Galleon

by CJ Williams

  With the situation deteriorating, they needed to make landfall, and soon. The only way to improve their progress was to increase their canvas and run it longer. As if in answer to his prayers, a stiff breeze came over the deck and the sails blossomed.

  “From now on, we go watch-on-watch,” he told Kyoko. “And we start running with topsails as well.”

  She gave him a worried look. “What’s watch-on-watch? I hope it doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

  “It does, but it’s not that bad. We’ll sail day and night in shifts. Each of us will work eight hours on and take four hours off. That way we’ll always have two of us on duty. I can handle the deck duties and still work on things like mending and replacing. You girls stay at the helm. The only exception, of course, is for storms. Whenever weather comes, we still have to stow the sails. With three of us, it’s doable.”

  *.*.*.*

  The first three days were a relief for Hannah. The breeze made her sea sickness disappear, and that made up for a lot. The downside was she had to spend most of her time at the wheel rather than aloft. The days ran together in a constant haze of catnaps, quick cold meals, and steering. During her night shift at the ship’s wheel, she struggled to stay awake, and more than once Alyssa woke her up when she nodded off. She constantly felt at the edge of a dream, but the new routine inevitably became routine.

  Putting up the topsails for the first time was a bit scary. She wasn’t sure why; she’d had no fear of heights working on the main yard. But the extra fifty feet made a big difference. At that height, the boat seemed to rock and pitch more than ever. But it had to be done, so she gritted her teeth and tried not to look down.

  When she loosed the topsails, Grandfather couldn’t help as much with the lines because the topsail sheets tied off at the end of the main yard rather than being winched to the deck. Once the sails were out, Grandfather retired to his cabin, leaving her to take the helm.

  The ship handled differently with the extra canvas. It was as though Alyssa herself felt the urgency of the situation. There was more response from the rudder and more pull against the wheel. The increase in speed, however, was a welcome offset. Now they were getting somewhere.

  By the time she’d stowed the sails for the third storm, she no longer thought about the height. In fact, the damned harness was the biggest obstacle of all. She complained about it to Grandfather, but he only got angry when she brought up the subject.

  *.*.*.*

  On a particularly hot morning, Kyoko relieved Grandfather at the wheel. She wore a loose cotton blouse and a pair of cutoffs. All of her clothes were so dirty she hated to put anything on, but washing them in seawater left them feeling stiff and itchy. “It’s going to be miserable today,” she said impatiently.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” he responded in a frustrated tone.

  The heat was awful, especially at night. Better than freezing, but not much. At least the wind was steady from the southwest. It promised to be a good day for sailing.

  “We could stop for an hour,” Kyoko said, thinking a bath would be like heaven. “Even just thirty minutes. It would really be nice.”

  She had tried twice in the last few days to convince him to pause their journey while she and Hannah took a dip, but he would not listen, saying they couldn’t afford the lost time.

  “I already told you to forget it!” he snapped crossly. “You can swim when we get there. We’re cutting this way too close with our food and water.” His worries were infectious, and she found herself in an unusually bad mood.

  He muttered and stomped off to his cabin. Two hours later he was back. “Couldn’t sleep,” he grumbled. “Too hot inside. I’ll check my fishing lines.”

  He left, and moments later she heard him pulling something in. Hopefully, it would make a nice meal. They hadn’t caught anything for the last three days.

  After a few minutes, he came down the steps from the poop deck and held up the catch with a frown. He called it a catfish because of the sharp pectoral spines behind its gills. She’d been stuck more than once trying to cut their heads off because they fought back pretty hard. And they weren’t that good for eating but better than nothing, she supposed.

  He motioned for her to join him and headed toward the galley in the forecastle. Kyoko lashed the wheel and followed. It helped when he held the thing still while she decapitated it.

  Hannah called from the deck, “I’m going aloft.”

  “All right,” Kyoko shouted.

  She turned her attention to the catfish. Gus laid it out on a metal pan, and she got the big knife from her cupboard. She estimated its weight at about eight pounds.

