Treasures of the Deep

by Andrew McGahan

  But then something amazing happened. Another volley rang out, but not from the swivel guns on the high deck; instead it came from below – from the windows of the Great Cabin! And in the air, huge nets were magically spreading themselves, and falling over the enemy.

  Pietru was clapping his hands again – and for once Roland felt like joining him. Of course! He should have remembered that they had these new weapons. And wonderfully, they were working. The three attack boats were entangled in the nets, one running away out of control with its rudder jammed, the other two adrift, engines disabled, their crews fussing about their sterns. The swivel guns gave them another blast for good measure, but then the Revenge’s own motion was taking it out of range, and everything grew quiet. Roland looked about to assess the rest of the battle, but between the day’s haze and the clouds of smoke, there was little to see, only the flash of gunfire off to the west. Slowly, the Revenge came round to bear broadside onto the stranded attack boats. But it seemed they were not to be fired on, for there was a bustle on the main deck, and soon three cutters, each loaded with armed marines, were launched across the water towards the enemy.

  Roland watched in surprise. So the attack boats and their crews were to be taken prisoner? Interesting. He focussed on the craft that had led the assault. Its crew was waiting motionless on the narrow deck, studying the oncoming marines, while its young commander, a dark-haired officer of short stature, stared about desperately as if in search of some last rescue.

  He certainly wasn’t grinning anymore, Roland noted with satisfaction, grinning bloodily himself for a moment.

  But then Pietru gave a strange strangled cry, a sound that Roland had never heard him make, indecipherable, but alarming.

  He turned: the scapegoat was pointing a fleshy arm directly down at the water, and following it Roland saw a mass of pale, stringy lines suddenly seething up from the deeps to surface all about the ship.

  He froze in disbelief. It couldn’t be—

  But then the cry went up from the main deck.

  ‘Ropes! White ropes!’

  And so the horror began.

  It was the moment – the capture lasted a few minutes at most – that would define the rest of Roland’s existence, removing him forever from the world he had known, and condemning him to a fate unique among mankind. Yet in the years that followed he would often be amazed by how little he remembered of it. Perhaps it was always like that with the sudden cataclysms that shattered lives: the mind simply could not commit the terror and consequence of such swift incidents to the humble realms of memory.

  Had there been time to escape? If he had moved – in that very first instant – and leapt over the side, might he have cleared those grasping white ropes and made it to open water and rescue?

  He didn’t recall even considering it. Many men certainly jumped to their deaths in the ensuing chaos, but not Roland. Oh, he understood the ship’s terrible danger, sure enough. Poor sailor though he was, he knew all the same of the dreaded Rope Fish and the fate of vessels caught in the embrace of such a creature, and so realised from the first just how doomed was the Revenge. But the knowledge seemed only to paralyse him. He did no more than take a single step back from the rail – Pietru, he noted, did the same – and then watched motionless, dreamlike, as the white ropes went swarming up the side of the ship and on, arching over the deck to latch on to the sails and rigging and spars above, creating, in mere moments, a great tented roof.

  He didn’t remember crying out either, though screams were everywhere: screams of fear, screams of pain (for several seamen had been caught up in different ropes, and were being bodily torn apart) and, worst of all, the screams of despair, the wretched cries for help hurled across the water to the boats that were already drawing away in loathing, friend and foe alike. Those boats would never answer, they belonged now to another universe, one visible still to those on the Revenge, cruelly close, but forever cut off by the white strands enveloping the ship and seething in the water all around.

  But at some point Roland’s paralysis must have broken, for he had scattered recollections from the ensuing hours that found him at one moment on the main deck, hacking futilely at the white ropes with a bayonet; at another, climbing madly into the rigging only to meet the white roof overhead; at another yet, jostling amid a crowd on the foredeck trying to climb out on the bowsprit in the hope that the beam might extend just far enough to enable a man to dive those last desperate yards beyond the ropes …

  In vain, all in vain.

  But even madness can maintain its grip only for so long. Finally, as if by common consent, a calm fell across the ship, a pause for breath as the shock and panic drained away, leaving the crew rational once more, and able to look about themselves with haggard but sober eyes to assess their position.

  It was grim, to be sure. For one, they were alone. Out upon the sea, night was descending, and the fleets of friend and foe both had fled, abandoning the Revenge to face the first eve of its long purgatory without company. Nor would any ship ever return in search of them: even those still living on the Revenge were as good as dead now to their former comrades.

  But how many in fact were still living? The captain called for a casualty report, and it soon emerged that of the ship’s six hundred and fifty crew, some two hundred and fifty were dead or missing. About forty of those were the seamen and marines who had launched on the cutters prior to the disaster, and so saved their own lives unwittingly. The rest were those who had drowned by leaping overboard into the embrace of the white ropes, or who had been torn apart by the tendrils as they rose.

  Which left just four hundred survivors.

  Four hundred, and the Rope Fish.

