How Firm a Foundation (6 page)

“Yes, Sir.” Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s tone was properly apologetic, but a devilish glint lurked in his brown eyes, Yairley thought.
Then the young man’s expression sobered. “I thought I’d best get down here quickly, Sir.” He raised his arm and pointed over the starboard quarter. “There’s a line of breakers out there, about five miles on the quarter, Captain. A long one—they reach as far as I could see to the northeast. And they’re wide, too.” He met Yairley’s gaze levelly. “I think it’s the Garfish Bank, Sir.”

So the ensign
had been thinking the same thing
he
had, Yairley reflected. And if he was right—which, unfortunately, he almost certainly was—they were substantially further north than the captain had believed they’d been driven. Not that there’d been anything he could have done to prevent it even if he’d known. In fact, if he hadn’t changed heading when he had, they’d have driven onto the bank hours earlier,
but still.…

“Thank you, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk. Be good enough to ask Lieutenant Lathyk to join me on deck, if you would.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.”

The ensign disappeared, and Sir Dunkyn Yairley bent over the compass, picturing charts again in his mind, and worried.

*   *   *

“You wanted me, Sir?” Rhobair Lathyk said respectfully. He was still chewing on a piece of biscuit, Yairley noted.

“I apologize
for interrupting your breakfast, Master Lathyk,” the captain said. “Unfortunately, according to Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk we’re no more than five miles clear—at best—of the Garfish Bank.”

“I see, Sir.” Lathyk swallowed the biscuit, then bent to examine the compass exactly as Yairley had.

“Assuming Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s eye is as accurate as usual,” Yairley continued, “we’re a good forty miles north
of my estimated position and Sand Shoal lies about forty miles off the starboard bow. Which means Scrabble Sound lies broad on the starboard beam.”

“Aye, Sir.” Lathyk nodded soberly. The good news was that Scrabble Sound ran almost a hundred and twenty miles south to north, which gave them that much sea room before they ran into the eastern face of Ahna’s Point or into Scrabble Shoal, itself.
The bad news was that from their current position they couldn’t possibly clear
Sand
Shoal at the western edge of Scrabble Pass, the mouth of the sound … and even if they had, it would only have been to allow the wind to drive them into Silkiah Bay instead of Scrabble Sound.

“Go about, Sir?” he asked. “On the starboard tack we might just be able to hold a course across the sound for Fishhook Strait.”

Fishhook Strait, roughly a hundred miles north of their current position, was the passage between Scrabble Sound and the northern reaches of the Gulf of Mathyas.

“I’m thinking the same thing,” Yairley confirmed, “but not until we’re past the southern end of the bank. And even then”—he met Lathyk’s eyes levelly—“with this wind, the odds are we’ll have to anchor, instead.”

“Aye, Sir.” Lathyk nodded.
“I’ll see to the anchors now, should I?”

“I think that would be an excellent idea, Master Lathyk,” Yairley replied with a wintry smile.

*   *   *

“I don’t like this one bit, Zhaksyn,” Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk admitted quietly several hours later. Or as quietly as he could and still make himself heard at the main topmast crosstrees, at any rate. He was peering ahead through his spyglass as he spoke,
and the line of angry white water reaching out from the barely visible gray mass of the mainland stretched squarely across
Destiny
’s bowsprit. He had to hold on to his perch rather more firmly than usual. Although the wind had eased still further, Scrabble Sound was a shallow, treacherous body of water. Its wave action could be severe—especially with a southeasterly blowing straight into it—and
the masts’ motion was enough to make even Aplyn-Ahrmahk dizzy.

“Not much about it to like, if you’ll pardon my saying so, Sir,” the lookout perched at the crosstrees with him replied.

“No. No, there isn’t.” Aplyn-Ahrmahk lowered the glass with a sigh, then slung it over his shoulder once more. He started to reach for the back stay again, then stopped himself and looked at the lookout. “Best
not, I suppose.”

“Better safe nor sorry, Sir,” Zhaksyn agreed with a grin. “Specially seeing as how the First Lieutenant’s on deck.”

“Exactly what I was thinking myself.” Aplyn-Ahrmahk patted the seaman on the shoulder and started down the more sedate path of the shrouds.

