Hawkwood's voyage

SEVENTEEN

12th day of Midorion, year of the Saint 551.

Wind nor’-nor’-east by north on the starboard quarter, veering and strengthening. White-tops and six-foot swell. Course due west at seven knots, though we are making leeway I estimate at one league in twelve.

Now three weeks out of Abrusio, by dead-reckoning some 268 leagues west of North Cape in the Hebrionese. Aevil Matusian, common soldier, lost overboard in the forenoon watch, washed out of the beakhead by a green sea. May the Saints preserve his soul. Father Ortelius preached in the afternoon watch. In the first dog-watch I had hands send up extra preventer-stays and bring in the ship’s boats. Shipped hawse bags over the cable-holes and tarpaulins over all the hatches. Dirty weather on the way. The Grace of God is drawing ahead despite all Haukal does. Lost sight of her in the first dog-watch. I pray that both our vessels may survive the storm I feel is coming.

There was so much that the bald entries in the ship’s log could not convey, Hawkwood thought, as he stood on the quarterdeck of the Osprey with his arm wrapped round the mizzen backstay.

They could not get across the mood of a ship’s company, the indefinable tensions and comradeships that pulled it together or apart. Every ship had a personality of its own-it was one of the reasons that he loved his willing, striving carrack as she breasted the white-flecked ocean and slipped ever further westwards into the unknown. But every ship’s company also had a personality of its own once it had been at sea for a while, and it was this which occupied his thoughts.

Bad feeling on board. The sailors and the soldiers seemed to have divided into the equivalent of two armed camps. It had started with the damned Inceptine, Ortelius. He had complained to Hawkwood that though the soldiers attended his sermons regularly-even the officers-the sailors did not, but went about their business as though he were not there. Hawkwood had tried to explain to him that the sailors had their work to do, that the running of the ship could not stop for a sermon and that those mariners not on duty were seizing four hours of well-earned rest-the most they ever had at one time, because of the watch system. Ortelius could not see the point, however. He had ended up calling Hawkwood impious, lacking in respect for the cloth. And all this at Murad’s dinner-table whilst the scar-faced nobleman looked on in obvious amusement.

There were other things. Some of the sailors had gone to several of the passengers on board for cures to minor ailments-rope-burns, chilblains and the like, and the oldwives had been happy to cure them with the Dweomer they possessed. Friendships had sprung up between sailors and passengers as a result; after all, a large proportion of the crew were, so to speak, in the same boat as the Dweomer-folk: frowned upon by the Church and the authorities. Again Ortelius had protested, and this time Murad had backed him up, more out of devilry than for any real motive, Hawkwood suspected. No good could come to a ship which tolerated the use of Dweomer on board, the priest had said. And sailors being the superstitious lot they were, it had cast a pall over the entire crew. For many of them, however, the Ramusian faith was just another brand of Dweomer, and they did not stop their fraternization with the passengers.

There was a weather-worker aboard, Billerand had informed Hawkwood, one of those rare Dweomer-folk who could influence the wind. He was a mousy little man named Pernicus and had offered his services to the ship’s master, but Hawkwood had not dared to use his abilities. There was enough trouble with the priest and the soldiery already. And besides, now that the wind had veered and was screaming in over the quarter, the ship was sailing more freely. They were logging over twenty-five leagues a day, no mean feat for an overloaded carrack. If, God forbid, the Osprey found herself on a lee shore, then Hawkwood would not hesitate to call on Pernicus’ services, but for now he felt it was better to let well alone.

Especially considering what had happened today-that damned stupid soldier having a shit in the beakhead while the waves were breaking over the forecastle. He had been washed out of his perch by a foaming green sea, and they could not heave-to to pick him up, not with a quartering wind roaring over the side. Murad had been furious, especially when he had learned how many ribald jokes the incident had given rise to in the crew’s quarters.

There was a change about the lean nobleman that Hawkwood could not quite define. He gave fewer dinners and left the drilling of the soldiers to his ensigns. He spent much of the time in his cabin. It was impossible to keep a secret on board a ship less than thirty yards long, and Hawkwood knew that Murad had taken two young girls from among the passengers to his bed. Apart from anything else, the noises coming through the bulkhead that separated their cabins were confirmation enough of that. But he had heard the soldiers’ gossip: that Murad was somehow enamoured of one of the girls. Certainly, the man had all the symptoms of one lost in love, if one believed the bards. He was snappish, distracted, and his already pale face was as white as bone. Dark rings were spreading like stains below his eyes and when he compressed his thin lips it was possible to see the very shape of the teeth behind them.