  “Go ahead,” he muttered, holding the spines out of the way.

  Kyoko put the knife just past the spines and sliced down at an angle. The fish convulsed, and Gus roared with pain. One of the spines caught him right in the webbing between his first two fingers.

  “Damn it!” he shouted.

  “Don’t pull on it,” Kyoko warned. The spines had a nasty barb on the tip. Too late. Gus jerked it out and groaned again. Blood welled out from the hole. “Let me clean it,” she said, “or you’ll get it infected.”

  She grabbed his wrist and poured some clean water over it.

  “Not too much,” he complained. “We need that for drinking.”

  Kyoko ignored him and cleaned the wound. “You better put a bandage on that. Go on.” She pushed him out of the galley and turned back to the catfish. It had flopped onto the floor. She grabbed it by the tail and slammed it against the cooktop. “That’s for Grandfather,” she said, picking up her knife once again.

  “What the hell is this?” Grandfather shouted angrily from the deck. “Damn it!”

  Kyoko looked out the door to see what had set him off. He was standing at the base of the mainmast holding Hannah’s safety harness. Hannah was climbing down the shrouds, and her guilty expression said she knew she’d been busted.

  “I was just tying off the sheet,” she said defensively. “It was loose.”

  “That’s no reason to kill yourself,” he yelled. He shook the harness in front of Hannah’s nose, and his face turned red. Kyoko could tell he was about to explode. “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted.

  Hannah lost her temper and fired back. “What’s wrong with me?” she spat. “What’s wrong with you? I’m just trying to do my job and all you do yell at me!”

  “If you’re going to do your job, do it right!” Gus tried to force Hannah to take the harness.

  “Leave me alone!” she screamed. When Gus pressed it into her hands, she whipped it away and then threw it right back into his face.

  “Oh my God!” Kyoko exclaimed, hurrying onto the deck. “Don’t you dare hurt Grandfather!”

  Hannah shrieked in frustration and vaulted up the steps to the forecastle deck.

  “I can’t stand this anymore,” she cried. “I just want—”

  A huge wave washed over the bow and swept Hannah off the deck into the sea.

  A warning horn sounded, and Alyssa’s voice filled the air. “Man overboard! All hands on deck!”

  “Told you so!” Grandfather shouted. He looked over the rail and waved. “Bye, bye.” He turned away, commenting to Kyoko, “Maybe life will be a little more pleasant with just the two of us.” In spite of his words, he thumbed the clutch off the winch, freeing the line to the bottom sail. The canvas flapped, all lift gone, and Alyssa slowed immediately. He picked up a coil of rope to throw to Hannah.

  Kyoko was standing at the rail and yelled, “Shark! Grandfather, there’s a shark!”

  Gus dropped the rope and hurried to Kyoko’s side.

  There really was a shark, and it was headed straight for Hannah. The big, triangular dorsal fin was exactly the same as those they had seen in the lagoon, and the huge jaws were unmistakable.

  Hannah was frantically swimming toward the ship, but there was no way she was going to outrun those deadly teeth.

  “Give me that,” Gus s
aid and took the big knife from Kyoko’s hand. “And throw that rope to Hannah.” He vaulted to the top of the railing and jumped out away from the ship. With a savage yell, he came down right on the head of the shark. Both of them disappeared beneath the waves.

  “Grandfather!” Kyoko screamed. She grabbed up the rope and threw it toward Hannah. The line tangled itself into a big loose knot and fell back against the side about ten feet below the rail. Only a few inches trailed in the water.

  Although slowing, the boat continued to move forward. Hannah would never catch the rope. In fact, she was losing ground. Kyoko ran forward and released the clutch on the foresail, but the ship still had momentum. She looked over the rail but had lost sight of Hannah in the wake.

  The shark burst out of the sea, leaping entirely into the air. Grandfather sat astride its back, holding onto its dorsal fin with one hand and repeatedly slamming the knife into its spine with the other. The shark arched up and then nosed over to disappear again beneath the waves.

