To Hull And Back Quotes

Get rid of their mast, knock holes in the hull, then get back on board." "You want us to sink her?" Gundar asked, and Halt shook his head. "No. I want her badly damaged but capable of making it back to port. I want the word to go out that the strange ship with the red falcon ensign"—he gestured to Evanlyn's ensign, flying from the mast top—"is manned by dangerous, hairy maniacs with axes and is to be avoided at all costs." "That sounds like us," Gundar said cheerfully.

He sat in disbelief as the Mission Possible continued its rocking motion farther out to nowhere. He could hear the metronomic slap, slap, slap of water against the boat’s hull. He checked his watch, turned his Yankees cap around, and started the engines. Taking one last look around, he turned the bow of the Bertram back toward shore. Ready or not, it was time for Jake Reid to go home.

In my experience, whatever happens clings to us like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowing us slightly, both uglifying and giving us texture. You can scrape all you want, you can, if you have money, hire someone else to scrape, but the barnacles will come back or at least leave a blemish on the steel.

Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slip-over jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.

Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy’s. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.

Things that have happened to me that have generated more sympathy than depression Having tinnitus. Scalding my hand on an oven, and having to have my hand in a strange ointment-filled glove for a week. Accidentally setting my leg on fire. Losing a job. Breaking a toe. Being in debt. Having a river flood our nice new house, causing ten thousand pounds’ worth of damage. Bad Amazon reviews. Getting the norovirus. Having to be circumcised when I was eleven. Lower-back pain. Having a blackboard fall on me. Irritable bowel syndrome. Being a street away from a terrorist attack. Eczema. Living in Hull in January. Relationship break-ups. Working in a cabbage-packing warehouse. Working in media sales (okay, that came close). Consuming a poisoned prawn. Three-day migraines.

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep" The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day. As long as it takes to pass A ship keeps raising its hull; The wetter ground like glass Reflects a standing gull. The land may vary more; But wherever the truth may be--- The water comes ashore, And the people look at the sea. They cannot look out far. They cannot look in deep. But when was that ever a bar To any watch they keep?

My own father came out of the sea and went back that way... His splintered hull shored him long enough to drop anchor inside my mother. Shoals of babies vied for life. I won.

I love coming back into Chersonesus in the afternoon; the city is lit up by the sun beginning to set. The sound of the water rushing past the hull, and the sky is as blue as Helena’s eyes.” “Did I hear a woman’s name?

Matthias nodded to the fisherman and Rotty winked back at him, giving a brief tug on the beard of his disguise. He poled the boat rapidly down the canal. As they approached Zentsbridge, Matthias caught sight of the huge bottleboat parked beneath it. It was wide enough that the hulls scraped as Rotty tried to pass. The bottle man and Rotty broke into a heated argument, and Nina let loose another wail, long and loud enough that Matthias wondered if she was trying to compete with the plague siren. “Perhaps some deep breathing?” the medik suggested from the railing. Matthias gave Nina the barest warning glance. They could fake a pregnancy. They couldn’t fake an actual birth. At least he didn’t think they could. He wouldn’t put anything past Kaz at this point.

Now when he closes his eyes he can really look at himself. He no longer sees a mask. He sees without seeing, to be exact. Vision without sight, a fluid grasp of intangibles: the merging of sight and sound: the heart of the web. Here stream the different personalities which evade the crude contact of the senses; here the overtones of recognition discreetly lap against one another in bright, vibrant harmonies. There is no language employed, no outlines delineated. When a ship founders, it settles slowly; the spars, the masts, the rigging float away. On the ocean floor of death the bleeding hull bedecks itself with jewels; remorselessly the anatomic life begins. What was ship becomes the nameless indestructible. Like ships, men founder time and again. Only memory saves them from complete dispersion. Poets drop their stitches in the loom, straws for drowning men to grasp as they sink into extinction. Ghosts climb back on watery stairs, make imaginary ascents, vertiginous drops, memorize numbers, dates, events, in passing from gas to liquid and back again. There is no brain capable of registering the changing changes. Nothing happens in the brain, except the gradual rust and detrition of the cells. But in the minds, worlds unclassified, undenominated, unassimilated, form, break, unite, dissolve and harmonize ceaselessly. In the mind-world ideas are the indestructible elements which form the jewelled constellations of the interior life. We move within their orbits, freely if we follow their intricate patterns, enslaved or possessed if we try to subjugate them.

Where to?" said the bear. The boy wobbled back to the rear seat, concentrating as the hull rolled and bounced beneath him. He half sat and half fell onto the hard wooden bench, bashing his wrist painfully against the edge as he landed. "Ow!" he said. "Just over to the other side, please." He waved his unbashed hand vaguely out across the water without looking up. "Right you are," said the bear.

....One dark night, my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull; I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down, they lay together, hull to hull, where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . . My mind's not right. A car radio bleats, "Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell, as if my hand were at its throat. . . . I myself am hell; nobody's here-- only skunks, that search in the moonlight for a bite to eat. They march on their soles up Main Street: white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire under the chalk-dry and spar spire of the Trinitarian Church. I stand on top of our back steps and breathe the rich air-- a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail. She jabs her wedge-head in a cup of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail, and will not scare.

Pham Nuwen spent years learning to program/explore. Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father’s castle. Where the creek had worn that away, ten meters down, there were the crumpled hulks of machines—flying machines, the peasants said—from the great days of Canberra’s original colonial era. But the castle midden was clean and fresh compared to what lay within the Reprise’s local net. There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it—the horror of it, Sura said—was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex—and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely. . .the starting instant was actually some hundred million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems. So behind all the top-level interfaces was layer under layer of support. Some of that software had been designed for wildly different situations. Every so often, the inconsistencies caused fatal accidents. Despite the romance of spaceflight, the most common accidents were simply caused by ancient, misused programs finally getting their revenge. “We should rewrite it all,” said Pham. “It’s been done,” said Sura, not looking up. She was preparing to go off-Watch, and had spent the last four days trying to root a problem out of the coldsleep automation. “It’s been tried,” corrected Bret, just back from the freezers. “But even the top levels of fleet system code are enormous. You and a thousand of your friends would have to work for a century or so to reproduce it.” Trinli grinned evilly. “And guess what—even if you did, by the time you finished, you’d have your own set of inconsistencies. And you still wouldn’t be consistent with all the applications that might be needed now and then.” Sura gave up on her debugging for the moment. “The word for all this is ‘mature programming environment.’ Basically, when hardware performance has been pushed to its final limit, and programmers have had several centuries to code, you reach a point where there is far more signicant code than can be rationalized. The best you can do is understand the overall layering, and know how to search for the oddball tool that may come in handy—take the situation I have here.” She waved at the dependency chart she had been working on. “We are low on working fluid for the coffins. Like a million other things, there was none for sale on dear old Canberra. Well, the obvious thing is to move the coffins near the aft hull, and cool by direct radiation. We don’t have the proper equipment to support this—so lately, I’ve been doing my share of archeology. It seems that five hundred years ago, a similar thing happened after an in-system war at Torma. They hacked together a temperature maintenance package that is precisely what we need.” “Almost precisely.