A packet of spray came aboard and drenched Hawkwood’s shoulders but he hardly noticed. The wind was still freshening and there was an ugly cross-sea getting up. The waves were running contrary to the direction of the wind and streamers of spray were tearing off them like smoke. The ship staggered slightly as she hit one of them; she was rolling as well as pitching now. No doubt the gundeck was covered with prostrate, puking passengers.

Billerand hauled himself up the ladder to the quarterdeck and staggered over to his captain.

“We’ll have to take in topsails if this keeps up!” he shouted over the rising wind.

Hawkwood nodded, looking overhead to where the topsails were bellying out as tight as drumskins. The masts were creaking and complaining, but he thought they would hold for a time yet. He wanted to make the most of this glorious speed; he reckoned the carrack was tearing along at nine knots at least-nine long sea miles further west with every two turns of the glass.

“There’s a bucketful on the way, too,” Billerand said, glancing at the lowering sky. The clouds had thickened and darkened until they were great rolling masses of heavy vapour that seemed to be tumbling along just above the mastheads. It might have been raining already; they could not tell because of the spray that was being hurled through the air by the wind and the swift cleavage of the ship’s passage.

“Rouse out the watch,” Hawkwood said to him. “Get one of the spare topsails out across the waist. If we have a downpour I’d like to try and save some of it.”

“Aye, sir,” Billerand said, and wove his way back across the pitching quarterdeck.

The watch were prised from their sheltered corners by Billerand’s hoarse shouts and a sail was brought out of the locker below. The seamen made it fast across the waist just as the clouds broke open above their heads. Within a minute, the ship was engulfed in a torrential downpour of warm rain, so thick it was hard to breathe. It struck the deck with hammer-force and rebounded up again. The sail filled up almost at once, and the sailors began filling small kegs and casks from it. Noisome water, polluted by the tar and shakings on the sail itself, but they might be glad of it some day soon, and if they were not it could be used to soak clothes made harsh and rasping by being washed in seawater.

The wind picked up as the crew were unfastening the sail and sent it flapping and booming across the waist like some huge, frightened bird. The ship gave a lurch, staggering Hawkwood at his station. He looked over the side to see that the waves were transforming themselves into vast, slate-grey monsters with fringes of roaring foam at their tops. The Osprey was plunging into a great water-sided abyss every few seconds, then rising up and up and up the side of the next wave, the green seas choking her forecastle and pouring in a torrent all the way down her waist. And the light failed. The clouds seemed to close in overhead, bringing on an early twilight. The storm Hawkwood had expected and feared was almost upon them.

“All hands!” Hawkwood roared above the screaming wind. “All hands on deck!”

The order was echoed down in the waist by Billerand, thigh-deep in coursing water. They had the sail in a bundle and were dragging it below-decks. A forgotten keg rolled back and forth in the scuppers, crashing off the upper-deck guns. Hawkwood fought his way over to the hatch in the quarterdeck that opened on the tiller-deck below.

“Tiller there! How does she handle?”

The men were choked with the water that was rushing aft, struggling to contain the manic wrenchings of the tiller.

“She’s a point off, sir! We need more hands here.”

“You shall have them. Rig relieving tackles as soon as you are able, and bring her round to larboard three points. We have to get her before the wind.”

“Aye, sir!”

Men were pouring out of the companionways, looking for orders.

“All hands to reduce sail!” Hawkwood shouted. “Take in those topsails, lads. Billerand, I want four more men on the tiller. Velasca, send a party below-decks to make sure the guns are bowsed up tight. I don’t want any of them coming loose.”

The crew splintered into fragments, each intent on his duty. Soon the rigging was black with men climbing the shrouds to the topmasts. Hawkwood squinted through the rain and the flying spray, trying to make out how much strain the topmasts were taking. He would put the ship before the wind and scud along under bare poles. It would mean they would lose leagues of their westering and be blown to the south-west, off their latitude, but that could not be helped.

A tearing rip, as violent as the crack of a gun. The foretopsail had split from top to bottom. A moment later the two halves were blasted out of their bolt-holes and were flying in rags from the yard. Hawkwood cursed.

