with vigilance at its most somnolent, a low thumping was suddenly heard.

  Drowsy lookouts shook themselves and called out. Dow, nodding to sleep as he stood on the high deck, likewise came alert. The knocking was coming from the waterline; something was bumping along the hull – it sounded like one of the boats returning. But it was on the wrong side of the ship, away from the boarding ladders, and none of the boats were due in anyway.

  Except – now that Dow made a count of the dim lights out ahead, there were only five craft visible, not six.

  Lanterns were brought and men climbed down to the waterline on ropes – then gave cries of dismay. The sixth boat was there, drifting against the ship’s side as the Chloe moved slowly forward; its towline floating slack in the water, its oars hanging at rest in their locks.

  But there was no one in it. The craft was empty. The ten rowers who had crewed it, and the coxswain who had manned the tiller, had all vanished.

  *

  Panic now threatened among
the crowd on the main deck, but Dow’s own reaction was one of anger. Here was no shadowy glimpse from the corner of the eye, or a stolen oar; here was a blatant attack, and eleven men and women missing! He called a halt to all towing and ordered that the other boats search the water for swimmers, and sent a demand to Diego that he do likewise on the New World. But even though the fleet halted there the rest of the night, the thirteen remaining boats combing the water back and forth till dawn, not a single member of the missing crew was sighted, alive or dead.

  The sombre light of day brought no better news. Other than weed and islands, the sea was empty. The searchers kept at it for hours more, but at noon the hunt was abandoned and all boats recalled.

  Shock was fading by then on the Chloe, replaced everywhere by whispered talk and fearful glances.

  ‘Here at last,’ said Magliore, his words passed faithfully all about the ship, ‘we see the malice of the Dead towards the living. Who else but such unearthly spirits, the cold unbreathing corpses of the drowned, could steal away so many souls in utter silence, without even those in the boats nearby hearing a cry? The sunken ones have gone beyond mere warnings – now eleven of us have been borne away to perish in the deeps, to become drowned ones themselves. Will we still refuse to pay attention? What more signs do our captains need? We must retreat! Or these victims will not be the last!’

  Early in the afternoon a delegation from below decks came to Dow, led not by Magliore or his friends, but by the most sober and level-headed senior figures of the common crew. And even they were restive. They did not presume to speak on whether the fleet should turn back or go on – but they did make it clear that no one from the Chloe would crew any boat that was sent out by night. From now on, they would row only by daylight.

  The latter precaution Dow had already decided upon in any case, for until the mystery of the disappearance could be solved it was too great a risk to chance other lives. But as for turning the fleet around and retreating, that, as ever, was not his choice to make.

  A message came from Diego that same afternoon to enforce the point, borne by Florenze. ‘Forthwith,’ the lieutenant declared to Dow, ‘all rowing is to be restricted to daylight hours – but otherwise the fleet will continue on its southward course as normal. His Highness remains unbowed. As for those lost, Prince Diego is no believer in ghosts, and orders that you keep special guard against treachery among the Chloe’s crew, for it is in treachery that the answer to this mystery lies, he is sure. He urges you to beware of those who aim to hinder this expedition through murder and fearmongering. That is the danger that must be met – not one conjured by fantastic tales.’

  So it was that no boats were sent out that twentieth night. From sunset, the fleet lay at rest – the ships at least; there was little rest to be had for their crews. On the Chloe, lookouts were posted at every vantage, gazing into the impenetrable blackness. Accompanying them were armed sentries, for Fidel had issued muskets to trusted crewmembers. Although whether these sentries guarded against a threat from within or without the ship remained unspoken. Perhaps it was both.

  The night crept by, as suffocating and silent as ever, and again it seemed the darkness might pass without event. But then, just as lethargy was stealing over the watch, the peace was shattered by screams. Awful screams, from below – a woman’s voice, in highest terror.

  Armed guards rushed down the stairways, and on the lowest gun deck they found a woman surrounded already by a shocked crowd. She was distraught, and weeping a terrible tale: her child had been stolen away before her very eyes, by something that came from the sea.

  It was some time before she could be calmed enough to recount the event in any detail, and by then Dow and his senior commanders were in attendance to listen. The woman was one of the refugees from the Snout. She and her husband and their two children, a baby boy and a young girl, had made their home in a corner of the Third Gun, and up until now had existed there without complaint. They had escaped the fevers that had felled so many others, perhaps because their corner was a well-ventilated site, being near to one of the open gun ports. But if so, that same port had been their undoing, for it was through this opening that the – thing – had gained entry.

  In truth though, in the lower deck gloom the mother had seen very little. All she could relate was that she had been woken from a restless doze by a small noise from her son; a half cry in his sleep, she had thought. His bed was by her side, and she had turned to him – only to find a shadow looming over her.