Don’t you see?” I watch with fascination rather than horror as a chain of explosions breaks the back of the Intrepid. “We’re dead. We’re already dead.” The hull of the Intrepid flexes, buckling beneath us. Explosions race toward us in silence, threatening to consume us. There’s no time to act. There’s barely time to utter one last sentence before we’re caught in the inferno. “We’ve probably been dead for centuries.

Days after the elections of 2016, asha sent me a link to a talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. We have to have hope, she says to me across 3,000 miles, she in Brooklyn, me in Los Angeles. We listen together as Dr. deGrasse Tyson explains that the very atoms and molecules in our bodies are traceable to the crucibles in the centers of stars that once upon a time exploded into gas clouds. And those gas clouds formed other stars and those stars possessed the divine-right mix of properties needed to create not only planets, including our own, but also people, including us, me and her. He is saying that not only are we in the universe, but that the universe is in us. He is saying that we, human beings, are literally made out of stardust. And I know when I hear Dr. deGrasse Tyson say this that he is telling the truth because I have seen it since I was a child, the magic, the stardust we are, in the lives of the people I come from. I watched it in the labor of my mother, a Jehovah's Witness and a woman who worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time, keeping other people's children, working the reception desks at gyms, telemarketing, doing anything and everything for 16 hours a day the whole of my childhood in the Van Nuys barrio where we lived. My mother, cocoa brown and smooth, disowned by her family for the children she had as a very young and unmarried woman. My mother, never giving up despite never making a living wage. I saw it in the thin, brown face of my father, a boy out of Cajun country, a wounded healer, whose addictions were borne of a world that did not love him and told him so not once but constantly. My father, who always came back, who never stopped trying to be a version of himself there were no mirrors for. And I knew it because I am the thirteenth-generation progeny of a people who survived the hulls of slave ships, survived the chains, the whips, the months laying in their own shit and piss. The human beings legislated as not human beings who watched their names, their languages, their Goddesses and Gods, the arc of their dances and beats of their songs, the majesty of their dreams, their very families snatched up and stolen, disassembled and discarded, and despite this built language and honored God and created movement and upheld love. What could they be but stardust, these people who refused to die, who refused to accept the idea that their lives did not matter, that their children's lives did not matter?

A fine statue of a naked Theseus stands proudly today in Athens' central place of assembly, the city's hub, Syntagma Square. Even today he is a focus of Athenian identity and pride. The ship he brought back from his adventures in the Labyrinth of Crete remained moored in the harbour at Piraeus, a visitor attraction right up to the days of historical ancient Athens, the time of Socrates and Aristotle. Its continuous presence there for such a long time caused the Ship of Theseus to become a subject of intriguing philosophical speculation. Over hundreds of years, its rigging, its planks, its hull, deck, keel, prow, stern and all its timbers had been replaced so that not one atom of the original remained. Could one call it the same ship? Am I the same person I was fifty years ago? Every molecule and cell of my body has been replaced many times over.

Jin sipped his coffee and made a face. I’ve seen it before. Earthers hate our coffee. Physics dictates that it tastes like shit. Earth’s air is 20 percent oxygen. The rest is stuff human bodies don’t need like nitrogen and argon. So Artemis’s air is pure oxygen at 20 percent Earth’s air pressure. That gives us the right amount of oxygen while minimizing pressure on the hulls. It’s not a new concept—it goes back to the Apollo days. Thing is, the lower the pressure, the lower the boiling point of water.

First-century discipleship was expressed as a servant-master relationship (see Matthew 10:24). Once accepted as a disciple, a young man started as a talmidh, or beginner, who sat in the back of the room and could not speak. Then he became a distinguished student, who took an independent line in his approach or questioning. At the next level, he became a disciple-associate, who sat immediately behind the rabbi during prayer time. Finally he achieved the highest level, a disciple of the wise, and was recognized as the intellectual equal of his rabbi.'" 2. Memorizing the teacher's words: Oral tradition provided the basic way of studying. Disciples learned the teacher's words verbatim to pass along to the next person. Often disciples learned as many as four interpretations of each major passage in the Torah. 3. Learning the teacher's way of ministry: A disciple learned how his teacher kept God's commands, including how he practiced the Sabbath, fasted, prayed, and said blessings in ceremonial situations. He would also learn his rabbi's teaching methods and the many traditions his master followed. 4. Imitating the teacher's life and character: Jesus said that when a disciple is fully taught, he "will be like his teacher" (Luke 6:40). The highest calling of a disciple was to imitate his teacher. Paul called on Timothy to follow his example (see 2 Timothy 3:10-14), and he didn't hesitate to call on all believers to do the same (see 1 Corinthians 4:14-16; 1 1:1; Philippians 4:9). One story in ancient tradition tells of a rabbinical student so devoted to his teacher that he hid in the teacher's bedchamber to discover the mentor's sexual technique. To be sure, this is a bit extreme, yet it demonstrates the level of commitment required to be a disciple. 5. Raising up their own disciples: When a disciple finished his training, he was expected to reproduce what he'd learned by finding and training his own apprentices. He would start his own school and call it after his name, such as the House of Hillel.

Our ship is a barque. She’s a lot like a barquentine, but not exactly like. Similar in length to the Monsea, and three-masted, but the foremast and the mainmast carry square-rigged sails and only the aftermost mast is rigged fore-and-aft. Do I sound more and more like I know what I’m talking about? The front and middle masts carry square sails that drop down from above. The back mast carries triangle sails that we raise from below, with lines I know the names of. And she’s beautiful, she’s so, so completely beautiful with the wind in her sails. She’s tried and true; she has barnacles clinging to her once-crimson hull that’s been burnished by the sun and the sea into something more weathered. Annet bought her from a wine merchant in Monport, on behalf of the queen. Bitterblue wanted to rename her something boring, but Annet and Navi both cried out in alarm that it was bad luck to rename a ship. I was relieved, because her name is the Fledgling. “Silly name for a ship that’s sailed many seas,” said Bitterblue, but I like to imagine a grown bird that’s only just now learning to fly.