A man who was nothing but a screaming dark blur plunged from the rigging and vanished into the heaving turmoil of the sea.

“Man overboard!” someone yelled, uselessly. There was no way they could heave-to to pick someone up, not in this wind. For the men on the yards, a foot put wrong would mean instant death.

The men eased themselves out on the topsail yards, leaning over to grasp fistful after fistful of the madly billowing canvas. The masts themselves were describing great arcs as the ship plunged and came up again, one moment flattening the sailor’s bellies against the wood of the yards, the next threatening to fling them clear of the ship and into the murderous, cliff-like waves.

The wind picked up further. It became a scream in the rigging and the spray hitting Hawkwood’s face seemed as solid as sand. The ship’s head came round slowly as the men on the tiller brought her to larboard, trying to put the wind behind them. Hawkwood shouted down into the waist:

“You there! Mateo, get aft and make sure the deadlights are shipped in the great cabins.”

“Aye, sir.” The boy disappeared.

They would have to shutter the stern windows or else a following sea might burst through them, flooding the aft portion of the ship. Hawkwood railed at himself. So many things he had left undone. He had not expected the onset of the storm to be so sudden.

The waves around seemed almost as high as the mastheads, sliding mountains of water determined to swamp the carrack as though she were a rowing boat. The pitching of the ship staggered even Hawkwood’s sea-legs, and he had to grasp the quarterdeck rail to steady himself. They had the topsails in now, and men were inching back down the shrouds a few feet at a time, clinging to the rough hemp with all the strength they possessed.

“Lifelines, Billerand!” Hawkwood shouted. “Get them rigged fore and aft.”

The burly first mate went to and fro in the waist, shouting in men’s ears. The noise of the wind was such that it was hard to make himself heard.

She was still coming round. This was the most dangerous part. For a few minutes the carrack would be broadside on to the wind and if a wave hit her then she might well capsize and take them all to the bottom.

Hawkwood wiped the spray out of his eyes and saw what he had dreaded-a glassy cliff of water roaring directly at the ship’s side. He leaned down to the tiller-deck hatch.

“Hard a-port!” he screamed.

The men below threw their weight on the length of the tiller, fighting the seas that swirled around the ship’s rudder. Too slowly. The wave was going to hit.

“Sweet Ramusio, his blessed Saints,” Hawkwood breathed in the instant before the great wave struck the ship broadside-on.

The Osprey was still turning to port when the enormous shock ran clear through the hull. Hawkwood saw the wave break on the starboard side and then keep going, engulfing the entire waist with water, swirling up to the quarterdeck rail where he stood. One of the ship’s boats was battered loose and went over the side, a man clinging to it and screaming soundlessly in that chaos of wind and water. He saw Billerand swept clear across the deck and smashed into the larboard rail like a leaf caught in a gale. Other men clung to the guns with the water foaming about their heads, their legs swept out behind them. But even as Hawkwood watched the wave caught one of the guns and tore it loose from the side, sending the ton of metal careering across the waist, devastation in its wake. The gun went over the larboard side, shattering the rail and tearing a hole in the ship’s upper hull. Even above the roaring torrent of the water, Hawkwood thought he could hear the rending timbers shriek, as though the carrack were crying out in her maimed agony.

They were almost swamped. Hawkwood could feel the sluggishness of the carrack, as though she were doubly ballasted with water. The deck began to cant under his feet like the sloping roof of a house.

There was a tearing crack from above. An instant later the main topmast went by the board, the entire mast with its spars and yards and cordage coming crashing down on the larboard side. Blocks and tackle and fragments of shattered wood were hurled down round Hawkwood’s ears. Something thudded into the side of his head and knocked him off his feet. He slid along the sloping deck and ended up in the lee scuppers, entangled with rope. The falling mast had crashed through the sterncastle and was hanging over the side, dragging the carrack further over. He was dimly aware that he could hear horses screaming somewhere down in the belly of the ship, a wailing like a multitude in pain. He shook his head, blood pouring down across his eyes and temples, and reached for one of the axes which were stowed on the decks. He began to swing at the mass of broken wood and tangled cordage that was threatening to pull the ship over on to her side.

“Axemen here!” he shrieked. “Get this thing cut away or it’ll take us all with it!”

Men were labouring up out of the foaming chaos of the waist with boarding axes in their hands. He saw Velasca there, but no sign of Billerand.

