Grace prepared as she had before. However, this time she and the dogs kept to the path she’d found on her previous search. That path covered a greater distance than the more direct route she’d taken before. However, the absence of large brush and close trees made walking faster.
About mid-day, she arrived at the tree-stump circle near the bayou shore. She sat there to care for the dogs, eat her lunch and consider her next steps.
Follow the shoreline?
That’s what I did last time, and it really is safer than trying to machete my way through a swamp.
What about the blockage of broken boards and tree limbs?
She was certain to come across that again. Grace would take things as they came. Who knew, she might find a way through.
An hour or so later, dogs beside her, she stared once more at the barrier. Try as she might, she could not see a viable path.
Can I go around?
She examined the shoreline. Water lapped at the verge, swaying the weedy grasses that encroached on the submerged soil. Bayous were notorious for odd, dangerous currents, unstable, frequently shifting bottoms, and of course home to a raft of nasty predators not the least of which were gators.
Raft. She should’ve brought a raft or taken a canoe and come via the water. Too bad she didn’t have either with her.
However, she did have boards, or rather pieces of boards—some of them quite large. She found a big piece close to the outer edge of the barrier, and with considerable pulling, pushing and prying, managed to extract it from the mishmash of boards and tree limbs.However, the wood was scarcely large enough to hold her. She looked at her canine friends. “Mars, Mercury, go home. Now!”
They stood tilting their heads.
“I mean it. Go home. Go to the stable and guard the horses.”
Chorusing woofs, the pair set of toward home.
Praying the pups would encounter nothing dangerous, she went in search of a long narrow piece of wood or branch to use as a pole.
The sun was edging toward the horizon by the time Grace managed to step onto her makeshift raft and start poling parallel to the shoreline. The tangle of driftwood, boards, and other objects that had floated ashore, probably in some long-ago storm was larger than she expected. She kept poling, careful both to stay on the raft and prevent her pole from getting stuck in the mucky bottom.
Up ahead, the backwater disappeared around a low outcropping. She let the slow-moving current take over, using the pole as a rudder, and made the turn without incident.
There it is.
The aft end of the clipper ship that should not be this far up the bayou. The huge rudder angled high out of the water, as if the ship were broken or half sunk. The plane of the massive piece of wood was cracked in a number of places. The bottom edge was jagged, as if chewed by an equally huge termite.
Grace searched the stern above the rudder for a name but saw no lettering. She shrugged. Finding the name there was possible, but she’d learned in her college days that most sailing ships from the early nineteenth century had the ship’s name and documentation numbers carved into a beam in the main cabin or hold. Not every captain thought it necessary to spell out the ship’s name in paint on the exterior of the vessel. Indeed, for pirates, it seemed expedient to make their ship harder to identify, thus leaving the name off.
She poled out of the current, passing below the rudder as she approached land. Stepping ashore, she hauled her raft onto the ground, leaving it and her pole while she marched along the length of the ship. About midway, she found a spot where the entire ship had been broken in two. The lumber connecting the two ends was splintered, almost shredded. The forward section listed toward the shore, and while the beam of the vessel was wide, on its side andpartially buried in boggy mud, the fore could not be seen from behind the aft—the direction from which she’d approached.
A spit of sandy soil had collected between the two sections. Rather than eroding over time, as might be expected, the mud had accumulated until it formed a ramp leading into the exposed midship hold.
Prodding the dirt with a handy tree branch, Grace discovered it was solid enough to walk on. Up she went into the darkness of the hold. She paused to take her electric lantern from her pack then switch it on. Turning a slow circle, she surveyed the ship’s interior. It was empty—mostly.
What did I expect?A treasure hoard?The skeletons of a long dead crew?
She reached out to a nearby bulkhead to find it riddled with wormholes and spongy with damp rot.
Grace chuckled softly at her own nonsense, but stopped when the lantern light passed over an object. She directed the beam back toward the object and found a narrow set of stairs. A ladder is what the sailors would have called it.
She hurried to climb the ladder, eager to learn what could be seen from the upper deck. The ascent took much longer than she’d anticipated, and as she walked, the hull around her and the wood beneath her feet wobbled. Grace stopped, waiting for the unstable structure to settle, but before her eyes, the ladder treads and the hull planking changed color and density.
The effect of the changes—stairs and hull—was dizzying. Her head swam, but she continued to watch.
What’s happening?
The wood remained dark, but did not have the aged patina that wood long exposed to the elements acquired. Instead, the stair treads appeared waxed and well cared for. The wormholes and signs of damp rot vanished. The caulking between the boards morphed from chipped and broken to seamless lines covered in pitchy tar.
