"Every nautical chart we studied, every monsoon pattern we memorized, is nothing but wastepaper here."
Making it into these waters alive was already proof that these people had given everything they had.
"Captain! There's something ahead!"
The shout from the masthead shattered the gloom on deck.
The lookout leaned halfway out of the barrel-like crow's nest, his arm pointing straight ahead.
"Land! It's land!"
The young man in the headscarf snapped his head up.
A sharp scrape of metal followed his movement-three inches of the sword at his waist were already drawn, its cold gleam lighting his suddenly bright eyes.
"Did you all hear that?"
His voice struck the gunwale and echoed with a low buzz. "There's somewhere we can set foot up ahead.
Hot soup, dry beds, liquor that'll set your throats burning... it's all waiting there!"
The cabin door swung open.
First came several pairs of hands gripping the doorframe, their knuckles thick, their skin marked with old scars of varying depths.
Only then did figures stagger out, their bandaged limbs looking insubstantial in the sunlight.
Their cheeks were unnaturally flushed and their lips cracked, but the same light burned in all their eyes.
"We can really... go ashore?"
"At last... at last we can stand on ground that doesn't sway..."
"Wait!"
The voice from the mast came crashing down again, this time taut as scraping metal. "There's a ship! That's the outline of a warship-it's charging at us!"
The commotion on deck froze instantly.
The young man in the headscarf quickly pulled out a brass telescope, its barrel clicking softly as it extended.
Closing one eye, he aimed the lens at the rapidly growing black dot on the horizon.
Three masts, sails filled with wind, and a white wake cleaved by the bow that ran as straight