The man in the sea vanished underwater for a few seconds, but he came up again. Still, the mechanical ship showed no flag. The blinking light signal went on and on.
‘Sir, do we engage?’ the second mate’s voice called from near the hatchway.
‘She’s got no colours, she could be anyone’s!’ Heecham bellowed back.
When the man in the water reached the end of the rope, he only rested against it, too tired to pull himself up. Someone yelled at him to tie a bowline knot, but he clearly wasn’t a sailor; he only looked blank. Shrapnel tore into the water next to him. The sailors shouted to hurry the fuck up before he was blown apart.
‘Quiet!’ Kite said to them. ‘Quiet, all of you. Sir,’ he called down to the man in the water, ‘listen. I’m going to tell you how to tie a knot that won’t break your ribs when we pull you in, all right? It’s not difficult.’ Everyone gasped as a cannon ball smashed up a plume of water all of ten feet off the bow. On the quarterdeck, Heecham was still telling the helmsman to hold still, and not far off Kite and the sailors, a midshipman was hauling hard on the signal flag ropes, uncoiling a message up the mast:
URGENT identify yourself
Still nothing from the mechanical ship, no flag to show its nation. More shrapnel.
‘Ready?’ Kite said, in what he hoped was a calm voice. It was Officer Trick Number One. If you could sound calm enough, you could claim that everything was absolutely fine, even if the man next to you had just exploded, and people would believe you.
The man in the water nodded. He was shivering so badly he could barely move his hands, but he was doing a hell of a job at not panicking, and he managed the knot on the first try. The second it was done, the sailors leapt on the rope and hauled him out. Kite leaned down over the side to lift him up. The man folded on to the deck soaked and shivering. Kite knelt to start getting the man’s coat off. The water streaming off him was so cold that it hurt to touch.
Through the rails, Kite saw more gun flashes, and then a mammoth fireball exploded across the mechanical ship’s prow. The heat blasted all the way to the Defiance, along with an acrid smell and plumes of pitchy smoke. Sailors jerked back from the rail, swearing. Something blasted into the water right next to the hull, even bumped it. A chunk of one of those great waterwheels, mangled, and so hot it hissed furiously in the water.
The hull ground along something. The helmsman turned them away.
‘Wait, what about …’ The man trailed off. He looked dazed. Hitting the sea would have felt like smacking into something solid from the height he’d fallen.
‘We can’t sail here blind,’ Kite said. He squeezed his hands to make him listen, because the way he was shivering looked more like fear now than cold. ‘Come on, let’s …’
‘Is he a devil?’ someone asked plaintively.
‘No, he’s just cold,’ Kite said with as much authority as he could muster. ‘Move aside, come on. Back to work.’ He helped the man up as well as he could. ‘Are you?’ he added, less sure. ‘Or – the other thing?’
‘No,’ the man managed. He looked scared. ‘Are you a ghost?’
‘No,’ said Kite, perplexed. ‘I’m a signal lieutenant.’
The man looked even more relieved than Kite felt.
His name was Jem Castlereagh. As soon as he was dry, Kite took him to Captain Heecham who, for all his usual stolidity, listened hard. So did Kite. The two senior lieutenants stood a little distance behind Heecham, the lamplight dotting gleams on the silver stripes on their sleeves.
The name of the mechanical ship was the Kingdom. It was not an infernal invention, nor celestial, but one built by ordinary people. It had come from Scotland. It was a vessel surveying for a lighthouse. Jem had been aboard on a government inspection; he was something to do with Parliament and a project to improve lighthouses all round the coast. But then they had begun to see a ghost ship following them.
Jem had thought something odd was going on ashore as well, because when they passed ports, the lights were too few and too dim – but it wasn’t until half an hour ago that they had any idea that anything really strange had happened. Not until they realised the ghost ship wasn’t a ghost ship at all, but a French battleship trailing them. The French had fired when the Kingdom tried to pull away.
While he spoke, Jem studied Heecham’s office. His eyes caught on the lamps fixed between the tilting windows, on their uniforms, the papers on the desk. They were remarkable eyes, an earthy shade of bluish-green Kite had never seen before, and which he wouldn’t have expected on someone so foreign-looking. But Jem wasn’t foreign. His voice was as English as Oxford silverware.
‘But why did you think it was a ghost ship?’ Heecham demanded. He sounded furious, which was how he always sounded when he was rattled. ‘We’re in the middle of a war, man; you’re hardly more likely to see a ghost than the French! And what the bollocking hell was that ship? What were those waterwheels, how were you running on no sail?’
Jem showed no ire, nor impatience. He only looked like he would have sold his soul to be anywhere else. ‘May I ask what year it is?’
‘What?’ Heecham snapped.
‘Seventeen ninety-seven,’ Kite said, with a strange spinning feeling.
Jem nodded. He seemed calm, but it was oil on water. He was still shaking, even though the cabin was hot now. ‘Captain Heecham – we left Scotland in eighteen ninety-one. There is no war then. We all thought the French ship was a ghost ship because … because we don’t have sailing ships any more. Modern ships run on coal engines.’ He smiled a fraction. ‘I suspect I’m rather lost, gentlemen.’
There was a moment of entire stillness. The only motion was the swing of the lamps on the ceiling, and the tilt of the horizon beyond the windows. Heecham shifted his weight from foot to foot and huffed his breath out. He wanted to roar that it was all rubbish, Kite could see that accusation coiled up in his throat, but they had all seen the Kingdom. There was nothing like it anywhere in the world. Kite had heard of engines, but only ones which worked the pumps in mines. They didn’t power ships. And there was Jem himself; extremely English and somehow foreign all the same, dressed with Puritanical plainness all in black and white.
‘Well,’ Heecham said finally. He seemed to deflate. ‘We are making now for Southampton, where, if you stick to this story, the Admiralty shall wish to speak to you in detail. In the meantime, Mr Castlereagh, you must consider yourself our guest.’
‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’ Jem sounded mechanical. Kite brushed his shoulder, worried he might be about to faint. He didn’t faint, but he caught Kite’s knuckles and squeezed them as hard as someone in the middle of an amputation might have. His skin was freezing, despite the brazier beside him. He was going into shock. Kite edged the brazier closer with the toe of his boot.
‘How is this even possible?’ Jem said softly, to all of them.
‘The fog, perhaps. Something eerie about it. One always hears stories.’ Heecham had turned angry again. Jem flinched. Kite tried to communicate only with his fingertips that there was nothing to worry about there, that Heecham wasn’t angry with him, only his own ignorance.
Everyone was quiet. The sounds of the deck came down to them; the thumps of footsteps, muted from the seamen who went barefoot, sharp from officers’ boot heels. Kite could feel the rudder pulling to one side as the helmsman steered away from shore.