Natalie Hargraves

The Whydah is enveloped in a thick fog. It surrounds the ship on all sides; giant, impenetrable white walls of nothing. The deck is silent, save for the creaking of the ship as she’s rocked by an invisible force.

None of them can tell what’s moving the ship—they’ve been becalmed for days, now. The sea is a terrifying, endless black-blue, so still that it looks almost like a mirror. When Bellamy glances over the side rail, he can see his own face looking back up at him, gaunt and pale. The expression on the reflection’s face is strangely urgent, like he has an important message, if only Bellamy would lean over further to listen—  

‘Captain,’ Williams says raggedly. His voice, days ago, had been loud and booming; Bellamy liked to joke that Williams’ father was a foghorn. Now, it’s thin and reedy, barely recognisable. ‘Away from the water.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Bellamy whispers. He barely has the energy to stand. Instead, he pulls himself along the deck in a slow, awkward crawl. He’d be embarrassed, if he had the energy left to care about such a thing. Even as he drags himself back toward what’s left of the crew, huddling together around the mainmast, he thinks of his reflection in the water. He wants to go to it, hear what it has to say.

All reflective surfaces on deck have been covered, the spare sails dragged from below. Their weapons have been stowed away, thrown carelessly into empty crates that Bellamy is sure had been full, just a few days ago.

He’d balked at the idea, at first. Leaving themselves undefended in such unfamiliar territory made him nervous.

Williams had shrugged off his concerns. ‘It won’t help. Not here.’

Bellamy drags himself to sit between Williams and Davis. Davis is fidgeting, eyes darting around, restless and quick, fingers twitching. Bellamy knows the feeling—the desperation to do something, to pass the time, to find a way out. Anything to distract from the oppressive silence and awful waiting.

‘You’re not supposed to look at the water, Captain,’ Davis rasps. He sounds like he’s been shouting for hours.

‘I don’t remember doing it,’ Bellamy says. ‘Last I remember, I was sitting with Brown.’

Williams grips his forearm tightly, as if he can keep Bellamy there by sheer force of will.

Bellamy thinks of Mary, and of the goods in the cargo hold. Sugar, tobacco, cotton, silks, gold. The riches he’d promised her, delivered at last.

He hopes, for a wild, optimistic moment, that some of it will reach her. That, through some undeserved providence, it will wash up on the shores of Cape Cod. That the strange, unfamiliar coins will make their way to Wellfleet, to Mary’s inn. That she’ll see them and know he tried.

The silence is broken by the sudden sound of water crashing against the ship. They all flinch, the noise gunshot-loud in the quiet gloom. It’s followed by a series of slow, wet thumps. The ship rocks in the still waters, pushed around by some invisible weight.

Something is climbing up the side of the ship.

‘It’s time, then,’ Williams says, solemn.

‘Time for what?’ Bellamy asks. There’s a hard, determined set to Williams’ face that he doesn’t like. He’s seen it before, on the faces of men going into a battle they know they can’t win. 

Lord, not like this, he thinks wildly. Not yet. Please.

Williams won’t look at him. ‘You’ll see.’

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Natalie Hargraves is a teacher who occasionally writes things that could be generously counted as stories. When not braving the Wild West that is an Australian high school classroom, she can be found writing short fiction in a variety of genres. Of particular interest are ghost stories and historical fiction. When she grows up, she wants to be just like Baba Yaga: a creepy, off-putting Slavic witch who does not have a mortgage and is entirely unreachable by email.

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