"Endurance" -- July 9

Word count: 1200

Endurance

A sight of a turtle at sea was a sign to persevere. Captain Victoria Yates remembered her mother’s teaching as she leaned over the railing, watching the dark, leathery back of the sea turtle disappearing beneath the waves. She frowned.

It had been eight weeks since their last sight of land and the sailors had been restless for two. It surfaced in the songs they sang while manipulating the sails, an undercurrent of discontent that bubbled close to the surface when they took their rations of grog at the end of the day. Tori was the only one who knew how close the grog barrels were to empty.

“We’re close,” Tori muttered to herself as she swung down from the railing, braids flicking across her shoulders. “I can feel it in my bones.”  

She took her platform at the middle of the ship, where she could see the whole deck. The tall steam-pipes at the center of the ship were silent and cold. They had run out of fuel a week ago. The sails, set and waiting, breathless, for a puff of wind to stir them, hung slack like dirty laundry in the rigging. Two sailors, covered in tar, sat mending rope below her, two lounged in the crow’s nest, and the rest sprawled in various attitudes on the deck and in the rigging.

They were all waiting for wind. Wind that seemed like it would never come. The sea was silent and still, the ocean swells so small they barely rocked the ship. The sailors sent nasty glances up at Tori. No wonder. A becalmed ship was open to pirates, to storms, to all kinds of dangers. Without power and without wind, the Endurance was crippled.

And so was she.

****

“A sea turtle.”

“Yes.” Tori restrained her anger. She had explained herself to the boatswain at least three times.

“All respect, Captain Yates, the men aren’t going to take faith in an alleged sighting of a sea turtle.”

“They don’t need to. They just have to have faith in me.”

The boatswain let out a deep sigh and finished his glass of wine—the last of the bottles Tori had supplied herself with at the last port. “Captain, you’re going to have a mutiny on your hands if you don’t talk to the crew soon.”

“Is there talk of mutiny on board?”

The boatswain pursed his lips. Tori knew better than to press him. She trusted him to keep any secret told in passing—the others undoubtedly felt the same. And the look told her all she needed. She rose from the table.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll talk to them. Wait for the wind, and I’ll talk to them.”

As the boatswain left, there was more than a little sadness and even a little dread in his eyes.

****

They had been three days becalmed and one of the water barrels had just run out when the crew came to talk to Captain Yates. The men crowded into her cabin, scratching at their wild hair and bushy beards, shuffling their feet.

“Captain Yates?”

“Yes?” Tori deliberately laid her instruments down atop the chart she’d been studying.

“Captain Yates, we’re wanting to know how much longer you intend keeping us out on the sea like this.”

It was something to admire about men, that they were generally so direct with their proposals and wants. Tori looked down at the notes she’d scratched in the margins of the ship’s log.

“It shouldn’t be much longer now, lads. Is there something particular concerning you?”

“Yes, Cap’n,” another seaman interjected. “We’re worried, Cap’n, about the water, Cap’n. We don’t have enough left for a long voyage, Cap’n.”

“How much do we have?”

“Enough to get us back to the last port, Cap’n, if we turn around now.”

A murmur arose among the men. It was crowded and musty inside the cabin, and Tori pushed through her men, beckoning them to follow her as she stepped out onto the deck and went to the rail for a breath of open, if not fresh and moving, air.

“Captain Yates, with all respect, we think it is time for you to do your duty toward us and take us back to land.”

Tori leaned over the railing, looking down into the still water, so quiet she could see the barnacle-crusted hull plunging straight beneath the waterline. So serene. Untroubled by a knot of sailors bent on getting her to give up on her dream.

A ripple broke the surface of the water, and then a few more, and then a dark shape surfaced, gliding alongside the ship. A tiny head broke the water and a warm glow filled Tori’s heart. A sea turtle. A sign.

She turned from the railing, her face set. “We press on,” she said. “It won’t be far now.”

She returned to her cabin through a knot of men that stared after her as she went with dark scowls on their brows.

****

Tori never thought she’d be defending herself from her own men. In the starlit twilight, she stood in her cabin alone, with two pistols and a sword on the table behind her. Outside, she could hear the grumbling of the men and the clanks of their weapons.

A heavy knock on her door.

Tori thrust her chin in the air and spoke as loudly and confidently as she could despite the sick fluttering in her chest.

“State your business.”

“Captain Yates, it’s us. We have proposals for you.” The voice was muffled through the cabin’s heavy door.

“I hope your proposals involve putting down your arms and returning to your posts.”

“Please let us in. We must speak to you.”

“Look, be reasonable. We’re only four or five days from a port—”

“Captain Yates, I think this discussion would be simpler if you would open the door.” The sailor’s voice rose to a frustrated pitch.

Tori hesitated. She leaned her forehead against the door, hand on the knob. “How many are on your side?” she asked softly.

“Everyone, Captain.”

Silence. Then the sailor’s voice again.

“I would hate to force the door on a lady, but you aren’t leaving me much of a choice, Captain Yates.”

So she was alone then. The people she had counted on for help, to support her, to be on her side when the mutiny came, had turned traitor. Tori looked back at her little table full of weapons. She thought of the forty men on the other side of the door, wiry and lean and agile sailors.

She thought of the sea turtle. How it meant land was nearer than they thought, and how it was a sign to stay the course and endure, and she thought of her mother, who had been the first sea captain in their family and loved turtles. Mother always claimed that turtles had seen her through all the storms of her time at sea.

Tori put her back to her table of weapons.

“Sounds like you’re going to have to break it down anyway,” she said.

In the starboard distance, unnoticed by the preoccupied crew, a long, low brown shadow of an island slipped from sight forever.