CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
If Cerven found the slow, noiseless approach of Ahearn and the others ominous, he gave no sign of it. As they came down the companionway, he set aside the foresail sheet he was unknotting and stood to face them respectfully. “Yes, gentles?”
Ahearn managed not to roll his eyes. Back to calling us “gentles,” now? Creeds, that’s like addressing a sow as “your Ladyship.” “It’s time we had a chat, young Cerven.”
“Ah! About how I may be of service as we travel together?”
Ahearn exchanged looks with the others, tried to smile. “Well, if you can always read minds so easily, that would certainly be a help.” Ahearn found he was half hoping it to be true. “But yes, Master Cerven, that’s what we mean to establish. Talshane wrote a letter that came into our hands just before we sailed from Herres. It sings your praises, but the lyrics are, well, a bit vague.”
Cerven nodded with a hint of hesitation. “So this is in the nature of a formal inquiry regarding my capabilities and background.”
Ahearn managed not to shrug. There might actually be some benefit to hearing the stripling make an official report of himself. And by making it at Ahearn’s behest certainly reinforced who was in charge of the group. “You may consider it so, Master Cerven.”
The young man stood very straight. “Very well. Firstly, Sir Ahearn”—but he was unable to continue because of the general outburst of laughter… at which Cerven’s eyebrows rose.
Ahearn’s were descending as S’ythreni waved a hand at the young man. “Once you’ve wandered about with us,” she gasped through fading paroxysms, “you’ll understand how impossibly funny it is to picture Ahearn as a… a noble!” She fell back into speech-defeating chortles.
“I apologize for the churlish interruption,” Ahearn said with a warning frown at his companions. “Pray continue, Master Cerven.”
“If I may, Si—er, Ahearn—it might help to hear Station Chief Talshane’s letter, assuming it does not touch upon confidential matters.”
By way of answer, Ahearn read it out.
Cerven nodded when he reached the end. “I shall endeavor to clarify the most oblique statements first. The allies of whom Captain Talshane speaks educated me in the history, languages, and, er, conditions of several ancient groups that are largely presumed to have wholly diffused into contemporary populations. This is not the case, but most of them live incognito in various amenable nations or establish communities in remote locales.”
Before Ahearn could stop himself, he blurted out, “Fish teats, he speaks just like a Dunarran!” Then, with an abashed and apologetic glance at Varcaxtan: “Well, at least like some Dunarrans.”
Cerven watched the exchange with faint anxiety. “Is my speech a matter of concern?”
Ahearn almost stuttered as he sought a suitable reply. “Well, let’s just say it’s a mixed blessing.”
Elweyr leaned toward the youth. “He means no offense.”
“I took none, Magister Elweyr.”
The mantic closed his eyes in supreme patience. “Just Elweyr, if you please. What skills do you have beyond that of being a scholar of the history and languages of hidden peoples?”
“Well, I have similar knowledge pertaining to cultures that have truly vanished from the surface of Arrdanc.”
The dragon sighed. “I believe they wish to know about your less esoteric abilities.”
“Ah!” And Cerven rattled off an impressive list of skills he had acquired from his mentors and then honed while an apprentice in the wider world.
When he was done, Varcaxtan leaned back. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that your, er, mentors, were training you to be a Courier for the Archive Recondite. Just like Druadaen.”
The young man nodded. “Captain Talshane said something quite similar. Which reminds me; I must reemphasize that while I have been taught how to fight from horseback, I have not been trained in the charge.”
“At least you know the difference,” murmured Varcaxtan.
Ahearn avoided S’ythreni’s amused glance. One time on Aswyth Plain, he’d made it embarrassingly clear that he hadn’t known the difference. “Well, then, Cerven, welcome to the company. Officially, I suppose. You’ve all the kit you need for all your talents?”
“I do… more or less.”
Hmmm… “I’m not a man who rests easy with a hanging tone like that one.”
“Apologies. My saddle and tack remained behind in Moonfleet, as did my bow. My departure did not include any gear or preparations that might have alerted enemies to my intent.”
“Well,” Ahearn said agreeably, “I’m sure we can see to correcting those lacks. And perhaps Elweyr can take time to acquaint you with the scribblings of mantics, teach you how to comb through the various sources he’s not had time to fully decipher. He’s always complaining that—”
“He already knows,” Elweyr said in a low voice, studying Cerven narrowly. “At least some of the scripts. Don’t you?”