Let’s each take a Sailfish and have a race,” George cried, running over to a pretty light-blue boat, with a yellow sail wrapped neatly around the mast. The mast and rudder had been placed carefully next to the hull. “That sounds like fun,” Nancy said enthusiastically. “Which boat would you like, Bess?” Nancy was eying a dark-green one with a red stripe around it. Its white sail, mast, and rudder were placed exactly like the others. “Someone keeps things shipshape around here,” she thought admiringly. “These boats look like painted wooden soldiers all lined up.” “I’ll stick to the rowboat, thanks,” Bess said. “I’d rather be under my own steam. If I took a sailboat, the wind might blow me somewhere I didn’t want to go,” she added, glancing at a breakwater of rocks not far away. “Don’t worry, Bess,” said Nancy. “Why don’t you come with me? We can always tack back when you say the word. It’s a light offshore wind,” she added, looking up at the pennant on the boathouse. “And I promise to head up into the wind, whenever you’re scared, although I don’t relish getting in irons. Oh well, if we do, you can jump out and push!” Nancy laughed.

Many hundreds of craft of all sizes and nationalities - transatlantic steamers, full-rigged ships, barques, schooners, and fishing smacks - were running into the Sound from the open sea, making for the shelter of the roads of Elsinore. Not a single vessel was heading the other way, all were scudding in before the tempest; many of them, no doubt, had put to sea several days before, bound round the Skaw into the German Ocean, but had been compelled to turn back by the violence of the hurricane. They were all staggering along under the smallest possible amounts of canvas, pitching heavily into the frightfully high seas; here a full-rigged ship under close-reefed topsails; here a schooner under fore and main trysails; here a brig under bare poles; here a pilot-cutter under spit-fire jib, and the balance-reef down in her mainsail. Several vessels had lost spars or portions of their bulwarks; one Norwegian barque was evidently water-logged, and in a sinking condition, and was floundering slowly into smoother water, but just in time; and outside the Sound, on the raging Kattegat, were hundreds of other vessels, some hull down on the horizon, making for the same refuge, their fate still uncertain among those gigantic rollers, and, no doubt, with many an anxious heart on board of them.

I shall describe one example of this kind of world, the greatest planet of a mighty sun. Situated, if I remember rightly, near the congested heart of the galaxy, this star was born late in galactic history, and it gave birth to planets when already many of the older stars were encrusted with smouldering lava. Owing to the violence of solar radiation its nearer planets had (or will have) stormy climates. On one of them a mollusc-like creature, living in the coastal shallows, acquired a propensity to drift in its boatlike shell on the sea’s surface, thus keeping in touch with its drifting vegetable food. As the ages passed, its shell became better adapted to navigation. Mere drifting was supplemented by means of a crude sail, a membrane extending from the creature’s back. In time this nautiloid type proliferated into a host of species. Some of these remained minute, but some found size advantageous, and developed into living ships. One of these became the intelligent master of this great world. The hull was a rigid, stream-lined vessel, shaped much as the nineteenth-century clipper in her prime, and larger than our largest whale. At the rear a tentacle or fin developed into a rudder, which was sometimes used also as a propeller, like a fish’s tail. But though all these species could navigate under their own power to some extent, their normal means of long-distance locomotion was their great spread of sail. The simple membranes of the ancestral type had become a system of parchment-like sails and bony masts and spars, under voluntary muscular control. Similarity to a ship was increased by the downward-looking eyes, one on each side of the prow. The mainmast-head also bore eyes, for searching the horizon. An organ of magnetic sensitivity in the brain afforded a reliable means of orientation. At the fore end of the vessel were two long manipulatory tentacles, which during locomotion were folded snugly to the flanks. In use they formed a very serviceable pair of arms.

We are all damaged now,’ said Arvida, watching the approach. ‘All but you.’ Yesugei sat back against the curve of the hull. ‘No living thing is undamaged.’ ‘Yet you still smile. You still believe.’ ‘So do the rest. They need to remember, that is all. For now, all they see is slow defeat. They forget they have been... magnificent. They fight alone when all others are lost or manning walls far away. They come at enemy out of the glare of the sun. They have made him halt, turn back, come after us. They have forsaken the world they loved, have let it pass into ruin, all for this.’ Yesugei thought of Qin Xa then, from whom there had never been a murmur of unbelief. ‘They will remember, before the end. Other Legions have failed this test – they let their souls change.

Later that day, at about five-thirty P.M., Harriman met with Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who was also suffering from a cold and looked tired. The two discussed the broader naval situation, in particular the threat to Singapore posed by the rising power and aggression of Japan. The U.S. Navy had no plans to interfere, Hull told him, but he personally believed that the navy should deploy some of its most powerful ships to the waters of the Dutch East Indies in a display of force, in the hopes—as Harriman paraphrased his remarks—“that by bluff the Japs could be kept within bounds.” By sitting back, Hull said, America risked the “ignominious result” of having Japan seize key strategic points in the Far East, while America kept its ships safely moored at their big Pacific base. Obviously tired and befogged by his cold, Hull could not for the moment remember its exact location. “What is the name of that harbor?” Hull asked. “Pearl Harbor,” Harriman said. “Yes,” Hull said.

