by Ellen Datlow
“Is there else you can do to stop the water?” Captain Maxwell was regretting his decision to sail without a carpenter, Swift could tell, but it was too late now.
“Not in this sea,” Swift said. “We must get to port, if we’re to save her.”
The captain nodded, and looked over the rain-misted deck to where passengers huddled—a small group of women, merchants, and servants, European, Indian, and Malay, seeking relief from cramped quarters.
“So be it,” he said. “We’ll set what sail we can and make for the coast.” Suddenly the captain’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”
Alarmed, Swift squinted his eyes against the rain. At the rear of the ship a small light wandered erratically up the mizzen mast. For a moment Swift thought it was a man carrying a candle, and he was filled with anger at whatever fool would bring an open flame into the rigging. Then he saw how the flame moved. Lithely. As though it were alive.
“St. Elme’s fire,” one of the tars murmured. “Quick, mark where she lands.”
“Best get below decks now,” Captain Maxwell advised his passengers, his voice betraying a hint of strain. “The wind is picking up.”
The flame flew suddenly to the middle of the ship, and soared to the top of the main mast. It hovered there, about a foot above the spar.
“The Supero Santo. It guides the haunt to us!”
“It predicts how many will drown,” a tar corrected.
“If atop, and only one, it means a storm will soon be over. We should all bid it goodspeed.”
The flame broke into three pieces and sank toward the deck. Sailors recoiled, scrambling to get out of the way of the spirit-fire. The corpusants hovered over the Minerva’s dark boards, still and silent.
“Three a-deck,” the captain muttered, almost under his breath. “That’s no good omen.”
Swift’s mess-boy edged forward, studying the triangle of flames with a cat’s intensity. Decurrs yanked the boy back and cuffed him on the ear.
“Oh look,” one of the European passengers said. “There’s more.”
Horrified, Swift followed the passengers’ gaze over the side of the vessel, to where a hundred or so of the tiny flames reeled and spun. Beneath the corpusants, the ocean burned like witch’s oil, green and blue.
“Allahumma rahmataka arju,” prayed one of the Mussulmen, “fala takilni ila nafsi tarfata ’ain …”
“Wish them goodspeed,” the captain ordered, his voice thick. “And see to your lines.”
“Have you ever seen that?” The boy asked as his messmates hurried to their stations. “Saint Elme’s fire? And so many of them? What does it mean?”
Swift had no answer. Around him, he could feel the wind rising.
“I’ve drowned no cat and killed no albatross,” Glosse said in the mess. Above the starboard watch’s heads the second day of the gale howled and roared. “I have whistled down no wind. Yet death-fires reel about our rigging, and the damned follow our wake, sending good tars to their deaths.”
“It’s not the haunt-ship that made A-kou lose his footing,” said Holdfast. “The Lascars say he had hungry eyes.”
“It was the haunt-ship that killed him,” Glosse said firmly. “And it’ll kill us all until we give it what it wants.”
Swift’s throat was dry. He wanted no part in this.
“And what does it want?” Decurrs said sharply. “Have you hailed that vessel, Glosse? Have you taken a message from the dead?”
“I am no fool, Decurrs, to hail a haunt. No,” Glosse said. “In dreams I heard it so. My lost brother came to me last night, his mouth full of seaweed and his shoes full of sand. In his hands he held a copy of our crew’s list, burning and smoldering. As I looked closer I saw one of those names afire, and knew then it was the Jonah who’d cursed us.”
“Whose name was it?” The boy sounded a bit too eager.
“If I had my letters I could tell you,” Glosse said. “But I’m no reading man. We have a Jonah aboard, and the haunt-ship wants him. That’s all I need to know.”
The rain drummed above their heads. The mess-table, suspended from the ceiling, creaked on its chains.
“And what do you wish us to do, Glosse?” Decurrs’s words jabbed the air. “Hunt down a Lascar to hang? For so they did on your last berth, or so I’m told.” There was a glitter in Decurrs’s eye. He was one of those who thought the captain had made a poor choice in Glosse, that the position of third mate should have gone to a more senior seaman.