  The thing held the Revenge tight in lethal embrace, its tendrils covering every inch of the hull, and then spreading in a thinner latticework – one that allowed ample air and light to pass through – up to the rigging and spars, leaving only the tops of the masts free. Beneath this canopy the open decks were clear of any intrusion by the ropes, and the lower decks were also clear, save that all the gunports were thickly blocked now by a white wall of webbing. The ship itself, meanwhile, was heavier, riding some eight feet lower in the water than it had ridden before, dragged down by the weight of its captor. And with only a few upper sails still spread, and the rudder jammed, they were drifting almost beam-on to the evening breeze, helpless to navigate.

  Dishevelled, and bleeding from a cut over his eye, the captain strove all the same to sound confident. ‘Take heart, lads,’ he told the crew, ‘for we’re not dead yet. True, legend may have it that no ship has ever escaped the clutches of a monster such as this, but by the deeps, I intend that we will be the first ship to do so! We are men, are we not, with minds and reason and skilled hands, and this Fish is but a dumb beast for all its clinging ropes. I refuse to believe that given time and thought, we cannot free ourselves.’

  In Roland’s elder years, these words would echo in his memory as self-deluded fripperies, a child’s tantrum against being sent to bed, loud maybe, but of no purpose. Time would prove only that reason and skill were useless, and that the Fish was no dumb beast. Instead, it was—

  Ah, but that was later.

  Much, much later.

  For now, in response to the captain’s speech, the crew did indeed rouse themselves from despair and take new heart. If it lay within the realm of human endeavour to do so, they would set themselves free.

  Their first attempt, even as that first night deepened, involved trying to burn the white ropes away. Axes and knives had already been employed against the ropes in the initial frenzy, and proved ineffectual, for the tendrils were tougher than the toughest leather, somehow both springy and firm, and no ordinary blade could sever them. So now gunpowder was brought up from the magazines, and set alight against the tendrils where they clung to the upper hull. But although the flames flared bright in the darkness, and the white ropes took on a sooty appearance in response, they did not release their glue-hold
on the hull, nor seem in any vital way to be damaged.

  Below decks, meantime, a cannon was loaded and fired at the white wall that covered each of the gunports. And although the shot did indeed blast a small hole briefly amid the ropes, new tendrils quickly rose from the sea and covered it over. And anyway, even if a gunport could be completely cleared, and a man could climb through, he would only find himself in a sea of the grasping tendrils, and so be dragged down to his death.

  Fire and explosives thus did not seem to be the answer, so after further thought the carpenters were summoned, bringing not more axes or other blades, but saws, to see if the tendrils could be hacked through, rather than merely sliced. And at first it seemed the idea might prove fruitful. With much labour, and at the cost of dulling three saw blades, several of the white ropes were indeed hewn through along the level of the railing.

  But again, more tendrils rose from the sea to replace them – the Rope Fish seemed to have an infinite supply. And anyway, below the cut, the tendrils still held firm against the rest of the hull, attached fast all the way down to the waterline and beneath. It was no use severing the ropes higher up. To have any effect in actually releasing the Revenge, a hundred men with a hundred saws would have to descend to the bottom of the ship, beneath the water, and there attempt to sever all the strands at once. But of course that was impossible. They did not have a hundred saws, and any man who descended even to the waterline would be snatched away instantly to be drowned.

  Thus passed the first night in futility, and dawn broke over a chastened crew. Yes, further attempts and experiments were made with the saws in the following days, and with fire as well, before all such notions were abandoned – but it was clear even from the first morning that some other tactic would be required. After all, every other ship caught in this way must have tried both fire and blades, and had notoriously failed. What the Revenge needed was an idea that no other crew had yet thought of or attempted.

  Only, what could it be?

  Roland wracked his mind as much as anyone, but other than taking wing from the tip of the mainmast like a bird, he could think of no likely means of escape. No one asked his opinion in any case. The captain made it clear that his duties remained the same as before, to keep Pietru out of harm’s way – and out of everyone else’s way too, for in truth, there was less patience now among the crew for the scapegoat’s wanderings. So Roland played no part in the efforts to free the ship. Instead, he shepherded Pietru about as best he could, hating the task as much as ever, and seeing less worth in it than ever, when in his own judgement they were all destined for death regardless.

  The others, however, remained more hopeful. On the fifth day of their imprisonment, with the ship drifting north still, a new attempt was made at liberation. The weapons master had by then devised half a dozen large mines, each the size of a whisky barrel, waterproofed and packed with gunpowder, and heavily weighted to ensure that they would sink rapidly, even if the grasping white ropes did not seize them and drag them down.

  At noon, they were dropped into the sea, three to each side of the ship, their fuses lit and set to detonate at a depth of two hundred feet. It was not known if the main body of the Rope Fish actually floated at this level, but it was held that such monsters must live at least that far down, for if they floated any shallower, then someone would have been able to describe the creatures before now. In clear water, it was possible to see as deep as a hundred and fifty feet, but in all history, no witness, gazing down from the surface at a Rope Fish, had ever glimpsed more than a great shadow, far, far below. So two hundred feet seemed a reasonable guess. If the monster was anywhere close, the mines must surely either kill it, or wound it enough to make it let go.