  “Alyssa!” Kyoko screamed. “Do something!”

  A warning horn blared across the deck. “All hands,” Alyssa’s voice boomed. “Prepare for emergency strake deployment. Brace, brace, brace!”

  The ship jerked to a sudden halt, throwing Kyoko sprawling to the deck. Loud, creaking screeches of unused machinery filled the air as the side rail folded down away from the ship, exposing giant hinges. Two narrow strips of the hull, one below the quarterdeck and another under the forecastle, pivoted upwards from below the waterline. Between them, the center chine under the hull had split in half to create long outriggers on either side of the boat. The ladder steps molded into the hull were now stairs down to the wide base that floated just above the waves.

  Kyoko rushed down to stand on the flat surface of the strake and grabbed Hannah’s outstretched hand, pulling her out of the water.

  The shark erupted from the sea once again with Gus still hammering the creature with the bloody blade. The shark gyrated from side to side while in the air before crashing once again into the sea, out of sight.

  Alyssa’s voice boomed from the side of the ship. “I am going to stun the shark, but it will incapacitate Captain Gus. You must be ready to retrieve him; he will be unconscious.”

  “Not yet!” Kyoko shouted. “Wait until they surface! I can’t see him!”

  The shark burst from the surface once more, bending wildly back and forth. Gus had lost the knife and was holding on to the dorsal fin with both hands. The shark turned on its side while in the air and Gus lost his grip. As he slid off to the side, the shark spun about, burying its nose against Gus, and its fierce jaws snapped closed. Gus yelled in agony before the shark drove him under the waves.

  “Now!” Kyoko screamed. “It’s killing him!”

  With a crack of thunder, the ocean beneath the Alyssa burst into a brilliant light. Kyoko looked but couldn’t see Gus through the foam and blood on the surface. A blur of motion by her side was Hannah diving into the sea at the spot where Gus had disappeared.

  A heart-stopping moment later Hannah resurfaced with one arm wrapped around his inert body. “Help me,” she cried as she reached the outrigger. Kyoko grabbed Gus and pulled him out of the water and then Hannah. Gus was covered in blood.

  “Brace yourselves,” Alyssa said loudly. The strake rotated up out of the water until it was level with the deck. “You must transport the captain to the infirmary immediately. He is seriously injured.”

  The two women carried Gus to the hopelessly inadequate surgery and laid him out on the operating table. Kyoko told Hannah to bring a bucket of boiling water, but she had already fled the scene.

  From the corner cupboard, Kyoko withdrew a small box that she had carefully wrapped with a cloth back on the island. Inside were ancient surgical instruments that she had sterilized by boiling them. She picked up a shiny scalpel and looked at a camera mounted on the side wall.

  “Are you recording this, Alyssa?” Kyoko asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Stop all cameras until I say otherwise. His family should not see what I’m about to do.

  *.*.*.*

  The Studio 37 video backdrop faded from Kyoko holding the scalpel. The camera zoomed out to show a pair of stunned TV personalities. Russell closed his mouth and gave Cassie an incredulous look.

  “We should…apologize, I guess,” he said, repeating Kent’s suggestion in his earpiece.

  “Right,” Cassie agreed. She turned to face the camera. “Russ and I are very sorry for showing those graphic images during your breakfast viewing. I…uh…we…of course we didn’t know that…uh.”

  Russell shook off his surprise and picked up the commentary. “Most of our viewers have said many times they want to see these videos as soon as they arrive, so we do our utmost to accommodate. Obviously, with live television, you don’t always know what that will bring. I…uh…” Russell wasn’t sure what to say. It was embarrassing, because he usually didn’t seize up like this.

  Kent’s exasperated voice sounded in Russell’s earpiece. “Throw it to Katelynn.”

  Katelynn was on the set this morning to report about the new political scandal coming out of Montreal. But she was a fast thinker and had a personal interest in the Grandfather story.

  “Katelynn,” Russell said, turning to his guest. “What’s your take on this?”

