Waters

Openings to the water I stopped;
I searched for cracks and the wanting parts I fixed:
Three sari of bitumen I poured over the outside;
To the gods I caused oxen to be sacrificed
-Unknown













The first word is with God.
A fanatic stands next to a line of men and howls into the early morning cold. The dead rats stringed to his sack-cloth britches sway in time with his canter. He hops around in little circles and shrieks at the sailors, telling them they are on a holy mission. He has a banner which stretches from wrist to wrist. On the greasy cloth is written three lines of verse.
They that go down to the sea in ships;
That do business in great waters;
These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.
One of the sailors quietly mutters the Lord’s Prayer as the rat-man jumps and sidles.
Three by three the men walk onto the ship. Heavy fog rolls across the Thames and from the wharf the world drops away into the grey breath of London. The plank they walk is to enter the ship, which is a fine old vessel whose timbers are pitched in blood. The flaking letters on the stern name her Destiny, though all who walk aboard call her Fate. The docks are filled with old souls and cats, and everywhere there are rats scurrying. The cats gorge themselves until they keel over, then the old folk break their necks and boil them up before the rats can eat their paws.
‘The old superstition that having a woman aboard brings bad luck is now a proven scientific fact.’
The man who spoke didn’t bother to look up at the passing sailors as he imparted this wisdom. He must have been a quartermaster, since he just chewed at the stub of his pencil and made tally marks on the back of a puritan broadsheet.  The lack of women folk sits well with the bosun, who eyes the men coming aboard with a hunger that causes him to twitch and click his fingers. The sinners-turned-sailors filing along the dock number thirty in all and each is given a small metal token stamped with a number. The idea is that the tokens are kept on the voyage by the sailors and are then exchanged for their wages on their return. The captains stopped giving the men real money because they said it leads to gambling and thievery on the ship. But the real reason is that most of these men will die soon, so what is the point of paying them?
The thirty men, tallied, stocked and stored, are marching on the words of King Charles. Each of the sailors was dragged from his cell, lightly beaten and earnestly asked if they enjoyed bracing sea air and travel. Charles was willing to call off their date with the noose in exchange for a few months service at sea.
‘The heathen keep coming, and we need you to plug the hole.’ They were told with a grin.
To make sure they took their charge seriously a burly old priest commonly called Batter was placed in command of their holy mission. As the men shuffled about on the sodden timbers Batter was in his bunk, dead drunk and snoring his belly-snore. The sailor who had mumbled the Lord’s Prayer was given his token and came aboard. He’d made himself a promise that he would document all that happened so that someone may know how he died, and why he was in such miserable circumstances. So far he had only written one line. I am in good health. It was a lie, he was sore with lice and there were angry red welts appearing on his forearms and back. But a hero (he envisioned himself as such) must be in good health, even when he is wounded and bleeding and toothless. The diary he carried was small and bound in red pig skin and had his name, Mason, written in black sloping print along the spine. From the deck he turned back to take one last look at London.
London. Once a great beast called London had terrorised the lands and eaten all the cattle. It grew huge and bloated and when it rested the gasses from its body turned the ground black and glassy. None of the people dared approach it since it was raddled with disease and had a mouth that was wide enough to drink the ocean. One day a farmhand was milking his last three cows when there was a sudden clap of thunder. Thinking nothing of it he went on with his milking and then a fork of lightning split the sky. The farmhand, who was a simple sort of fellow, realised that the ordering of this was all amiss. Looking up he scratched his head. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Well how would you like that? He said to Daisy, the cow he had been milking. Daisy snorted and began to graze, leaving the farmhand to stare as another clap of thunder rolled the sky like pinched skin. This time he was sure he didn’t imagine it and he looked to the East as the sound seemed to be coming from there. All at once a great terror seized him as he spied the great grey beast London throwing itself through the skies. Poxes and plagues had eaten up what little wings the beast had once had but fortunately it was a great jumper, spanning entire counties in each bound. The farmhand was scared of being eaten and so he looked around for something to hide behind. His eyes fell on Daisy, who didn’t seem at all disturbed by the shaking ground.