  Its appearance she could not describe, other than that it seemed man-shaped, with a head that was framed by long, lank hair, and that its skin gleamed in the darkness, dripping water, and that there was a stench like flesh long dead. Then it had moved, and her son cried again, and she realised that the shadow had hold of the baby, clutched in inhuman limbs. Even as she rose up in horror, the thing slipped away. Its silhouette darkened the gun port momentarily, there came a soft splash, then nothing.

  As she recounted all this through her tears, searchers were busy throughout the ship, while outside others had descended the boarding ladders, coming as close to the water as they dared, to survey the sea for any sign. But all such efforts were in vain. The baby was gone.

  *

  Now there was no stopping it. Panic gripped the Chloe. A child stolen from within the bosom of the ship, virtually from his mother’s arms! If there was no safety there, then there was no safety anywhere.

  People ran to and fro through the lower decks, herding all the children into the amidships areas, surrounding them there with guards. Others slammed all the gun ports shut and bolted them fast. But this only created a mass of terrified children, shrieking and wailing together in a darkness that had been made even more unbearably airless than usual. And it served no purpose anyway. There were no more intrusions that night. Indeed, the feeling was palpable to those topside: the threat from the water had withdrawn, satisfied with the stolen child.

  Dawn found the fleet weary and witless, and for a long while, even with the day come, the crews on both ships refused to launch the boats, so great had their loathing grown for the sea and the weed and the floating islands. Magliore was right, they said. This was truly the Ocean of the Dead, for what else could the thing be that had taken the baby but one of the drowned, one of the Sunken Ones, as the poet called them? Was it not a corpse-like thing, stinking of death and decay, pallid and dripping, and hateful of the living?

  Dow and his officers argued in reply: whatever the source of the attack, the fleet had only ever been harassed by darkness, so it was still safe to row by daylight. The crews were unconvinced. Even if the Sunken Ones would not attack by day, they said, they would still be hiding in the watery shadows of the abyss, drifting out of sight beneath the weeds and the islands, and the thought of them staring up was intolerable. Dow and his officers reasoned again: even if that was true, still the crews must launch the boats, for if they didn’t, then how could the fleet ever escape this region? It was row – or perish here of thirst and starvation. And as Prince Diego would allow them to row in only one direction, there was nothing else to be done but to push on, and to do it now.

  The validity of this even the fearful crews had to accept eventually, and by midmorning the boats were lowered again, the lines were paid out, and the fleet resumed its creeping journey southwards.

  The day passed in suspenseful calm. Nothing rose from the sea to interfere with the rowers, and on the ships those who were off duty slept while they might, for all knew that there would be no sleep in the coming evening. They were in a state of war now against an unseen enemy, the Sunken Ones, or, as they were more often being called, simply the Sunken. As the afternoon lengthened, all gun ports – they had been opened that morning – were closed again, and every outer window or door that gave access from the decks was locked tight.

  Sunset came. The boats were recalled and raised from the water, and the fleet waited motionless amid the weeds as darkness infused the sky, first purple
through the Barrier haze, then coal black. Oil and candles had been issued enough to light the ships more brightly than ever before – and also, lanterns were lowered on ropes to the waterline about both vessels, so that nothing could approach unseen. If anything crept aboard through such illumination, said folk, then it was indeed no solid creature at all, but truly a ghost.

  Night thickened. On the Chloe, there was much loud talk and even some singing from the crew, as if to spite the darkness and brave the great silence of the Doldrums – or perhaps it was just to drive off evil spirits by noise alone. But as the hours passed the overwhelming blackness bore down on even the most defiant of the watchers, and in time the quiet gained ascendency.

  Only to be shattered by more screams – a man’s hoarse shouts this time, one of the watchers in the bow. ‘Faces,’ he cried in terror, reeling back, ‘faces in the water below! Drowned faces, staring!’

  And in response other voices rose. ‘Eyes! See, they are watching us! By all the deeps, their eyes . . .’

  Mayhem erupted as people rushed to gain a view. More shouts rose, of horror and denial. Dow, standing by the wheel, dashed to the nearest rail and threw his gaze down to behold – what?

  At first he was not sure he saw anything, for the ocean was a distorted mirror that reflected the glow of the hanging lanterns and indeed his own face, all askew. But beneath that, through his own features, he suddenly glimpsed another face below the surface, a visage pale and ghastly, long hair drifting in the water, a drowned mouth open wide, and black hollow eyes, like empty sockets picked clean of flesh, staring unblinkingly.

  Then it was gone, sinking away into blackness.

  Musket fire cracked now around the ship, and pinpoint splashes fractured the mirrored sea, and voices cheered . . . but when all the ado died away, and when all the different accounts were compared, it seemed that although dozens of faces had been sighted and fired upon, nothing had been hit, and there was no proof now that there had even been anything to hit. While on the New World, nothing had been sighted in the water at all.