And were you immediately taken with Charlotte, when you found her?" "Who wouldn't be?" Gentry parried with a bland smile. He drew a slow circle on Lottie's palm, stroking the insides of her fingers, brushed his thumb over the delicate veins of her wrist. The subtle exploration made her feel hot and breathless, her entire being focused on the fingertip that feathered along the tender flesh of her upper palm. Most disconcerting of all was the realization that Gentry didn't even know what he was doing. He fiddled lazily with her hand and talked with Sophia, while the chocolate service was brought to the parlor and set out on the table. "Isn't it charming?" Sophia asked, indicating the flowered porcelain service with a flourish. She picked up the tall, narrow pot and poured a dark, fragrant liquid into one of the small cups, filling the bottom third. "Most people use cocoa powder, but the best results are obtained by mixing the cream with chocolate liquor." Expertly she stirred a generous spoonful of sugar into the steaming liquid. "Not liquor as in wine or spirits, mind you. Chocolate liquor is pressed from the meat of the beans, after they have been roasted and hulled." "It smells quite lovely," Lottie commented, her breath catching as Gentry's fingertip investigated the plump softness at the base of her thumb. Sophia turned her attention to preparing the other cups. "Yes, and the flavor is divine. I much prefer chocolate to coffee in the morning." "Is it a st-stimulant, then?" Lottie asked, finally managing to jerk her hand away from Gentry. Deprived of his plaything, he gave her a questioning glance. "Yes, of a sort," Sophia replied, pouring a generous amount of cream into the sweetened chocolate liquor. She stirred the cups with a tiny silver spoon. "Although it is not quite as animating as coffee, chocolate is uplifting in its own way." She winked at Lottie. "Some even claim that chocolate rouses the amorous instincts." "How interesting," Lottie said, doing her best to ignore Gentry as she accepted her cup. Inhaling the rich fumes appreciatively, she took a tiny sip of the shiny, dark liquid. The robust sweetness slid along her tongue and tickled the back of her throat. Sophia laughed in delight at Lottie's expression. "You like it, I see. Good- now I have found an inducement to make you visit often." Lottie nodded as she continued to drink. By the time she reached the bottom of the cup, her head was swimming, and her nerves were tingling from the mixture of heat and sugar. Gentry set his cup aside after a swallow or two. "Too rich for my taste, Sophia, although I compliment your skill in preparing it. Besides, my amorous instincts need no encouragement." He smiled as the statement caused Lottie to choke on the last few drops of chocolate.

Jesus Christ!" Foraker's shocked exclamation burned across the bridge like a buzzsaw, and Caslet's mouth fell open as his plot suddenly changed. One instant, his ship was charging into the teeth of two opponents' fire; the next instant, there were no opponents. The warships' acceleration had carried them within less than three hundred thousand clicks of the Manty merchantman, which had suddenly rolled back down to present her own broadside to them. Eight incredibly powerful grasers smashed out from the "unarmed freighter" like the wrath of God, and the second raider destroyer simply vanished. A single pair of hits on the light cruiser burned through her sidewall as if it hadn't even existed, and her after third blew apart in a hurricane of splintered and vaporized plating. Three of Shannon's shipboard lasers added their own fury to her damage, chewing huge holes in what was left of her hull, but they were strictly an afterthought, for that ship was already a helpless hulk. "We're being hailed, Skipper," Lieutenant Dutton said shakenly from Communications. Caslet just looked at him, unable to speak, then looked back down at his plot and swallowed as the unmistakable impeller signatures of a full dozen LACs drifted up from the "freighter's" gravitic shadow and locked their weapons on his ship. "Speaker," he rasped. "Unknown cruiser, this is Captain Honor Harrington of Her Majesty's Armed Merchant Cruiser Wayfarer," a soprano voice said quietly. "I appreciate your assistance, and I wish I could offer you the reward your gallantry deserves, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to surrender.

Like noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail feathers streaming like pennons. A gentle joyousness—a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.

The front door swung open and a gust of wind rushed inside. Boots scuffled along the floor, and Camille turned to see what pig had shown up at Daphne’s so early in the day. Her heart thumped as the door slammed. Stuart McGreenery tucked his arched captain’s hat under his arm and pulled off his white gloves. “A charming establishment,” he said. He turned up his nose, and sniffed the air. “Is that desperation I smell?” Oscar threw his fork and knife on the table and kicked back his chair. “Did you decide to join us for breakfast?” McGreenery lunged forward and Oscar rose to his feet. “I came to see what you know about the hole in the hull of my ship, you insolent whelp,” McGreenery said. Oscar’s cheek twitched with pleasure. “Why not just have me escorted down to it with a knife in my back?” Camille stood and inserted herself between the two men. Daphne sat in the corner of the parlor rolling cigars, her wide eyes darting from McGreenery to Oscar. “We heard the explosion,” Camille said. “What makes you think we had anything to do with it?” McGreenery retreated one small step and stared down the slope of his nose at her. This time he kept his icy stare level with her eyes. “Because it was not an accident. The explosion was set in a deliberate attempt to keep me from departing for Port Adelaide.” Camille tried to subdue the shake of her knees. “We certainly didn’t see it. Oscar and I were in our room.” McGreenery cocked his head. “I heard you were sharing a room.” He glanced at Oscar. “I doubt William would be fond of that.” “You don’t have the right to even speak his name,” Oscar said, strangling each word. McGreenery gracefully removed the hat out from under his arm and slipped it back on. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing will stop me from reaching the stone, least of all a little girl and her trained monkey.” Camille rushed forward, ready to smack McGreenery across the cheek. Oscar grabbed her around the waist and held her back. McGreenery bowed slightly, grinning with pleasure, and then whisked out the front door. She shrugged out form Oscar’s grasp and watched through the windows as McGreenery sauntered down the street toward the Stealth, where she could hear the echo of repairs already under way. “One day that prick is going to get what he deserves,” Oscar muttered. “I just hope I’m the one who gets to give it to him.

Another episode startled Trump’s advisers on the Asia trip. As the president and his entourage embarked on the journey, they stopped in Hawaii on November 3 to break up the long flight and allow Air Force One to refuel. White House aides arranged for the president and first lady to make a somber pilgrimage so many of their predecessors had made: to visit Pearl Harbor and honor the twenty-three hundred American sailors, soldiers, and marines who lost their lives there. The first couple was set to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits just off the coast of Honolulu and straddles the hull of the battleship that sank into the Pacific during the Japanese surprise bombing attack in 1941. As a passenger boat ferried the Trumps to the stark white memorial, the president pulled Kelly aside for a quiet consult. “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asked his chief of staff. Kelly was momentarily stunned. Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor” and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else. Kelly explained to him that the stealth Japanese attack here had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet and prompted the country’s entrance into World War II, eventually leading the United States to drop atom bombs on Japan. If Trump had learned about “a date which will live in infamy” in school, it hadn’t really pierced his consciousness or stuck with him. “He was at times dangerously uninformed,” said one senior former adviser. Trump’s lack of basic historical knowledge surprised some foreign leaders as well. When he met with President Emmanuel Macron of France at the United Nations back in September 2017, Trump complimented him on the spectacular Bastille Day military parade they had attended together that summer in Paris. Trump said he did not realize until seeing the parade that France had had such a rich history of military conquest. He told Macron something along the lines of “You know, I really didn’t know, but the French have won a lot of battles. I didn’t know.” A senior European official observed, “He’s totally ignorant of everything. But he doesn’t care. He’s not interested.” Tillerson developed a polite and self-effacing way to manage the gaps in Trump’s knowledge. If he saw the president was completely lost in the conversation with a foreign leader, other advisers noticed, the secretary of state would step in to ask a question. As Tillerson lodged his question, he would reframe the topic by explaining some of the basics at issue, giving Trump a little time to think. Over time, the president developed a tell that he would use to get out of a sticky conversation in which a world leader mentioned a topic that was totally foreign or unrecognizable to him. He would turn to McMaster, Tillerson

