30 Miles

A Note on This Story

30 Miles is a work of fiction built on a true event: the wreck of the steel barque Hermann, driven ashore near Mousa, Shetland, after a nine-day storm in the North Sea in 1892. The broad strokes — the lost masts, the failed rescue by a passing steamer, the desperate line ashore — happened. The rest is imagined.

If you'd like the story firsthand, from the people who still tell it best, look up the Facebook page for The Mousa Boat. Better still, go to Shetland yourself and hear it from Mousa Boat skipper Rodney Smith, the way I did.

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On the eighth morning Hans Svendsen saw Norway.

It was not much to look at.

A dark interruption along the eastern horizon. A low grey seam beneath a lower grey sky, visible when Hermann climbed a swell and gone again when she settled into the trough. Hans stood at the weather rail with one hand hooked around a shroud and watched it appear and disappear.

Land.

Someone behind him said, "There."

Hans did not turn.

"I see it."

Eight days out of Wemyss.

The wind had been south and southwest for days, squally and wet, but it smelled different near the coast. Hans believed this although he could not have said what the difference was. Colder, perhaps. Cleaner. Something underneath the salt.

Trees, if a man wanted badly enough to smell trees.

He had slept four hours.

He had dreamed of coffee.

Thirty miles, Captain Odbersen had said.

Perhaps forty.

Nothing.

By noon they might be inside the fjord. By evening the coal would begin coming out of the hold. After that there would be drink, hot food, a bed that did not move beneath him.

Hans watched the dark line rise once more.

Then Hermann dropped into the trough and Norway vanished.

She was ten months old.

This fact had been repeated often enough during the voyage that Hans had begun to suspect the ship herself was proud of it.

Steel-built at Rønne. Three masts. Clean lines. Good fittings. Ten months old and £2,400 new, if anyone cared to convert a ship into money.

Hans did not.

Ships were ships. He had known old ships that seemed to understand the sea and new ones that fought it like frightened horses. Hermann was still too young to have acquired habits. Her timbers did not groan because she had no timbers to groan. Her steel hull answered the sea with little knocks and tremors that Hans had not yet learned to interpret.

He had been aboard her less than a month. The captain knew her better.

Captain Odbersen was standing aft, looking south.

That was the first thing Hans remembered afterward.

Not the clouds.

Not the wind.

The captain looking south.

The Naze Light lay north-half-east. Moss was close enough that every man aboard had begun privately arranging his evening. And Odbersen was looking the wrong way.

Hans crossed the deck.

"What is it?"

The captain kept his eyes on the horizon.

"Wind."

"We have plenty."

"Yes." Odbersen finally looked at him. "Too much."

By afternoon they were beating against it. By evening they had stopped making Norway.

The wind strengthened through Saturday.

It did not arrive dramatically. There was no wall of cloud, no single gust that announced itself as the beginning. It simply became harder to do everything. Walking required thought. Opening a hatch required two men. Speech became something done close to another man's ear.

The sea changed colour.

By Sunday morning the southerly had become a gale and Hermann was still outside the fjord.

Hans came on deck before dawn and found the world reduced to three colours: black water, white spray, grey sky. The land was gone.

"Can we tack?"

The mate gave him a look.

Hans nodded. Stupid question.

They tried anyway.

For two hours Hermann fought toward the fjord and lost every yard she gained. Her bow rose, hung, and slammed down hard enough to make Hans's teeth strike together. Water crossed the deck green and solid. The scuppers never cleared before the next sea arrived.

The captain stood aft with his oilskins shining black.

At nine he gave the order.

They bore away.

Hans watched Norway slide slowly across the horizon. That was worse than losing sight of it. For an hour the coast remained visible while Hermann ran down under the Naze seeking shelter.

Thirty miles.

Perhaps forty.

Hans had crossed the North Sea for nothing.

He told himself it was one day. A gale passed. Wind changed. Ships waited. That was the sea.

By evening they were dodging under the Naze, rising and falling in the lee of the land. Someone made coffee. Hans drank his from a tin cup with both hands around it.

"Tomorrow," one of the men said.

Hans looked toward the hatch.

"Tomorrow."

It became a joke. They said it again Monday. Tomorrow. Tuesday morning. Tomorrow.

Tuesday afternoon nobody said it.

The wind came round south-east after dark.

Hans was below when he felt the first change. Not the force of it. The direction. A ship has a thousand small sounds, and a sailor knows them without knowing that he knows them. Water moving along the hull. A line working. Canvas answering wind. Cargo settling. Iron touching iron somewhere unseen.

The sounds changed.

Hans opened his eyes. His bunk pitched beneath him. Across the forecastle, someone snored once and stopped.

Then came the blow.

It struck Hermann broadside. The lamp swung violently, and for a moment the light went with it entirely, the flame guttering against the glass, the forecastle dropping into a red-black dark before it caught again.

In that half-second Hans did not know which way was up. He lay in his bunk with his hands out, not knowing whether he was about to fall toward the deck or the ceiling, and something in his chest recognised the feeling before his mind did.

This was what it would be to be shut in a box and dropped down a well.

A cup fell from somewhere and hit the deck.

Hans was already sitting up when the second blow came. The ship heeled. Kept heeling. Someone shouted above, and the sound came to him wrong, flattened, close, as though the man were shouting directly into his ear rather than a deck above him.

Hans's bare feet hit the deck.

"Boots."

He found one. The ship rolled back. He found the other. By the time he reached the ladder the hatch had opened and snow came through it.

He climbed into the night.

The wind took his breath. For several seconds Hans could see nothing at all. Snow moved horizontally across the deck. It did not fall. It travelled. White streaks vanished into darkness faster than his eyes could follow them. Spray came with it, indistinguishable until it struck his face.

Hans turned to find the mainmast, a shape he had walked past a thousand times, that his hand knew, that he did not need his eyes for, and it was not there.

For three full seconds Hans stood on his own deck unable to locate the single largest object on it.

White. Only white, moving.

Then the mast appeared six feet closer than he had thought.

Hans grabbed it.

A man moved past him. Hans recognised him only by the shape.

"Where's Odbersen?"

The man pointed aft.

Hans began moving. The deck tilted. He caught a stay. The sea appeared beyond the rail, not below it. At eye level.

Hans tightened his grip. The black wall rose higher. Someone shouted. The sea struck.

For an instant there was no ship. There was water.

Hans held the stay with both hands and felt himself lifted. His boots left the deck. Something struck his shoulder. He opened his mouth and got salt water in it.

Then the water went away.

The deck returned beneath his knees. Hans coughed. He was still holding the stay. He got up.

Odbersen was at the wheel with another man. Hans reached them. The captain's beard was white with snow.

"Below," Odbersen shouted.

Hans could not hear him.

"What?"

"Get them up."

Hans understood. No one slept. Not now.

By dawn the snow had hidden everything.

There was no horizon. There was no sky. There was only the ship and the water immediately around it, and not even all of that. At times the bow disappeared entirely, swallowed twenty feet ahead of him, so that Hermann seemed to end in white nothing.

Hans found this worse than the waves. A wave was a thing. This was the absence of things.

The six men worked in pairs because a man alone could be lost ten feet away. They shortened what sail they could. They checked lines. They checked the hatches. They checked the pumps. Then they checked them again.

Kruse went below for rope. Hans watched the boy disappear through the forecastle hatch. The cover slammed. Hans caught it before the latch fell. He held it open. Kruse had not noticed.

Hans looked down into the dark.

"Kruse."

A face appeared below.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Hans kept one hand on the hatch until the boy came back. After that, whenever someone went below, Hans watched the hatch.