The young man had turned slightly pale. He nodded hesitantly. “I would not call myself accomplished in the deciphering of such writings, but—”
Umkhira had straightened. “Hold: does this mean the man-boy is a mantic, himself?”
Cerven shook his head vigorously, but could not answer before Elweyr said, “No. But it’s unusual. Hardly anyone but mantics learn the scripts.”
“How did you suss he had the knowing of them?” asked Ahearn.
“He didn’t goggle like a fool when he learned I was a mantic. And he’s inquired after my books during the journey. Several times.”
The dragon cleared its avatar’s now perpetually phlegmy throat. “Familiarity with those scripts was not always as uncommon as it is now. What you call mancery was once but a single part of a larger array of disciplines which had knowledge as its first object, not power.”
“Knowledge?” Umkhira repeated. “What manner of knowledge?”
“Cosmology. Ontology. The synergies between them.”
“So, more or less what Druadaen went in search of: the truth of the world.”
The dragon answered Ahearn with a wintry smile. “In a manner of speaking.” It lifted its chin. “The weather has turned. Sharply.”
Ahearn glanced out a porthole. The sky had darkened, and what had been port quarter breeze had spun about into a headwind out of the east that painted frothy ruffles atop the risers of the following seas. “We’d best leave off until there are fewer clouds on the horizon. And when our bowsprit isn’t pointing straight at ’em. Let’s check on our crates. Wouldn’t do to for them to be poorly fit to the dunnage. Then we’ll go above.”
“On deck?” Umkhira said hoarsely. “Even as a storm is coming?”
“It’s where we’re likely to be needed,” Ahearn replied. “Come on; the weather won’t wait on us, y’know.”
“You’re sure we’re only a few leagues from the coast?” Ahearn shouted over the rain hammering down on the ship’s small poop deck.
“I will be once your boy comes back with those charts!” the captain replied with a hint of reproach.
Why, you—! “If you had enough crew, you wouldn’t have needed me to send him—”
A hand came to rest on his shoulder. Varcaxtan used the swordsman’s surprised silence to lean over it and into the captain’s thin, leathery face. “I’m sure he’ll be along soon enou—why, here he is, now!” Although the Dunarran’s mouth was alongside his ear, Ahearn could barely hear the last words over the sudden squall that howled down the length of the ship, drenching it from bow to stern and pushing it slightly to starboard.
“Mind the rudder!” the captain yelled at his pilot. “Half a point to port!”
Cerven made his way quickly but carefully up the stairs. He’d rarely been on a ship before they’d sailed from Shadowmere, but had readily adapted to the rhythms and routines of life a-sea. “I have the charts, Captain,” he articulated sharply, the crisp sounds cutting through the drumming sheets of rain better than shouting would have. “I took the liberty of finding an oilskin in which to—”
“Give them here, boy,” growled the captain. And it really did sound like a growl. Swaying side to side with the deck, he unfolded the oilskin and then the map, scanning quickly. He looked up, studying the seas over the starboard bow. “Can’t see it anymore, but I caught sight of a headland there before the clouds opened up. I’d bet my life on it.”
Sure’n you’re betting everyone’s life on it. But Ahearn only said, “And how far to safe harbor?”
“Can’t say, but that headland means it’s the stretch of coast we want. Now, leave me to getting us there… unless there be one amongst you who’d do a better job?”
He’d ended on a sarcastic tone and an annoyed glare that raked across the faces of the gathered company. But Ahearn held his peace, careful not to allow his expression to betray his true reaction: that by all accounts, Varcaxtan was at least as skilled a mariner as he.
Indeed, as the weather had worsened, so had the company’s opinion of the ship and crew. It had been mostly clear sailing from Herres, down the coast of Uershael and across the wide mouth of the Medvir Bight that curved its way into the very center of the mainland.
But that crossing had taken them out of the sight of land for two days, and when the skies darkened, and then the rain arrived, Ahearn and the others saw worry edge into the deck crew and the sailhands’ tense faces. Now, with the wind rising sharply, their eyes were widening into barely suppressed panic.
Ahearn started at a sudden overhead wailing; contending gusts were tearing into each other. “Banshees in the rigging,” he muttered, glancing up at the distended mainsail. It was strained taut against its tyes, all along the yard. “Damn, but that canvas might not hold.”
