Reamde

It had turned out that the calm day spent working on the drogue and the storm sail had been calm precisely in a calm-before-the-storm sense, and so the following couple of days had been spent in a condition of extreme misery. The storm sail and drogue had been deployed as soon as it became obvious what was about to happen. The Skipper and Engineer had scurried around and closed all hatches where it seemed water might get in, and then they had gone up to join the Pilot. The vessel’s steering gear consisted of a system of chains joining the wheel on the bridge to the actual rudder, and when things became rambunctious, it sometimes required more strength than the Pilot could muster—especially when she was exhausted from a long shift. At such times the Skipper would take over until such time as his arms wore out or the torque simply became too much, whereupon the Engineer would take the wheel and do battle, mano a mano, with the Mother of the Wind. There was no time during the storm when the Engineer was unable to supply the requisite amount of brute force. The problem lay in mixing it with intelligence. They could not see a thing. The bridge’s windows were sheeted with rain and windblown spume. The one that faced forward, just above the wheel, had a motorized disk set into it that was supposed to spin at great speed and throw off water, but they could not get it to work. So during the part of the storm when they most badly needed to see the waves, so as to make informed decisions about steering, they were blind and had to judge the shape of the sea by feeling the tilting and heaving and plummeting of the deck plates beneath their feet. By that time, of course, it was too late to effect any useful response. The best that the Engineer could do was assume that the next wave would be moving in roughly the same direction as the current one, and steer accordingly. He had just about convinced himself that all his efforts were a complete waste of time, based on sheer fantasy, when he lost concentration for a few moments and they got broadsided by a crest that laid Szélanya on her side for several moments. All three of them, and all the loose stuff in the bridge, telescoped into what had been the port bulkhead and was now the floor, and lay there like crumpled refuse for several moments until the vessel lazily rolled upright again. She was not beautiful but she was, apparently, well ballasted.

It abated and they discovered, to no one’s surprise, that the storm sail and the drogue were long gone.

It was six days after the storm that they sailed her into that bay on Luzon.

Giant water-skating insects had begun to clutter the flat, sparkling waters of the bay. Some of them made buzzing noises. Upon closer observation, these proved to be long slender boats with double outriggers. At first they tended to set parallel courses at a safe distance, but as it became evident that Szélanya was going to run aground, they began to draw in closer, apparently trying to make sense of what was happening. Each of them carried between one and half a dozen persons, lithe and brown and keenly interested, verging on celebratory.

CSONGOR HAD IMAGINED running her right up onto the beach, but she hissed to a stop in water a few meters deep, a stone’s throw from shore. This made it possible for the small boats, which drew much less water, to surround them. Within a few minutes, Szélanya had been girdled by a complex of rafted-together boats, and at least two dozen people had invited themselves aboard. They were all so cheerful, so well behaved in a certain sense, that it took a few minutes for him to understand that they were here to sack Szélanya. The GPS had disappeared before he even understood what was happening. The bridge was rapidly denuded of electronics, the mast of antennas, the galley of pots and pans. Hacksaw blades were droning all around, ratchet wrenches chirping like crickets. He experienced a welter of incompatible feelings: outrage that his stuff was being stolen, then the sheepish recollection that he and Marlon and Yuxia had stolen the entire vessel to begin with, committed piracy, killed a man. Giddy relief that they had finally reached dry land, combined with rapidly growing alarm that they had found themselves in a strange foreign place among larcenous, albeit polite, natives. Stabbing, paranoid fear that said people might be stealing his own personal possessions at this very moment, followed by the realization that he had no possessions other than what he was wearing on his body and carrying in his pockets.

Except for the shoulder bag. Ivanov’s leather man-purse.