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

gazed with stony eyes, not a word, not a plea.
    I sailed by.
    As suddenly as it had appeared, the wreck vanished from sight. It was a while before I got my thoughts together enough to trim the sail. I took a slug of rum. The fog thickened. The sea was empty; the dead had had the decency to leave. Son of a bitch; why me? Why, in this immensity of empty sea, did those damned faces have to be near me? Hadn’t I seen the bastards enough before? Fine. I’ll stop the first fish boat coming down the coast to get some help from Victoria and get them on their way. Back to bloody China. Or at least toward China, which they’ll never see again because the first gale is going to tear that rat-ass wreck to shreds. Serves ‘em right. Should have stayed at home. Why come anyway? Greed, that’s why. “More,” they wanted “more.” Well, there’s no “more.” The “more” is all gone.
    Son of a bitch. Another fifty feet and I would never have seen them. Those eyes in the lantern light. I cursed and flung the empty bottle at the dark. Then I tightened the main and threw the coiled sheet on the deck, uttering a curse I didn’t know I knew. I turned the wheel and fed the main out again. Turned back. The compass rose spun in the sputtering light. This was madness. Back where? What course? How far? Probably sunk by now anyway. For a moment I hoped they’d sunk.
    They stood where I had left them, every one of them. This time the green starboard lantern lit their eyes. I yelled at them, my voice breaking with anger, but no one moved. I luffed up and slowed. “Throw me a line, you bastards! Throw rope!” Nothing. I yanked the mainsheet loose and hurled it at their faces. Not a blink. “Grab it, you morons! Grab it!” And I waved a violent motion toward the ketch. Dead as doornails. “This is your last chance, then I’m gone!” I was sailing right by them, within reach, but the sheet kept sliding off the stern rail into the sea, when I saw something shift. Someone moved enough to put a skeletal foot on the rope. A kid, even frailer than the rest. I threw him the stern line. He raised his stick arm and caught it. Others stirred and helped. The swells rose; the ketch and the wreck rose and sank more or less together. I kicked the fenders over as we rubbed against her stern. The kid leaned awkwardly down and lowered his bundle of bones into my arms. One by one they came, I could have sworn I heard their bones clattering. Over the rail they came and scattered on the deck like pick-up sticks.
    I herded them into the bow. There must have been forty of them. Good thing I was only running empties. In the engine room of the wreck, I found water up to my knees. I hacked at a sea cock with the fire ax until it gave, and the water rushed in, swirling around me as I climbed back out.
    We sailed off. In the pale light the wreck pitched steeply aft.
     
     
    T HE DAWN BROKE . On the pink horizon, only the bow of the wreck now pointed at the sky, then it was gone. Some of them watched the empty sea a long time. I sailed into a little bay, fetched up, and stopped a couple of boat-lengths from the point. “Go on, get off,” I whispered, to keep from waking the fisherman anchored up the bay. The kid was first to rise. He eased his legs over the side but hung on to the rail, then he slid a bit farther. When he let go, he sank like a goddam stone, didn’t even know enough to struggle. I had to save him with the boathook.
    I launched the skiff, cleated a long line, then rowed ashore and tied it to a fir. I waved at them to come hand over hand along the line. One by one they slipped into the sea, but they were too many, and when the line went under, they went with it. I hauled on my end to pull them up again and saw the ketch begin to head for shore. I rowed back and dropped anchor; didn’t set it, just dropped it. I hauled the line tight again but not all of them were on it. Some made it and lay like drowned seals on the rocks. The last of them