At noon he went below for coffee. He had to brace both knees against the table. The cup moved anyway. He drank half. The rest went across the floor. No one laughed.

Above them something struck the deck. All six men looked upward. Silence. Then another impact.

A loose block. Someone went up. Hans remained seated.

His hands shook. He looked at them. Cold. That was all. Cold. He put them beneath his arms. After a while he flexed his fingers inside his sleeves. He made a fist. Or thought he did. Hans pulled his hand out and looked. The fingers were closed. He put it away again.

The man returned.

"Nothing."

"What hit?"

"Nothing." The man shrugged. "Still there."

That became sufficient.

Wednesday became Thursday without anyone noticing. Time was measured by watches, but watches had ceased to mean morning or evening. There was only dark and less dark. Snow. Water. Wind.

Hans slept perhaps twenty minutes sitting against a bulkhead and woke because his head struck steel. He did not remember closing his eyes.

He climbed back on deck. The sea had grown. He had not believed that possible.

The first time Hermann dropped between two of the great waves, Hans looked to starboard and saw water rising beside the ship.

Not a wave.

A mountain. That was what his mind called it. A black mountain moving toward them.

He looked port. Another.

For one impossible instant Hermann lay in a valley between them. The mastheads did not reach the crests.

Hans stared. The ship began climbing. He grabbed the rail. She went up. Up. Up. The deck steepened beneath him. He could see nothing beyond the bow but black water. Then suddenly there was sky. The bow reached the crest. Wind struck them. The ship hung. Hans felt the strange weightless instant before the fall. His stomach rose.

Then Hermann went down.

The bow disappeared. The deck became a slope into darkness. Hans locked both arms around the rail. The impact travelled through the hull into his bones. Water came over. It struck him in the back and drove his chest into steel. His fingers opened. One hand slipped.

Hans saw it happen. His own hand. Open. Nothing beneath it.

He caught the rail again. The sea went away. Hans remained where he was. He could not breathe. Someone was shouting his name. He lifted one hand. Alive. The man stopped shouting.

Hans stayed on his knees. He thought about the thirty miles. He hated himself for it.

On Thursday evening Captain Odbersen said something Hans could not hear. They were beside one another near the mainmast.

"What?"

Odbersen leaned close.

"Twenty years." Hans waited. The captain wiped snow from his beard. "I have been twenty years at sea."

Another wave lifted them. They held on. When it passed, Odbersen looked at him.

"Never this."

That frightened Hans more than anything yet had.

Odbersen turned back toward the wheel. His lips were moving. Hans watched. He knew the shape of the words from childhood. He had not thought of Odbersen as a man who prayed.

Hans looked away.

Friday morning began with the ship lying down.

There was no warning Hans understood. One moment he was moving forward along the weather side. Then the deck turned beneath him.

Not rolled.

Turned.

The rail dropped. The opposite rail rose. Someone screamed. Hans fell. His shoulder struck the deck and he began sliding. He clawed at steel. Nothing. His hip struck something. He spun.

The sea filled the world beyond the low rail. Hans understood where he was going. His hand found rope. He closed both fists around it. The ship continued over. The deck became a wall. His feet left it.

Hans hung.

For a moment he was suspended above the sea by his hands. Then Hermann stopped. She did not come back. Hans swung against the deck. His left knee struck hard enough that white light filled his vision. He screamed. The wind took the sound. He held on.

The ship remained on her beam ends.

"Hans!"

He looked up. Or what had been up. A face appeared beyond rigging.

"Hold!"

Hans nearly laughed. Instead he pulled. Someone caught the back of his coat. Another hand grabbed his arm. They dragged him toward what had become the high side. He collapsed against the rail.

The world was wrong. The masts lay almost parallel with the water. Sails and rigging thrashed against the sea. Every wave struck the exposed side of the hull and pushed them farther.

Hans looked aft. Odbersen was climbing toward them.

"Foremast!"

Nobody moved.

The captain pointed. "Cut it away!"

Hans understood. Someone beside him shook his head. Odbersen grabbed the man's coat.

"Cut it!"

They moved.

An axe on a ship is an ordinary thing until you are ordered to destroy the ship with it.

Hans crawled. Walking was impossible. He dragged his injured leg behind him and climbed across the deck toward the foremast. The mast was pulling them down. Every wave caught the rigging and sailcloth in the water and held Hermann there.

They cut. Lines first. Rigging snapped away into darkness. One struck the deck like a whip. A man cried out. Hans did not look.

"Again!"

The axe rose. Fell. Rose. Fell. Wood splintered. The mast shuddered. Hans felt each blow through the handle. Then, after a while, he did not. They were killing it. The thought was absurd. He kept cutting.

A wave struck. The mast disappeared beneath water. When it came up, something cracked.

"Back!"

Hans tried. His knee folded. Someone seized him under the arm.

The foremast broke. For half a second it remained attached by rigging. Then the sea took it. The mast vanished. Lines screamed through blocks. Something tore free with a sound like a gunshot. The wreckage disappeared into the storm.

Everyone waited. Hermann did not move. She remained on her side.

Hans looked at Odbersen. The captain looked at the mainmast. No one spoke. They all knew.

"No," someone said.

Odbersen said, "Mainmast."

"No."

"Cut it."

The man stared at him. "If we lose it—"

"We've lost it." The words were almost quiet. Odbersen pointed at the water. "Cut."

Hans took up the axe.

The mainmast took longer.

Hans's hands stopped hurting. This worried him. He changed his grip and felt nothing. The axe handle might have belonged to another man. He swung. Again. Again. Again. His world narrowed to the place where iron met wood. The storm disappeared. The ship disappeared. There was only the cut.

He remembered chopping wood as a boy. His father telling him not to strike from the shoulder. Let the axe fall. Don't fight it. Let the weight work.

Hans almost laughed. His father had not imagined this.

Another blow. The cut widened. Someone else took the axe. Hans crawled backward. His hands would not close properly. He put them inside his coat.

The mainmast cracked. Everyone froze. It went slowly. Almost gracefully. The top moved first. Then the whole mast leaned farther toward the water. Rigging tightened. Snapped. The mast fell into the sea.

The ship shuddered.

For one terrible second nothing happened. Then Hermann moved. Hans felt it beneath him. Slowly. A few degrees. Then more. The deck tilted back toward level. Someone shouted. The ship rolled upright. Hans slid across the deck and struck the opposite rail.

He lay there laughing. He did not know why. Another man was laughing too.

Odbersen wasn't.

The captain was looking down. At the deck. At the way the ship sat.

Hans stopped laughing.

"What?"

Odbersen did not answer. Hans felt it. A list. Small. But wrong.

The captain went to the hatch. Hans followed. They opened it. The sound came from below. A deep, granular roar. Something enormous moving in darkness.

Coal. Three hundred tons of it. The cargo had shifted.

Odbersen lowered the lamp. The light descended perhaps ten feet. Then stopped. The hold continued beneath it. The coal moved there. Unseen. A long sliding thunder from one side of the ship to the other.

Hans stared into the blackness. He imagined a man falling into it.

Not drowning.

Burial.

Odbersen raised the lamp. Above them the remaining mizzen sails cracked in the gale. One tore. Then another. Canvas went streaming into darkness.

Odbersen closed the hatch.

Hans looked at him.

"What now?"

The captain looked toward the place where the foremast had been. Nothing. Where the mainmast had been. Nothing. Aft, the ruined mizzen. Then Hans.

"Now?"

The ship rose beneath them. Odbersen held the rail.

"Now we go where it takes us."

Friday. Saturday. Sunday.

