Free Ghost Sea: A Novel (Dugger/Nello Series) by Ferenc Máté

“So what did you do with the yacht, Harry?” I asked the dock foreman. “Sailed for parts unknown,” he said. “How about we go get us a beer?”
     
     
    I SAILED ALONE for Sooke on the dawn tide. The sky was clear, the nor’westerly fresh, and by early afternoon I had sailed across Georgia Strait on a reach and was riding wing-and-wing past Saturna Island, keeping to the north side of Boundary Pass so I wouldn’t end up on the gallows in Frisco. At sunset the wind eased, and in the warm fragrance of firs I dropped anchor off a spit to catch an hour of sleep.
    When I awoke, moonlight lit the cans.
    I sailed with just the main, doing about three knots plus the tide so if I bumped into a deadhead, I wouldn’t bump too hard. The night air cooled, and I bundled up in the cockpit. When the first swells from the ocean passed under us, the ketch rolled gently. Near midnight the wind fell. The fog came in and bit me to the bone. A shudder rippled through me. I thought at first it was the cold. I gybed the main and headed higher northwest.
    I was hungry. I lashed the wheel a good half mile off Vancouver Island and went below to get a hard-boiled egg and sausage. Huddled in my big coat, I leaned against the mizzen and hummed to keep myself company and to keep from getting queasy in the lazy rollers. Eat and sing, especially at night. I felt content, and for a moment considered just sailing right out of the damned strait into the Pacific, the thousands of miles of empty Pacific, with the boatload of empty tin cans and all. I went down below to fill the mug, heard the sea rush past the hull and the tin cans give a rustle as we rolled, and I was just coming up the companionway into the splash of moonlight when I heard the first thud: muted, almost shy, as if not wanting to disturb the silence.
    The moon glowed through the fog like a candle through angel hair. With the shores now hidden, I lit the compass light. The reddish flame seemed curiously alive. Then the thud came again. Too soft for a log, not hollow enough for driftwood. Soft; like someone tapping in the bow. I went forward on the starboard deck; the moon lit brighter there. The bow wake rose a black fold and trailed off into the night. Tap. A swell raised the bow and lowered it with a whoosh. Tap, tap. I lay over the bow, hung on to the whisker stay, and looked down into the water. Foam flowed from where the bobstay split the sea, for a moment blurring what trailed beside the hull, but as the bow rose again and the bobstay rose free, I could see—so close I could almost touch her face—a black-haired mermaid staring up at me. Her body long and white, only her sharp-boned face and long, streaming hair were etched by the silver light.
    They had wrapped her in a white sheet, frail as a child, but her hair was free to snag the bobstay pin, so she swung in the swell and her knees banged the hull. I climbed down; a swell came and put us both half under. As gently as I could, I untangled her hair and set her free. She floated off into the night.
    The swells grew and the tin cans rustled. I went below for dry boots but settled for more rum.
    The next one came when I stepped back into the cockpit. A man this time, on his belly, head turned like a swimmer taking breaths. The wind picked up and the fog thinned and I could see now, some close, some far, the pallid shapes floating slowly by. We drifted through a sea of the dead. I stared so hard I almost hit the wreck.
    Noiseless and darkened, it came out of the fog directly in my way. She made no sound. Her stokers must have given up long ago, for there was no smoke rising from her funnel. She lay lifeless beam-on to the swell, and rolled just far enough that, at each starboard roll, another white-wrapped shape slid across her foredeck and splashed into the sea.
    The not-yet-dead had gathered on the aft deck, clinging to the cabin top or with their legs over the rail. My port lantern in the shroud cast a red glow over them. They