PROLOGUE
The lookout in the crow’s nest of the H.M.S. Avenger had been the first to spot him, clinging to a floating piece of wreckage off the port bow. They sent a boat out and discovered he had lashed himself to a large section of what had once been the mainmast of a ship. He was half dead from thirst and badly burned, both by fire and by the sun. His lips were cracked and parched and his skin, where it had not been blackened by flames, was red and blistered, oozing with infection. They feared they would lose him. Admiral Lord Hood, anxious to learn the fate of whichever ship it was the poor devil had come from, gave strict orders to the Avenger’s surgeon to call him at once should the man regain the power of speech. No such summons proved necessary. The entire ship’s company heard it when, on the second day following his rescue, the man began to scream.
They had managed to calm him down somewhat by the time Hood arrived in the sick bay. The man was thrashing on the surgeon’s table, and for all that he was little more than skin and bones, it took two men to hold him down. He was struggling against them, his eyes rolling wildly, while Dr. Graves attempted to administer some laudanum.
“Belay that!” Hood said firmly, though without raising his voice. “The man is of no use to me drugged.”
Something in Hood’s voice penetrated through the shipwreck victim’s terror and he ceased to struggle against the two sailors. His eyes became fixed upon Hood, who met his gaze steadily and nodded reassuringly.
“You’re safe, man,” he told the shipwreck victim. “You’re aboard the A venger, bound for Bristol.”
“Thank God,” the man whispered, his voice now barely audible. “Thank the Almighty God!”
“What happened to your ship?” Hood said gently.
“Destroyed,” the man said, shutting his eyes. His chest rose and fell unevenly as he breathed laboriously. “It was the beast,” he said, with a shiver.
Hood frowned. “The Beast? I know of no such ship.”
“A sea beast!” said the man, opening his eyes wide and staring at Hood with the gaze of a lunatic. “The Covenant was destroyed by a monster from the depths!”
“Monster?” Hood said, glancing at the doctor. “What monster?”
“Perhaps he means a whale, Your Lordship,” said Dr. Graves.
“No!” The man struggled to rise, finally managing to prop himself up slightly on his elbow. “No, not a whale!” he said, fervently. “A beast, I tell you! A veritable leviathan! A great, horrid, monstrous thing from the very jaws of hell!”
“Come, man, what nonsense is this?” said Hood. “We are not children to believe in sea dragons. Even schoolboys know such creatures do not exist.”
“I saw it, I tell you!” said the man, his voice rising. “It churned the sea all round as it thrashed its mighty tail. It sounded and we heard it scream! I will hear that dreadful sound for all the days and nights left in my miserable life!”
“The man’s a lubber,” Dr. Graves said. “It must have been a whale he saw.”
“Not this one,” said the first mate, who had helped hold him down. “There’s tar in his hair and those were good seaman’s knots he lashed himself to the mast with.” He glanced up nervously at Hood. “No seaman gets himself frightened senseless by a whale, Your Lordship.”
“Lubber, am I?” said the sailor, his voice rising in pitch as he neared hysteria. “Whale, was it? Aye, you show me the whale that can hole a man-o’-war and then spit fire into its hull! Aye, the very flames of hell! One instant, there was a mighty ship, the next, there was nought but flaming splinters! The creature spat at us and we were consumed! Not a man jack left alive to tell the tale save me!”
“The poor man’s daft,” said Dr. Graves. “He’s lost his mind.”
“Aye, call me mad! Any sane man would. But I know what I saw, and I only pray to God I never lay eyes on it again!”
“Steady, now,” said Hood, bending down close to the man. “You have been through an ordeal enough to make any man half-mad. Try to remember. Think, could it be that a whale struck your ship or was struck by it? Perhaps the shock caused a lantern to fall and ignite the powder magazine?”
“I tell you, it was no whale!” the man shouted. “Think you I do not know a whale when I see one? We thought at first it was a whale when we glimpsed it on the surface, but no whale could swim with such unholy speed or give vent to such a cry! No whale spits fire at a ship!” He reached out and grasped the lapels of Hood’s seacoat with shaking hands. “Pray!” he said, his eyes glazing over, staring not at Hood, but at something else that none of them could see. “Pray you do not cross this creature’s path! Tell your lookouts to keep watch! Tell your men to keep their eyes upon the sea! If they should sight a dark shape in the water with a fin very like a shark’s, but larger than any shark that ever swam the ocean, tell them to make their peace with God! For you can turn your ship; you can put up every foot of sail in the strongest wind and flee, but it will avail you nought! The hell-spawn swims with a speed beyond belief! You shall hear its awful cry and it will sound and the sea will roil with its passage!”
The man began to laugh hysterically.
“Aye, a whale, you say. A whale!”