SEA DRAGON’S GIFT

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

140406 words

copyright 2018

written 2007

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Chapter 1: The Voice of the Sea

The day was fair and the sun was high, glittering off the water of Sea. Big Wohan was near the horizon and swift little Dorac was nearly at the mast head.  Carsis, the third moon, was not due to rise until well after night fall.

The helmsman turned the three hundred foot length of the Longin dead into the wind.  The breeze, now acting as a brake, slowed the big ship to a stop.  Her large lateen sails went slack and fluttered in the gentle wind as the big ship, resembling a cross between a Chinese junk and a Yankee Clipper, finally went dead in the water.

“Why is the Captain even listening to her?” Silor, the lead deck-hand demanded of nobody in particular, gesturing offhandedly at the young, white haired girl standing beside Captain Mord Halyn near the bow of the ship.  He was further back, near the foremast, in a knot of people prominent in the ship’s community.  The Masters of the Craft Council were there along with many of the officers who were off duty.  There were many others who were simply curious as to what Kurin was going to do this time.  The nearly unbelievable rumor was that she was going to sound the bottom without a fathom-line.

Master Juris, the chief boat-wright and head of the Longin’s Craft Council, seeing a chance to needle Silor again, chose to answer him. Sarcastically he asked, “Why?  Is your memory as clumsy as yourself?  Do your recall as far back as three Wohans?  A whole hundred days?  There was a Coriolis storm, remember?  Quite a large one.”

Silor did, in fact, remember the storm.  I was on deck through most of it.  I took the Captain’s orders and directed my mast crews.  We saved the mainsail, the Longin herself, and every life aboard, when the reefing points tore out in hundred mile per hour winds.  It was me up in the rigging.  Rain and freezing wind tried to hurl me to Dark Iren.  I set the puling blocks and caught lines that the hurricane whipped out of the control of my men and women.  We got the yard secured to the boom and rebound that flailing canvass.  We were almost done, the last line fought into its block, when slippery footing on a wet line let a hard gust throw me twenty feet to the deck.  I broke my left arm.  Silor was still paying the cost of saving the ship in his aching left arm, only recently out of its sling.  Yes, Silor remembered the storm.

“Everybody knows how to deal with a blow like that,” Master Juris went on, patronizingly lecturing Silor like as if he were a child.  “Run before it, close hauled and quarter your way out to safety after you are on the back of its path so it won’t just run you down again. The trick is to know when to quarter your way out with neither sun, moons or stars to help.  We came out of the storm with only one section of one sail blown out of shape beyond salvage.  The damaged section was replaced in five hours, and we were back in trim.  How many ships did we find in that storm’s track?  All needing major repair?”

“Six,” muttered Silor sulkily thinking correctly, Master Juris will always find a way to criticize whatever I do.  Saved the ship, Logged a hero, and Master Juris calls me clumsy!  Didn’t see Juris in the rigging helping!  Once, five years ago when I was a kid, one bad thing happened, and Master Juris has never let me, or anyone else, forget.

“Kurin called the timing sooner than anybody expected and the Captain believed her. She was right.  She got us to safety. It’s only one of the many times that she’s been right. That’s why the Captain listens to her.  Now, let’s watch and see what this is all about.” The other Craft Masters of the Longin had come up from their shops below-decks to watch Kurin’s demonstration.  They nodded in agreement.  

Master Cirde the head of the weaving shop said, “I wish that Kurin was my apprentice instead of yours, Juris.  She learns quickly and works well, rarely showing anything until she is sure of it.  She came to my shop to play and that’s how we found out that the secret of Longin Lace had not left the ship when Cat went back to the sea.”

“She actually pays attention to instruction, instead of letting her mind wander onto dry land,” said Master Clard, the drummer.  There was some good-natured laughter at the expense of apprentices in general. “They’re about to start,” he added.

“Just time for a friendly wager,” said Master Juris, smiling predatorially at Silor.  “You are sure that this stop is a waste of time.  I have some confidence in my apprentice.  Two steamed fish cakes from this evening’s dinner will be the stakes.  Acceptable?” He held out his hand and Silor, cornered by his own dislike, shook on it.  In the background, others could be heard making various bets as well.

The attention of the whole group was now fixed on the Captain, the sailor beside him with a sounding line, and on twelve-Gatherings-old Kurin, the center of this storm on a calm sea.  She closed her gray eyes and appeared to be concentrating on something that nobody else could notice.  The deck was rolling gently in the swells, that was all.

She nodded to herself, satisfied, and wrote quickly on a tallow-slate with a bone stylus, showing it to Captain Mord, who signed it.

“Make the sounding,” he ordered the sailor who was standing ready.  The sailor nodded with a brisk, “Aye, Sir!”  He heaved a coral stone attached to a light line overboard and let it sink.  The line had knots at regular six foot intervals and the sailor counted them as the stone sank.  To the surprise of everyone except the girl, who was nevertheless relieved, the weight found a bottom at only twenty one fathoms, a mere sixty six feet down.

“You were right, Kurin,” said Captain Mord loud enough for all to hear. “There is a shallow bottom here that we never knew of.  This could mark a good crabbing reef, if it has any size.”

