HMS Eraystor drove onward, climbing each thirty-foot wave in turn, lifting her sharply raked stem towards the heavens while water thundered green and white and angry across her foredeck, charged headlong down her narrow, gangway-like side decks, flowed in solid, angry sheets across her quarterdeck. Higher and higher she climbed, spray cascading from her flared bows like some demented waterfall until she reached the crest and her forefoot thrust free of the water. Then her bow came down once more in a fresh explosion of spray, landing like the hammer of Kau-yung, and she went charging down into the valley, while the smoke pouring from her single funnel vanished almost before it could be seen, torn apart by the sixty-mile-an-hour wind that screamed around her upper works like some lost demon, seeking its way home to Shan-wei.
“Thank God we didn’t wait for the colliers, Sir!”
Dahnel Bahnyface, Eraystor’s third lieutenant, didn’t—quite—have to shout in Zhaikyb Gregori’s ear, but it was a near thing even in the shelter of the ironclad’s conning tower. On the open bridge, conversation would have been flatly impossible.
“I hope they’re well clear of this,” Gregori agreed.
Bahnyface had been a little surprised to see the first lieutenant in the conning tower when he climbed up the ladder from below. Vyktyr Audhaimyr, Eraystor’s second lieutenant, had the watch for another—Bahnyface checked the bulkhead chronometer—seven glorious minutes, and Gregori wasn’t the sort of worrier who typically checked up on his watch standers as if he didn’t trust them.
On the other hand, this wasn’t exactly typical weather.
At five-eleven, Gregori was tall for a native Old Charisian, and he was forced to bend slightly to peer through one of the conning tower vision slits. In calm conditions, that slot was forty feet above the ship’s waterline; in the current conditions, a constant spatter of spray blew in through it on the fringe of the howling wind. Now he straightened, wiped his face, and shook his head, his expression grim.
“With any luck, they saw this coming in time to take shelter in Shepherd Bay,” he said. “Just pray to God they weren’t trying to round Hill Island when it hit!”
Bahnyface nodded soberly. Of course, while he was praying for the coal-laden galleons following in the squadron’s wake, he might just have a word or two with the Archangels on Eraystor’s behalf, as well. Langhorne knew the four-thousand-ton ironclad was incomparably more survivable than the original jury-rigged Delthak-class or the shallow-draft riverine ironclads which had followed them. She’d been designed for blue water—or to survive crossing it between bombardment missions, at least—with a raised forecastle and a gracefully flared bow. At right on three hundred feet in length, her hull was an immensely strong iron and steel box, and the great, throbbing engines at the heart of her made her independent of any galleon’s canvas.
Of course, if anything were to happen to those engines or the whirling screws they drove.…
Don’t even go there, Dahnel, he told himself firmly as he settled the hammer-islander on his head and tied the strings tightly under his chin.
The waterproof headgear would be little enough protection, but its back flap might at least keep solid sheets of water from running down his neck. Like many professional seamen, Bahnyface favored the stiffened version made of heavily tarred canvas, although others preferred the softer oilskin version. Personally, he wanted as much protection against the force of the spray coming at him as he could get, although he had to admit the stiffer versions tended to catch the wind better. He’d had half a dozen of them blown away over the course of his career, no matter how tightly he tied their laces.
And if there’d ever been a wind suitable to blow away hats, this was it, he reflected glumly. He didn’t normally envy Anthynee Tahlyvyr, Eraystor’s chief engineer. He didn’t really understand Tahlyvyr’s fascination with steam and coal and oil, and the noisy, vibrating clangor of an engine room under full power—with pistons, crankshafts, and Langhorne only knew what else whirring and driving in every conceivable direction while oilers squirted lubrication at all the madly spinning bits and pieces—struck him as a near approximation of hell. Nor did he envy the sweating, swearing stokers feeding the voracious furnaces, especially in weather like this, when just staying on one’s feet, much less avoiding serious injury while heaping shovels of coal into a roaring firebox, became a serious challenge.
Today, he’d have changed places with Tahlyvyr in a heartbeat, however. Failing that, he would really have preferred to stand his watch from inside the conning tower. Unfortunately, visibility was far too limited from in here. Even more unfortunately, while the bridge lookouts would be rotated into the conning tower’s protection every half hour or so, the officer of the watch—who would very shortly be named Dahnel Bahnyface—had no one with whom to rotate. And about the best anyone’s oilskins could manage on a day like this was to limit the influx of fresh, cold seawater. The water already inside his foul-weather gear would gradually warm to something more endurable if he could only avoid fresh infusions.
Not a chance in Shan-wei’s hell, he thought philosophically. Still, a man has to hope.
He finished fastening the hammer-islander and bent over the deck log, scanning it for any special notifications or instructions which might have been added. It was up-to-date, he noticed, checking the time chop on the duty quartermaster’s most recent entry. He took special note of the damage report about the scuttle which had been stove in amidships. He’d have to keep an eye on it and make sure the repairs were holding … although he rather suspected that if they gave way and a solid stream of ocean water seven inches in diameter came roaring through the opening someone in the vicinity was likely to notice even without his keeping a wyvern’s eye on it.
“Anything special I should keep in mind, Sir?” he asked, tapping the deck log and raising an eyebrow at the first lieutenant. Gregori shook his head.
“No. I just came up to take a look before the Captain and I sit down with the Admiral for breakfast.”
One of the telegraphsmen made a soft, involuntary gagging sound, and the first lieutenant chuckled.
“Trust me, Symmyns,” he said, “Eraystor’s like riding a kid’s pony beside what a regular galleon would be doing in seas like this!”
“Oh, I know that, Sir!” Zhak Symmyns was a Chisholmian, with a pronounced Harris Island accent, and his family had been fishermen for generations. “Reason I joined the Navy, though, was to get away from little boats.” He grimaced. “M’ stomach was never up t’ the fishing, really—no matter how many times m’ Da beat me for it. An’ Langhorne knows, he tried hard enough t’ beat it out of me!”