“Well, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk?” Captain Yairley asked calmly when he reached the quarterdeck. The captain’s valet stood at
his side, improbably neatly groomed even under these circumstances, and Yairley held a huge mug of tea between his hands. The steam from the hot liquid whipped away on the wind before anyone had a chance to see it, but its warmth felt comforting against his palms, and he raised it to inhale its spicy scent while he waited for Aplyn-Ahrmahk’s report. The steep-sided crest of Ahna’s Point was visible
from deck level, however, which meant he already had an unfortunately good notion of what the ensign was about to say.

“White water clear across the bow, Sir,” Aplyn-Ahrmahk confirmed with a salute. “All the way from the coast”—his left arm gestured in a northwesterly direction—“to a good five points off the starboard bow.” His arm swung in an arc from northwest to east-northeast, and Yairley
nodded.

“Thank you, Master Aplyn-Ahrmahk,” he said in that same calm tone, and took a reflective sip of tea. Then he turned to Lieutenant Lathyk.

“The depth?”

“The lead shows twenty-four fathoms, Sir. And shoaling.”

Yairley nodded. Twenty-four fathoms—a hundred and forty-four feet—accorded relatively well with the sparse (and unreliable) depths recorded on his less-than-complete charts. But
Destiny
drew just over twenty feet at normal load, and the leadsman was undoubtedly right about the decreasing depth. By all accounts Scrabble Sound shoaled rapidly, and that meant those hundred and forty-four feet could disappear quickly.

“I think we’ll anchor, Master Lathyk.”

“Aye, Sir.”

“Then call the hands.”

“Aye, Sir! Master Symmyns! Hands to anchor!”

“Hands to anchor, aye, aye, Sir!”

Bosun’s pipes shrilled as the hands raced to their stations. Both of the bower anchors had been made ready hours ago in anticipation of exactly this situation. The canvas hawse-plugs which normally kept water from entering through the hawseholes during violent weather had been removed. The anchor cables, each just over six inches in diameter and nineteen inches in circumference, had been gotten
up through the forward hatch, led through the open hawseholes, and bent to the anchors. A turn of each cable had been taken around the riding bitts, the heavy upright timbers just abaft the foremast, before fifty fathoms of cable were flaked down, and the upper end of the turn led down through the hatch to the cable tier where the remainder of the cable was stored. The anchors themselves had been
gotten off of the fore-channels and hung from the catheads, and a buoy had been made fast to the ring of each anchor.

Under the current circumstances, there was nothing “routine” about anchoring, and Yairley handed the empty mug to Sylvyst Raigly, then stood with his hands clasped behind him, lips pursed in a merely thoughtful expression while he contemplated the state of the bottom.

His charts
for Scrabble Sound were scarcely anything he would have called reliable. The sound wasn’t particularly deep (which helped to account for how violent the seas remained even though the wind had continued to drop), but the chart showed only scattered lines of soundings. He could only guess at the depths between them, and according to his sailing notes, the sound contained quite a few completely uncharted
pinnacles of rock. Those same notes indicated a rocky bottom, with unreliable holding qualities, which wasn’t something he wanted to hear about at this particular moment. Almost as bad, a rocky bottom posed a significant threat that his anchor cables would chafe and fray as they dragged on the bottom.

Beggars can’t be choosers, Dunkyn,
he reminded himself, glancing as casually as possible at
the angry white confusion of surf where the heavy seas pounded the rocky, steeply rising beach below Ahna’s Point or surged angrily above Scrabble Shoal. There was no way
Destiny
could possibly weather the shoal under these wind conditions. She was firmly embayed, trapped on a lee shore with no option but to anchor until wind and weather moderated enough for her to work her way back out.

Well,
at least you managed to stay out of Silkiah Bay,
he reminded himself, and snorted in amusement.

“All hands, bring ship to anchor!” Lathyk bellowed the preparatory order as the last of the hands fell in at his station, and Yairley drew a deep breath.

“Hands aloft to shorten sail!” he ordered, and watched the topmen swarm aloft.

“Stand by to take in topsails and courses! Man clewlines and buntlines!”

Clewlines and buntlines were slipped off their belaying pins as the assigned hands tailed onto them.

“Haul taut! In topsails! Up foresail and mainsail!”

The canvas disappeared, drawing up like great curtains for the waiting topmen to fist it in and gasket it to the yards. Yairley felt
Destiny
’s motion change as she lost the driving force of the huge square sails and continued ahead under jib
and spanker alone. She became heavier, less responsive under the weight of the pounding seas as she lost speed through the water.

