Clay looked to left and right and saw that two swimmers, the strongest of them, were nearly even with him, swimming as if they intended to close a noose around the launch, or perhaps get to the ship first. He sounded the warning, “Mister Eager, Sir, round heads out to left and right!”
Mister Eager grunted and growled, “Pull harder, whores!”
How can men swim so hard, and with those big bent knives in their mouths?
What drives them?
Are they men or fiends?
They could now hear Jonah Heel yell something, but could not make out his words over their own racket. The strongest two swimmers were now swimming even with the prow of the launch. Another two swimmers were perhaps twenty paces off the stern. Two more followed just off their shoulders, chopping the water with their naked red arms.
The report of a musket crackled behind them and a mini-ball splashed into the water to the left, missing the lead swimmer. Mister Eager groaned and cursed, “Stupid Mick bastard ‘ill never hit from so far—save loads for boarding—row, you slugs!”
Clay felt his knee stiffen under him and it occurred that he better stretch his legs so he stood and felt the boards creak under his feet as the launch plowed through another swell. Mister Eager grunted his approval, “So it might be more than fucking six goats with one prick!”
Fat Sam chimed in, “You can do it, Clay. Split those watermelon heads! Be like The Captain at Sabian’s Crossroads, cool like iced tea, Clay…cool.”
Sam and Mister Eager were stroking harder than ever, and they were now near enough to shout clearly to the ship.
Glory be, close to safety!
But Slanty was giving, his chest rattling with a cough, and Pea-brain was panicking.
No, it cannot be. Good Lord, please don't turn out the light!
The launch foundered over the next swell, which was the last one really. The ship was laying just off the drop, right before the Ocean started roiling itself into a fuss over the approaching land. It occurred to him that the Ocean was something like his mamma now, the mamma to them all, their salvation against these terrible men.
Good Lord, please let the Ocean be your swelling hand. Might we see this fallen sun rise up again?
The Ocean seemed to answer with a heave, and scrawny Clay Evenstar wondered at the chill that crept up his back as the last light of day blinked out beyond the distant hills, forming a second shade of night and the stern lamp of the sloop that had lost its purpose and its captain in the same day bathed them in a light far inferior to the sun, of a sudden making him feel like a candle guttering in a storm—or, worse yet, one of the shadows that would die with the candlelight.
