Sometime in the next ten hours, Riley thought, they'd make land, or Mandalay would sink to the bottom. Those were the only two options left. Ten more hours at the pumps was the most he could ask of his crew. Already they were working without sleep, without much of anything in the way of food, and still the water rose, lapping in at the edges of the ragged hole in the side of his ship.

One of the boys had collapsed an hour ago: just fell asleep on his feet and pitched face forward into the water, nearly drowning. Old Henry Nine-fingers, the cook, had let go of his own pump handle and dragged the boy out of the water, coughing and spluttering. Doc Hutchins had fed the boy a short of rum, then wrapped him in a patchwork wool blanket.

Ten hours, maybe less if the wind picked up. Already they'd had to haul the remaining portside cannons to the starboard, to correct the ship's lean.

At least they'd managed to put out the fire, thank any gods that might still be listening. For a few minutes there it had looked like the whole powder magazine was going to go up, but somehow the bucket brigade's efforts had combined with the water streaming in and the soup leaking from the ruins of the pantry to quench the flames in time. There was still a horrific stench in the air, cooked flesh and burned gunpowder, the reek of death.

Charles lay on the deck, flat on his back, his clouded eyes staring up at the broad blue sky. No one had yet spared a moment to close his eyes. Someone should, thought Riley, and tried to stand. But his legs weren't working right, and all that happened was that he fell over onto his side.

Faint gull shrieks came to him as he pushed himself back upright, and he knew they couldn't be far from land. But there was no one in the nest: everyone was belowdecks save Riley and Charles.

"Charles," he whispered, and already the name was foreign to him, an alien name belonging to an alien creature. He wondered if he'd meet Charles again someday, some dim day when the sun was masked by winter clouds and the sea was the pallid grey of corpseflesh. He wondered what they'd say to each other. You were a good officer, he thought. You stood your post. Even when the deck heaved and the boys screamed and the world itself was rent by the blast, you stood your post.

Shroudlines and oak creaked in the stiff breeze that pushed them toward port. Riley turned his head and looked at the wreck of the mizzen mast, the cut ends of the shrouds stirring in the wind or trailing in the water. The stump of the mast was black and ragged, and something in it smoldered even now. Beyond it, he could see officer country, the cozy rooms that he had shared with Charles and Fauntleroy. Now it would be just the two of them, but no one would be sleeping in those berths tonight. The windows had all shattered, and the bunks were full of jagged glass.

The water from the pumps sounded like a constant stream of piss falling into the ocean, but Riley knew better. It was blood. His ship was wounded, was dying, and there wasn't a God-damned thing he could do about it. It was too late even for prayer.

Doc Hutchin came up from below, his face and hands and shirt bloody. There were men and boys down there that had been running the pumps for hours, maybe days. They'd been working the wooden handles, calluses splitting and weeping, their blood serving as oil to lubricate the pumps. No one really knew how long it had been anymore. The sun's travels seemed erratic ever since the cannon had exploded, but Riley was pretty sure that it was just the crisis, punching a hole in his experience of time.

Hutch came over to him, taking slow and careful steps. He never seemed to get his sea legs, ever, but he didn't often relish going ashore in port either. The men whispered theories about his checkered past, how he had a constable looking for him in every port. One of the boys had once found a WANTED poster nailed to a tavern door which bore a decent likeness of the good doctor's face.

"Drink?" said Hutch, squatting down next to him.

"No," he said. "Got to get up. Soon."

"You're exhausted," said the doctor. He pulled a flat-sided brown bottle out of one of his boots. There was a foomp! sound as he pulled the cork out of the neck with his teeth. "Bit o' rum 'll do you some good, I reckon."

"I don't—"

"Doctor's orders," said Hutch, handing him the bottle.

He swigged down two swallows' worth, then handed the bottle back. As he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the doctor took a healthy pull, then re-corked the bottle and slid it back down into his boot.

"Help me up," said Riley. "The men need to see their Cap'n."

"Aye," said Hutch, and rose to his feet. He put a hand on the bulwark to steady himself, then extended his other hand to Riley. The doctor pulled the captain upright.

Something shrieked from on high, and they both looked up, shading their eyes against the sun. A gull wheeled above them.

"Will we make it, d'you think?" said Hutch. His voice was nonchalant, as if he didn't care one way or t'other about the answer, but Riley had known him a long time. The doctor was terrified; it was written all over his face, in the worried lines around his eyes, in the hard set of his jaw, clamping his teeth together so tight they ground one against the other.

"It'll be close," said Riley.

"Ah," said the doctor, and bent to retrieve his bottle again. "No sense lettin' it go to waste, then," he said, straightening up. This time, when he pulled the cork out, he spat it overboard.

"True," said Riley, accepting the bottle when it was offered. The rum burned its way down his throat to his belly, warmth spreading out like slow golden fire. "To Mandalay," he said, raising the bottle high, then handing it back to its owner.

"To Mandalay," said Hutch, holding the bottle aloft, then draining it and letting it drop to shatter on the deck. "Long may she sail."

"Aye," said Riley, and the gull screamed again. And another, and another, in shrieking chorus.

Riley closed his eyes, daring in that moment to hope, to offer a brief, undirected prayer of thanks.

"Is that… is that land?" whispered Hutch, as though he hardly dared hope.

Riley turned and followed the doctor's gaze. A low, dark line lay on the horizon like blood on the water.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it is."

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 3:26 PM and is filed under Part I: Everything that never happened. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.