Varcaxtan sighed. “Not as though we have much choice but to crowd sail. If we don’t make port at F’Shëssa, or at least run safe aground, this weather is like to tear us apart.”
Umkhira, who had either been distracted by the fearsome weather or repeated attempts to hold down her supper, looked up with widened eyes of her own. “Is this ship so weak?”
Varcaxtan’s smile was avuncular. “Peace now, Lightstrider. It’s a matter of the weather more than the ship.”
“How so?” asked Elweyr.
Varcaxtan jerked his head toward the stern. “We have strong following seas: always do, when you’re eastward bound along the southern edge of Medvir Bight. But now the storm has turned and we’re moving into a westerly headwind that’s growing stronger by the minute.”
Ahearn nodded, remembering what his one and only love had told him not long before she’d died. “Aye. I’m told the fishermen in these parts call that the ‘spinwind.’ You can’t keep way because you’re always being jostled from both fore and aft. Or from port and starboard, if you’re set athwart both the current from the stern and the breeze over the bow.” He tsked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Wish we were a smaller hull.”
“Why?” gulped Umkhira.
Varcaxtan answered as he wiped the rain out of his face. “Small boats, like those used by fishermen, are rigged fore-n-aft. Tacking is easier for them. So’s dropping your canvas or smartly hoisting it aloft.” He glanced at the wind-quivering mainmast just forward of the waist. “But on this bigger ship, we’ve no choice but to hope all that square-rigged canvas will last long enough to push us to safety.”
“You make it sound as though we’re in a race for our lives,” S’ythreni muttered.
Varcaxtan shrugged. “Well, we just might be. Particularly if—”
Exasperated shouting from back at the wheel rose over the growing cacophony of contrary and combative gusts. Ahearn ascended the stairs to better hear the increasingly heated debate between the captain and the pilot.
Unfortunately, as the two saw the approaching “special passengers,” they shifted into a language Ahearn did not understand. All he could tell is that they were pointing to slightly different headings to the south, which, with the onset of evening and the stars, had become as black as night. When they’d concluded, the captain smiled in their direction; it was more a satisfied smirk at having frustrated their attempts at eavesdropping.
“Well, that’s more’n a mite aggravatin’,” Ahearn muttered.
“It is,” Varcaxtan agreed. “Frankly, I think the captain is just hoping that the pilot is right about our position.”
“Wait: you understand that gabble?”
Varcaxtan nodded. “It’s Davyaran.”
Ahearn frowned. “As in Davyara-Nadia? At the other end of the Bight, yeh?”
“The same.”
“Well, then you’d think he’d know his own seas, wouldn’t you?”
“You might,” S’ythreni muttered, just loud enough to be heard over the shrill creaks of the wet rigging. “But his people haven’t sailed close to our coast for decades.” Seeing Ahearn’s perplexity, she added, “A kinslaying. It left bad blood between us.”
Elweyr shouted, possibly to be heard over the wind, possibly out of impatience. “But what were they saying, damn it?”
The ship pitched heavily to port; beneath their feet, a groan ran the length of the keel. Varcaxtan waited for the hull to right itself. “The captain hasn’t full knowledge of this stretch of coast. Like most of the crew, he’s from up near the Channel Cities. The pilot is Davyaran. Sounds like he claimed he was familiar with these waters.”
“You don’t think he is?”
Varcaxtan shook his head. “Possibly less than the captain.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve sailed these waters a few times.” When Umkhira stared at him, Varcaxtan shrugged. “Thirty years as an Outrider and you see a lot of Ar Navir. At any rate, the pilot never refers to specific landmarks. He just talks about ‘the coast down here.’”
“Even so,” Umkhira pronounced, crossing her considerable arms, “the captain is just as much at fault for not knowing his crew better.”
“Neither of which will matter if we’re dead,” S’ythreni snapped, rolling with a swell that almost tumbled Umkhira against, and almost over, the gunwale.
Ahearn steadied himself. “Now, it hasn’t come to that—”
“Yet!”
Ahearn cut a sharp glance at S’ythreni. “But just in case, let’s be prepared for”—he was suddenly and intensely aware that Cerven was hanging on his every word—“for any outcome. High Ears, you stand by the conn—”
“And keep my eyes out for the coast. About time.” She was off.