“Stand clear of the starboard cable! Cock-bill the starboard anchor!”

The shank painter, which had secured the crown of the anchor to the ship’s side, was cast off, letting the anchor hang vertically from the starboard cathead, its broad flukes dragging the water
and threatening to swing back against the hull as the broken waves surged against the ship.

“Let go the starboard anchor!”

A senior petty officer cast off the ring stopper, the line passed through the ring of the anchor to suspend it from the cathead, and threw himself instantly flat on the deck as the anchor plunged and the free end of the stopper came flying back across the bulwark with a
fearsome crack. The cable flaked on deck went thundering through the hawsehole, seasoned wood smoking with friction heat despite the all-pervasive spray as the braided hemp ran violently out while
Destiny
continued ahead, “sailing out” her cable.

“Stream the starboard buoy!”

The anchor buoy—a sealed float attached to the starboard anchor by a hundred-and-fifty-foot line—was released. It plunged
into the water, following the anchor. If the cable parted, the buoy would still mark the anchor’s location, and its line was heavy enough that the anchor could be recovered by it.

“Stand clear of the
larboard
cable! Cock-bill the anchor!”

Yairley watched men with buckets of seawater douse the smoking starboard cable. Another moment or two and—

Destiny
staggered. The galleon lurched, the men
at the wheel were hurled violently to the deck, and Yairley’s head came up as a dull, crunching shock ran through the deck underfoot. For a moment, she seemed to hang in place, then there was a second crunch and she staggered onward, across whatever she’d struck.

“Away carpenter’s party!” Lieutenant Lathyk shouted, and the carpenter and his mates bolted for the main hatchway, racing below to
check for hull damage, but Yairley had other things on his mind. Whatever else had happened, it was obvious he’d just lost his rudder. He hoped it was only temporary, but in the meantime …

“Down jib! Haul out the spanker!”

The jib disappeared, settling down to be gathered in by the hands on the bowsprit. Without the thrust of the rudder, Yairley couldn’t maintain the heading he’d originally
intended. He’d planned to sail parallel to the shore while he dropped both anchors for the widest purchase possible on the treacherous bottom, but the drag of the cable still thundering out of her starboard hawsehole was already forcing
Destiny
’s head up to the wind. The pounding seas continued to thrust her bodily sideways to larboard, though, and he wanted to get as far away from whatever they’d
struck—probably one of those Shan-wei-damned uncharted rocks—as possible before he released the second anchor.

Fifty fathoms of cable had run out to the first anchor, and the ship was slowing, turning all the way back through the wind under the braking effect of the cable’s drag. She wasn’t going to carry much farther, he decided.

“Let go the larboard anchor!”

The second anchor plunged, and
the pounding vibration of heavy hemp hawsers hammered through the ship’s fabric as both cables ran out.

“Stream the larboard buoy!”

The larboard anchor buoy went over the side, and then the starboard cable came up against the riding bitt and the cable stoppers—a series of lines “nipped” to the anchor cable and then made fast to purchases on deck—came taut, preventing any more it from veering.
The ship twitched, but enough slack had veered that she didn’t stop moving immediately, and the larboard cable continued running out for several more seconds. Then it, too, came up against its bitt and stoppers and
Destiny
came fully head to the wind and began drifting slowly to leeward until the tautening cables’ counter-balanced tension could stop her. It looked as if she’d come-to at least
two hundred yards from shore, and they could use the capstans to equalize the amount of cable veered to each anchor once they were sure both were holding. In the meantime.…

Yairley had already turned to the wheel. Frahnklyn Waigan was back on his feet, although one of his assistants was still on the deck with an unnaturally bent arm which was obviously broken. As Yairley looked, the petty officer
turned the wheel easily with a single hand and grimaced.

“Nothin’, Sir.” He’d somehow retained a wad of chewleaf, and he spat a disgusted stream of brown juice into the spittoon fixed to the base of the binnacle. “Nothin’ at all.”

“I see.” Yairley nodded. He’d been afraid of that, and he wondered just how bad the damage actually was. If he’d simply lost the tiller or fractured the rudderhead,
repair would be relatively straightforward … probably. That was the reason
Destiny
carried an entire spare tiller, after all. Even if the rudderhead had been entirely wrung off, leaving nothing to attach the tiller to, they could still rig chains to the rudder itself just above the waterline and steer with tackles. But he doubted they’d been that fortunate, and if the rudder was entirely gone.…