Boom!
London landed and took off again, one more jump and it would be in the paddock!
Boom!
The vibration sent the farmhands teeth all a-rattle in his head. He had managed to get behind Daisy and now he dared to have a look at London, spied from beneath Daisy’s swinging teats.
Eyes, that was the first thing he saw. A hundred, no, a thousand, all rolling and darting and no pair ever seeing the same thing at the same time. The beast was scaly, and the scales were the grey colour of lint and dripped with a thick something that looked like mashed soap. On its underside it was missing a great patch of scales and showing through was a pink and supple belly alive with roving parasites. It had two mouths, one in the usual place and one where its privates should surely be. But then again, what God ever intended this creature to reproduce? London had a particular weakness for good beef on the bone and snatched poor Daisy, and the farmhand along with her, into its lower mouth. Luckily for the farmhand this mouth had few teeth on account of the rot that pooled in its gums. Down he went, swallowed whole like Jonah and the whale, and for a few moments things were topsy-turvy before up he popped like a cork in a bath. Daisy was beating her hoofs beside him but she had broken her neck in the fall and soon drowned in the things stomach. The farmhand could have helped Daisy but he wanted to use her as a buoy and he couldn’t do that with her thrashing all about. So he watched her drown and wasted no time clambering onto her corpse. Tasting his lips he noted that the fluid in the beasts belly was salty like sea water and concluded that London must have drunk up the North Atlantic before coming to eat Daisy. Feeling very pleased with his logic he looked around his prison. Strangely enough it was quite bright in London’s stomach and when the farmhand looked down through the water he could see a blurred tree or a mountain and occasionally something much smaller like a blade of grass or a poppy in bloom.
Boom! Boom!
London was on the move again and the shaking was enough to unseat the poor farmhand. The waters bubbled and spluttered and he realised that soon he will surely drown. But the farmhand was a stubborn type and he took the metal stud from his belt and, diving down to where the light was strongest, used it to tear at London’s belly. The beast was a diseased old thing and in its great many years of life its skin had become grease-paper thin so it was no great burden to puncture it. All at once the farmhand, dead Daisy and a thousand - thousand gallons of putrid stinking water gushed out over the land. Green became glass and the red blooms of the poppies drooped into death. Giving out one last great roar London herself fell and twitched in the muck she had accumulated. It took her a very long time to die. Some say she is still dying today. But we grew accustomed to her smells and her plagues and built houses from her bones and for now it is good.
Mason yawned, and turned about. The men were all aboard and the supplies nearly loaded. Two of the new heresy-hunters were fist fighting on the deck and the bosun had to beat them half to death to make them stop. Two others dragged their bleeding bodies across to the foc’sle and lashed them back to back. Mason does not know why they do this or what will become of these men. He only knows that it is not his blood on the deck, and that surely has to be a good start to this voyage. He added a new line to his diary. Day one – I have not bled. In time this may be a lie too.
The gang walks are hauled away with neat certainty, like a cut umbilical cord. Six feet of fog, London’s breath, separate Mason from the cold stone of the city he knows, the city that makes him shiver. London swallowed both his parents’ whole. His father dropped into the red maw of the consumption, his mother succumbed to winter’s icicle teeth. The buildings that huddle around the wharf have split their eaves and shed their shingles. Old souls with faces like salted beef crowd around a small fire, all eyes trained hungrily on a form spitted above the flames. In turn the buildings crowd around them; gutters loose and outstretched like arms, plate glass eyes that are no less hungry. The cycle of London. We all must go back to the grey beast sometime. In the fog a cat yowls.