They drove before the storm. There was no sailing Hermann anymore, no steering her in any meaningful sense. She was a steel object containing six living men and three hundred tons of coal, pushed across the North Sea by weather.

Hans stopped thinking about Moss. He stopped thinking about Denmark. Houses. Fires. Dry socks. Hans knew these things existed because he remembered them, but they seemed no more immediate than stories from the Bible.

There was only Hermann. And Hermann was dying.

Water found its way into everything. By Friday night the forecastle had become unreachable. No one ventured down. They slept on deck when they slept at all. Mostly they did not.

On Saturday night Hans saw a man standing near the bow.

He was certain of it. A tall man without a hat. Hans shouted. The figure did not move. He crawled toward it. Ten feet away it became torn canvas. Hans sat looking at it for a long time. He told no one.

On Sunday, alone at the rail, Hans tried to remember his mother's face.

He could remember details. Her hands. A brown dress. The small white scar beneath her chin. But when he tried to assemble them into a face there was nothing.

Eyes. What colour?

He knew this. Of course he knew.

Blue.

Were they blue?

Hans shut his eyes. Blue. He decided they were blue. He repeated it until he believed himself, the way he had once repeated his catechism.

Because the alternative was silence. And silence was where the rest of it lived.

Monday came quietly. That was what woke him.

Hans opened his eyes. He was lying against the lee side of the deck with his cheek on wet steel. Something was different. He listened.

Wind. Water. The hull.

But beneath it there was a quality of silence.

Light touched his face. Not sun. Daylight. Real daylight.

Hans pushed himself upright. His entire body objected. He crawled to the rail. Looked.

At first he thought it was another hallucination. A dark shape. Then another.

Land. Not a line this time. Cliffs.

Hans stood too quickly. His injured knee buckled. He caught the rail.

"Land." No one moved. Hans shouted. "LAND!"

Bodies stirred. Odbersen appeared. Hans pointed. The captain stared. For several seconds his expression did not change. Then he said something.

Hans couldn't hear.

"What?"

"Shetland."

Hans looked at him. He knew the word. Of course he knew it. But it took a moment to understand.

"Shetland?"

Odbersen nodded.

Hans looked back at the coast. Wemyss. Norway. Now this. They had crossed the North Sea again. Not east. West. Thirty miles from Moss, and the sea had carried them almost all the way back.

Hans began laughing. Nobody joined him. He couldn't stop. He laughed until it hurt. Then he sat down.

Land did not save them.

The wind and tide took Hermann toward the coast. With only the damaged mizzen there was little they could do. The cliffs grew.

Hans had spent three days wanting nothing but land. Now he wanted it farther away.

By afternoon they were well up toward Bressay. The lighthouse appeared. For a time Hans believed someone must see them. How could they not? A ship without two of her masts. Rigging gone. Deck wrecked. Six men aboard. Someone would see. Someone would come.

No one came.

The wind veered east-north-east. The tide caught them. Hermann moved south along the coast. Hans watched houses appear occasionally beyond the shore. Tiny. Impossible. Smoke rose from one chimney. He stared at it. A fire. Someone was warm beside that fire. The thought seemed obscene.

He lifted both arms. He waved. No one could see him. The house passed astern.

Darkness came early. Hans hated it. Land remained close, but darkness erased it.

They could hear the shore now. That was worse. The sea striking rock. A deep concussion repeated somewhere beyond sight.

Boom. Silence. Boom.

They showed lights. They signalled. Nothing answered.

Then one of the men shouted. Hans turned. A light moved across the darkness.

Not shore.

Sea.

A steamer.

For several seconds nobody moved because nobody trusted what he was seeing. Then everyone moved at once.

"Light!"

"Get the flare!"

"Where?"

"South!"

Hans saw her. Two lights. Then the black shape beneath them. A ship. A real ship. Moving. His heart began hammering.

They lit a flare. Red fire erupted in Hans's hand. He raised it. The light painted the deck blood-red. Every face turned monstrous. Hans waved it.

"HEY!"

The others shouted.

"HO!"

"HERE!"

"SHIP!"

The steamer continued. Another flare. Hans climbed as high as he could on the ruined deck and swung the light.

"They see us!" Someone beside him was laughing. "They see us!"

Hans believed it. Of course they did. How could they not? The flare burned like a small sun in the darkness.

The steamer passed to the south.

"She's turning."

Hans stared. The lights continued.

"She's turning."

They were not.

"Again!"

Another signal. They showed every light they could. Hans screamed until his throat tore.

The steamer continued south.

One of the men said, "She'll turn."

No one answered. Hans watched the lights. They became smaller.

"She'll turn."

Boom.

The lights shrank.

Boom.

"She'll turn."

The steamer disappeared.

Nobody spoke.

The tide carried them around Mousa. Hans knew the name only because Odbersen said it.

"Mousa."

Hans looked into darkness.

"Where?"

"Port."

There was nothing to see. The island existed as a greater darkness inside darkness, a shape defined only by the absence of stars behind it. Hans watched it. The ship moved toward the mainland coast. They could do nothing.

The sound of the rocks grew louder. The sea beneath Hermann changed. Shorter. Sharper. Breaking.

At some point Odbersen ordered them all on deck. No one asked why. They put on what clothes remained. Hans tied a line around himself. Another man did the same. There was no discussion.

The ship rose. Fell. The darkness ahead made a different sound.

Three o'clock, someone said. He never knew who.

Three in the morning.

The first impact was almost gentle. A scrape beneath the hull. Everyone froze. Hans looked down. Nothing. Then Hermann lifted. A wave carried her forward.

The ship struck rock.

Steel screamed. Hans fell. The sound was enormous. Not a crash. A tearing. The entire hull vibrated. Coal shifted below. The ship rolled. Another wave struck. Hermann moved farther onto the rocks.

Hans got to his knees.

"Hold!"

He did. The next impact threw him flat. Something broke below. Water came over the deck. The ship rolled toward shore. Then back.

Hans could see the cliff now. Close. Far too close. Black stone rose beside them.

A wave lifted Hermann. The cliff came nearer. The ship fell. The cliff moved away.

Hans stared. Near. Away. Near. Away.

The sea was breathing them against it.

Dawn did not come quickly enough.

For hours they remained on the wreck. No one had seen them. No rescue came. The cliff stood perhaps yards away when the ship rolled toward it and impossibly farther when she rolled back. There was no beach. No harbour. No boat. Only rock.

Hans looked at the remaining mast. The mizzen. Then at the cliff. He looked again.

Odbersen saw him.

"No."

Hans said nothing.

"No."

The ship rolled toward shore. The masthead moved with it. Closer to the cliff. Then away. Hans watched. Again. Closer. Away. He began estimating the distance.

His hands were grey. He flexed them. Slowly.

Odbersen stepped beside him.

"You cannot."

Hans looked at the cliff. "We cannot stay."

"We wait."

"For what?"

Odbersen did not answer.

The ship struck beneath them. A new sound came from the hull. Deep. Final.

"How long?"

Odbersen shook his head.

Hans looked at the mast. Then the cliff. There was a ledge. Not much. Enough. Perhaps.

The ship rolled. Hans counted. One. Two. Three. At the height of the roll the masthead came close. How close? Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty. Too far.

Again. The ship rolled back. Black water opened between hull and cliff.

If he missed, there would be no second attempt.

Hans thought of his mother's eyes. Blue. He had decided blue.

Odbersen touched his arm.

"Hans."

Hans turned. The captain looked old. He had not looked old eight days ago.

Hans said, "Give me a line."