The basic requirements for crossing an ocean under sail are no more than they always have been – a strong hull; a simple, easily managed rig; a good steering system with back-up; the ability to repair or rebuild anything on board while still at sea. It really isn’t that complicated.

near-deserted parking lot, both buildings looking freshly painted and hopeful for a marina in which there were no yachts. The biggest boat moored at the dock looked to be a forty-footer. Most of the others looked to be lobster boats, aged and constructed of wood. A few of the newer ones were fiberglass. The nicest of those was about thirty-five feet long, the hull painted blue, the wheelhouse painted white, the deck a honey teak. She paid attention to it because her husband stood on it, bathed in their headlights. Caleb exited the car fast. He pointed back at her, told Brian his wife was not taking things well. Rachel was happy to note Caleb limped even as he speed-walked to the boat. She, on the other hand, moved slowly, her eyes on Brian. His gaze barely left hers except for the occasional flicks in the direction of Caleb. If she’d known she’d end up killing him, would she have boarded the boat? She could turn around and go to the police. My husband is an impostor, she’d say. She imagined some smarmy desk sergeant replying, “Aren’t we all, ma’am?” Yes, she was certain, it was a crime to impersonate someone and a crime to keep two wives, but were those serious crimes? In the end, wouldn’t Brian just take a plea and it would all go away? She’d be left the laughingstock never-was, the failed print reporter who’d become a pill-addicted broadcast reporter who’d become a punch line and then a shut-in and who would keep the local comics stocked with weeks of fresh material once it was discovered that Meltdown Media Chick had married a con man with another wife and another life. She followed Caleb up the ramp to the boat. He stepped aboard. When she went to do the same, Brian offered his hand. She stared at it until he dropped it. He noticed the gun she carried. “Should I show you mine? So I feel safer?” “Be my guest.” She stepped aboard. As she did, Brian caught her by the wrist and stripped the gun from her hand in the same motion. He pulled his own gun, a .38 snub-nosed revolver, from under the flaps of his shirt and then laid them both on a table by the

Far below the waterline in the very lowest compartment of a ship you will find a deck covering the bottom of the vessel from the centerline, most frequently the keel, to the sides creating a space called the inner bottom. The purpose of this space is to protect the ship from flooding if the hull were to become compromised or breached by a grounding. This deck, known as the bilge is also the collecting place for water and oil that flows from spills, rough seas, rain, leaks in the hull, engine oil and lubricant. The bilge being a vast expanse would be difficult to pump dry if it wasn’t for collection wells that are designed to pump the contents into holding tanks. These wells were and are still known as a stuffing box or a rose box. In years past these wells were pumped directly into the sea without considering the adverse consequences to the ecology. The discharge of bilge sludge is now normally restricted and for commercial vessels discharging this toxic waste is totally outlawed and regulated under Marpol Annex I. On larger ships waste water can be passively treated by methods such as bioremediation, which uses bacteria or archaea to break down the hydrocarbons in the waste and bilge water. Once treated the water could be safely returned to the sea. Pumping the bilges was a constant undertaking by the ship’s engineers and was necessary to keep the ship afloat. There were times however when the drain in the rose box would become clogged, and that was when the lowest ranking member of the engine department was called upon to clear the blockage. On most ships this task would fall to the “Wiper” or on a training ship a “Mug or Plebe.” Never knowing what had clogged the drain in the rose box we were ready for anything. When, as a midshipman, my turn came to reach into the rose box I came up with rags, paper and thick gunk. Disgusting as it was it could have been worse! I have heard tales of dead rats and once the ship’s pet cat clogging the drain, but it was all in a day’s work. Coming back up on deck the sun shone brighter and the flying fish were a welcome sight!

Admiral.” “Well, we have you matched against her again.” Catardi thought back to the facts he’d memorized about the computer-controlled ship. The aft half of the ship was devoted to the reactor, pressurizer, steam generator, a single ship’s service turbine, a single propulsion turbine, and the main motor, all in one small compartment. There was no emergency diesel, no catwalks, no nuclear-control space, no shielded tunnel through the reactor space. Forward of the frame 47 division between the engineering spaces and the forward combat space there was a two-level deck devoted to electronics. The ending of the pressure hull forward marked the beginning of the free-flood torpedo compartment

It wasn’t so much a person that greeted us as a back draft of cigarette smoke

Whenever she went to the kitchen to refill her tea, she came back with the white crystal tornado of sugar swirling in the glass.

A Brach’s peppermint was clicking around on one of her back molars.

Heavy turbulence shook the aircraft, yet it held course toward its destination. Its powerful engines barely produced any noise, and the black hull made it almost invisible against the darkness. Three more of the same type of aircraft followed it, traveling in formation, like silent birds of prey hiding in the shadows of the night. The passengers inside weren't bothered by the shaky ride. Highly focused and ready for anything, they sat there in silence, secured with safety bars into long rows of seats facing each other. All wore the same tight black combat suits and gloves, firearms were strapped to their thighs, and everyone had a rucksack on their back. Matching, tight-fitting helmets covered their heads, cheeks, and upper necks. Only a small part of their faces was visible, and their eyes. All of them had identical neon-blue eyes. Their stares were somewhat chilling and disturbing; the unnatural eyes and their unmoving faces made them look like an army of living dolls, waiting to spring into action.

