The Ruling Sea Read Online Free Page A

undeniably huge for a housecat, the man’s reaction more befitted one facing a tiger with gore-stained jaws. Before he could run, the man in black seized his arm.
    “She cannot touch you. Have you forgotten yourself already?”
    The cat walked primly toward them. The thin man positively writhed with fear. When the animal passed them it paused and crouched, and the fur rose along its back. The thin man squealed again. But the cat heard nothing, and though it looked about suspiciously its eyes passed over them unseeing.
    “One kick,” said the man in black. “Your left foot, or your right.”
    “I won’t do it!”
    The man in black took a step forward and seized the cat by the scruff of the neck. It yowled and twisted, but before it could scratch him the man flung it with all his strength over the rail. Two seconds sprawled, noiseless; then came a faint splash.
    He turned on the man in glasses.
    “Imbecile. Where is the intelligence you’re so proud of? Any such creature you may now drive off, or kill, or punish as it deserves. Savor the fact. Taste that new joy. We have a word for it, incidentally.”
    “Wh-what word is that?”
    “Safety.”
    They went below. Even one deck down it was still very dark. Soldiers groped for boots and helmets. A pair of tarboys brought their ration of water; they gargled and spat. The man in spectacles knew they could not see him, and in truth felt his fear ofthe soldiers melting away. But one of the boys, tall for his age with a finger-sized hole in one ear, gave him such a fright that he ducked behind the shot garlands. His bright eyes peeped timidly between the rows of cannonballs. The man in black shook his head.
    “Why can’t you act like a man?”
    “That boy tried to kill me!” squeaked the other.
    “If he touched you now he’d get a dozen lashes.”
    The thin man raised his head and gave a tentative smile. “Oh yes, lashes. He deserves lashes. A dozen lashes, boy!”
    “That’s better,” said the man in black.
    He took the thin man’s arm. “Notice, my friend, how great ships resemble great houses: each deck with its open central compartment, its courtyard. Each with its brighter rooms and its darker. Grand airy spaces for the masters, cupboards for those who serve. Most beings in this world cling to the place where fate has dropped them, even if that place is a stinking hold, where they scrabble about on hairy bellies, cursing and cursed. You must be strong indeed to change your fate.”
    The thin man looked to his right. Beside the shot garlands lay a row of corpses, wrapped in shreds of canvas and tied up with twine. Another row lay between the cannon on the starboard quarter.
    “Killed yesterday,” said the thin man. “Killed by your fleshanc ghouls. I didn’t realize there were so many.”
    The man in black turned him away. “The dead are none of your concern. Look here! A man after your own heart.”
    A sailor had found a patch of light beside an open gunport. He had a sheet of tattered paper and a pencil stub. With the sheet spread flat on a twenty-four-pounder he was writing in a quick, clumsy hand. Now and then he glanced up at his shipmates, but few of them met his eye.
    “He’s writing a letter, you see? Touch it, take it from him!”
    “Is it a love letter?” asked the man in spectacles, drawing near despite himself.
    The man in black laughed aloud. “What else? Go on, read it to me. I know full well you can read.”
    He snatched the page from the sailor’s hand and gave it to the thin man. The sailor appeared to forget the letter the moment it was taken from him: he merely crossed his arms and looked out of the gunport. On the back of his hand was a tattooed K .
    “It may make you blush,” said the man in black.
    The other adjusted his spectacles.
Dear Kalli
, the letterbegan. He could not make himself read it aloud. There was something wrong about the letter, anyway, for although it began as one thing it soon became something else.
    Dear