“Umkhira, get below, hook the marked ballast to our crates, and for the sake of any god you care to name, get rid of your greaves and vantbrasses.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he shook his head. “Doesn’t matter that they’re leather. Right now, you’re more likely to be swimming than fighting. Now, go!”
She nodded, turned to descend the stairs… which left her looking along the weather deck and over the bow. Even in the dim light, Ahearn saw her blanch as she faced the mounting risers. But after swallowing mightily, she kept moving.
Ahearn turned to Elweyr. “No arguments, now. You find the safest place up here on the poop and stay put until we see how these bones roll.”
“Uh… why?”
“Because this is the safest place to jump off the boat. If you’re in its wake, it can’t very well wind up on top of you. Dragon—well, where the devils is that cranky old wyrm?”
“I’m right here. And if you call me a wyrm again, I shall surely eat you.”
Startled by the proximity of the voice, Ahearn scanned for the dragon’s avatar… and discovered her, curled into the quarterdeck’s portside privy partition, half descended into the head itself. “Gods, Dragon, why are you there?”
“Because I fit, O paragon of human insight. If the ship founders, I shall surely reach the water close to its stern.” Despite the prickly reply, its voice was thin and ragged.
Ahearn stared, stepped toward it. “Dragon, are you—?”
“Desist, idiot! I am quite well and have no need of your solicitous mewling! But, this body is—well, it will not function much longer, nor does it retain enough strength to survive a long swim or be useful on deck. This spot, if cramped, is not only secure but requires little strength to hold fast while the ship pitches about. Now, go tend your other charges.”
Ahearn turned, looked at Varcaxtan, who’d overheard. Without a word, each knew what was to be done, and that they’d both agreed to it. Varcaxtan would stay close to the irascible creature and see to its avatar’s survival—about which the dragon itself seemed singularly cavalier. Yes, that would simply cause it to reawaken in its own body, but that posed problems of its own—none which Ahearn had the time to consider.
He turned to see who might need his help—and found just such a person standing next to him: Cerven. Ah, crabs in a codpiece, just what I feared: relegated to a nursemaid. Careful to keep his impatience out of his voice, he began, “Now, Cerven—”
He stopped when the young fellow held out an object it took him a moment to identify: an inflated cow’s bladder. “Wha—what’s this?”
“For the, er, invalid. It—er, she may have need of this to stay afloat. She looks quite poorly.”
Ahearn took it from him, managed not to shake his head as he handed it off to Varcaxtan. “This is—blast, just where did you get this?”
“Brought it with me, Si—um, Ahearn. Told it was prudent.”
“Well… well, yes, it seems to be.” Too damn like Druadaen; all that fool planning… and then, worst of all, it turns out to be useful! “And are you ready for—?”
“You’ve no need to worry about me. I’ve not been in high seas, but I swam often enough in the river Sunderflow and have no fear of the water.”
Whether that was all true or not, Cerven said it with such surety and aplomb that Ahearn had neither the inclination nor time to contest it. “Very well, then stay here with the others.”
Before he could resume scanning for a place where his strength or knowledge might be put to best use, he heard another dispute arising back at the conn. This time, S’ythreni’s voice was in the mix: “So you actually know where you’re going?”
Oh, fer the love of— Ahearn swayed along with the deck as he made his way back to the group clustered about the wheel.
But before he could speak, the pilot was shouting an answer over a new set of howling gusts. “Of course I do!” His accent was as thick as his theatrical umbrage at the question.
“What’s this about?” Ahearn asked, fairly sure he already knew.
“This… lady,” began the captain, “does not believe we know our jobs!”
S’ythreni shook her head. “I did not say that. I am questioning whether you know these waters. And you have yet to tell me,” she added, turning to the pilot, staring over the white-knuckled hands with which he was gripping the wheel, “what you should be looking for on the coast.”
“We looking for the lighthouse at F’Shëssa.”
“Of course, but specifically, what will guide you to it?”
The pilot was either confused or panicked. “Well, er, a light, of course.” At which the captain rolled his eyes before he could stop himself.
S’ythreni leaned in. “We know that; I mean, in the absence of the light. What features are you watching for to steer you toward it? What about the foam of the reefs on the way? How best to approach?”
