Novel Excerpt
The storm exploded against the ship from above
and below, the rain-driving gales tilting the
superstructure too far toward the capsize-line, and
the helmsmen would furiously correct it, and a
mountain of ocean would rise beneath the ship and send
it sloping downward where it would crash in a valley
of water, all decks shiver-shaking as though the
flat-bottom had fallen on rock, then up and sideways
again. All the while the screaming madness of the
storm was whistling into the tightest rivetings of the
ship, making the P-ways and compartments sing and moan
like wind-tunnels, as if the storm, even as it blasted
the ship from above and earthquaked it from below,
knew that the quickest way to destroy the ship was to
send a million filaments of sound into its cracks,
each whistle uniquely pitched -- the drowned voices of
sailors from the wooden schooners and whalers and
men-of-war which had struggled this far, years ago,
but only this far, and had been waiting quietly, a
mile below, for the night when their crews would come
flying out of the sea to circle and mock ships of
metal and sing them to pieces.
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