example, but he wasn’t a rat, and he could hardly go unnoticed. Instead he clung to the sides when he could, and washed about when he could not, and vomited from the awful motion of it all and the saltwater he couldn’t help but swallow. Like a nightmare, he felt the level of water creeping gradually up to his chest. At last he could stand it no longer. He began to fight his way towards the steps.
It ended more violently than he had expected.
The ship shuddered violently as though it had struck something, throwing him off his feet as he fell engulfed in shifting water.
Ash floundered, righting himself, and then from overhead came the heart-stopping sound of wood being torn asunder, and a thunderous noise like a waterfall roaring towards him, shaking him to the core and terrifying him in that first instant of approach – and then the hatch exploded open and the sea was flooding through it, and Ash was swept up by the boiling surge all the way to the very back of the bilge.
He smashed against the hull, spluttering for air. His arms flailed out, his feet scrabbled for purchase. Ash managed to right himself, and he tried to push his way back towards the steps. It was hopeless, though. The full weight of the sea pressed him back, squeezing him flat against the hull with such force that it was all he could do to gasp for a dry breath of air.
The timbers of the ship began to groan with a different pitch. The ship tilted nose-first, rolled onto her side at the same time.
She was going down.
Ash drew a breath in the last few feet of air between the churning surface and the planks rushing towards his head. The water was freezing, leeching the strength from his muscles. Despite himself, he began to hyperventilate, so that he swallowed air and water.
Ash allowed the brief moment of panic to flood his body with vitality, and then he pinched it off with a practised command of will.
His head struck the planking above. Still the rush of water felt like a slab of rock pressing against him. He would have to wait for the ship to flood before he could swim out through the hatch.
It was no easy realization that, as the rising water finally submerged him.
Even beneath the water he could hear the torment of the ship’s hull. Ash clung to his precious lungful of air, and kicked towards the hatchway.
The pressure in his ears increased. He knew the ship had sunk beneath the surface, was dropping now to the seafloor. With increasing haste his hands scrabbled along the planking in search of the hatchway. For an eternity he grasped at wood, unable to find the way out. Again that repression of panic.
His hands groped against emptiness and he pulled himself through it. Something floated against him and he pushed it away. A body, drowned already.
Ash swam towards where he thought the ceiling should be. Objects brushed against him, the sacks and joints of meat that had been hanging there. He pushed through them, found his hands grasping steps; pulled himself upwards through another opening. By memory he knew that he was in the galley passageway now, with steps at its far end leading to the upper deck. He swam with all his strength, his ears throbbing from the increasing pressure that wrapped him like a skin of stone. His lungs were on fire. Another body drifted across his path and he pushed that one aside too. This time it moved – hands jerked out at him, grasping for life. Someone was still alive down here.
Ash broke free from the grip. He reached out, grabbing a face – rubbery lips, a nose, bristly eyelashes, hair. He grabbed a handful of that hair, and with his feet he pushed off hard. An eternity passed as he dragged the flailing sailor along to the end of the corridor. He came to the steps, unmistakable against his touch.
With a final kick, Ash dragged them both clear of the sinking ship.
He opened his eyes a fraction, ignored the stinging pain of the saltwater. He gazed upon an endless darkness; like looking into death.
He had no way to tell which way was up, for light and weight were an absence here. His mouth tried to open for air. Ash clamped his jaw shut, his chest throbbing with a white heat.
This is it, he thought for an instant. This is it!