Again and again whistled the cat-o’-nine-tails; sounding against the hard, broad back with a serpentine whack. This was followed by the bark-like crack of it recoiling, which preceded the shower of skin gobs, red blood drops, and shreds of flesh raining to deck. He was of two minds: one that this was such an unjust waste, and another that this had become his place, wielding the scourge of authority among the meat crawlers, taking vengeance on this one silently suffering rack of strength while the weak looked on, wondering if they would be next.

The main and poop decks of the Sloop-of-war HMS Mars had become a tawdry stage, on which the pathetic remnants of her crew danced like French puppets to the tune of the voodoo pygmy swinging by the neck from the yardarm above. As the fine vessel, infected with it festering cargo, cut a course for itself away from the horrid island of jungles, mountains, slaves and masters, it occurred to Jay—who felt ever more bright of mind than at any time in his past—that the pygmy swinging by the neck far above must surely be dead. Yet on he sang, from his dangling pulpit above, “Oh wee Me!”

Jay stopped after stroke thirty-nine and looked about, to see the stout, buggering bully Pell Driscoll, and his laky, tall, stringy Boomy Faulks, standing slack-jawed and wide-eyed, swaying to the tune of the voodoo pygmy chanting above. As his arm stopped, these men—instead of falling upon him with menace—seemed to regard him as their captain. This caused him to look to Commander Parsons, who, most insanely, was engaged in the act of cutting into his own wrist with his sword as he leaned against the gunwale.

Jay looked in a panic to Mister Hitchins manning the tiller and saw him, eyes rolled back into his head, mouthing the pygmy’s refrain, “Oh wee Me!”

Mister Pringle suffered as before, seemingly unaffected by the weird wee song. Hal Thurmond turned his head on a wickedly lashed neck to regard Jay, and hissed like a torn drum, “Whip me senseless, Jay. Then toss me into the drink. I have no ‘sire t’ sail beyon’ ‘is day.”

Pell and Boomy then took up the refrain as well, “Oh wee Me!” and began to caper about the deck drunkenly, but surefooted as well, like drunken cats, singing the weird wee song.

“Are ye certain, Hal!”

“I’m no papist to seek damnation in stages. Have done with me!”

Jay’s hand felt broader, like a man’s hand perhaps, as he reached back and sent the scourge whistling for the repentant back once again. With each strike Hal seemed to moan in relief rather than pain. And the sea foam churned against the hull as the belly of the ship slid across the belly of the watery world.

Pell and Boomy were acting the sailor part, if in a weird trance, as they let out more canvas with the aid of the pulley blocks, though dropping and filling the mainsail would be beyond the powers of two men. The two cavorted now like demons, forever chanting the wee refrain as they went about the tasks of many men with eager hand and sure foot. And still Jay flayed the back of his friend and protector, his savior, tied to the mast by their cruel masters, and now wanting simply to die.

Mister Hitchens sang more deeply at the tiller, and there crawled poor Mister Pringle, toward the jolly boat like a coward seeking cover during a battle. The captain, up on the poop, was hanging his bleeding arm over the gunwale and chanting something different, which did not register in Jay’s suddenly weary mind. It occurred to him that he would not be able to hear the second song while he cracked the cat on Hal, for it sounded in time with his whip. Jay dropped the whip to the blood spattered deck and stood on its surging board as the main sail was unreefed, thanks to some uncommonly heroic efforts on the part of Pell and Boomy, now super sailors of some giant monkey kind.

When he woke, still standing, Hal was fast asleep, unbound and curled up against the mast. The pygmy above—now unseen for the billowing canvas—still sang his “Oh wee Me!” refrain.

Mister Hitchens continued at the wheel in time. It was then that Jay noticed that the sun was at high noon and he must have stood here in a stupor for some hours.

Mister Pringle was curled up behind the jolly boat hugging a tackle block like it would save him from some terrible fate.

The captain—bloody-sleeved and as pale as the winter moon—stood above the gunwale at the waist of the boat behind Jay, belting out his own refrain in between the pygmy’s chant, “Swim ye fin.”

Mister Pringle whimpered as the men suffering from the yellow jack began filing up onto deck as Pell and Boomy capered about singing the voodoo refrain. The sickly shat-worn men with sallow faces, sunken eyes, and pitiful shoulder bones showing began emerging in file, walking as if the dead might walk, without a shred of enthusiasm for life, or even the care to take a breath to sustain it.

Soon all twenty of the sick sailors were arrayed along the gunwale about Commander Parsons, swaying in time with his melancholy chant, “Swim we fin.”

Jay turned to look into Mister Pringle’s eyes, who alone seemed to have some sense of what was going on. As their eyes met in that questioning manner that Adam and Eve must have regarded each other with upon finding themselves beyond the bounds of God’s Garden, he heard the slap of deadened feet and turned to look behind him.

Jay Prescott turned his head in time to see 20 men and their captain step off the gunwale as one and plummet into the sea below. He ran to the gunwale and was there even as the feet of the falling men broke the surface and their bodies caused a slapping splash. Beneath and behind, as the sloop surged on, Jay saw the sad figures of the sunken eyed men drift into the maws of as many waiting sharks, unnaturally, and purposefully gathered for their thrashing feast.

“Swim ye fin,” was heard no more, but would forever echo in his mind like an unforgettable toll of a bell.

And still, the unseen pygmy swinging from the far yardarm sang his song, “Oh wee Me!”with Mister Hitchens, his hands eagerly on the tiller, providing an echoing chorus, smiling the smile of the insane, his eyes still blindly rolled back into his head, captain now of this devil’s ship.

Phenyl woke with a start from her terrible dream of the ancient mariner’s plight, feeling in her bones the sorrow of that soul pulling away into the unknown from a hellish island on a devil-taken ship.

What could it mean, she mused, even as her head bobbed above a set of broad hide-covered hips that reeked of a lifetime without sanitation.

Her hips were gathered in the crook of one upward circled arm, her pelvis and belly folded over a broad shoulder, her arms dangling nearly to the maddeningly uneven ground scattered with leaves, stones, a matt of what looked like needle-shaped leaves and tree limbs seemingly crawling across the dirty ground. It was enough to drive a person insane.

And on the tireless feral drone, self-mutilated to look like the primitive men he had been cultivated to replace, and clothed in the skin of some pet-like creature, carried her ever upward into the hills that ringed the northern border of Habitat Syra’s own habitat, a basin that she had never envisioned escaping, and was suddenly surprised that she was afraid to leave.