The old fear thrilled through Swift. He shook his head warningly at Decurrs. Glosse was a mate now, after all, and had the power of the lash.
Holdfast Muhammad looked up from the swinging mess-table, his face grave. “Is that true, Glosse? I’ll pass no whisper for you if it’s so.”
Glosse waved his hand. “That was a different matter,” he said. “A theft.”
“The captain would not look kindly on you if you stir mutiny among the Lascars,” Decurrs said. His eyes met Swift’s, and Swift knew Decurrs expected him to speak up, to draw on his authority as the other old hand in the mess. Swift dropped his gaze.
Glosse forced a smile on his face. “Now, now, fellows,” he said. “What’s this talk of mutiny? I ask only that you keep your ears and eyes open, that’s all. “’Tis no more than good tars should do.”
Tension loomed around them, and then the boy spoke up. “Perhaps the haunt is a mutiny ship,” he said helpfully. “Like the Eagle.”
“Perhaps it’s your arse,” Cobb said. The men laughed. But Glosse gave Decurrs a sidelong glance and Swift knew it was not over between them.
Three days later, the gale winds still blew, and the ship pitched low and heavy. The waves ran mountains high. Swift, his arms numb with fatigue, slipped across the wet deck to his station. They would keep the Minerva before the wind, with bare poles.
At three bells, a sailor rushed up from below to shout in the captain’s ear. Someone else took up the cry, the words straining over the roar of the wind. “Water’s reached the lower deck.”
Captain Maxwell kept his eyes on the yards. “Keep to your stations,” he shouted, but his words were muffled by the gale.
The Minerva veered. Lashed though he was, Swift had to hook his hand around a wooden cleat to steady his footing. Looking toward the main mast, he saw to his horror that the reefed sail had come loose. One of the knots had been poorly tied—perhaps the dead sailor’s, perhaps Swift’s own—and now they might die for it.
The Minerva lurched as the loose sail caught the wind. Captain Maxwell, to his credit, did not hesitate. “Stand by to cut away the main mast!”
The sailor closest to the axe stood stupefied, his gaze transfixed by the terrible swell of the sail. Holdfast Muhammad undid his rope-anchor and slid his way over to the axe. Balancing like a man on a tightrope, he carried it over the tilting deck to the tallest mast on the ship. Some of the landsmen moved to join him, machetes in hand. The sharp crashes of their blows were muted by the deafening wind.
Swift could not help but turn to watch the mainmast shudder. After an age the mast sagged sideways, and with agonizing slowness tilted into the ocean. Such was the wind-sound that he could not hear it fall, but he saw the mast drop, and saw also the terrifying snarl of rope and timbers that moved with it.
“No,” Swift said. They had not cut away the rigging properly. He ducked as the stays tore loose. Wood splintered. Heavy wooden blocks careened across the deck.
The captain shouted orders into the wind, but no one could hear him. Horrified, Swift watched the ocean rise up behind the larboard gunwale. Distracted, the helmsman had let the ship broach to. Now, broadside to the wind, the Minerva’s deck tilted into a wall of water.
The wave smashed across the deck. Swift grabbed hold of a cleat, struggling to keep his footing as warm seawater drenched him. The ship’s bell clanged faintly, desperately. Abandon ship.
A Malay woman staggered out of a hatchway. Swift stretched a hand to her, grabbing her by the wrist.
Swift pulled the woman to the windward side of the mizzen shrouds and showed her how to grasp the thick black ropes from the sides. “Keep a vertical rope between your legs,” he yelled in her ear, and stepped onto the horizontal ratlines.
Together, he, the woman and Decurrs climbed up, away from the ocean. He could hear faint screams from below. The lower decks were almost fully submerged—one or two of the passengers must be searching for air against the ceiling. It would not last long.
Captain Maxwell clung to the standing rigging above their heads. He nodded upwards, gesturing that the woman should enter the crow’s nest. They passed her silently through the lubber’s hole, then followed themselves. A collection of passengers clung to each other on the firmer footing of the crow’s nest, limbs slipping and flailing as the ship rolled. Swift kept his arm locked around a shroud, as did Decurrs.