There is a tapping on the deck and the new sailors become quiet. Mason turns his back to London, his eyes to the river. But before the river, the Captain. Mason had seen many large men in his time but none quite so large as the Captain. His actual measurements were fairly average, a good six feet two without his buckled loafers and plumed hat. But his spirit, if you would call it that, was a true goliath and each man on that deck felt a chill in its shadow. Beside him jittered the bosun, who was called Billy, who made all of the sailors call him Billy-boy. Billy danced his eyes along a row of crotches and chests and the men were repulsed by his obvious arousal. He began to absent-mindedly rub his hand along his thigh but stopped when the Captain spoke.
‘Let every man who sails aboard me ship know that I’ve sworn no loyalty to the King. He pays me, I do what he says. That’s it. And since you lot were recently guests at one of his majesty’s charming house of corrections, I ‘spose you don’t show the man much love either. Well let me tell you now that in a few days the hate you hold for him will be nothing compared to how you’ll feel about me. That’s how I know I’ve done my job.’
Captain began to inspect the men, who had formed up into loose rows, then began again in his voice that was like rushing water.
‘Charles tells us we must root out heresy. He says that the monsters don’t belong in England. He tells me here,’ Captain pulled a folded piece of paper from his coat, ‘that he’ll pay me thirty pieces of silver for each of yer lives. I want me thirty pieces of silver, thirty times over. But Charles’ll only pay me if you fall in battle with the heathen, and what’s more is he wants me to bring back yer eyes as proof.’
The men were silent, the passing moments seemed loud in their heads.
‘Do any of you doubt that Charles is mad?’
Mason was surprised. The talk of the town was that the King had guillotined a troupe of actors suspected of treasonous thoughts, and here the Captain was voicing them openly? But then again, Mason thought, the King truly is mad.
‘Now me inner pirate tells me to cut yer eyes out now and dump the bodies for the gulls.’ He let the thought stagnate, each man was tensed to throw themselves from the ship. ‘But before pirate I’m a fair man, and I’ll allow each of you to prove yer metal against the heathens before I take yer eyes. Which brings me to me first order. I’m assigning all of you into pairs. This is a very serious matter. If any of you die in a manner which means I cannot harvest yer eyes then it is your partner’s duty to replace them. Heathens, pigs, donkeys, I don’t care where they come from so long as I can pass ‘em off for me silver. If you fail in this I will take one eye from you personally. So if you’d rather keep yer peepers make sure your partner dies here.’ Captain raised his boot and stomped the Fate’s timbers.
Evidently this was the end of his speech. Captain turned and, drawing his shadow around him like a robe, retired to his quarters. Now it was Billy-boy’s turn to talk.
‘I’m in charge here, you’s see? The lot of you have to do what I say or it’s the lash for you. And Captain loves when I give the new boys a good lashing. So if you’s smart you’ll want to stay on my good side.’ Billy-boy patted his leg as you would when calling for a dog. ‘Now how many of you ever been on a boat?’ No one said a thing. The men discreetly started to push each other to the front, all hoping not to catch the bosun’s eye.
‘Not one? Well that don’t matter. In a week you’ll all be playing the ropes like you’d been doing it all your life.’ Billy-boy burst into cackles which made him cough and wretch violently. He spat phlegm over the rails and made eyes at a small man who sported a tattoo that read no one conquers who doesn’t fight. Mason doubted that Billy-boy could read, but it was obvious that he liked an inked man. The sailor felt a new love for his unmarked body.
‘Well boy that looks like it’s got a story behind it. Why don’t you tell me about it?’
Billy-boy dragged the man into his small cabin and as he was pushed at the grunts and thumps echoed through the hollow bowels of the ship, collecting into ice water that pooled in pillows and underneath hammocks. None of the new men slept that first night and they didn’t see Billy-boy’s toy until dawn of the next day. No one knew what to say to him. No one wanted to touch him, to approach him, so they just went about their work swabbing the decks or furling endless sail and so very soon they had forgotten all about the bruised shattered body that was curled up against the foc’sle.
