The longboat rose and fell beside The Dreadnork with unnerving steadiness, like some ancient sea creature that had temporarily agreed to participate in logistics.
Before anyone could object, AuntieDamsonCrumble swung lightly down from the rigging on a rope while Hussie launched herself directly after her with the expression of someone improving an already excellent day. Within moments crates, barrels, rope bundles and several enormous sacks of Tunnocks Teacakes were being hauled aboard with terrifying efficiency.
The six Norsewomen continued rowing steadily throughout the entire operation. Nobody aboard had yet seen any of them appear remotely tired.
“Mind the lantern oil!” shouted JanesLittleGirl from somewhere overhead.
“Which one?” yelled Hussie cheerfully.
“The labelled barrels!”
There was a pause.
“…they’re labelled?”
Far above them Batshit swung upside down through the rigging screaming, “SERIOUS SCANDINAVIANS!” One of the Norsewomen raised a hand politely in acknowledgement without breaking stroke.
The Atlantic swell had grown heavier. The Dreadnork no longer rolled like a ship in coastal water but moved with the slower, deeper motion of open ocean. Each great rise lifted the galleon high enough for the western horizon to appear briefly endless, before the hull settled once more into the troughs between swells.
Ahead of them the Rustler appeared only intermittently now. Sometimes the yacht vanished completely for several long minutes before re-emerging far ahead as a pale shape against darkening water.
“The yacht can sail far closer to the wind than we can,” said RandomHypatia, adjusting dividers across a chart spread beneath the stern lantern.
Octavia frowned westward into gathering dusk. “So theoretically they should disappear over the horizon forever.”
Swashbuckled glanced upward at the vast square sails shifting softly overhead. “Oh, eventually,” she said. “Provided they avoid the usual difficulties.”
Octavia blinked. “The usual difficulties?”
“Fog. Storms. French privateers. Sea serpents. Navigational despair. Falling off the edge of the world.”
Octavia stared at her. “You cannot genuinely believe ships fall off the edge of the world.”
“Well not frequently,” said Swashbuckled.
“It doesn’t happen at all,” Octavia said, her voice rising an octave. “The world is a sphere! It’s round! This has been proven by science, mathematics, and Magellan!”
Swashbuckled waved a dismissive, leather-gloved hand. “Look, if you want to get all caught up in fancy-pants academic geometry, that’s your business. But I’ve seen the maps, Octavia. There are clearly giant decorative banners at the bottom that say ‘Here be Dragons’ and ‘The Southern Ocean’. If you sail past the letters, what do you think you’re landing on? The vowels?”
“That’s just the border of the parchment!”
“Exactly,” Swashbuckled said triumphantly. “And if you run out of paper, you run out of ocean. It’s just basic seamanship.”
Octavia opened her mouth, appeared to reconsider the value of continuing this conversation, and drank some coffee instead.
Swashbuckled watched her swallow, a sudden grin breaking across her weathered face. “Oh, relax, I’m just pulling your anchor chain! Of course I don’t believe the world is flat. I’m a captain, not an idiot.”
Octavia let out a long relieved sigh and lowered her cup slightly. “Thank goodness. For a moment I thought…”
“Everyone knows the world is a giant hollow cylinder,” Swashbuckled interrupted. “If you fall off the outside, you simply land on the inside. But the inside is where the mole-people pirates live, and their harbour fees are exorbitant. Frankly I’d rather take my chances with the dragons.”
The wind freshened slightly from the south-west. Above them the upper canvas bellied outward with a deep rolling crack like distant thunder.
RandomHypatia steadied the charts with one hand. “If the wind holds there are advantages,” she said. “The yacht may sail closer, but we carry far more sail once properly running west.”
“Provided,” said Octavia, “we are actually capable of navigating west.”
“We have charts,” said Swashbuckled.
“We have seventeenth-century charts,” Octavia corrected.
“We also have RandomHypatia.”
“That is not the same as modern navigation equipment.”
RandomHypatia looked faintly offended. “Dead reckoning remains perfectly viable.”
“That phrase alone is deeply concerning.”
“Latitude from Polaris,” continued RandomHypatia calmly, “solar declination at noon, chronometer permitting we may estimate longitude tolerably well.”
“You can genuinely navigate an Atlantic crossing with a sextant?”
“Certainly,” said RandomHypatia. “People crossed oceans successfully for centuries before inventing satnav.”
“Yes,” said Octavia. “And a surprising number of them vanished permanently.”
“Only the less organised ones,” said Swashbuckled.
Far ahead, barely visible now, the Rustler rose briefly atop a swell before vanishing once more into the deepening Atlantic dusk. By full dark the yacht had disappeared completely. Not vanished behind a wave. Vanished. The horizon no longer contained a ship.
Hedgehog remained seated at the laptop while several gerbils organised manifests around her with the grim efficiency of an expanding maritime intelligence service.
“The manifests repeat the same ports,” Hedgehog said, looking up. “Galway. Iceland. Newfoundland. Maine. Fuel. Supplies. Transfer locations. But instead of heading north-west towards Galway, they've just changed course.”
Octavia frowned. “Why?”
Hedgehog looked back at the screen for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said as she turned to look in the direction they were heading.
The horizon contained weather. Cloud had been building slowly for over an hour. Now it spread steadily across the sky towards them, swallowing the first stars one by one.
RandomHypatia looked upward for the first time with genuine concern. “That,” she said quietly, “is inconvenient.”
Octavia stared at her. “‘Inconvenient’ appears to be doing an extraordinary amount of work there.”
“The weather will clear,” said Swashbuckled calmly. “And if it doesn’t?”
Swashbuckled adjusted the wheel slightly.
“Then we shall have to do it blind.”
“Blind?” asked Octavia.
“Dead reckoning. Lunar distance. Latitude by noon sighting. Judging currents by swell direction. Birds. Clouds. Water temperature. Luck. Mild superstition. Severe superstition.”
“And these work?”
Swashbuckled considered this. “Often enough to continue attempting ocean crossings.”
Octavia sighed, reached into her coat pocket and produced her phone. “Well fortunately,” she said, “civilisation has now invented satellite navigation.”
Swashbuckled glanced at the glowing screen with deep suspicion. “Witchcraft.”
“It’s GPS.”
“Exactly,” said Swashbuckled. “Invisible sky trickery.”
Octavia stared at the screen, her thumb hovering anxiously over the map app. “I’m trying to pull up the satnav,” she said. “Then we can actually see where we’re going instead of guessing with pieces of paper.”
The battery was at three percent.
Swashbuckled kept her hands steady on the wheel, her eyes scanning the dark horizon. “That thing has a lithium heartbeat, Octavia. It’s not going to survive the preamble to a storm.”
As if on cue, the screen died completely.
Swashbuckled glanced over at the black screen, entirely unbothered. “So,” she said. “why don't we put the expensive paperweight away and get back to proper seamanship.”
The first cold drops of rain struck the deck.