FROM OTHER SOURCES Pre–race and Venue Homework Get hold of any history of past events at the venue, plus any information that the conducting club may have about weather and expected conditions. Go to the weather bureau and get history for the area. Speak to sailors from your class who have this venue as their home club or who have sailed there on a number of occasions. Boat, Sails, Gear Preparation Checklist Many times the outcome of a race is as dependent on what you have done prior to the race as to what you do out on the course. Sometimes no matter how good your tactics and strategy are a simple breakage could render all that useless. Hull – make sure that your hull is well sanded and polished, centreboard strips are in good condition, venturis if fitted are working efficiently, buoyancy tanks are dry and there are no extraneous pieces of kit in your boat which adds unwanted weight. Update any gear that looks tired or worn especially control lines. Mast, boom and poles – check that all halyards, stays and trapeze wires are not worn or damaged and that pins are secure, knots tight and that anything that can tear a sail or injure flesh is taped. Mark the full hoist position on all halyards. Deck hardware – check all cam cleats for spring tension and tape anything that may cause a sail tear or cut legs hands and arms. Check the length of all sheets and control lines and shorten anything that is too long. This not only reduces weight but also minimises clutter. Have marks on sheets and stick or draw numbers and reference scales for the jib tracks, outhaul and halyards so that you can easily duplicate settings that you know are fast in various conditions. Centreboard and rudder – ensure that all nicks and gouges are filled and sanded and the surfaces are polished and most importantly that rudder safety clips are working. Sails – select the correct battens for the day’s forecast. Write on the deck, with a china graph pencil, things like the starting sequence, courses, tide times and anything else that will remind you to sail fast. Tools and spares – carry a shackle key with screwdriver head on your person along with some spare shackles and short lengths of rope or different diameters. A tool like a Leatherman can be very useful to deal with unexpected breakages that can occur even in the best prepared boat.

Combine the following four categories of ingredients to taste: Green vegetable (use one or more): kale, spinach, bok choy, collard greens, cabbage greens, Swiss chard, beet greens, sprouts, cucumber, broccoli, celery, avocado Liquid (use one): water, tea, almond milk, coconut milk, coconut water, raw milk, kefir. Add ice if you like your smoothie chilled. Fruit (use one or more, fresh or frozen): strawberries, blueberries, bananas, apples, cherries, coconut, carrots, beets (top and root), lemon, gingerroot, pumpkin, tomatoes Add-ins: protein powder (with no added sugar), flax meal (for omega-3s), cinnamon (regulates blood sugar), stevia, spirulina, chlorella, hulled hemp seeds, chia seeds soaked in water, olive oil, powdered vitamin C

they turned around to head down — and Jeff crawled onto the deck to pull down the jib — he saw a blue heron standing on a little muddy point of land across the creek. He pointed and Dicey followed his eyes. The blue raised its flat head to look at them. Its feet were in the water, its feathers slightly ruined as if by a recent annoyance. Jeff watched the bird, waiting for it to take off, anticipating the squawk with which it would trumpet its disapprovals. But the blue seemed not to find them threatening. It stared across the creek at them, then turned its back on them in a stately gesture of dismissal. Jeff knew the bird knew they were there. But, from all you could tell, the bird had never noticed them. It raised its head to look out across the marsh, unconcerned, solitary, ignoring them with great determination. Dicey’s low voice told him to pull down the mainsail, and he did. When he had it gathered around the boom, he looked back to the bird. The great blue still stood there, its back still to them. It wasn’t going to let the suspicion that they were there chase it off of its fishing territory. Jeff wrapped the sheet around the loosely furled mainsail and went up to the bow to fend off. Dicey concentrated on maneuvering the boat, propelled now only by its own weight. Her hand rested on the tiller as she waited patiently for the sluggish hull to respond to her directions. The landing was perfect. Jeff held onto a piling with one hand while he looped a clove hitch around it. Then he looked back at Dicey. “You know who that bird reminds me of? You.” Her expression changed, and he didn’t know what he’d said wrong. Then he saw that the change was caused by Dicey trying to hold back laughter. “I was thinking how much it was like you,” she told him.

Professor Craig Franklin of the University of Queensland mounted a crocodile research partnership with Steve. The idea was to fasten transmitters and data loggers on crocs to record their activity in their natural environment. But in order to place the transmitters, you had to catch the crocs first, and that’s where Steve’s expertise came in. Steve never felt more content than when he was with his family in the bush. “There’s nothing more valuable than human life, and this research will help protect both crocs and people,” he told us. The bush was where Steve felt most at home. It was where he was at his best. On that one trip, he caught thirty-three crocs in fourteen days. He wanted to do more. “I’d really like to have the capability of doing research on the ocean as well as in the rivers,” he told me. “I could do so much more for crocodiles and sharks if I had a purpose-built research vessel.” I could see where he was heading. I was not a big fan of boats. “I’m going to contact a company in Western Australia, in Perth,” he said. “I’m going to work on a custom-built research vessel.” As the wheels turned in his mind, he became more and more excited. “The sky’s the limit, mate,” he said. “We could help tiger sharks and learn why crocs go out to sea. There is no reason why we couldn’t help whales, too.” “Tell me how we can help whales,” I said, expecting to hear about a research project that he and Craig had in mind. “It will be great,” he said. “We’ll build a boat with an icebreaking hull. We’ll weld a can opener to the front, and join Sea Shepherd in Antarctica to stop those whaling boats in their tracks.” When we got back from our first trip to Cape York Peninsula with Craig Franklin, Steve immediately began drawing up plans for his boat. He wanted to make it as comfortable as possible. As he envisioned it, the boat would be somewhere between a hard-core scientific research vessel and a luxury cruiser. He designed three berths, a plasma screen television for the kids, and air-conditioned comfort below deck. He placed a big marlin board off the back, for Jet Skis, shark cages, or hauling out huge crocs. One feature that he was really adamant about was a helicopter pad. He designed the craft so that the helicopter could land on the top. Steve’s design plans went back and forth to Perth for months. “I want this boat’s primary function to be crocodile research and rescue work,” Steve said. “So I’m going to name her Croc One.” “Why don’t we call it For Sale instead?” I suggested. I’m not sure Steve saw the humor in that. Croc One was his baby. But for some reason, I felt tremendous trepidation about this boat. I attributed my feelings of concern to Bindi and Robert. Anytime you have kids on a boat, the rules change--no playing hide-and-seek, no walking on deck without a life jacket on. It made me uncomfortable to think about being two hundred miles out at sea with two young kids. We had had so many wild adventures together as a family that, ultimately, I had to trust Steve. But my support for Croc One was always, deep down, halfhearted at best. I couldn’t shake my feeling of foreboding about it.

