“What the fuck is happening?”the captain bellowed.“Lahiri!What’s the situation below decks?”
“I don’t know, Captain.”
“Well, neither do I,” Dinesh admitted.“But if there are this many in the hull we’re going down, and fast!”
Hillier came up the steps from below deck.
“There’s water coming in now, Captain.The men are pumping the bilge and repairing the holes as fast as they can.They’re small but there are too many of them.”
“Bloody hell, I’ve never heard of this before.Should take a month or more for shipworms to get this bad.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Fear sliced through me.
“There are holes in the ship?We’re going down?”I yelped.
We were in the middle of the ocean, approaching Jamaica but not there yet.If theArrowwent down, we were all dead.
“Rooster, can you do something?Anything!”Dinesh pleaded.
Men yelled orders and boots stomped on the deck and beneath, as the crew killed as many worms as they could find.
“I don’t know,” I said.“Won’t a storm make us go down faster, whether the gale’s mine or not?”
The captain shrugged and lifted his hands in a helpless gesture.
“To be frank, I don’t know what else we can do.”
I frowned, seeing a worm inching toward my foot.
“God fucking dammit, you stupid shite!”I muttered, lifting my foot to stomp the slimy creature into the deck.
My shoe came down on solid wood.The worm had vanished.
“Where the fuck did it go?”
I met the captain’s confused gaze.We looked about us.Where a moment before there had been an infestation, now the wood was solid and the worms had gone.
Puzzled shouts came from all around us.
“What the fuck?Where did they go?”
“The holes are filled.What the hell is going on?”
This was yet another hallucination, like the attacking ship.
The captain recovered his wits more quickly than I.
“Hillier, check below decks.Hopefully, the same has happened there.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Men wandered the deck, muttering in confusion.I was relieved, of course, but also unnerved.If we couldn’t distinguish the truth from illusion, how were we supposed to fight what assailed us?How could we defeat a foe who didn’t play fair?
I looked about me at the men of the crew, this community that had become dear to me.They looked as frightened as I felt.Captain Martin, who loved theArrowand her men, now faced perhaps his greatest adversary, and all because of me.In a moment, my fear turned to blazing anger.
How dare this mysterious force disrupt our lives and cause such chaos?Well, this ends now.
