down, right down, as if indicating hell. Jeluc opened his eyes and the rope twitched at his waist, this way, that. He got up, and walked out on to the deck.
The stars were bright as white flames, and the shadow of the mast fell hard as iron on the deck. But it was all wrong.
Jeluc looked up, and on the mast of the ship hung a wiry man, with his long gray hair all tangled round the yard and trailing down the sail, crawling on it, like the limbs of a spider.
This man Jeluc did not know, but the man grinned, and he began to pull off silver rings from his fingers and cast them at Jeluc. They fell with loud cold notes. A huge round moon, white as snow, rose behind the apparition. Its hand tugged and tugged, and Jeluc heard it curse. The finger had come off with the ring, and fell on his boot.
“What do you want with me?” said Jeluc, but the man on the mast faded, and the severed finger was only a drop of spray.
Opening his eyes again, Jeluc lay on the bunk, and he smelled a soft warm perfume. It was like flowers on a summer day. It was the aroma of a woman.
“Am I awake now?”
Jeluc got up, and stood on the bobbing floor, then he went outside. There was no moon, and only the sail moved on the yard.
One of the lines was jerking, and he went to it slowly. But when he tested it, nothing was there.
The smell of heat and plants was still faintly about him, and now he took it for the foretaste of the islands, blown out to him.
He returned to the cabin and lay wakeful, until near dawn he slept and dreamed a mermaid had come over the ship’s rail. She was pale as pale, with ash blond hair, and he wondered if it would be feasible to make love to her, for she had a fish’s tail, and no woman’s parts at all that he could see.
Dawn was so pale it seemed the ship had grown darker. She had a sort of flush, her sides and deck, her smooth mast, her outspread sail.
He could not scent the islands anymore.
Rain fell, and he went into the cabin, and there examined his possessions, as once or twice he had done before a battle. His knife, his neckscarf of silk, which a girl had given him years beore, a lucky coin he had kept without believing in it, a bullet that had missed him and gone into a tree. His money, his boots, his pipe. Not much.
Then he thought that the ship was now his possession, too, his lady.
He went and stood in the rain and looked at her.
There was nothing on the lines.
He ate pork for supper.
The rain eased, and in the cabin, he slept.
The woman stood at the tiller.
She rested her hand on it, quietly.
She was very pale, her hair long and blond, and her old-fashioned dress the shade of good paper.
He stood and watched her for some time, but she did not respond, although he knew she was aware of him, and that he watched. Finally he walked up to her, and she turned her head.
She was very thin, her face all bones, and she had great glowing pale gleaming eyes, and these stared now right through him.
She took her hand off the tiller and put it on his shoulder, and he felt her touch go through him like her look, straight down his body, through his heart, belly and loins, and out at his feet.
He thought, She’ll want to go into the cabin with me.
So he gave her his arm.
They walked, along the deck, and he let her pass into the cabin first.
She turned about, as she had turned her head, slowly, looking at everything, the food and the pan of coals, which did not burn now, the blankets on the bunk.
Then she moved to the bunk and lay down, on her back, calm as any woman who had done such a thing a thousand times.
Jeluc went to her at once, but he did not wait to undo his clothing. He found, surprising himself, that he lay down on top of her, straight down, letting her frail body have all his weight, his chest on her bosom, his loins on her loins, but separated by their garments, legs on her legs. And last of all, his face on her face, his lips against hers.
Rather