How better to experience the hours of darkness than at the back of your boat with a cup of tea in hand as she forges through the water, painting excited light on to the inky black as phosphorescence bursts into life at the bow and slowly fades its farewell in the wake? The deck is like a reflection of the stars in the sky as the phosphorescence glows in its random resting places. I feel so alive when I am out there with an unblemished horizon and the musical rush of water passing the hull. The

City streets I see your lies, I will not play your game No longer will you talk to me, you think I'm going insane But I've forgot my number, now I'm remembering my name I've been too long traveling on your train You tried your best to strangle me, but I could take the pain You tried to hypnotize me, but I see'd right through your game And now your tatty tricks to me are really rather tame I've been too long traveling on your train City lights don't shine, they glare And your music doesn't speak, it swears And in your streets, the ghosts have forgotten why they're there Some day soon I know I'm going miles and miles away Back to the garden where the magic children play And to the country lady who knows more than I can say Whose nights shine brighter than your day

He commands a group and feeds off of them.” “What does that mean? Like he eats them?” Hull asked. “Yes, you dumb shit, he eats them,” Red replied. “He waits for them to rot and then he puts them in a bowl with saltines and hot sauce.” He lifted his hand and popped Hull in the back of the head. “Fidiot.” “Hey,

A mosaic of memories takes me back to my own childhood, and then to my children. My earliest memory of St. Augustine was a day trip from Jacksonville; a day with some neighbors who were nice enough to purchase me a plastic toy-tugboat with a blue superstructure and white hull. Other accounts meld into my adult years. With its history and attractions, The Ancient City is pristine and picturesque by most accounts; but from the Newer Jail (not the Old Jail) , the perspective is very different.

Side-Wheelers were built following the time sail ships were popular. It was a time when engineers experimented with various ways to transfer the thrust of steam engines to useful ways of propelling vessels through water. Side-Wheelers are a subspecies of paddleboats that were popular for a time, until it was determined that they were actually dangerous in heavy seas. Paddle steamers have a paddle wheel on each side of the ship’s hull making the vessel vulnerable to wave action coming in from abeam. If the seas were heavy enough the upper paddles could actually push water in the opposite direction from the ships heading, although the upper reach of the paddles were usually encased in a wooden housing. If the vessel rolled far enough the paddles or blades on one side or the other could come completely out of the water, thereby losing the necessary resistance. It was dangerous at best and was most frequently used on river boats. One of the best examples of a side-wheeler lost at sea was the sidewheel steamer Portland owned by the Eastern Steamship Company. It was 7 p.m. on Nov. 26, 1898 when Capt. Hollis Blanchard, convinced that he could outrun an oncoming storm and make it back to Portland in the morning left Boston. The 219-foot vessel had 120 passengers and 60 crew members including the night watchman, Griffin S. Reed of Portland. That night, hurricane-force winds and 40-foot seas blew up as blinding snow from two storms hit simultaneously and ravaged the New England coast. The Portland must been swamped by the violent sea just a few hours later. Although a ship’s whistle was heard on Cape Cod giving a distress signal of four short blasts, nothing could be seen through the heavy snow. Later that night bodies started washing ashore, late that night however. Many of the victims of the gale were laid to rest in the Portland Evergreen Cemetery. Griffin Reed’s body was never recovered however a stone has been placed in the cemetery in his memory. A total of about 400 New Englanders died in this storm still known as “The Portland Gale.” A hundred and fifty vessels, including the Portland sank in this ferocious storm leaving no survivors. In 2002, divers finally located the Portland in 500 feet of water. From her location, Highland Light, on Cape Cod, bears 175 degrees true at a distance of 4.5 miles.

A man who refuses to repent and change is like a ship heading straight for the rocks. He may think he has time to turn back, but the waves of consequence are crashing hard against his hull. Repentance and change are the anchors that can save him from the wreck, but if he waits too long, the sea of opportunity will swallow him whole. Don't wait until it's too late, drop the anchor of repentance and chart a new course before the storm of regret consumes you.

My last image of Cambodia was of darkness, it was the sound of nearly forty mute wanderers, of silent prayers. I closed my eyes. My father told my Hanuman had crossed the ocean, how he had gone into another life. Look back, my mother said, one last time. I follwed through our twilit apartment, walked in the shade of my father, past bare walls and open windows, the noise of the street pouring in. Between us, she said, I had known love, I had lived a childhood that might sustain me. I remembered beauty. Long ago, it had not seemed necessary to note its presence, to memorize it, to set the dogs out at the perimeter. I felt her in the persistent drumming of water against the boat's hull. Guard the ones you love, she told me. Carry us with you into the next life.

With a snarl of pain, she forced herself to sit up, her head spinning with the sudden movement. One hand touched her temple, sticky with dried blood. She winced, feeling a gash along her eyebrow. It was long but shallow, and already scabbing over. She clenched her jaw, teeth grinding, as she surveyed the beach with squinting eyes. The ocean stared back at her, empty and endless, a wall of iron blue. Then she noticed shapes along the beach, some half-buried in the sand, others caught in the rhythmic pull of the tide. She narrowed her eyes and the shapes solidified. A torn length of sail floated, tangled up with rope. A shattered piece of the mast angled out of the sand like a pike. Smashed crates littered the beach, along with other debris from the ship. Bits of hull. Rigging. Oars snapped in half. The bodies moved with the waves. Her steady breathing lost its rhythm, coming in shorter and shorter gasps until she feared her throat might close. Her thoughts scattered, impossible to grasp. All thoughts but one. “DOMACRIDHAN!” Her shout echoed, desperate and ragged. “DOMACRIDHAN!” Only the waves answered, crashing endless against the shore. She forgot her training and forced herself to stand, nearly falling over with dizziness. Her limbs aches but she ignored it, lunging toward the waterline. Her lips moved, her voice shouting his name again, though she couldn’t hear it above the pummel of her own heart. Sorasa Sarn was no stranger to corpses. She splashed into the waves with abandon, even as her head spun. Sailor, sailor, sailor, she noted, her desperation rising with every Tyri uniform and head of black hair. One of them looked ripped in half, missing everything from the waist down. His entrails floated with the rear of him, like a length of bleached rope. She suspected a shark got the best of him. Then her memories returned with a crash like the waves. The Tyri ship. Nightfall. The sea serpent slithering up out of the deep. The breaking of a lantern. Fire across the deck, slick scales running over my hands. The swing of a greatsword, Elder-made. Dom silhouetted against a sky awash with lightning. And then the cold, drowning darkness of the ocean. A wave splashed up against her and Sorasa stumbled back to the shore, shivering. She had not waded more than waist deep, but her face felt wet, water she could not understand streaking her cheeks. Her knees buckled and she fell, exhausted. She heaved a breath, then two. And screamed. Somehow the pain in her head paled in comparison to the pain in her heart. It dismayed and destroyed her in equal measure. The wind blew, stirring salt-crusted hair across her face, sending a chill down to her soul. It was like the wilderness all over again, the bodies of her Amhara kin splayed around her. No, she realized, her throat raw. This is worse. There is not even a body to mourn. She contemplated the emptiness for awhile, the beach and the waves, and the bodies gently pressing into the shore. If she squinted, they could only be debris from the ship, bits of wood instead of bloated flesh and bone. The sun glimmered on the water. Sorasa hated it. Nothing but clouds since Orisi, and now you choose to shine.