In the morning the fog slipped by and slid off the ship like fish scale. The water they were left with was bluer than grey, but much less than blue. Mason, who had been learning how to climb the sails, took a look at where they had emerged. London was gone, vanished beneath her own breath, though if Mason ever felt homesick he knew he could simply look down into the waters they sailed. The filth of her had spread far from her docks and harbours and here, in the North Atlantic, the sea still choked on her dust and marrow. Mason peered past the rails and into the waters. Here and there were smashed barrels and odd objects – a wardrobe, socks and mittens, a bathtub full of clocks which floated on the rubbish accumulated under it. Mason turned to starboard and spotted a tiny wooden boat that was in danger of capsizing amidst the flotsam. Its occupants, three women, were scooping enormous jellyfish from the waters. The Fate sailed by and the little craft rocked so violently in their wake it caused one of the women to pitch over into the sea. London’s breath closed over them and Mason was left wondering if the lady had drowned. Her sisters, if that is what they were, had seemed more interested in hauling up the milky-white jellies. Mason made a brief note of the occurrence in his red pig diary.
Mason’s partner Angelo came to lean at his shoulder. Angelo is wide-chested and ruddy and has an infected eyelid which causes him great pain. Though Angelo knows the infection will eventually swallow the sight from his eye he always seems to be in good spirits, a fact that Mason is constantly thankful for.
‘How are we today young master?’ Before the Fate, before prison, before his second murder, Angelo was a servant to a minor Lordling. Now he dotes on Mason with strange tenderness.
‘Well enough.’ Mason paused, peered back into the receding fog. ‘Will you ever miss her?’
Angelo shrugged and picked lice from his shoulders. ‘My mother conceived me in a Kings Cross opium den. I killed her coming out; midwife said I pulled too much o’ her though with me. They were going to wait for me to die then bury me atop ‘er. Said I’d nae live. But I suckled. I... I sucked three wet-nurses dry!’ Angelo laughed and it came in gurgles from his belly, like he was still a baby underneath the bluster. ‘And so I grew up and killed me first man. Did time, reformed, became a servant. Me master got it into his head that I be stealing and was going to run me out to the coppers. He said that I’d be hanged this time. Said that unless I did something for him, he’d run me out.’ Angelo shrugged again. ‘I didn’t want to go back to prison. I helped him kill his son.’
Billy-boy was shouting at one of the younger men. Early that morning, appetite apparently sated, he’d screamed the men out of bed and onto the deck. It was freezing cold and the waves were coming over the sides in foamy washes. The men didn’t have a chance to blink the sleep from their eyes before they were being chased up the sails and rigging, Billy swinging his wooden switch at thighs and arses. He screamed about trimming sail and swinging to aft but none of the men had any idea what he was on about so they’d just run around, trying to look busy, and hope his eye, his switch and ultimately his prick, wouldn’t find them. The young man screamed as Billy-boy whipped his legs. Mason and Angelo turned back to the water.
‘Course he’d planned it all along,’ Angelo continued. ‘When I came back from the river the coppers were waiting to haul me off. I was waiting for me date with the noose when I’m told I was gonna be a sailor. Didn’t figure on this though.’ Angelo ran his hand along a length of frayed rope. He looked to where Mason was looking.
‘My whole life happened in London. She’s always looked over me, me own guardian angel. She saw me kill that man’s son and read to me when I was in the lockup. She’s more o’ a mother than I ever knew. I’ll miss her for that.’ Angelo smiled and leaned his arms on the railings next to Mason.
They passed the next few moments in silence. The only sounds were the whimpering of the young sailor as the switch was brought down whack! whack! whack! in measured rhythm and the soft pop and bump of small objects hitting the hull of the Fate as she slid through the dirty water. Gulls were calling from somewhere overhead and Mason stretched gingerly. The hard work of the morning had sapped his strength and now his muscles felt like rusty wire. That said even Billy-boy must admit that Mason has some natural seafaring talent. The tricks were taught and in time would be easy, every knot and barked instruction ringing in his salt encrusted soul. Mason stretched his fingers out and took up his pencil, flicking two pages into his diary where the writing had trailed off.