They began chopping at the fallen topmast like men possessed. The carrack rose on the breast of another gargantuan swell of water, tilting ever further. She would capsize with the next wave.

The topmast shifted as they hacked at it. Then there was a cracking and wrenching of wood, audible above the wind and the roaring waves and the sharp concussions of the biting axes. The mass of wreckage moved, tilted, and then slithered over the ship’s side into the sea, taking a fiferail with it.

The carrack, freed of the unbalancing weight, began to right herself. The deck became momentarily horizontal again. Then it began to slant once more, but from fore to aft this time. She had turned. The ship was before the wind. Hawkwood looked aft over the taffrail and saw the next wave, like a looming mountain, rear up over the stern as if it meant to crush them out of existence. But the ship rose higher and higher as the bulk of water slid under the hull, lifting the carrack into the air. Then they were descending again-thank God for the high sterncastle to prevent them being pooped-and the ship was behaving like a rational thing once more, riding the huge waves like a child’s toy.

“Velasca!” Hawkwood called, wiping blood out of his eyes. “See to the foremast backstays. I think the topmast destroyed one. We don’t want the foremast going as well.” He glanced around. “Where’s Billerand?”

“Took him below,” one of the men said. “Had his shoulder broke.”

“All right, then. Velasca, you are acting first mate. Phipio, second mate.” Hawkwood looked at the battered wreckage, the shattered rails, the stump of the mainmast like an amputated limb. “The ship is badly hurt, lads. She’ll swim, but only with our help. Phipio, get a party down below to check for leaks, and have men working on the pumps as soon as you can. Velasca, I want all other hands sending up extra stays. We can’t get the topmasts down, not in this, so we’ll have to try and strengthen the masts. This is no passing squall. We’re in for a long run.”

The crowd of men split up. Hawkwood left them to their work for the moment-Velasca was a competent seaman-clambered down the broken remnants of the ladders to the waist and entered the companionway to the aft part of the ship.

The heaving of the carrack threw him against one bulkhead and then another, and there was water swirling in the companionway, washing around his calves. He made his way to the tiller-house where six men were battling to bring the tiller under control as it fought their grip in the monstrous battering of the waves.

“What’s our course, lads?” he shouted. Even here the wind was deafening, and there was also the creaking and groaning of the carrack’s hull. The ship was moaning like a thing in pain, and there was the horse still neighing madly somewhere below and people wailing on the gundeck. But that was not his problem now.

“Sou’-sou’-west, sir, directly before the wind,” one of the struggling helmsmen answered.

“Very well, keep her thus. I’ll try and have you relieved at the turn of the watch, but you may be in for a long spell.”

Masudi, the senior helmsman and an ex-corsair, gave a grin that was as brilliant as chalk in his dark face.

“Don’t you worry about us, sir. You keep the old girl swimming and we’ll keep her on course.”

Hawkwood grinned back, suddenly cheered, then bent over the binnacle. The compass was housed in a glass case, and to one side within it a small oil lamp burned so the helmsmen might see the compass needle at all times of the day or night. It was one of Hawkwood’s own inventions, and he had been inordinately proud of it. As he bent over the yellow-lit glass his blood fell upon it, becoming shining ruby like wine with candlelight behind it. He wiped the glass clean irritably. Sou’-sou’-west all right, and with this storm his dead-reckoning was shot to pieces. They were going to be far off course when this thing blew itself out, and if they wanted to get back on their old latitude they would have to beat for weeks into the teeth of the wind: an agonizing, snail’s-pace labour.

He swore viciously and fluently under his breath, and then straightened. How was the Grace of God faring? Had Haukal been caught as unprepared as he? The caravel was a sound, weatherly little vessel, but he knew for a fact that it had never before encountered seas as high as these.

He waved to the helmsmen and left the tiller-house, lurching with the dip and rise of the ship. He slid down a ladder and then kept going forward until he was through into the gundeck. There he halted, looking up the long length of the ship.

The place was a shambles. The sailors had lashed the guns tight so they were crouched up against the gunports like great, chained beasts, and in between them a mass of humanity cowered and writhed in a foot of water that came surging up and down the deck with every dip of the carrack’s bow. Hawkwood saw bodies floating face-down in the water, the pathetic rag-tag possessions of the passengers drifting and abandoned. There was a collective wailing of women while men cursed. The lanterns had been put out, which was just as well. The deck resembled the dark, fevered nightmare of a visionary hermit, a picture of some subterranean hell.