The man’s face grew as pale as his hands. “Can’t see in this dark and rain.”
“But if you could—?”
Ahearn drew her away, back toward Varcaxtan. “You’ve trapped the rat in its corner, High Ears. Nothing more to be done.”
“And you are satisfied being in his hands?” she asked of both of them.
Varcaxtan smiled sadly. “We’re in the hands of whatever gods care to hold us, because this much is certain:”—he nodded toward the pilot—“we were never in his.”
S’ythreni stared at them, then angrily began removing her boots.
Ahearn shouted at her. “Have ye gone daft, now?”
“No, I’m being sensible.”
“How’s that?”
“Because it’s better not to be wearing boots if you have to swim.”
Ahearn swallowed, saw Elweyr wince at her words and then turn his attention to his own footwear. Might not be a bad idea, that…
“A light!” the pilot shouted. “Up ahead!”
All of them followed his eyes over the bow: nothing but darkness.
“Where?” Elweyr shouted back.
“There… wait for us to climb the riser so that we—there! There!”
“I see it!” shouted the captain. “Make for it! Bo’sun, let out the canvas! All speed!”
S’ythreni’s urgent and very shrill question—“The light: is it steady or flickering?”—was lost in the babble of voices issuing orders and cursing the sea. Ahearn wondered at her odd question, but kept his focus on remaining watchful and ready to either help the ship or save themselves.
As the captain finished screaming his orders, the wind answered by rising into a sustained, rageful howl. The square-rigged mainsail snapped taut with an explosive crack. Before anyone could so much as loosen a sheet, a corner of the canvas tore free of the yard with a fateful pop.
With a sound like an immense leather hide being ripped in two, the sail surrendered to the gale all at once. Its lower half slapped downward like a pale, sodden palm. It caught the sailmaster full on, launching him over the gunwale into the darkness and lashing rain.
The ship lost way, flung about by the wind and angry risers as the captain fought to keep the pilot’s rudder work matched to the mizzen’s handlers as they fought with the yard. If the ship was to reach safety, they had to both keep the only remaining sail set to the wind and the prow pointed toward the intermittent light.
A set of loud thumps arose from the companionway. Ahearn partly ran, partly skittered across the quarterdeck to investigate and saw Umkhira’s hands scrabbling at the coaming, trying to mount the slippery steps. He moved toward the stairs, ready to lend her a hand.
Cursing, she finally came level with the deck—just as the risers shoved hard against the stern and gusts pivoted sharply. The yard handlers struggled to keep the wind in the sail, but as they did, the poop rose so high that the rudder lost purchase with the sea. The ship spun like a wild spindle and struck a submerged rock—hard.
The world did not just tilt; it became complete nonsense. For a moment, Ahearn couldn’t tell which way he was facing or even if he was still standing with his head pointed upward—
Then he was in the air. But only for a moment: he slammed down on the deck, bounced off it, started falling back—except the deck jerked up and hit him again. The air went out of him in a hooting rush and pain shot hot along a rib, but the pitching of the deck began to slow. He followed that motion and managed to roll up to his feet, more surprised than pleased.
Along the length of the weather deck, soaked silhouettes were struggling to stand but fewer than had been there before. Umkhira crawled back up out of the companionway, her head now half-black with dim-lit blood. Ahearn staggered down the poop deck’s stairs and hauled her upright—just as her eyes lost focus. Her head lolled and she vomited, half of the acrid mess hitting him, half spiraling off into the swirling rain.
Ahearn got an arm around her and, lodging that hand in her armpit, half-helped, half-dragged her back up to the poop. The captain was now berating rather than arguing with the pilot. For one terrified moment, Ahearn thought Elweyr had disappeared—but then saw that he had followed the dragon’s example and was crouching in the starboard head.
“I don’t understand,” the pilot was saying as Ahearn propped up Umkhira so she could hold herself to the side of the head’s partition. “The light at F’Shëssa—that’s a clear run to the port. No rocks! I can’t—”
“That’s because it’s not the light at F’Shëssa,” S’ythreni almost spat from where she was clinging to the rail.
“But I—!”
“You know nothing. That’s a Yylm trick. To wreck ships trying to reach Mirroskye.”
“Yylm?” echoed the puzzled captain, his voice strangely loud in the sudden calm. “What’s that?”