Day Two
After leaving London via Lambeth we tacked north into the wind which has blown fitfully for the last day. Progress still slow due to the rubbish that has piled up in the water, though it has thinned considerably since leaving the Thames. A single unlucky man is lowered down every few hours to pull long clumps of stinking black filth from the stern and rudder. Two men have almost met their end this way, one from near-drowning and one that swears he was attacked by a beast from the deep. The red ring marks that cover the left side of his body are large and sore, though the skin itself was not punctured. I fear for when they choose me for this task. Angelo, the man whom I was partnered with yesterday, has told me a little of his life and crimes in London. It is strange that his circumstances prior to the Fate mirror my own.
We still do not know the reason we have been chosen. I don’t even know what we are doing here. Charles has told us to purge the heretical, but that is like telling a snake to kill every reptile he sees. And this boat is a true snake pit. We have no bearing and I find myself missing London more the further I get from her. Where are we going? And to what ends?
I still say my prayers by night. But Billy-boy loves to keep us up.

‘Angelo?’ Mason asks.
‘Hmmm?’ His head swivelled around.
‘Do you suppose us being out here, untrained sailors and all, has anything to do with the Boaters?’
Angelo scratched at his belly, dislodging crumbs fit to choke a man.
‘Don’t know.’ He replied at length. ‘They still being kept in the Baileys yeah? I saw a few of ‘em when the first boat came in. Disgusting. Can’t tell man from woman with that lot. They want to find evidence of heresy? Just gotta look at what came off of them boats, eh.’
Mason nodded. ‘They might have wanted us to look much closer than that.’ He murmured.
He turned his eyes to the northern horizon. All seemed in place; sky on top of sea and nothing between the two. Angelo muttered something about biscuits and left his side. The Boaters had given Mason pause for thought. What if the Fate was heading into wherever they had come from? Apparently when they’d been tortured they’d claimed to be from a place in the sea, except it wasn’t any country Mason had ever heard of and the sea it foundered in seemed equally improbable. What had they called it? Lappity? Laddipy? Pollity? He was no longer sure.
It had started to rain when Bluster came out on the decks, his breakfast grease smeared down the front of his sack-cloth cassock. He bounced across the deck with an ebullience that seemed totally out of place, saying good morning to every sailor he passed. Even Billy-boy had to look up from his whipping as Bluster greeted him. Looking down at the poor fellow on the timbers Bluster tsk-tsk’d and told him to behave himself since the Lord is in the waters too. Someone joked that it must have been the Lord that had attacked the fellow with the sucker-marks. Bluster lost his bounce and glowered at the man.
‘God will teach you soon enough not to mock him.’ Turning about he sauntered over to the railing Mason was leaning against.
‘How does the morning find you, my child?’
‘Fitful. Hungry.’ Mason blanched as the smell of Batter itched up his nose. The sweaty white porpoise smiled and prattled on about the war of the righteous, his eyes becoming large and bovine in devotion.
‘For if we intend to defeat the heathen on their own soil then we ourselves must be cleansed of our sins.’
‘Is that why we received confession before we boarded the Fate?’
‘The Fate? Surely you mean the Destiny?’ Batter didn’t wait for Mason to correct himself. ‘Yes it was my idea actually. Every man walking these planks has been washed of sin. Isn’t that marvellous? Makes me feel much more secure.’ Batter turned to survey the scurrying, panting, collapsing mess of life that coated the timbers. ‘Each of these men was rescued from a jail cell, many of them on sentences of death. Society had given up on them. But I refused. I heard of this voyage and I wanted to give these men a second chance, a way to have their sins scrubbed from them with hard work and salt spray. Ah.’ Batter lifted his nose to the wind and inhaled deeply.
‘So you chose all of these men?’ Mason asked.
‘That’s right sailor! Well...maybe not all of them. There were a few choices that I was concerned with, but I have faith in the way the Lord works. He will see us through to the final stand.’
‘So where do we sail, Father?’
‘North, my child. North.’
With that Batter resumed his bounding step, the slippery deck apparently no problem even under his wooden sandals.
‘You, Mason!’ It was Billy-boy.
Oh Jesus, please no.
‘You’d better get to scrubbing that railing ‘less you wanna be keel-hauled, eh?’ Billy-boy threw him a filthy rag. Mason nodded his head and bent to his task, waiting for Billy’s voice to sound again, for his soft breath to reek anchovy and pilchards past his cheek as he places his arm around Mason’s waist, his hand atop Mason’s own. Showing You How It’s Done, that’s what he called it. Mason shuddered and waited. Finally he heard a cabin door slam shut and dared to look around. Men were scrubbing around where Billy had whipped the young boy to blood. Of the boy himself there was no sign but Mason hoped he was below having his wounds tended to. Then he remembered there was no doctor aboard the Fate.
Mason polished his way along the rail to the foc’sle where Billy’s conquest from the night before was sleeping in a ball. He looked puffy with two large black eyes and love bites all over his arms and neck. Mason was sickened to think of how he must have suffered below the waist, and perhaps internally too. It was horrible, he knew, but he looked at that man’s face for such a long time, finding comfort in every line, every pock and blemish that was not present on his own face. It made Mason feel set aside from this man, unable to be hurt the way he had been hurt. For a few moments he felt that perhaps he would not be chosen at all. But Hope slipped from Mason’s hands like wayward soap. He knew, then and there. We all must take our turn.


