The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 47
We nearly lost Skyeless on the second day, which was Christmas 1995, as a rogue wave crashed over us, with him and Orri at the boom; only luck and a lifeline saved him, half insane from being snapped back from his grave, his leg smashed up. We did lose Hallverd, the King’s Spy, on the fifth day: delirious with fever, he charged on deck and threw himself off the stern; a wave caught him in midair and drove him back half the length of the ship before it pulled him under. We lost the top of our foremast on the seventh day. The sea still whirled as the sky raged, lightning bolts like claws leaping as if from wave crest to wave trough—an illusion that was magnificent and awful. By the ninth day, the first day of 1996, we could not pull ourselves to duty on the foredeck. Grandfather lashed himself to the wheel, ordering the heaviest crew members to take alternate turns holding his legs to provide him leverage against the rudder. We gave ourselves up to fate. Grandfather did not sleep; he prayed, he sang psalms, he argued with his Lord God: “You should not abandon us here! We have not begun to suffer! We are vain sinners! What purpose my work if this is an end? I must deliver him from their ways! Satan cannot take me! I feel your hand cradling me! Test me, break me! I shall not relent!”
When the storm did break, we were straddling the equator, approximately one thousand miles from Africa and a little less from South America. The waves poured us like debris into an unholy heat. With Babe’s help, I untied Grandfather and pulled him below. Cleopatra helped us undress him, wash him, lay him out to sleep. We were too exhausted to talk, collapsed in our own berths. I do not know how many days it took us to recover, Angel of Death drifting in the humid calm.
It was Wild Drumrul, asleep on deck to avoid the swelter below, who first smelled the smoke; unless it was Iceberg and Goldberg and their pups up top, also to escape the heat, who licked Wild Drumrul to alarm. He awoke me, screaming in broken German, “The fire! The sea is on fire!”
We awakened Guy, Israel, and Thord, and we five stood aghast at the stern. It was midmorning, the sea nearby like green glass. Above, the sky was whitish blue with the heat. And before, at a great distance to the west, there was a shimmering fire line, subtending a ninety-degree angle. A thin smoke hugged the water in the near distance, and as we watched it curled across the sea to wash over us in the light breeze that fluttered our single sheet, then died. The calm was complete. The view was unconvincing, another illusion, and one had to turn away and look again, several times, to judge time and space. There was a fire line there, like ragged red crystal between the green blue sea and the pale blue sky.
We drifted in the strong westerly current toward the burning sea. At twilight, no indication of a wind from any quarter, all of us save Peregrine, Charity, and Grandfather gathered on deck to lounge before that terrible beauty.
“Water cannot burn,” said Wild Drumrul to me.
“Is it the coast?” asked Israel.
“I don’t think we can see that far,” I said.
“Water cannot burn,” said Wild Drumrul to Israel.
Full night displayed the Magellanic Cloud above and a spectacular seascape below, the fire starkly clear. We were still dazed from the storm, so I suppose more available to hypnotism. It did not occur to us to think of jeopardy. There was not a harsh word all day. It was Grandfather, emerging past midnight, surly and mighty again, who upset us, especially me. He paced the deck, then turned to drag me to the foredeck, another private conference.
“Greenland! You have not declared yourself,” he said.
“I can’t do it, please, you see,” I tried.
“Knowing what I have said is true? We might have a chance.”
“This is my family. You are my family. You said that to fight for what is mine is not wrong.”
“Lord God is angrier than I had thought,” he said.
“Do you know what that is?” I asked, pointing to the fire.
“You know!” he boomed, springing to the mainmast to preach. “You all know what you see! My children, how long will you not see? You lie there beaten, even as you are sucked into the maelstrom.”
“A fire storm!” said Israel, standing up in excitement as I translated Grandfather’s idioms. “That is what. Old man, you are crazy, but you do see things. Don’t you understand, Guy? Grim says we’re in the doldrums. The variables. It’s where the junk collects, right? An enormous stagnant pond, between the winds and currents of the North Atlantic and the South Atlantic. That junk, it’s been ignited into a fire storm, fed by waste.”
“That’s farfetched,” said Guy.
“So were those pirates. So was Praia,” said Israel.
Gizur told Grandfather what they had said; Grandfather stamped the deck. “Your godless science and your perversions have blinded you. Look again, then pray for our delivery from such evil.”
“It is Satan,” said Gizur, who had fallen under Grandfather’s spell more than any of us, his mind weakened, now crumbling.
“That doesn’t help anyone, Gizur, that nonsense,” said Israel.
“Accursed Jew!” said Grandfather.
“None of that,” said Thord, moving to shelter poor Gizur.
“Unrepentant Sodomite!” said Grandfather. “Heed the boy! Hell has burst into the world! Satan has torn