They tied it around his waist. Hans tested the knot. Once. Twice. The other end was made fast. Five men stood watching him. Nobody told him not to go now. The ship had made the decision for them.

Hans put one hand on the mast. The wood was wet. He began climbing.

His knee screamed. He ignored it. Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot. The mast moved beneath him. He had climbed masts all his life. Never one like this. The sea had become the sky.

Each roll swung him toward the cliff and away again. He climbed higher. The deck shrank beneath him. Five faces looked up. Hans did not look down again.

Hand. Foot. His fingers slipped. He caught himself. He did not know how.

The rope around his waist pulled. He pressed his cheek against the mast. Waited. The ship rolled. The cliff approached. For one second Hans saw individual cracks in the rock. Then the ship fell away. His stomach dropped. The cliff retreated. Black water opened beneath him.

Hans closed his eyes.

No.

He opened them. He climbed.

At the top there was nowhere else to go. Hans wrapped one arm around the mast. The wind struck him fully. He looked at the cliff. It seemed farther from here. That was impossible. He laughed once. The sound disappeared.

Below, Odbersen shouted something. Hans could not hear.

He looked at the rope. Around his waist. Down the mast. Across the deck. Five men.

The ship rolled toward shore. Hans watched the cliff. Not yet. It came closer. Closer. He bent his knees. The mast swung. Rock filled his vision.

Not yet.

The ship reached the top of the roll. For an instant everything stopped. Hans saw the ledge. Wet black stone. Snow caught in a crack. A tuft of dead grass above it.

Then Hermann began to roll away.

Too late.

Hans stayed. The cliff retreated. He breathed. Again. The ship went out. The sea opened. He looked down despite himself. White water exploded against rock. He stopped looking.

The ship began back. The cliff approached. Hans shifted his feet. His left hand would not close. He put it around the mast anyway.

Closer. The rope felt heavy at his waist. Closer.

He thought of nothing. That surprised him. No mother. No home. No God. Only distance. The cliff. The mast. The roll.

The ship rose. Closer. Hans bent his knees.

Not yet.

The cliff withdrew slightly as the ship twisted.

Not yet.

Then the next sea struck Hermann. The ship lurched toward shore. The masthead swung. The cliff came at him.

Now.

Hans jumped.

For an instant there was no wind. No ship. No sea. He was between things.

Then stone struck him. His chest hit first. His chin struck rock. His hands clawed. Nothing. His body slid backward. The sea appeared beneath his boots.

Hans screamed. His right hand found an edge. Fingers closed. His left scraped uselessly across wet stone. The rope snapped tight around his waist. Behind him Hermann rolled away. The line pulled. Hans's body swung outward.

His right hand began to open.

No.

He kicked. His boot found nothing. The rope pulled harder. Someone aboard was shouting. Hans could not hear words. His fingers slipped. One. Then another. His left hand found grass.

Grass.

He grabbed it. The roots began coming free. Hans kicked again. His boot struck rock. He pushed. The ship rolled back toward the cliff. The rope slackened. Hans threw his left elbow onto the ledge. Pulled. His chest came over. Then his stomach. Then one knee.

He crawled. The ship rolled away. The rope tightened behind him. Hans flattened himself against stone. It pulled at his waist. He screamed. The knot held. The line went taut. Then slack.

Hans crawled higher. Five feet. Ten. He found a place above the reach of the water. He turned.

Hermann lay below. Five men stared up at him.

For a moment nobody moved. Hans raised one hand. Someone aboard raised his. Hans began laughing. He could not stop. He lay on the frozen ground above the cliff and laughed until it became coughing.

Then he remembered the rope.

It took time. Everything took time. The line between ship and shore had to be secured. Hans found rock. Wrapped the rope. Tested it.

Below, the men worked. The sea tried repeatedly to take the ship away from them.

One man came across. Then another. Hans helped pull them over the edge. Hands. Faces. Bodies. One by one.

The fifth man was Odbersen. The captain reached the cliff and Hans caught his coat. Together they crawled upward. For several seconds they lay beside one another. Neither spoke.

Below them Hermann rolled against the rocks.

Six men. Hans counted. He counted again.

Six. All six.

Odbersen sat up.

"Hans."

Hans looked at him. The captain seemed about to say something. Instead he put one hand on the back of Hans's neck.

That was all.

Two hours later Hermann sank.

They watched from the rocks. There was nothing they could do. The tide lifted her. The broken hull moved once. Then the stern settled. Water crossed the deck. The remaining mast leaned. For a moment only part of the ship remained visible. Then that too disappeared.

Hans stared at the place where she had been. A piece of timber surfaced. It rolled once in the waves. Then moved away.

He felt nothing.

The man who had climbed the mast was not the man standing on the cliff now. That man had existed for perhaps a minute. Frozen hands. A rope around his waist. Rock approaching. Distance. Then nothing but the jump.

Hans tried to remember what he had thought in the instant before he left the mast. He could not. Perhaps that was because he had thought nothing. Perhaps that was the only reason he had been able to do it.

Beside him one of the men said, "My coat."

Hans looked at him. The man stared at the sea.

"My good coat."

Hans began laughing. The man looked at him. Then he laughed too. Soon all of them were laughing. Odbersen shook his head. After a moment the captain laughed as well.

Six men on a frozen Shetland cliff laughing at a sunken ship.

Hans thought perhaps they had gone mad. He did not particularly care.

They remained on the rocks until seven. No one came. So they walked.

At first Hans could barely stand. His knee had swollen. His hands were cut. His chin bled. The rope had left a dark bruise around his waist. He walked anyway.

They found a path. Then another. The land seemed unreal beneath his feet because it did not move. Hans kept compensating for rolls that did not come. Once he stumbled sideways and nearly fell.

"Sea legs," someone said.

Hans looked back. The water was visible beyond the rocks.

"No."

He kept walking.

They found a house. Smoke rose from the chimney. Hans stopped. It was the same impossible thing he had seen from Hermann. A house. A fire. People.

Odbersen knocked. For a moment nothing happened. Hans became afraid. Not of being refused. Of the door never opening. Perhaps there was nobody in the world anymore. Perhaps there had only ever been the six of them and the sea.

Then the door opened.

A man stood there. Hans did not know his name yet. The man looked at them. Six soaked strangers. Clothes torn. Faces raw from wind. One limping. None carrying anything.

For a second nobody spoke.

Then George Smith of Pund opened the door wider.

Warm air came out. Hans smelled peat. Food. Dry wool. Human life.

He stepped inside.

Someone gave him a cup. Hans held it. He did not drink. He stared at the steam.

A woman said something he did not understand. Someone translated. Tea. Hans knew it was tea. He still did not drink.

The cup was warm. His hands began hurting. Pain returned finger by finger. It was extraordinary. He had thought numbness was suffering. He had been wrong. His fingers burned. He set the cup down.

Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. Hans sat beside the fire. The room moved. He closed his eyes. It moved more. He opened them. The floor tilted beneath him. Hans grabbed the chair.

George Smith looked over. "You're ashore."

Hans did not understand the words. Odbersen translated. Hans nodded. The floor moved again.

"No," he said.

Odbersen crouched beside him. "You are."

Hans looked at the captain. For three days and three nights none of them had slept. Hans had forgotten that sleep existed. His body remembered.

He looked toward the fire. Someone had placed bread on the table. Beside it was a dish of butter. The man across from Hans saw it too. For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then the man smiled.

"Butter."

Hans laughed. He tried to stop. He could not. The man laughed with him. Someone else joined them. Hans laughed until his chest hurt, until his burned throat hurt, until tears ran down his face.

Then somewhere inside it the laughter changed.