Cut the Candles
It was story night on the deck. Since it was a still night a few candles had been lit and placed around the foc’sle, the ship and sea about it so dark as to disappear beyond the tiny flames. The sailors that could not sleep were clustered within the circle of light and were passing around a bottle of gin. The bottle had ended up in the hands of a tall, wiry man. This is the story he told.
In a forest far to the south of our homes is a path that runs for half a mile. It twists and turns and sometimes becomes straight and flat. Parts of it are hard gravel and others are matted grass so fresh travellers begin to wonder if they’ve taken a wrong turn. This path is an odd little occurrence because where it exists one day it will not exist the next. It moves like a snake, slithering along the ground, making use of whatever materials the forest floor presents to cobble together its form. The people who live near the forest believe that once there was a village high up on a nearby mountain. The mountain was called Roke and the village was named after it. One day a man made the trip down the mountain to cut wood in the forest. He’d just worked up a sweat when he begins to hear singing. Listening hard he becomes certain, there is a woman singing somewhere deep in the forest. The man knows that the forest is home to beasts and demons and is concerned for the woman’s safety. He ventures deeper into the forest, following the sound of the singing. His heart beats harder as branches crack and leaves rustle around him. He holds his axe close in his slippery hands and pushes onwards. The singing, he notes, is actually quite beautiful. It’s breathy and lilting and seems to rise only a few feet off of the forest floor. The woman’s voice becomes louder or softer at each turn the man makes and eventually he emerges in a clearing. In the middle of the clearing is a leaf-green lake and in the middle of the lake, perched atop a dead elk, a nymph combs her blue hair as she sings. She has her back to the man and as he wanders down to the lakes edge he is bewitched by the nymph’s voice.
The story breaks as the sailor takes a swallow of gin. Rigging and wood creates truly unsettling noises in the night. The creaking reminds Mason of gallows rope, and each man feels a prickling of fear. They urge the sailor to resume his story.
The woodcutter sits and listens to the nymph sing. He does not know how long he stays there but he finds himself becoming more and more attracted to the creature. When the nymph finishes her final song she places her comb on the flank of the elk and turns to the woodcutter. He is struck by her beauty and, like slipping on a stone, falls into an easy love. The nymph swam over to where the man sat and asked if he’d enjoyed her singing. He told her he had and that he had never seen a woman that could match her beauty. The nymph laughed and looked about to swim away. The woodcutter begged her to wait. He confessed his feelings toward her and asked the nymph to marry him. She told him that if she left the pool she would surely die. The man then declared that he would build a home here, right next to the pool, and every day he would listen to her sing and watch her comb her hair. The nymph laughed again at this boast. She told him that if he could find her again she would consent to be his wife. And so the woodcutter returned to Roke, on the way home marking tree branches so he would know which way to return. He gathered supplies and said his farewells before beginning his trek. As he walked into the forest, following the scored trees, he began to hear the singing of the beautiful nymph. It was coming from a different direction from that which he’d marked, and he began to follow the sound of her voice. Before long he was utterly lost in the heart of the forest. He wandered in there for years, the trails he wore into the ground crisscrossing the land. Yet he never again set eyes on his beloved nymph, and he died upon the path he was walking to his love. His heavy heart pulled his spirit down into the path and now it wanders the forest, an endless search for the nymph that stole the woodcutter’s heart.