After a time, the wind died. Cries and prayers drifted up from the rigging, calls to God and to Allah. The relentless wash of waves surrounded them.
“How many do you think are clinging to this mast?” Decurrs said in his ear. “Look down.” Swift did and saw a muddle of bodies. Thirty, maybe forty souls clung to the mizzen, dangling above the seethe. If the mast collapsed, they would all perish.
Swift followed Decurrs down, climbing recklessly, hand over hand. Pulling out his belt-knife, he sawed at the sling-ropes that bound the mizzen yard to the mast. Beside him Decurrs did the same. The yard arm sagged, then dropped away, releasing its weight with a flurry of sail. Below them, someone screamed.
They rested in the rigging, swaying back and forth in the glowering night. It seemed the Minerva would not sink; this sometimes happened when water had covered the initial leak, and the ship carried a wood cargo. But she could not sail, either. The Minerva was not a ship anymore, and not yet a wreck. Something in-between.
Dawn cracked the sky, but brought no hope with it. The sea ran mountains high, raising and plummeting the remains of the Minerva into the troughs of its waves. Men and women clung to wet rigging, while the spray of wind-driven foam whirled about them. Most held to the mizzen mast rigging; a few sailors near the front of the ship had managed to scramble up the foremast. The stump of the main mast had offered no purchase to anyone. Somehow, through all this, the ship stayed afloat, though its upper deck was going to pieces, a strew of boards and ropes. The Minerva seemed to have found her level. She might float like this for many days, Swift realized.
Swift climbed up to the crow’s nest to check on the passengers. A European woman on the mizzen-top was shivering; she was clad only in a shift and straw petticoat. Swift offered her his jacket.
“Thank you, sir,” she said. “My name is Mrs. Newman. I am much obliged.”
Captain Maxwell, his collar turned up, stared at the waves. Looking down at the swamped ship, Swift racked his brains, searching for something that could save them. The jollyboat was gone, dragged beneath the waves. Perhaps they could fashion a raft? The quarterdeck beneath the mizzen was bare when the waves receded, but the violence of the sea was such that nobody dared climb down to her, for fear of being carried away.
“Someone will find us, surely,” said Mrs. Newman.
“Oh aye,” Captain Maxwell said. “They surely will.” He did not sound convinced. The man kept staring at the ocean, his face set. Swift did not like his look.
“I will go below,” Swift said, “and see if there is anything useful in the wash.” He said it as much to the passengers as to the captain; they should know that things were being done. But as he climbed down the rigging he felt despair roll over him. They were clinging to the remains of two masts above the remains of a ship that could no longer sail. They were at the mercy of wind and current now, in the Bay of Bengal, in monsoon season.
He climbed around the shivering sailors and landsmen until the rigging grew too crowded to pass. Embracing the shrouds, he watched the flotsam that swept to and fro across the quarterdeck, hoping to spy something useful, knowing that even if he did, the waves were too high to fetch it.
Resigned, Swift climbed back to the upper rigging. He rested beside the Gunner, who had taken up position below the crow’s nest.
“Do you think it a sin to eat a man?” the Gunner said.
The question made Swift’s scalp crawl. Swift had had little to do with the officer during the voyage. It was pirates and Indian Ocean slavers the Gunner watched for. And mutiny, of course.
“By God, sir,” Swift said. “It will not come to that.”
“I’ve been wrecked before,” the Gunner replied. “It will come.” He rested his chin on a ratline and closed his eyes.
The wind died. The sun stood overhead, vertical and bloody. Still the Minerva did not sink.
Swift’s throat was beginning to ache with thirst. He fumbled for a still-damp corner of his shirt. Tilting it to his mouth, he succeeded in squeezing free a drop or two.
“This is how it starts,” the Gunner said, watching him. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, a sure sign of thirst. “When we are driven to drink salt water, that’s when destruction comes.”
“You should not talk so much,” Swift said. He realized as soon as he spoke that he’d left off the obligatory “sir.” But the man did not deserve it, and he could not whip Swift now. “You’ll scare the women.”