He took her tallow-slate and added another note to it.  Then he showed it to the waiting Craft Masters, officers and crew-folk.  There for all to see, in Kurin’s neat writing, was ‘Bottom about 20 fathoms’ with ‘Cpt. Mord Halyn Longin’ signed beneath it as witness.  There was also a note in Captain Mord’s hand, ‘Bottom found at 21 fathoms, Cpt. M.H.L.’

As the tallow-slate was passed about the group.  Theatrical groans and cries of glee went with it.  The sailors and some of the Masters could be heard cheerfully settling bets.   Master Juris gloated to a gloomy Silor, “That’s two steamed fishcakes that you owe me from your plate at dinner.  Want to try for all three, when we actually map out the shallows?”

The Captain now held up a carefully made chart on paperfish parchment for the Masters and Officers to see.  Kurin’s neat drawing showed carefully marked depth contours for the expected bottom.

“I will let Kurin explain to you, as she did to me, the means of making this chart without long and laborious soundings.”

“Kurin, you know the Masters of the Craft Council.  Please explain your method and answer their questions.”

She had known these men and women for Gatherings and worked and learned in their shops as a way of playing in her free time, but she was nervous still.  This time, for almost the first time, she was going to try to teach them, instead of learning from them — and all of them at once.

She nervously twisted her long white hair in her hand as she began, “Five Gatherings ago, when we were on our way to her last Gathering with us, Cat gave me a hint to how she was able to steer the Longin so well in spite of her blindness.  She said, ‘The sea speaks to me and tells me where the currents and reefs are.  It’s voice is the long waves under the waves that we see.’

Kurin went on with gathering confidence, “It took me all of the five Gatherings since to figure out what she meant and how to interpret the waves.  Look at the little wind waves on the surface.  The Longin is big enough that they don’t move her at all.  Still, she rises and falls to a longer, deeper wave than those.  The long deep waves are the ones that I read for this work.

“It wasn’t easy to sort them out without help.  They get shorter and higher when they pass over a shallow bottom.  They bend when they go around the end of a shallow area and make a pattern that I can show you as the bent waves cross the ones that go straight.  Currents, both big permanent ones like the Naral and Cliftos Currents, and transient flows caused by the tides, push the waves around.  You can learn to tell which way the current is going, and about how fast.”

“I grasp the basic idea,” said Master Juris, absently scratching his bald head, “but I’ve watched you work on that chart in the boat-shop for most of a Gathering.  Wouldn’t soundings be faster and more accurate?”

“I chose this place because we always sail past wide of it, due to the sudden change in the direction of the Naral Current, caused by this very reef.  The turn that the current makes can throw dead-reckoning between navigation sightings way off.  Because of that, we’ve always avoided this area.  This is the one place in all three of our home waters where there is nothing but wave information to go on.  Each time that we went past at a distance, I was able to add a little more.  I could chart it to this same accuracy in only two passes if we came up within a mile of the reef and sailed along it.  At most, three to four hours.”

The Masters retired down the deck to confer for a bit, trying to decide how to handle this turn of events.

While they were conferring, Captain Mord announced, “The second part of this experiment is to go ahead and do soundings by tried and true methods, to verify the accuracy of Kurin’s chart.

“While we do that, we’ll put some crab nets down in the known part of the shallows and try our luck.”  The crew began to launch boats for the soundings and bustle about, preparing nets and crab-rings for use.

In the background the large, tubular hailing drum could be heard pounding out directions to the boats doing the soundings.  Its main use was long-distance ship to ship communication, in favorable conditions it could bridge distances of over a mile with its very directional pulses of sound. Two officers, now using Kurin’s chart and a wide based range-finder, were telling the drummer what was needed next and he was telling the boats where to plumb the depths.

While the soundings were being taken, the other small, four and six oared, boats were lowered to the water with that absence of splashing that signals both experience and skill.  Women and men both clambered down a big meshed net secured to the rail for that purpose.  The ring nets, lines and floats were being lowered on boat hooks to the waiting crews.  They were accompanied by good-natured banter and a few jeers from folk on deck, envious of those chosen to go.  Oars made little whirlpools in the water and drove the boats ahead of quickly vanishing wakes as the crews rowed out to try the reef for crabs and to set some shrimp traps.

As Silor was eagerly preparing to go over the side to a waiting boat, Captain Mord approached.  “Silor, I know that your arm is out of its sling but take the word of another who’s had a broken arm. Don’t over do it at first.  I want you to organize the lookouts for Strong Skins and Wing Rays.  I don’t need to tell you how dangerous those fish can be.  Stay aboard this time and man the small crane. Somebody has to bring the catch aboard.  I’m the Captain, and I don’t get to go out anymore.”  He leaned on the rail beside Silor and looked at the departing boats with a heavy sigh.

Silor gripped the net cords so tightly that his knuckles turned white.  I want to go out!  My arm’s getting better!  How did she do this?  “Yes, Sir.  Set the lookouts.  Man the crane.  I’ll take care of it, Sir,” he grumped stiffly.  Stung at the loss of a chance at something fun to do, he went to do as ordered.

TO BE CONTINUED

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