Silence came about the deck and sat down with the men in the circle. It took its drink of gin and passed it along to the next man. A tiny breeze was kicked up and made the candles splutter. The breeze came from the west and with it it brought jasmine and the slow warmth of a desert night. It had travelled a thousand miles to reach this place, this speck of sea and these sailors. The men did not mind the breeze and each let it take them where it pleased. Mason was taken to a place he had not visited for a while, his family home. It was the day that mother was taken ill and young Mason was cutting inches off of the legs of the chairs to feed the fire. Slowly the chairs were getting shorter and shorter until the seats came to rest on the ground. Still the fire was weak and seemed about to cough up its life in soot. Mason’s mother started coughing then, as if in prelude to the fires death, and Mason’s tiny face grew fierce and determined. He took the hatchet he had, still too big for his little hands, and smashed the chairs, the table, the dresser, the wardrobe to pieces. These he dragged over next to the fire and, depositing himself next to his kindling, began to gingerly feed it. Soon a long heat filled the small home and the flames licked up into the chimney. Mason’s cheeks burned from being so close but he felt too proud of his inferno to feel the pain. He got up and went to his mother’s side, expecting her to be smiling and rosy, now there was a good fire burning. But she wasn’t rosy, or pink or even white. She was blue. She was dead.
Mason’s memory was pushed from his head as a bottle was pushed into his palm. A few of the sailors had started singing in low tones of England. Mason took a swallow from the bottle. It burned on its way down and immediately began to affect him. The ships cook had taken ill and so it was biscuits and meat jelly for dinner that night. Mason couldn’t eat much of it. He wondered if he was a vegetarian. He tried to remember the last time he ate meat (not including the jelly, which Mason thought didn’t count since it was just fat and congealed blood, no flesh). As Mason pondered this and many other things the men started on a new song.

A poor old man came riding by
And we say so, and we hope so
A poor old man came riding by
Oh, poor old horse.

Says I, "Old man, your horse will die."
Says I, "Old man, your horse will die."

And if he dies we'll tan his skin
And if he don't we'll ride him again.

For one long month I rode him hard
For one long month we all rode him hard.

But now your month is up, old Turk
Get up, you swine, and look for work

Get up you swine and look for graft
While we lays on and drags ye aft

He's as dead as a nail in the lamp-room door
And he won't come worrying us no more

We'll use the hair of his tail to sew our sails
And the iron of his shoe to make deck nails

We'll hoist him up to the fore yard-arm
Where he won't do sailors any harm

We'll drop him down with a long, long roll
Where the sharks will have his body and the
Devil take his soul.

Though he was pained to leave the candlelight Mason thought it best to take to his hammock. As he approached the wheelhouse he listened for any noises from below. Silence. Billy-boy must be asleep, something that Mason was grateful for. Not having slept at all last night he was exhausted after the day’s work, which promised to begin again at a suitably ungodly hour. Mason crept to his hammock, his senses alive to the tiniest squeak, and settled in for the night. The slowly tilting ship rocked him onto sleep’s shores.