Kavin's World Read Free

her fit to sail, and any more you need you may ask later. You’re master of this sea-orphan; tell Belagin so, and what you’ll have him do. I’d never stand between a man and his true love. But there’s one thing…”
    “Anything, uncle!”
    “I’ll have you let me come with you, when she takes the salt water. At least once. Agreed?”
    I would have agreed to have off an arm for that gift.
    A thousand silver pieces were more than enough to make the ship ready again, for Belagin would ask nothing for his work, only for the cost of new copper. He had become fascinated by my beautiful seabird himself, as a great many others did as she lay on the shore.
    But I was as jealous of her as a new bridegroom at harvest festival. I spent every day with her, getting into every task of her repair, returning each day covered with bits of tar to a borrowed bed in the nearby village. In fact, I realized one morning, as I spread canvas on the shore, that I had completely forgotten about the girl Jora. That was well enough, because she had taken up with another by then, a most serious affair indeed, resulting, I believe, in twins.
    That morning, I stood under the ship’s lovely, beaked prow and tried to think of a name for her. She was nearly ready, and I had thought of a dozen names and discarded a dozen. But nothing seemed right or proper, somehow.
    I climbed aboard her once more and made my way to the high quarterdeck, where I had been working at a task I would not allow anyone else to do. We of Dorada are skilled in navigation above all others, and we know ways of setting such instruments as are needed. Near the whipstaff I had placed a great compass, made for me by a craftsman in the town, with an oil lamp to light it at night. On each side, I intended to place bronze peloruses, to line up angles between the ship herself and marks ashore. These lay ready to be placed, and my tools waited nearby.
    The ship had been steered by a rudder hung in pintles, up to the whipstaff above; the shaft of this rudder lay cased in a kind of column of dark wood rising through the after end. Next to the staff’s point of emergence from the deck I had seen a small square trap, flush on the deck of the great cabin, which I had assumed was for the purpose of casting out wastes.
    It was odd that as often as I had studied the ship, I had never before today noticed a small fact: this was a matter of the distance beneath the great cabin, and the place where the rudder post emerged. The trap, I suddenly realized, was not even visible on the outside of the hull.
    I quickly went down into the great cabin, an odd idea forming in my mind. At the trap, I placed a sharp iron under the edge, and pried up. It came, unwillingly enough, and with a squeak of nails, since it had been fastened tightly. There, underneath, was a black opening; a place in my ship, where I had never been. Impossible!
    I found a greaselamp and lit it, and slid down into the opening, barely big enough for my thin body.
    The space beneath ran under the cabin deck; it was a space not quite high enough to stand up in, and, in the lampflare, full of… something. I should have realized , I thought, that ships sometimes keep such hiding places, on the chance of piracy or mutiny. Here I might find anything!
    I found four chests, all empty—then a fifth, filled with a mad collection of things. I pulled out the contents, pawing each item with increasing puzzlement. Bright-colored garments, full of damp-mold; a pile of queer jewelry, of no great value; and a moldering mass of rolls, which I opened, too quickly, for some of them broke apart as I handled them. The language was totally unfamiliar, a twisting script. But here and there in one roll were drawings of this very ship, and I knew with joy that I had found the working sailplan itself.
    Other drawings were there, also: shoreline work, which must have been a set of sailing directions for some unknown coast, odd symbols and incomprehensible