  “Well, now we know he’s not Superman, but this is not what I wanted to see. For over a year now, all of us have been asking who is this guy, and we’ve built up some kind of mental image that he can do anything. Can you put that picture of him back up? The one where he was riding the shark?”

  The backdrop changed to a freeze frame of Gus, his face contorted with effort as he sat astride the leaping shark, his knife held high in the air ready to stab it over and over.

  “That is just incredible,” Katelynn continued. “He’s like a bull rider in some freaking monster rodeo. None of us know who he really is, but I can’t believe this is how it ends for Grandfather Gus. If there is a God in this universe, we will see him again.”

  Cassie shook her head in wonder. “I don’t care who he is. All I know is that I’m not going to sleep until the next video arrives.”

  The Grandfather clock read 576 days.

  *.*.*.*

  “It’s okay, Nana,” Grace said, trying futilely to comfort her grandmother. They were sitting on the living room couch in the luxurious Manchester Residence. Grace had come to visit for the weekend. The apartment building was only a few blocks from where Russell and Cassie were broadcasting. “Grandpa Gus will be okay.”

  “What a stupid girl,” Carol said furiously, wiping away tears of worry. “That was entirely her fault. He should have let the shark eat her.”

  “I know, but she’s the one who jumped into the ocean to save him.”

  “Don’t you dare defend her to me, missy! If you’re going to take her side, then you can just go home.”

  Grace bit her lip. Nana had a fair point. Hannah had indeed caused the problem, but only because Grandpa Gus constantly lost his temper with her. If only those two could get along! She hoped the next video would arrive soon. Please God, let him be okay.

  *.*.*.*

  Twenty-four hours, later Russell waited patiently for Cassie and Katelynn Santos to finish talking. They had invited Katelynn back because of yesterday’s upsetting news. Since the video of the shark attack, public opinion had swung pretty violently against Hannah. The producers thought Katelynn’s background would be an excellent counterpoint to the growing negativity. Russell didn’t take sides one way or another; from his perspective, controversy was good for ratings and Katelynn’s devotion to the young lady would certainly stoke the discussion.

  From the studio’s control room, Kent unexpectedly shouted into Russell’s earpiece. “It’s here!”

  On the set, Russell flinched visibly. “Hang on, Katelynn,” he said sourly. “I think our director has some information for us.”

  “Sorry,” Kent
’s voice said. “A new video from Grandfather Gus just showed up. Todd is cueing it up now. Give a warning this time! It may contain graphic material!”

  The Breaking News banner appeared on the backdrop, overlaying the shot of Gus riding bareback, knifing the shark like a madman. The photo had appeared in nearly every news publication worldwide.

  Russell looked at the camera somberly. “I’ve just been told the next video has arrived. I want to warn our viewers that there may be some disturbing images in this message; we simply don’t know. As I said yesterday, we bring them to you the second they arrive. It’s been just over twenty-four hours since Grandfather Gus was injured in the horrific shark attack. All right, here it is. Let’s watch.”

  The three TV personalities turned to the video backdrop. It turned dark and then showed the figure of an unconscious old man lying in bed. It was definitely Gus, but he didn’t look like the powerful senior citizen the world had come to know. Instead, it was an old and very sick man. Cassie gasped at the sight.

  The scene switched to show Kyoko and Hannah sitting at the table in Gus’s cabin, looking very distraught.

  Viewers were familiar with the setting, but not under such dire circumstances. Until yesterday, only fools spoke negatively about Gus or either of the girls. But Hannah’s actions had created a backlash the extent of which was still unknown. The message today could very well influence those negative feelings.

  “Grandmother,” Kyoko said into the camera. “First let me say how terribly sorry we are.”

  Hannah nodded and tried to speak but was choked up. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Es tut mir leid,” she finally managed.

  The subtitles read I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  Kyoko continued. “I am sure the video Alyssa sent yesterday was very upsetting. I would have stopped her, but sometimes it happens automatically, and I didn’t think of it until too late. But she did, and I know you want an update.” She paused as though trying to gather her thoughts. “Grandfather is recovering.”