Someone staggered over to him and took his arm.

“Well, Captain, are we sinking yet?”

There was no panic in the voice, perhaps even a kind of irony. In the almost dark Hawkwood thought he could make out a roughly broken nose, short-cropped hair, the square carriage of a soldier.

“Are you Bardolin, the girl Griella’s guardian?”

“Aye.”

“Well, we’ve no fear of sinking, though it was touch and go for a moment or two there. This storm may last some time so you had best get the passengers to make themselves as comfortable as they can.”

The man Bardolin glanced back down the heaving length of the gundeck.

“How many hours do you think it will last?”

“Hours? More than that, it’ll be. We’re in for a blow of some days, if I’m any judge. I’ll try and get the ship’s cook to serve out some food as soon as we have things more settled. It’ll be cold, mind. There will be no galley fires lit whilst the storm lasts.”

He could see the dismay, instantly mastered, on the older man’s face.

“Do you need any help?” Bardolin asked.

Hawkwood smiled. “No, this is a job for mariners alone. You see to your own people. Calm them down and make them more comfortable. As I say, this storm will last a while.”

“Have you seen Griella? Is she all right?” Bardolin demanded.

“She’ll be with Lord Murad, I expect.”

As soon as he had said the words Hawkwood wished he had not. Bardolin’s face had become like stone, his eyes two shards of winking glass.

“Thank you, Captain. I’ll see what I can do here.”

“One more thing.” Hawkwood laid a hand on Bardolin’s arm as he turned away. “The weather-worker, Pernicus. We may need him in the days to come. How is he?”

“Prostrate with fear and seasickness, but otherwise he is hale.”

“Good. Look after him for me.”

“Our ship’s chaplain will not be happy at the thought of a Dweomer-propelled vessel.”

“You let me worry about the Raven,” Hawkwood growled and, slapping Bardolin on the arm, he left the gundeck with real relief.

Deeper he went, into the bowels of the ship. The Osprey was a roomy vessel, despite her lower than usual sterncastle. Below the gundeck was the main hold, and below that again the bilge. The hold itself was divided up into large compartments. One for the cable tiers, where the anchor cables were coiled down, one for the water and provisions, a small cubbyhole that was the powder store and then the newly created compartment that housed the damned horses and other livestock.

There was water everywhere, dripping from the deckhead above, sloshing around his feet, trickling down the sides of the hull. Hawkwood found himself a ship’s lantern and fought it alight after a few aggravating minutes of fumbling in the dark with damp tinder. Then he made his way deeper below.

Here it was possible to hear more clearly the sound of the hull itself. The wood of the carrack’s timbers was creaking and groaning with every pitch of her beakhead, and the sound of the wind was muted. The horses had gone silent, which was a blessing of sorts. Hawkwood wondered if any of them had survived.

He found a working party of mariners sent down by Velasca to secure the cargo. There was four feet of water in the hold, and the men were labouring waist-deep among the jumbled casks and sacks and boxes, lashing down anything that had come loose in the carrack’s wild battle with the monster waves.

“How much water is she making?” Hawkwood asked their leader, a master’s mate named Mihal, Gabrionese like himself.

“Maybe a foot with every two turns of the glass, sir. Most of it came down from above with those green seas we shipped, but her timbers are strained, too, and there’s some coming in at the seams.”

“Show me.”

Mihal took him to the side of the hull, and there Hawkwood could see the timbers of the ship’s side quivering and twisting. Every time the carrack moved with the waves, the timbers opened a little and more water forced itself in.

“We’re not holed anywhere?”

“Not so far as I can see, sir. I’ve had men in the cable tiers and in the stockpens aft-a bloody mess down there, by the by. No, she’s just taking the strain, is all, but I hope Velasca has strong men on the pumps.”

“Report to him when you’ve finished here, Mihal. The pump crews and the helmsmen will need relieving soon.”

“Aye, sir.”

Hawkwood moved on, wading through the cold water. He struggled aft against the movement of the ship and passed through the bulkhead hatch that separated the hold from the stockpens nearer the stern.

Lanterns here, the terrified bleating of a few sheep, straw and dung turning the water into a kind of soup. Animal corpses were bobbing and drifting. Hawkwood approached the group of men who were working there in leather gambesons-soldiers, then, not members of his crew.