Hans wiped his face with the back of his hand. Nobody looked at him.

Outside, the wind kept blowing, the way it had blown for nine days, and would blow tomorrow, and the day after.

But it was on the other side of a wall now.

Hans listened to it try.30 MILES

On the eighth morning Hans Svendsen saw Norway.

It was not much to look at.

A dark interruption along the eastern horizon. A low grey seam beneath a lower grey sky, visible when Hermann climbed a swell and gone again when she settled into the trough. Hans stood at the weather rail with one hand hooked around a shroud and watched it appear and disappear.

Land.

Someone behind him said, "There."

Hans did not turn.

"I see it."

Eight days out of Wemyss.

The wind had been south and southwest for days, squally and wet, but it smelled different near the coast. Hans believed this although he could not have said what the difference was. Colder, perhaps. Cleaner. Something underneath the salt.

Trees, if a man wanted badly enough to smell trees.

He had slept four hours.

He had dreamed of coffee.

Thirty miles, Captain Odbersen had said.

Perhaps forty.

Nothing.

By noon they might be inside the fjord. By evening the coal would begin coming out of the hold. After that there would be drink, hot food, a bed that did not move beneath him.

Hans watched the dark line rise once more.

Then Hermann dropped into the trough and Norway vanished.

She was ten months old.

This fact had been repeated often enough during the voyage that Hans had begun to suspect the ship herself was proud of it.

Steel-built at Rønne. Three masts. Clean lines. Good fittings. Ten months old and £2,400 new, if anyone cared to convert a ship into money.

Hans did not.

Ships were ships. He had known old ships that seemed to understand the sea and new ones that fought it like frightened horses. Hermann was still too young to have acquired habits. Her timbers did not groan because she had no timbers to groan. Her steel hull answered the sea with little knocks and tremors that Hans had not yet learned to interpret.

He had been aboard her less than a month. The captain knew her better.

Captain Odbersen was standing aft, looking south.

That was the first thing Hans remembered afterward.

Not the clouds.

Not the wind.

The captain looking south.

The Naze Light lay north-half-east. Moss was close enough that every man aboard had begun privately arranging his evening. And Odbersen was looking the wrong way.

Hans crossed the deck.

"What is it?"

The captain kept his eyes on the horizon.

"Wind."

"We have plenty."

"Yes." Odbersen finally looked at him. "Too much."

By afternoon they were beating against it. By evening they had stopped making Norway.

The wind strengthened through Saturday.

It did not arrive dramatically. There was no wall of cloud, no single gust that announced itself as the beginning. It simply became harder to do everything. Walking required thought. Opening a hatch required two men. Speech became something done close to another man's ear.

The sea changed colour.

By Sunday morning the southerly had become a gale and Hermann was still outside the fjord.

Hans came on deck before dawn and found the world reduced to three colours: black water, white spray, grey sky. The land was gone.

"Can we tack?"

The mate gave him a look.

Hans nodded. Stupid question.

They tried anyway.

For two hours Hermann fought toward the fjord and lost every yard she gained. Her bow rose, hung, and slammed down hard enough to make Hans's teeth strike together. Water crossed the deck green and solid. The scuppers never cleared before the next sea arrived.

The captain stood aft with his oilskins shining black.

At nine he gave the order.

They bore away.

Hans watched Norway slide slowly across the horizon. That was worse than losing sight of it. For an hour the coast remained visible while Hermann ran down under the Naze seeking shelter.

Thirty miles.

Perhaps forty.

Hans had crossed the North Sea for nothing.

He told himself it was one day. A gale passed. Wind changed. Ships waited. That was the sea.

By evening they were dodging under the Naze, rising and falling in the lee of the land. Someone made coffee. Hans drank his from a tin cup with both hands around it.

"Tomorrow," one of the men said.

Hans looked toward the hatch.

"Tomorrow."

It became a joke. They said it again Monday. Tomorrow. Tuesday morning. Tomorrow.

Tuesday afternoon nobody said it.

The wind came round south-east after dark.

Hans was below when he felt the first change. Not the force of it. The direction. A ship has a thousand small sounds, and a sailor knows them without knowing that he knows them. Water moving along the hull. A line working. Canvas answering wind. Cargo settling. Iron touching iron somewhere unseen.

The sounds changed.

Hans opened his eyes. His bunk pitched beneath him. Across the forecastle, someone snored once and stopped.

Then came the blow.

It struck Hermann broadside. The lamp swung violently, and for a moment the light went with it entirely, the flame guttering against the glass, the forecastle dropping into a red-black dark before it caught again.

In that half-second Hans did not know which way was up. He lay in his bunk with his hands out, not knowing whether he was about to fall toward the deck or the ceiling, and something in his chest recognised the feeling before his mind did.

This was what it would be to be shut in a box and dropped down a well.

A cup fell from somewhere and hit the deck.

Hans was already sitting up when the second blow came. The ship heeled. Kept heeling. Someone shouted above, and the sound came to him wrong, flattened, close, as though the man were shouting directly into his ear rather than a deck above him.

Hans's bare feet hit the deck.

"Boots."

He found one. The ship rolled back. He found the other. By the time he reached the ladder the hatch had opened and snow came through it.

He climbed into the night.

The wind took his breath. For several seconds Hans could see nothing at all. Snow moved horizontally across the deck. It did not fall. It travelled. White streaks vanished into darkness faster than his eyes could follow them. Spray came with it, indistinguishable until it struck his face.

Hans turned to find the mainmast, a shape he had walked past a thousand times, that his hand knew, that he did not need his eyes for, and it was not there.

For three full seconds Hans stood on his own deck unable to locate the single largest object on it.

White. Only white, moving.

Then the mast appeared six feet closer than he had thought.

Hans grabbed it.

A man moved past him. Hans recognised him only by the shape.

"Where's Odbersen?"

The man pointed aft.

Hans began moving. The deck tilted. He caught a stay. The sea appeared beyond the rail, not below it. At eye level.

Hans tightened his grip. The black wall rose higher. Someone shouted. The sea struck.

For an instant there was no ship. There was water.

Hans held the stay with both hands and felt himself lifted. His boots left the deck. Something struck his shoulder. He opened his mouth and got salt water in it.

Then the water went away.

The deck returned beneath his knees. Hans coughed. He was still holding the stay. He got up.

Odbersen was at the wheel with another man. Hans reached them. The captain's beard was white with snow.

"Below," Odbersen shouted.

Hans could not hear him.

"What?"

"Get them up."

Hans understood. No one slept. Not now.

By dawn the snow had hidden everything.

There was no horizon. There was no sky. There was only the ship and the water immediately around it, and not even all of that. At times the bow disappeared entirely, swallowed twenty feet ahead of him, so that Hermann seemed to end in white nothing.

Hans found this worse than the waves. A wave was a thing. This was the absence of things.

The six men worked in pairs because a man alone could be lost ten feet away. They shortened what sail they could. They checked lines. They checked the hatches. They checked the pumps. Then they checked them again.

Kruse went below for rope. Hans watched the boy disappear through the forecastle hatch. The cover slammed. Hans caught it before the latch fell. He held it open. Kruse had not noticed.

Hans looked down into the dark.

"Kruse."

A face appeared below.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Hans kept one hand on the hatch until the boy came back. After that, whenever someone went below, Hans watched the hatch.

At noon he went below for coffee. He had to brace both knees against the table. The cup moved anyway. He drank half. The rest went across the floor. No one laughed.

Above them something struck the deck. All six men looked upward. Silence. Then another impact.

A loose block. Someone went up. Hans remained seated.