  Down the mines splashed, and swiftly disappeared. Everyone counted off the time under their breaths, imagining the barrels sinking closer and closer to the giant form that hung beneath the ship; or maybe being drawn down by the Fish’s own ropes, the monster’s eyes – if it had them – coldly considering these strange devices with their brightly burning fuses, drawing them fatally to its bosom, until, until – WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP.

  Roland, watching from the main deck, felt the mighty detonations through his feet, the whole ship juddering. For a moment afterwards there was nothing, then the ship seemed to lift a little, and finally, six great mounds of water rose from the sea, three on either hand, and broke into gouts of steam and spray, the crew cheering as the clouds rose to the sky.

  But the cheers soon died. On the ocean’s surface, the white ropes had merely risen and parted with the explosions, and then closed over again; and in the gouts of water that had been thrown up, there were no fleshy parts or gush of blood or other sign that the creature below had been wounded. Nor did a single tendril release from the ship. The mines had failed.

  That was only the first attempt, albeit. More mines were dropped over the following week, some deeper, some shallower, but all to as little purpose. Perhaps – said some – the main body of the fish was nowhere near the surface at all, but thousands of feet below, and so the mines were missing it entirely. But most came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t matter how accurate the mines were, the problem was there was just nothing solid enough in the monster for the weapons to damage. Most tales held that a Rope Fish was an amorphous creature in its main body, akin to an enormous jellyfish suspended beneath its millions of white tendrils. And how could an underwater explosion hurt something that was itself almost the consistency of water? It could simply flex and shift and bend around the detonation, as easily as did the white ropes on the surface. They might as well throw rocks at a cloud.

  At length, with their supply of gunpowder running low, the captain ordered an end to the dropping of mines.

  Some other way must be found.

  They had by now been adrift for fully two weeks. And, strangely, life went on. In the first instant of the attack, men had leapt overboard to their deaths rather than face an existence trapped within the Fish’s clutches … and yet, now that the horror of the capture itself was passed, the ship’s routines held much as they had before. The cooks still served two hot meals a day from the galley, the officers still commanded from the high deck, the crew still scrubbed the decks and slept in their hammocks by night. There was no breakdown in discipline, and surprisingly little complaint. The reality was, the Fish, for all the dread of its name, caused no overt discomfort to its victims.

  All it did was prevent them from sailing the ship.

  Or did it? In the Great Cabin the navigators were now pondering this very question, as they formulated a new plan of escape.

  The ship was adrift, true, but they had been marking its position closely all the same, for the white netting over the decks did not impede their view of the sky and stars. In the fortnight since the disaster they had travelled steadily north, and also slightly west – following, as would be expected, the dominant currents and winds of the Southern Reach waters. They now stood some few hundred miles to the south and east of the Twin Isles, and on their present track would in fact pass not far from the Red Island’s northeast coast.

  Which raised an intriguing possibility – what would happen to the Rope Fish in shallow water? If the thing dangled many hundreds of feet below the ship, then surely it would be dragged along the sea bed in any waters less deep – a process it would not enjoy. If the crew could therefore ensure that the ship ran aground at Red Island, even be it enemy territory, then surely the creature must release the vessel, or be dragged aground itself!

  Could they regain that much control of the ship? The upper masts still remained free, so limited sail could be set, and if the winds and currents cooperated, then maybe, maybe …

  Maps were studied anxiously, angles measured. To their frustration, the navigators were forced to admit that Red Island probably lay beyond their reach. The currents would take them close, but not close enough. But look – there – a fair distance off Red Island’s coast, but only some hundred miles to the north of t
he ship, lay a charted series of reefs that were almost athwart their path. There was no land, albeit, but land itself did not matter – all they needed was a rising ocean floor. Indeed, all the better if they could free the ship in mid-ocean, and not on an enemy coast. And even if worst came to worst, better shipwreck upon a reef, surely, than the doom of slow captivity.

  So it was decided. They would attempt to steer themselves upon the reefs. It needed only an alteration of a few points west of their current course in any case. Men were sent aloft to set what sails they might, but the main problem was the lack of a rudder, for it was still held fast – jammed flush against the stern – by the massed tendrils of the Fish, and no strength could turn it.

  There were, however, ways known to steer a ship if a rudder had been lost, as happened betimes at sea. One was to trail sea anchors behind each side of the vessel, canvas drogues that could be opened or closed via lines from the deck, so that drag was created to the left or right, which would then turn the ship. It was rough steering at best, but it might serve their purpose – if the drogues could be made to function amid the floating tendrils of the Fish.

  The first attempts were failures. The devices were immediately set upon by the ropes in the water, and dragged down. But then a novel solution was conceived. The Revenge still possessed the net-firing guns by which the Twin Islander boats had been disabled – they could be altered to fire a weighted drogue far out astern of the ship, beyond the range of the tendrils. (And ah, if only a man could be thrown so easily! But it was too far …)

  It was tried – and success! The drogues duly landed in open water, and their lines, in rising from the sea to the high deck, remained just clear of the white ropes about the ship, and so were not dragged down.

  They could steer. Only minimally, to be sure. But still, hopes on board rose to their highest levels since the capture. Now if only the wind and the currents held, in a matter of days they might well be free.