Emerald Sea

EPILOGUE

Martin waved the remnants of his pants back and forth on the stick, trying to attract the attention of the passing boat. It was a small craft, no more than three or four meters in length, with a dirty, patched triangular sail. The man at the tiller had been looking shoreward and turned the boat inshore in a controlled jibe, bringing the boom in and then turning to bring the north wind across the rear of the boat.

Martin had been subsisting for the last two weeks on brackish water found in pools and whatever looked mildly edible along the shoreline. He’d managed to make it to land with his knife, his sorely depleted money pouch, a tinderbox and his clothes. Over the time he had gotten first burnt and then blackened by the sun.

The islander was, if anything, darker, almost a true negro black for all his features were the motley polyglot that was common these days. He was tall and had a fair growth of beard, although it looked like a new addition.

“Hello,” Martin called as the skiff ran up on the shore. He seized the bow and pulled it farther in as the islander sat in the stern and looked at him.

“Didn’ need to do that, mon,” the man called. “Push ee back off. I’d guess you want to be get someplace else and I’ve fishing to do.”

“Okay,” Martin said, pushing the boat back into deeper water and scrambling aboard. The fisherman expertly brought the stern around and set the sail and the boat skipped back towards the distant reef.

“Man, am I glad you came along,” Martin explained. “Got any water?”

“Jug at your feet, mon,” the islander said. “The rounder gourd dere. The tall one’s me rum. Thomas don’t be sharing his rum wit’ any old castaway.”

The bottom of the boat was half full of empty baskets made of woven palm fronds. But by the mast were two stoppered gourds, one of them much rounder than the other.

“Well, thank you for the water, Thomas,” Martin said, taking a solid slug but leaving plenty in the jug. “The packet I was traveling on sank off-shore four weeks ago. I’ve been trying to signal someone to stop ever since.”

“Don’t many be coming this far south,” Thomas replied easily. “Plenty of fishing up thee coast. But Thomas he likes it down here. Plenty of good big fish, plenty of hogfish on the reef. Thomas, he like hogfish.”

“Never had it,” Martin replied, leaning back against the side of the boat. The sun was beating down and it was positively hot. Of course, a couple of times in the last week the wind had been downright vicious at night. He’d made a miserable job of weaving some palm fronds for cover, but they weren’t much against the wind. He’d take the heat.

“Be grabbin’ the boat hook, mon,” Thomas said after about a half an hour. “Be pickin’ up the gourd in the water.”

Martin found what was probably the boat hook, a solid pole of wood with a withy on the end bound into a crook by what looked like tree bark. The boat was rapidly approaching a floating gourd and Martin, after an initial hook that missed, pulled it over the side. The gourd had a rope tied around its narrow end and Thomas came forward, dropping the sail onto the deck with an expert twist of the halyard and grabbing the rope.

“Thomas will pull,” Thomas said, pulling in the rope hand over hand. “You be yankin’ out the fish.”

As the rope ascended it was clear it was attached to a net. As soon as the net cleared the bulwark Martin saw his first fish. The fish, about twice as long as his hand, had a whitish body with a blue stripe and a bright yellow tail. Its head was caught in the openings of the net by the gills. Martin grabbed it and tried to pull it out backwards but the gills were firmly caught. The whole time he was wrestling with it, Thomas continued to pull in the net.

“Pull it through, mon,” Thomas said, somewhat angrily. “It small enough.”

Over the next hour, or so it seemed, Martin pulled one fish after another out of the gill net. Thomas slowly told him what they were; the yellow-tailed ones were snapper as was a red-colored one. Hogfish had three tall spines on their back. There were at least three kinds of grouper. Scamp, bar jack, after a while he stopped trying to memorize them.

Finally they were done with the net, the fish in one of the baskets and the net piled untidily in the bottom.

“Thomas could have done it nearly as fast without help,” the sailor grumped, raising the sail and setting the boat into motion.

“Hey,” Martin said, slumping in the bottom of the boat and looking at the direction they were going. “Isn’t that north?” He pointed to the rear.

“Thomas don’t have just one net, mon,” the captain chuckled.

Thomas, in fact, had five nets out, and it was very near dark before they turned to the north. Martin was exhausted, and all he had done was pull the fish out. His hands were covered in fish slime, and no matter how many times he washed them over the side they didn’t seem to come clean. For that matter, most of his body was covered in one sort of filth or another. And he had been badly stung by some sort of jellyfish.

This was for the birds. He loved work, he could watch it all day, but this was just ridiculous.

The sun set fast and the tropical night was as black as pitch. The stars overhead shone down clearly, but at the surface of the sea it was like being in a cave. But the wake of the boat was filled with green phosphorescence. It was so bright, Martin swore he could see by it.

The captain was a barely glimpsed figure at the rear of the skiff and Martin couldn’t for the life of him figure out how he could see.

“You know where you’re going?” Martin asked.

“Oh, yeah, mon,” Thomas replied. “You just be lying back. Thomas get us home safe and sound.”

He had enough in his pouch to pay his way to the mainland. Once he was there, well, something would come up. It always did. With that thought, Martin lay back and looked at the stars until he fell asleep.

The change in motion of the boat woke him and he rolled over, stiff from lying on the bottom of the skiff. They were entering a harbor that could be dimly glimpsed by the light of occasional torches and lanterns. There was a rough stone dock but the boat headed for a low shoreline. As it grounded, Martin got out stiffly and grabbed a painter, pulling the boat up onto the shore as far as he could go.

“How did it go?” a voice said from out of the darkness.

“Rather well,” “Thomas” replied in a much more cultured tone. “Duke Edmund Talbot, meet John James the Third, aka Martin Johns, aka Martin St. John, aka… well I won’t do the whole list.”

Martin darted away from the voice on the shore and into the darkness. He had covered three steps when he ran into a metal-covered mass that picked him up by his hair until his feet dangled off the ground. His eyes immediately filled with tears of pain and he found himself still trying to run in place. It had been a really bad day.

“What you want I should do with him, boss?” the metal-clad figure asked grimly. The muscle-bound moron was apparently supporting Martin’s full weight with one extended arm. Effortlessly. At that, Martin quit trying to run. Fighting had been out of the question all along.

“Oh, don’t harm him, Herzer,” Talbot chuckled out of the darkness. “There are so many things we want to ask him.”