“Who’s that?” a voice snapped.

“The Captain. Is that you, Sequero?”

“Hawkwood. Yes, it’s me.”

Hawkwood saw the pale ovals of faces in the lantern light, the shining flanks of a horse.

“How bad is it?”

Sequero splashed towards him. “What kind of ship’s master are you, Hawkwood? No one was told to secure the horses, and then the ship went on its damned side. They never had a chance. Why could you not have warned my people?”

Sequero was standing before him, filthy and dripping. Something had laid open his forehead so that a flap of skin glistened there, but the blood had slowed to an ooze. The ensign’s eyes were bright with fury.

“We had no time,” Hawkwood said hotly. “As it was we almost lost the ship, and I’ve lost some of my men putting her to rights. We had no time to worry about your damned horses.”

He thought for a second that Sequero was going to fly at him and tensed into a crouch, but then the ensign sagged, obviously worn out.

“I am no sailor. I cannot say whether you are in the right of it or not. Will the ship survive?”

“Probably. How many did you lose?”

“One of the stallions and another mare. They broke their legs when the ship went to one side.”

“What about the other livestock?”

Sequero shrugged. It was not his concern.

“Well, get what stock have survived and secure them in their stalls. Lash them to the pens if you have to. This could be a long blow.” Hawkwood was beginning to feel like a parrot, repeating his litany to everyone he met.

Sequero nodded dully.

“What about the soldiers? How are they faring?”

“Drunk, most of them. Some of the older ones have been saving their wine rations. They thought they were going to die, and so decided to drown whilst drunk.”

Hawkwood laughed. “I’ve heard of worse ideas. What of Lord Murad?”

“What of him? He’s closeted with his peasant whore as usual.”

A violent lurch of the ship pitched them both into the stinking water. They struggled out of it spitting and cursing.

“Are you sure this thing won’t sink, Captain?” Sequero sneered.

But Hawkwood was already retracing his steps forward. Time to get back on deck and take up his proper place. He was blind down here.

It had become a little lighter and the clouds seemed to have lifted above the level of the mastheads. The seas were just as mountainous though, great hills of water with troughs a quarter of a mile apart and crests as high as the carrack’s topmasts. They were running before the wind now, and the waves were rising around the ship’s stern, lifting her high into the air and then passing under her, leaving her almost becalmed in their lee. There seemed to be little danger of her being pooped, thanks to her construction, and would have to ride the storm out, letting it blow them where it willed.

Velasca had had hawsers sent up to the mastheads and there were men working in the tops, struggling to secure them. Others were double lashing the upper-deck guns and the two ship’s boats that had survived, though the passage of the run-away gun had smashed chunks out of both their sides. And to both larboard and starboard thick jets of white water were spewing out of the pumps as men bent up and down over them, trying to lighten the ship.

“Tiller there!” Hawkwood shouted down the hatch. “How’s she steering?”

“Easier, sir,” Masudi called back. “But the men are tiring.”

“Mihal and his mess will be up to relieve you soon. Steady as she goes, Masudi.”

“Aye, sir.”

For hour after hour the carrack rode the vast waves and careered before the wind roughly south-west, away off their course and into seas unknown even to Tyrenius Cobrian. Despite the fact that the yards were bare, her speed was very great as she was shunted forward on the shining backs of the enormous breakers.

The watch changed. Exhausted seamen were relieved by others scarcely less exhausted, but the hands remained on deck for hour after hour, pumping, splicing, repairing or simply remaining in readiness for the next crisis.

It grew colder. When Hawkwood estimated that their storm-driven run had taken them some forty leagues off course the balminess in the air vanished and the water took on a grey, chill aspect in the sunless dawn of the next day. All that day they continued to run before the wind, eating bread and raw salt pork when they could, feeling the salt in their clothing rasp their saturated skin and continuing the unending repairs.

After a second night and a second day they began to feel that they had never been warm or dry, and had never really known sleep before. They lost another man off one of the yards who had slackened his grip out of sheer weariness, and they threw overboard the bodies of three passengers who had died of the injuries sustained in the first, savage squall. And they continued south-west across the titanic, illimitable Western Ocean, like a stick of wood adrift in a millrace with a knot of frenzied ants clinging to it. There was nothing else to do.