From the opposite rail, Varcaxtan’s voice was quiet but sharp. “There’s no time for talk.”
S’ythreni was too angry to have heard. “The Yylmyr are fallen Iavarain. Did Tharêdæath not tell you?”
“You mean, did he tell me the lands around you deathless tree spirits are filled with your own ghosts? Aye, he may’ve mentioned it.”
Ahearn was stunned at the disdain in the captain’s voice. “And you paid no mind to his words?”
From behind, Varcaxtan’s voice was as grim as Ahearn had ever heard. “Wind also comes in waves; they’re just longer. Be ready for—”
But the captain was heedless, too busy flinging his embarrassed resentment into Ahearn’s face. “I paid as much mind to your patron—or is it patroness?—as I would to anyone who walks on to my ship, claiming to be a legend.”
S’ythreni gaped, objected. “But it was Tharêdæath. He’s Uulamantre. He’s different.”
The captain retorted through a sneer. “He was different in only one way that mattered, lady sprite: he paid top fees in silver ingots.”
Sudden as lightning, the wild gusts returned. One moment, they were scudding along through rough but almost manageable seas: the next, they were blinded by a mix of rain and wind-risen spray. The ship heeled to leeward, the sail filling and luffing as if possessed by spirits locked in a tug-of-war. And close alongside, a brace of slick rocks pushed through the Bight’s eager, watery gums before receding from sight once again.
“Witch quim!” the pilot swore, cheating the ship in the other direction. “The gods saved us that time!”
“What saved you,” S’ythreni told him, “is that the river pushing out against us swung the bow a point southward. That’s why we missed the outer reefs.”
The captain stepped hastily between them. “Can you talk us to safety, then? You know these waters so well?”
S’ythreni’s chin came up. “Better than you, it seems.”
“Not what I asked. So if you can steer us in, take the wheel. If not, take a seat.”
“Come, S’ythreni,” Ahearn muttered, putting a light hand on her arm. “We haven’t time for this.” When she turned on him, he glanced at the dragon’s avatar and then Umkhira. She blinked, then nodded and went back to the rail, tying her boots to her belt as Ahearn removed his own.
For the next several minutes, they dodged the rocks—for the most part. The bumps and scrapes were modest, but between those and the first, heavy impact, the ship was taking on water. Worse yet, each dodge required a last-second haul at the wheel that took them farther and farther south—and no closer to shore.
“How long until you get around the reefs?” Elweyr shouted from the open-air head.
The captain glanced at the pilot who pointedly did not meet his eyes. “As long as it takes,” he yelled back, holding on to the binnacle for dear life as the wind shoved them away from the shoals even as the waves tried pushing them directly onto its fangs.
When the wind shifted so that it was directly over the beam, Varcaxtan stood straight, watching the captain carefully. Ahearn was about to ask what he meant to do when the Dunarran spoke, his voice very loud although he did not shout. “Angle this ship in closer. Now.”
The captain swallowed. “But the reef will tear it open like shark’s teeth, gut it beyond saving!”
“Y’fool: this ship is already dead! But the wind’s come ’round, enough that you needn’t fight it—for now. So drive her in as far as you can. That, or the outer rocks will cut us to chum before you can find us a way between them and over the bar.”
A rough shattering of wood seemed to cackle in response to Varcaxtan’s exhortation: the hull had been torn by more submerged stones. Two planks caught the weak light as they flew up from the port side and then disappeared into the black of the storm.
“We’re in the shoals!” the pilot screamed.
“I know that!” howled the captain. “Hard a’port!”
Varcaxtan’s eyes widened at the brash maneuver, even as S’ythreni’s head jerked back in alarm. “No! The rocks—!”
But the pilot, eyes distended in a double terror of steering blind in a storm and ignorant of the waters before him, had obeyed the captain too abruptly. The ship heeled over to the left—and straight into the tail-end of the reef.
Ahearn saw the black, glistening stones rise into the trough of a receding swell like suddenly drawn obsidian knives. He reacted before he could think. Racing across the poop toward Umkhira, he yelled “Jump!”
He caught up the startled Lightstrider in one arm and, holding her as tightly as he could, flung himself over the taffrail at an angle. He saw the dark, angry seas off the starboard quarter reaching up for him—
Just before the storm-dimmed dusk gave way to utter blackness.