His hands shook. He looked at them. Cold. That was all. Cold. He put them beneath his arms. After a while he flexed his fingers inside his sleeves. He made a fist. Or thought he did. Hans pulled his hand out and looked. The fingers were closed. He put it away again.

The man returned.

"Nothing."

"What hit?"

"Nothing." The man shrugged. "Still there."

That became sufficient.

Wednesday became Thursday without anyone noticing. Time was measured by watches, but watches had ceased to mean morning or evening. There was only dark and less dark. Snow. Water. Wind.

Hans slept perhaps twenty minutes sitting against a bulkhead and woke because his head struck steel. He did not remember closing his eyes.

He climbed back on deck. The sea had grown. He had not believed that possible.

The first time Hermann dropped between two of the great waves, Hans looked to starboard and saw water rising beside the ship.

Not a wave.

A mountain. That was what his mind called it. A black mountain moving toward them.

He looked port. Another.

For one impossible instant Hermann lay in a valley between them. The mastheads did not reach the crests.

Hans stared. The ship began climbing. He grabbed the rail. She went up. Up. Up. The deck steepened beneath him. He could see nothing beyond the bow but black water. Then suddenly there was sky. The bow reached the crest. Wind struck them. The ship hung. Hans felt the strange weightless instant before the fall. His stomach rose.

Then Hermann went down.

The bow disappeared. The deck became a slope into darkness. Hans locked both arms around the rail. The impact travelled through the hull into his bones. Water came over. It struck him in the back and drove his chest into steel. His fingers opened. One hand slipped.

Hans saw it happen. His own hand. Open. Nothing beneath it.

He caught the rail again. The sea went away. Hans remained where he was. He could not breathe. Someone was shouting his name. He lifted one hand. Alive. The man stopped shouting.

Hans stayed on his knees. He thought about the thirty miles. He hated himself for it.

On Thursday evening Captain Odbersen said something Hans could not hear. They were beside one another near the mainmast.

"What?"

Odbersen leaned close.

"Twenty years." Hans waited. The captain wiped snow from his beard. "I have been twenty years at sea."

Another wave lifted them. They held on. When it passed, Odbersen looked at him.

"Never this."

That frightened Hans more than anything yet had.

Odbersen turned back toward the wheel. His lips were moving. Hans watched. He knew the shape of the words from childhood. He had not thought of Odbersen as a man who prayed.

Hans looked away.

Friday morning began with the ship lying down.

There was no warning Hans understood. One moment he was moving forward along the weather side. Then the deck turned beneath him.

Not rolled.

Turned.

The rail dropped. The opposite rail rose. Someone screamed. Hans fell. His shoulder struck the deck and he began sliding. He clawed at steel. Nothing. His hip struck something. He spun.

The sea filled the world beyond the low rail. Hans understood where he was going. His hand found rope. He closed both fists around it. The ship continued over. The deck became a wall. His feet left it.

Hans hung.

For a moment he was suspended above the sea by his hands. Then Hermann stopped. She did not come back. Hans swung against the deck. His left knee struck hard enough that white light filled his vision. He screamed. The wind took the sound. He held on.

The ship remained on her beam ends.

"Hans!"

He looked up. Or what had been up. A face appeared beyond rigging.

"Hold!"

Hans nearly laughed. Instead he pulled. Someone caught the back of his coat. Another hand grabbed his arm. They dragged him toward what had become the high side. He collapsed against the rail.

The world was wrong. The masts lay almost parallel with the water. Sails and rigging thrashed against the sea. Every wave struck the exposed side of the hull and pushed them farther.

Hans looked aft. Odbersen was climbing toward them.

"Foremast!"

Nobody moved.

The captain pointed. "Cut it away!"

Hans understood. Someone beside him shook his head. Odbersen grabbed the man's coat.

"Cut it!"

They moved.

An axe on a ship is an ordinary thing until you are ordered to destroy the ship with it.

Hans crawled. Walking was impossible. He dragged his injured leg behind him and climbed across the deck toward the foremast. The mast was pulling them down. Every wave caught the rigging and sailcloth in the water and held Hermann there.

They cut. Lines first. Rigging snapped away into darkness. One struck the deck like a whip. A man cried out. Hans did not look.

"Again!"

The axe rose. Fell. Rose. Fell. Wood splintered. The mast shuddered. Hans felt each blow through the handle. Then, after a while, he did not. They were killing it. The thought was absurd. He kept cutting.

A wave struck. The mast disappeared beneath water. When it came up, something cracked.

"Back!"

Hans tried. His knee folded. Someone seized him under the arm.

The foremast broke. For half a second it remained attached by rigging. Then the sea took it. The mast vanished. Lines screamed through blocks. Something tore free with a sound like a gunshot. The wreckage disappeared into the storm.

Everyone waited. Hermann did not move. She remained on her side.

Hans looked at Odbersen. The captain looked at the mainmast. No one spoke. They all knew.

"No," someone said.

Odbersen said, "Mainmast."

"No."

"Cut it."

The man stared at him. "If we lose it—"

"We've lost it." The words were almost quiet. Odbersen pointed at the water. "Cut."

Hans took up the axe.

The mainmast took longer.

Hans's hands stopped hurting. This worried him. He changed his grip and felt nothing. The axe handle might have belonged to another man. He swung. Again. Again. Again. His world narrowed to the place where iron met wood. The storm disappeared. The ship disappeared. There was only the cut.

He remembered chopping wood as a boy. His father telling him not to strike from the shoulder. Let the axe fall. Don't fight it. Let the weight work.

Hans almost laughed. His father had not imagined this.

Another blow. The cut widened. Someone else took the axe. Hans crawled backward. His hands would not close properly. He put them inside his coat.

The mainmast cracked. Everyone froze. It went slowly. Almost gracefully. The top moved first. Then the whole mast leaned farther toward the water. Rigging tightened. Snapped. The mast fell into the sea.

The ship shuddered.

For one terrible second nothing happened. Then Hermann moved. Hans felt it beneath him. Slowly. A few degrees. Then more. The deck tilted back toward level. Someone shouted. The ship rolled upright. Hans slid across the deck and struck the opposite rail.

He lay there laughing. He did not know why. Another man was laughing too.

Odbersen wasn't.

The captain was looking down. At the deck. At the way the ship sat.

Hans stopped laughing.

"What?"

Odbersen did not answer. Hans felt it. A list. Small. But wrong.

The captain went to the hatch. Hans followed. They opened it. The sound came from below. A deep, granular roar. Something enormous moving in darkness.

Coal. Three hundred tons of it. The cargo had shifted.

Odbersen lowered the lamp. The light descended perhaps ten feet. Then stopped. The hold continued beneath it. The coal moved there. Unseen. A long sliding thunder from one side of the ship to the other.

Hans stared into the blackness. He imagined a man falling into it.

Not drowning.

Burial.

Odbersen raised the lamp. Above them the remaining mizzen sails cracked in the gale. One tore. Then another. Canvas went streaming into darkness.

Odbersen closed the hatch.

Hans looked at him.

"What now?"

The captain looked toward the place where the foremast had been. Nothing. Where the mainmast had been. Nothing. Aft, the ruined mizzen. Then Hans.

"Now?"

The ship rose beneath them. Odbersen held the rail.

"Now we go where it takes us."

Friday. Saturday. Sunday.

They drove before the storm. There was no sailing Hermann anymore, no steering her in any meaningful sense. She was a steel object containing six living men and three hundred tons of coal, pushed across the North Sea by weather.

Hans stopped thinking about Moss. He stopped thinking about Denmark. Houses. Fires. Dry socks. Hans knew these things existed because he remembered them, but they seemed no more immediate than stories from the Bible.

