On Blue's waters

The sloop was pitching violently, and dipping her bowsprit into the waves that had been lifting her by the stern when the wind was quartering. I returned to the slug gun nonetheless, and after two or three more shots learned to fire at the highest point of each pitch, just before the stern dropped from under me. Before I had to reload, I had the satisfaction of seeing the woman who had been shooting at me tumble headlong into the sea.

“We’re going to Pajarocu!” I told Babbie while I reloaded my gun with the cartridges from my pockets, and he nodded to show that he had understood.

My intuition had outrun my reason. But as I fired again, I realized it had been right. With one of their comrades dead, the crew of the black boat would certainly try to keep us in sight until shadelow, and during the night to position themselves between the mainland and us, assuming that we were bound to some northern port and would turn northeast as soon as we believed we were no longer observed. If we did, and they were lucky, they would have us in sight at shadeup.

“The sea will be much wider at this point, if Wijzer’s map is right,” I explained to Babbie, “and I’m sure it would be dangerous even for a boat much larger than ours, with more people on it and ample supplies. But it won’t be nearly as dangerous as going back and falling in with that black boat again, and if we get across it will be much faster.” I nearly added that if he did not like the idea he was free to jump out and swim. He nodded so trustingly that I was ashamed of the impulse.

Perhaps I should be ashamed of having killed the woman who fell from the black boat instead. It is a terrible thing to take the life of another human being, and I had killed no one since Nettle and I (with Marrow, Scleroderma, and many others) had fought Generalissimo Siyuf’s troopers in the tunnels long ago. It is indeed a terrible thing-to reason and to conscience. It is not always felt as a terrible thing, however. I felt more concern for my own life than for hers at the time, and would gleefully have sent the black boat to the bottom if it had been within my power.

The wind died away toward shadelow, but by then we were well out of sight of both the black boat and the coast. I tied the tiller and lay down with the slug gun beside me, resolved to wake up in an hour or two and have a long and careful look at the sea and the weather before I slept again; but when Babbie woke me, grunting and tapping my cheek and lips with the horn-tipped toes of his forelegs, the first light was already in the sky.

I sat up rubbing my eyes, knowing that I was on the sloop, but believing for a few seconds at least that we were bound for New Viron. The wind had picked up considerably (which I thought at the time had been the reason that Babbie had felt it necessary to wake me); but the hard chop of the previous day had been tamed to quick swells that rolled the sloop gently and smoothly, our masthead bowing deeply and politely to starboard, then to port, and then to starboard again, as if it were the honored center of some stately dance.

This was of some importance, because I glimpsed what appeared to be a low island to port. In a calmer sea, I would have climbed the mast for a better look at it, but my weight would have amplified the roll, and if it amplified it to the point that we shipped water the sloop would founder. I stood upon one of the cargo chests instead, a very slight improvement on the foredeck.

“If it’s an island,” I told Babbie, “we might be able to get water and information there, but we’re not so badly off for water yet, and we’d be a lot more likely to find ourselves in trouble.”

He had leaped to the top of another chest, though he was not sure enough of his balance to rear on four hind legs there, as he often did when he could brace a foreleg on the gunwale. He nodded sagely.

“I’m going to put out more sail to steady her,” I told him.

“Then she won’t roll so much.”

I shook out the mainsail and trimmed it, and went forward to break out the triangular gaff-topsail. There were traces of blood on the half-deck there, dark, clotting blood in a crevice where it had survived Babbie’s tongue. What remained was so slight that I doubt that I would have noticed it without the bright morning sun, and the fact that the surface of the foredeck was scarcely two hands’ width from my face as I pulled the gaff-topsail out. On hand and knees on the foredeck, I looked for more blood and found traces of it everywhere-on the deck, on the bow, on the butt of the bowsprit, and even on the forestay.

My first thought was that Babbie had caught a seabird and eaten it; but there should have been feathers in that case, a few blood-smeared feathers at least, and there were none. “Not a bird,” I told him. “Not a fish, either. A fish might jump on board, but there would be scales. Or anyway I’d think there would be. What was it?”

He listened attentively; and I sensed that he understood, though he gave no sign of it.