it blow. In all my years. See the mizzenmast, this one here?â Addison advanced across the deck and kicked the foot of the mast in question. âSheared straight off, below deck! What with that and the damage to the forecastle. But what did us was the rudder. It sprang clean apart. That mast killed a man coming down. Took his legs off and punched a hole in the foredeck for good measure. Waring couldnât save him. We couldnât go on. It was Godâs will that I got us back round the north of the island and into port.â
It seemed Addison wanted me to doubt what he was saying, or at least to question it so that he could restate its truth. He scratched the palm of one square hand with the fingers of the other now, itching to go on.
âKilled a man,â I prompted. âBy breaking his legs.â
âYes! Not just broke, though. It took them clean off. Look, come below. Iâll show you the new joinery, whole sections, green timbers, the repairs amidships.â
I let myself be led forward at the Captainâs insistence. Had Carthy spoken with him already, prepared the way for a visit? I could think of no other likely reason as to why Addison had required no persuading, no warrant, or other evidence of authority, no proof even of who I was.
I followed the Captain down the steps and across the weathered timbers of the main deck. His rolling gait first appeared to me as right for one accustomed to life on board a ship, but then he stumbled against a low spar and missed the rail he clutched for and ended up down on one knee, his hat awry. He pulled it off and slapped it against his stocky thigh and shouted âGullsâ Eyes!â as he stood and punched the hat roughly and set it back in its rightful place, and I suddenly suspected that the man must have been drinking; at the very least, frayed nerves had put him in this discomfited state.
âNo harm done I hope,â I said quietly as I waited for him to go forward again towards the hatch.
We made our way below. I had not set foot on a ship such as this since my passage to England as a small child but immediately, before my eyes had a chance to grow accustomed to the dark, the smell of the thing gripped me as something primal and familiar and horrific. There had been a strong,purifying breeze on deck, but even with the hatches open and the hold all but emptied, the dark interior of the ship filled me with claustrophobic dread. It smelt of rotten meat, gaseousness, death. I stifled an urge to wretch. One hand was still wrapped tight around a ladder rung: it was all I could do not to bolt straight back up it towards the light. As well as the horrible gloom and smell, the awareness that I was not on land but afloat intensified in me: I felt it as a ghastly weakening in my legs. The ship, tethered tight, was barely moving, but its gentle nuzzling at the dock, the imperceptible bumping and chafing of wood against stone, was magnified in the confinement of the hold, so that to me it seemed the ship was menacingly unstable. I locked my knees, fearful I might otherwise sink to the floor.
âCome along. Mind your head. Wood against timber, timber on wood. Thatâs it, Mr Bright, through here. The mast sheared straight through the bulwark, took a wall of shiplap with it. Infernally heavy. And these timbers here, and those ones, they were splintered by the blow. Something the matter?â
Having staggered after the Captain through a series of low doors with raised sills, past cramped storerooms disgorged of their contents, I now drew up short on entering the wider space between decks. It being impossible not to, I pressed my palm to my mouth and nose. The smell here was ⦠raw. The air that bore it had a thick, unholy quality, cloying as earth dug from a grave. A wad of revulsion rolled through me, from my stomach to my chest to my throat, and this time it broke over the back of my tongue, flooding my mouth with sick. I fought to
It seemed Addison wanted me to doubt what he was saying, or at least to question it so that he could restate its truth. He scratched the palm of one square hand with the fingers of the other now, itching to go on.
âKilled a man,â I prompted. âBy breaking his legs.â
âYes! Not just broke, though. It took them clean off. Look, come below. Iâll show you the new joinery, whole sections, green timbers, the repairs amidships.â
I let myself be led forward at the Captainâs insistence. Had Carthy spoken with him already, prepared the way for a visit? I could think of no other likely reason as to why Addison had required no persuading, no warrant, or other evidence of authority, no proof even of who I was.
I followed the Captain down the steps and across the weathered timbers of the main deck. His rolling gait first appeared to me as right for one accustomed to life on board a ship, but then he stumbled against a low spar and missed the rail he clutched for and ended up down on one knee, his hat awry. He pulled it off and slapped it against his stocky thigh and shouted âGullsâ Eyes!â as he stood and punched the hat roughly and set it back in its rightful place, and I suddenly suspected that the man must have been drinking; at the very least, frayed nerves had put him in this discomfited state.
âNo harm done I hope,â I said quietly as I waited for him to go forward again towards the hatch.
We made our way below. I had not set foot on a ship such as this since my passage to England as a small child but immediately, before my eyes had a chance to grow accustomed to the dark, the smell of the thing gripped me as something primal and familiar and horrific. There had been a strong,purifying breeze on deck, but even with the hatches open and the hold all but emptied, the dark interior of the ship filled me with claustrophobic dread. It smelt of rotten meat, gaseousness, death. I stifled an urge to wretch. One hand was still wrapped tight around a ladder rung: it was all I could do not to bolt straight back up it towards the light. As well as the horrible gloom and smell, the awareness that I was not on land but afloat intensified in me: I felt it as a ghastly weakening in my legs. The ship, tethered tight, was barely moving, but its gentle nuzzling at the dock, the imperceptible bumping and chafing of wood against stone, was magnified in the confinement of the hold, so that to me it seemed the ship was menacingly unstable. I locked my knees, fearful I might otherwise sink to the floor.
âCome along. Mind your head. Wood against timber, timber on wood. Thatâs it, Mr Bright, through here. The mast sheared straight through the bulwark, took a wall of shiplap with it. Infernally heavy. And these timbers here, and those ones, they were splintered by the blow. Something the matter?â
Having staggered after the Captain through a series of low doors with raised sills, past cramped storerooms disgorged of their contents, I now drew up short on entering the wider space between decks. It being impossible not to, I pressed my palm to my mouth and nose. The smell here was ⦠raw. The air that bore it had a thick, unholy quality, cloying as earth dug from a grave. A wad of revulsion rolled through me, from my stomach to my chest to my throat, and this time it broke over the back of my tongue, flooding my mouth with sick. I fought to
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