Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead
Page 45
The voice of Mr Smosh penetrated Hayden’s numbed mind, and the final words registered.
“We therefore commit her body to the deep,” he said, “to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead . . .”
They slipped her into the endless depths and condolences were again offered, until Hayden found himself alone on the quarterdeck. For a long time he stood at the rail, his mind in a whirl of strange emptiness. He could not give the order to make sail, to leave her there alone, sinking slowly down to the ooze and the darkness.
But he could not keep his ship there forever, and finally, he ordered sail to be made and their course shaped for Barbados. He went down to his cabin then and sat quietly by himself, listening for the sound of his own heart beating, for the tiny murmur within that he would bear with him until his heart could speak no more.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all of my friends who read my manuscripts and offer their kind comments: Stephen Ariss, Don Deese, Greg Janes, Doug Swanson, Chuck Bates, Carol Shahen, Jack Moss, Brendan Russell, and my first and always most trusted reader, my wife, Karen. I want to thank Rob Margolis, who has advised me on all of Hayden’s legal matters over the course of four books. I want to thank my friend, the intrepid small-boat sailor Gil Mercier, for lending Hayden his name when he is in France. One of my advisors passed away this year—Lyman Coleman, who was the retired senior padre of the Canadian Armed Forces. Lyman advised me on all things religious in the Hayden books and had been a friend for several decades. There is a little bit of Lyman in Mr Smosh and he will be missed by many. I want to thank my wonderful editors, Alex Clarke and Sara Minnich, for all of their hard work and insight as well as the teams at Penguin USA and UK. I would also like to thank my fantastic agents, Howard Morhaim and Caspian Dennis.