Chapter four
ShipwreckedDarkness lay over land and sea.
The breakers roared and leaped. The entangled ships rode down, wrapped in flames, sheets of fire spreading upon the tumultuous surface of the waters. The waves rolled in to break in crimson bands of flame upon the rocks. Gradually She of the Veils rose into the star-speckled sky to cast down her golden-pinkish light. Everyone left alive clustered to windward of the flames. The flames blew and gyrated in ghastly streamers and fingers of fire down toward the breakers.
The wind would soon pile us up, if the flames did not eat their way back to our precarious perches along the taffrail and the poop varter platforms. I did not think any shanks had survived. Certainly we saw none. But the thought occurred to me that, being descended dire