There was only Hermann. And Hermann was dying.

Water found its way into everything. By Friday night the forecastle had become unreachable. No one ventured down. They slept on deck when they slept at all. Mostly they did not.

On Saturday night Hans saw a man standing near the bow.

He was certain of it. A tall man without a hat. Hans shouted. The figure did not move. He crawled toward it. Ten feet away it became torn canvas. Hans sat looking at it for a long time. He told no one.

On Sunday, alone at the rail, Hans tried to remember his mother's face.

He could remember details. Her hands. A brown dress. The small white scar beneath her chin. But when he tried to assemble them into a face there was nothing.

Eyes. What colour?

He knew this. Of course he knew.

Blue.

Were they blue?

Hans shut his eyes. Blue. He decided they were blue. He repeated it until he believed himself, the way he had once repeated his catechism.

Because the alternative was silence. And silence was where the rest of it lived.

Monday came quietly. That was what woke him.

Hans opened his eyes. He was lying against the lee side of the deck with his cheek on wet steel. Something was different. He listened.

Wind. Water. The hull.

But beneath it there was a quality of silence.

Light touched his face. Not sun. Daylight. Real daylight.

Hans pushed himself upright. His entire body objected. He crawled to the rail. Looked.

At first he thought it was another hallucination. A dark shape. Then another.

Land. Not a line this time. Cliffs.

Hans stood too quickly. His injured knee buckled. He caught the rail.

"Land." No one moved. Hans shouted. "LAND!"

Bodies stirred. Odbersen appeared. Hans pointed. The captain stared. For several seconds his expression did not change. Then he said something.

Hans couldn't hear.

"What?"

"Shetland."

Hans looked at him. He knew the word. Of course he knew it. But it took a moment to understand.

"Shetland?"

Odbersen nodded.

Hans looked back at the coast. Wemyss. Norway. Now this. They had crossed the North Sea again. Not east. West. Thirty miles from Moss, and the sea had carried them almost all the way back.

Hans began laughing. Nobody joined him. He couldn't stop. He laughed until it hurt. Then he sat down.

Land did not save them.

The wind and tide took Hermann toward the coast. With only the damaged mizzen there was little they could do. The cliffs grew.

Hans had spent three days wanting nothing but land. Now he wanted it farther away.

By afternoon they were well up toward Bressay. The lighthouse appeared. For a time Hans believed someone must see them. How could they not? A ship without two of her masts. Rigging gone. Deck wrecked. Six men aboard. Someone would see. Someone would come.

No one came.

The wind veered east-north-east. The tide caught them. Hermann moved south along the coast. Hans watched houses appear occasionally beyond the shore. Tiny. Impossible. Smoke rose from one chimney. He stared at it. A fire. Someone was warm beside that fire. The thought seemed obscene.

He lifted both arms. He waved. No one could see him. The house passed astern.

Darkness came early. Hans hated it. Land remained close, but darkness erased it.

They could hear the shore now. That was worse. The sea striking rock. A deep concussion repeated somewhere beyond sight.

Boom. Silence. Boom.

They showed lights. They signalled. Nothing answered.

Then one of the men shouted. Hans turned. A light moved across the darkness.

Not shore.

Sea.

A steamer.

For several seconds nobody moved because nobody trusted what he was seeing. Then everyone moved at once.

"Light!"

"Get the flare!"

"Where?"

"South!"

Hans saw her. Two lights. Then the black shape beneath them. A ship. A real ship. Moving. His heart began hammering.

They lit a flare. Red fire erupted in Hans's hand. He raised it. The light painted the deck blood-red. Every face turned monstrous. Hans waved it.

"HEY!"

The others shouted.

"HO!"

"HERE!"

"SHIP!"

The steamer continued. Another flare. Hans climbed as high as he could on the ruined deck and swung the light.

"They see us!" Someone beside him was laughing. "They see us!"

Hans believed it. Of course they did. How could they not? The flare burned like a small sun in the darkness.

The steamer passed to the south.

"She's turning."

Hans stared. The lights continued.

"She's turning."

They were not.

"Again!"

Another signal. They showed every light they could. Hans screamed until his throat tore.

The steamer continued south.

One of the men said, "She'll turn."

No one answered. Hans watched the lights. They became smaller.

"She'll turn."

Boom.

The lights shrank.

Boom.

"She'll turn."

The steamer disappeared.

Nobody spoke.

The tide carried them around Mousa. Hans knew the name only because Odbersen said it.

"Mousa."

Hans looked into darkness.

"Where?"

"Port."

There was nothing to see. The island existed as a greater darkness inside darkness, a shape defined only by the absence of stars behind it. Hans watched it. The ship moved toward the mainland coast. They could do nothing.

The sound of the rocks grew louder. The sea beneath Hermann changed. Shorter. Sharper. Breaking.

At some point Odbersen ordered them all on deck. No one asked why. They put on what clothes remained. Hans tied a line around himself. Another man did the same. There was no discussion.

The ship rose. Fell. The darkness ahead made a different sound.

Three o'clock, someone said. He never knew who.

Three in the morning.

The first impact was almost gentle. A scrape beneath the hull. Everyone froze. Hans looked down. Nothing. Then Hermann lifted. A wave carried her forward.

The ship struck rock.

Steel screamed. Hans fell. The sound was enormous. Not a crash. A tearing. The entire hull vibrated. Coal shifted below. The ship rolled. Another wave struck. Hermann moved farther onto the rocks.

Hans got to his knees.

"Hold!"

He did. The next impact threw him flat. Something broke below. Water came over the deck. The ship rolled toward shore. Then back.

Hans could see the cliff now. Close. Far too close. Black stone rose beside them.

A wave lifted Hermann. The cliff came nearer. The ship fell. The cliff moved away.

Hans stared. Near. Away. Near. Away.

The sea was breathing them against it.

Dawn did not come quickly enough.

For hours they remained on the wreck. No one had seen them. No rescue came. The cliff stood perhaps yards away when the ship rolled toward it and impossibly farther when she rolled back. There was no beach. No harbour. No boat. Only rock.

Hans looked at the remaining mast. The mizzen. Then at the cliff. He looked again.

Odbersen saw him.

"No."

Hans said nothing.

"No."

The ship rolled toward shore. The masthead moved with it. Closer to the cliff. Then away. Hans watched. Again. Closer. Away. He began estimating the distance.

His hands were grey. He flexed them. Slowly.

Odbersen stepped beside him.

"You cannot."

Hans looked at the cliff. "We cannot stay."

"We wait."

"For what?"

Odbersen did not answer.

The ship struck beneath them. A new sound came from the hull. Deep. Final.

"How long?"

Odbersen shook his head.

Hans looked at the mast. Then the cliff. There was a ledge. Not much. Enough. Perhaps.

The ship rolled. Hans counted. One. Two. Three. At the height of the roll the masthead came close. How close? Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty. Too far.

Again. The ship rolled back. Black water opened between hull and cliff.

If he missed, there would be no second attempt.

Hans thought of his mother's eyes. Blue. He had decided blue.

Odbersen touched his arm.

"Hans."

Hans turned. The captain looked old. He had not looked old eight days ago.

Hans said, "Give me a line."

They tied it around his waist. Hans tested the knot. Once. Twice. The other end was made fast. Five men stood watching him. Nobody told him not to go now. The ship had made the decision for them.

Hans put one hand on the mast. The wood was wet. He began climbing.

His knee screamed. He ignored it. Hand. Foot. Hand. Foot. The mast moved beneath him. He had climbed masts all his life. Never one like this. The sea had become the sky.