The Gunner shrugged to show it did not matter, and lay back against the shrouds.
“We could dip our coats,” said a voice from below. Glancing down, Swift recognized his mess-boy huddled between two Lascars. He was surprised at his own surge of relief: he was glad the boy had lived.
The boy said again, in a small voice: “Captain Inglefield, in his Narrative, said he dipped his coat in the water and lay against it, so the water seeped into his flesh and left the salt on his skin.”
“Is such a thing possible?” A tar, dug into a lower ratline, sounded doubtful.
“Let us try,” Swift said. He did not say, “It will at least keep us busy.” Anything was better than lying endlessly against this swaying grid of ropes, thinking on death. He was a sailor: when Death came calling, he wanted it to catch him doing something useful.
A sailor donated his jacket. They fastened a rope belt to it and passed it down the ladder, so the lowest man could dip it into the ocean before passing it back up. It was a laborious, careful task on a swaying mast—exactly the thing to occupy a man and keep his thoughts from dreadful tales.
The women, however, had no such action to take. When Swift clambered up to the crow’s nest, he saw Mrs. Newman weeping, the other women staring straight ahead. Their skin had begun to blister in the heat. Swift passed the wet coat to the women first, and showed them how to daub their arms with it. Mrs. Newman moved slowly, as if in a dream. “Take your time,” Swift said, as kindly as he could.
“How bad is it?” she asked. “Truly.”
“We’re still afloat,” Swift said. “Perhaps a passing ship will spy us. Indeed,” he lied, “I thought I heard a gun last night. We are not the only ship in this sea.”
“Aye,” muttered a sailor below, “but I’d rather we were alone than with that ghost ship alongside.”
Mrs. Newman’s nostrils flared. She looked for all the world like a small animal trembling inside a Rangoon market cage. “What is he speaking of? What does he mean?”
“It is nothing,” Swift said. “Just tar’s talk.” He could have kicked the man.
“Don’t you worry about her,” the Gunner said as Swift retook his position on the standing rigging. “She’ll outlast us all. Her type always does.”
Night descended on them like a cloud. Though th
e weather was warm, Swift found himself shivering. Now that the wind had died, the groans and cries of terrified people surrounded him. The Zong, he thought, but he was not there; this was a different ship.
Swift woke with a start. Something—a feather? A wing?—had brushed his cheek. He thrust the bird away before it could peck out his eyes.
“Forgive me, Mr. Swift,” a woman’s voice said. Looking up, he saw the faint outline of Mrs. Newman’s face peering at him. A strip of fabric—the coat?—dangled in front of her. “I only thought—Is that a sail?”
Hope surged through Swift as he adjusted himself on the ropes, trying to get a better look at the ocean behind him. Something stirred in the haze of darkness, something pale and large.
“A sail!” came an exultant voice from the forecastle. “A sail to starboard.”
The shape turned. For one wonderful moment Swift saw it clearly, a square-rigger full to the wind.
“Does anyone have a pistol? A gunshot’s what we need.”
Another sailor hallooed into the wind.
Decurrs started forward in his ropes. “Do not hail that ship!”
“What?” Now Swift was fully awake. He glanced back at the vessel. This time he saw what Decurrs saw: the way the clouds slitted their gaze through the ship’s sails, the way her edges blurred with light.
“Do not hail that ship!” Decurrs shouted. From the foresail he heard a shout in Malay; angry voices rose from below. Others were realizing the danger.
And yet the hallooing man would not stop. Perhaps he was a landsman; perhaps he was desperate enough to not care about the consequences.
“Ahoy!” the man yelled. Bare-chested, he leaned out from the mizzen, his shirt fluttering in his hand as an improvised flag. “We are here!”
The man’s body flew away from the rigging. His arms and legs bewildered themselves in the air as he fell into darkness. The sailor who’d pushed him leaned back in, to the congratulations of his fellows.
“Too late,” Decurrs whispered.
Swift raised his gaze. The ghost ship was turning their way, her cobweb sails filling with impossible wind. Her whiteness was a loathsome thing: the white of a bone pushed through the skin; the white of a shark’s tooth as it eats a man alive.