Each roll swung him toward the cliff and away again. He climbed higher. The deck shrank beneath him. Five faces looked up. Hans did not look down again.

Hand. Foot. His fingers slipped. He caught himself. He did not know how.

The rope around his waist pulled. He pressed his cheek against the mast. Waited. The ship rolled. The cliff approached. For one second Hans saw individual cracks in the rock. Then the ship fell away. His stomach dropped. The cliff retreated. Black water opened beneath him.

Hans closed his eyes.

No.

He opened them. He climbed.

At the top there was nowhere else to go. Hans wrapped one arm around the mast. The wind struck him fully. He looked at the cliff. It seemed farther from here. That was impossible. He laughed once. The sound disappeared.

Below, Odbersen shouted something. Hans could not hear.

He looked at the rope. Around his waist. Down the mast. Across the deck. Five men.

The ship rolled toward shore. Hans watched the cliff. Not yet. It came closer. Closer. He bent his knees. The mast swung. Rock filled his vision.

Not yet.

The ship reached the top of the roll. For an instant everything stopped. Hans saw the ledge. Wet black stone. Snow caught in a crack. A tuft of dead grass above it.

Then Hermann began to roll away.

Too late.

Hans stayed. The cliff retreated. He breathed. Again. The ship went out. The sea opened. He looked down despite himself. White water exploded against rock. He stopped looking.

The ship began back. The cliff approached. Hans shifted his feet. His left hand would not close. He put it around the mast anyway.

Closer. The rope felt heavy at his waist. Closer.

He thought of nothing. That surprised him. No mother. No home. No God. Only distance. The cliff. The mast. The roll.

The ship rose. Closer. Hans bent his knees.

Not yet.

The cliff withdrew slightly as the ship twisted.

Not yet.

Then the next sea struck Hermann. The ship lurched toward shore. The masthead swung. The cliff came at him.

Now.

Hans jumped.

For an instant there was no wind. No ship. No sea. He was between things.

Then stone struck him. His chest hit first. His chin struck rock. His hands clawed. Nothing. His body slid backward. The sea appeared beneath his boots.

Hans screamed. His right hand found an edge. Fingers closed. His left scraped uselessly across wet stone. The rope snapped tight around his waist. Behind him Hermann rolled away. The line pulled. Hans's body swung outward.

His right hand began to open.

No.

He kicked. His boot found nothing. The rope pulled harder. Someone aboard was shouting. Hans could not hear words. His fingers slipped. One. Then another. His left hand found grass.

Grass.

He grabbed it. The roots began coming free. Hans kicked again. His boot struck rock. He pushed. The ship rolled back toward the cliff. The rope slackened. Hans threw his left elbow onto the ledge. Pulled. His chest came over. Then his stomach. Then one knee.

He crawled. The ship rolled away. The rope tightened behind him. Hans flattened himself against stone. It pulled at his waist. He screamed. The knot held. The line went taut. Then slack.

Hans crawled higher. Five feet. Ten. He found a place above the reach of the water. He turned.

Hermann lay below. Five men stared up at him.

For a moment nobody moved. Hans raised one hand. Someone aboard raised his. Hans began laughing. He could not stop. He lay on the frozen ground above the cliff and laughed until it became coughing.

Then he remembered the rope.

It took time. Everything took time. The line between ship and shore had to be secured. Hans found rock. Wrapped the rope. Tested it.

Below, the men worked. The sea tried repeatedly to take the ship away from them.

One man came across. Then another. Hans helped pull them over the edge. Hands. Faces. Bodies. One by one.

The fifth man was Odbersen. The captain reached the cliff and Hans caught his coat. Together they crawled upward. For several seconds they lay beside one another. Neither spoke.

Below them Hermann rolled against the rocks.

Six men. Hans counted. He counted again.

Six. All six.

Odbersen sat up.

"Hans."

Hans looked at him. The captain seemed about to say something. Instead he put one hand on the back of Hans's neck.

That was all.

Two hours later Hermann sank.

They watched from the rocks. There was nothing they could do. The tide lifted her. The broken hull moved once. Then the stern settled. Water crossed the deck. The remaining mast leaned. For a moment only part of the ship remained visible. Then that too disappeared.

Hans stared at the place where she had been. A piece of timber surfaced. It rolled once in the waves. Then moved away.

He felt nothing.

The man who had climbed the mast was not the man standing on the cliff now. That man had existed for perhaps a minute. Frozen hands. A rope around his waist. Rock approaching. Distance. Then nothing but the jump.

Hans tried to remember what he had thought in the instant before he left the mast. He could not. Perhaps that was because he had thought nothing. Perhaps that was the only reason he had been able to do it.

Beside him one of the men said, "My coat."

Hans looked at him. The man stared at the sea.

"My good coat."

Hans began laughing. The man looked at him. Then he laughed too. Soon all of them were laughing. Odbersen shook his head. After a moment the captain laughed as well.

Six men on a frozen Shetland cliff laughing at a sunken ship.

Hans thought perhaps they had gone mad. He did not particularly care.

They remained on the rocks until seven. No one came. So they walked.

At first Hans could barely stand. His knee had swollen. His hands were cut. His chin bled. The rope had left a dark bruise around his waist. He walked anyway.

They found a path. Then another. The land seemed unreal beneath his feet because it did not move. Hans kept compensating for rolls that did not come. Once he stumbled sideways and nearly fell.

"Sea legs," someone said.

Hans looked back. The water was visible beyond the rocks.

"No."

He kept walking.

They found a house. Smoke rose from the chimney. Hans stopped. It was the same impossible thing he had seen from Hermann. A house. A fire. People.

Odbersen knocked. For a moment nothing happened. Hans became afraid. Not of being refused. Of the door never opening. Perhaps there was nobody in the world anymore. Perhaps there had only ever been the six of them and the sea.

Then the door opened.

A man stood there. Hans did not know his name yet. The man looked at them. Six soaked strangers. Clothes torn. Faces raw from wind. One limping. None carrying anything.

For a second nobody spoke.

Then George Smith of Pund opened the door wider.

Warm air came out. Hans smelled peat. Food. Dry wool. Human life.

He stepped inside.

Someone gave him a cup. Hans held it. He did not drink. He stared at the steam.

A woman said something he did not understand. Someone translated. Tea. Hans knew it was tea. He still did not drink.

The cup was warm. His hands began hurting. Pain returned finger by finger. It was extraordinary. He had thought numbness was suffering. He had been wrong. His fingers burned. He set the cup down.

Someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. Hans sat beside the fire. The room moved. He closed his eyes. It moved more. He opened them. The floor tilted beneath him. Hans grabbed the chair.

George Smith looked over. "You're ashore."

Hans did not understand the words. Odbersen translated. Hans nodded. The floor moved again.

"No," he said.

Odbersen crouched beside him. "You are."

Hans looked at the captain. For three days and three nights none of them had slept. Hans had forgotten that sleep existed. His body remembered.

He looked toward the fire. Someone had placed bread on the table. Beside it was a dish of butter. The man across from Hans saw it too. For a moment neither of them spoke.

Then the man smiled.

"Butter."

Hans laughed. He tried to stop. He could not. The man laughed with him. Someone else joined them. Hans laughed until his chest hurt, until his burned throat hurt, until tears ran down his face.

Then somewhere inside it the laughter changed.

Hans wiped his face with the back of his hand. Nobody looked at him.

Outside, the wind kept blowing, the way it had blown for nine days, and would blow tomorrow, and the day after.

But it was on the other side of a wall now.

Hans listened to it try.