I’d become friendly with Tom Courtenay on Doctor Zhivago. He was an English actor, based in London, and didn’t want the hassle of navigating Paris alone. To make things simple, he moved in with Omar Sharif and me in the Avenue Foch apartment provided by the production. With angular features and a conventionally English look, Tom was young, sensitive, and an avid supporter of Hull City football club. While shooting in Paris, he would dart back to England whenever he could to see them play. Once, upon returning to Paris, he discovered assorted pubic hairs in his bedsheets—telltale evidence that one of Omar’s sleepovers had made use of his room. Tom was enraged. He confronted Omar, and their relationship almost didn’t survive. Never in all my life have I seen someone so angry.

Schwieger ordered the submarine to the bottom so his crew could dine in peace. “And now,” said Zentner, “there was fresh fish, fried in butter, grilled in butter, sautéed in butter, all that we could eat.” These fish and their residual odors, however, could only have worsened the single most unpleasant aspect of U-boat life: the air within the boat. First there was the basal reek of three dozen men who never bathed, wore leather clothes that did not breathe, and shared one small lavatory. The toilet from time to time imparted to the boat the scent of a cholera hospital and could be flushed only when the U-boat was on the surface or at shallow depths, lest the undersea pressure blow material back into the vessel. This tended to happen to novice officers and crew, and was called a “U-boat baptism.” The odor of diesel fuel infiltrated all corners of the boat, ensuring that every cup of cocoa and piece of bread tasted of oil. Then came the fragrances that emanated from the kitchen long after meals were cooked, most notably that close cousin to male body odor, day-old fried onions. All this was made worse by a phenomenon unique to submarines that occurred while they were submerged. U-boats carried only limited amounts of oxygen, in cylinders, which injected air into the boat in a ratio that varied depending on the number of men aboard. Expended air was circulated over a potassium compound to cleanse it of carbonic acid, then reinjected into the boat’s atmosphere. Off-duty crew were encouraged to sleep because sleeping men consumed less oxygen. When deep underwater, the boat developed an interior atmosphere akin to that of a tropical swamp. The air became humid and dense to an unpleasant degree, this caused by the fact that heat generated by the men and by the still-hot diesel engines and the boat’s electrical apparatus warmed the hull. As the boat descended through ever colder waters, the contrast between the warm interior and cold exterior caused condensation, which soaked clothing and bred colonies of mold. Submarine crews called it “U-boat sweat.” It drew oil from the atmosphere and deposited it in coffee and soup, leaving a miniature oil slick. The longer the boat stayed submerged, the worse conditions became. Temperatures within could rise to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “You can have no conception of the atmosphere that is evolved by degrees under these circumstances,” wrote one commander, Paul Koenig, “nor of the hellish temperature which brews within the shell of steel.

through the hull. The ship burst like a rotten pumpkin, and the engine exploded. The images in the northern doorway were even worse. Hazel saw Leo, unconscious—or dead—falling through the clouds. She saw Frank staggering alone down a dark tunnel, clutching his arm, his shirt soaked in blood. And Hazel saw herself in a vast cavern filled with strands of light like a luminous web. She was struggling to break through while, in the distance, Percy and Annabeth lay sprawled and unmoving at the foot of two black-and-silver metal doors. “Choices,” said Hecate. “You stand at the crossroads, Hazel Levesque. And I am the goddess of crossroads.” The ground rumbled at Hazel’s feet. She looked down and saw the glint of silver coins…thousands of old Roman denarii breaking the surface all around her, as if the entire hilltop was coming to a boil. She’d been so agitated by the visions in the doorways that she must have summoned every bit of silver in the surrounding countryside. “The past is close to the surface in this place,” Hecate said. “In ancient times, two great Roman roads met here. News was exchanged. Markets were held. Friends met, and enemies fought. Entire armies had to choose a direction. Crossroads are always places of decision.” “Like…like Janus.” Hazel remembered the shrine of Janus on Temple Hill back at Camp Jupiter. Demigods would go there

He asked the captain his usual questions: What can I do for you? Shall I take you shopping?" The captain said no, thank you, but he had another request. His crew would like to walk on grass. Green, green grass. "We have been ashore," said this captain, "but most of the time we walk on steel. It is unforgiving." The priest was not flummoxed. He put them in the center's van and drove them to a churchyard near Hull airport. "And they all took off their shoes and walked barefoot on the grass for an hour, then they went back to the ship.

NOTHING HAPPENED. And everything did. Your whole life you can be told something is wrong and so you believe it. Why should you question it? But then slowly seeds are planted inside of you, one by one, by a touch or a look or a day skateboarding in a park, and they start to unfurl uncurl little green shoots and they start to burst out of old hulls shells and they start to sprout. And pretty soon there are so many of them. They are named Love and Trust and Kindness and Joy and Desire and Wonder and Spirit and Soulmate. They grow into a garden so dense and thick that it starts to invade your brain where the old things you were once told are dying. By the time this garden reaches your brain the old things are dead. They make no sense. The logic of the seeds sprouted inside of you is the only real thing. That was what happened to us, wasn’t it? It was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If someone said, Isn’t it cute, look at them playing, we would have smiled back, humoring them, but it wasn’t playing. It was transformation. It was our own world. Our own rules.

Then Annabeth was running along beside him, reaching out her hand. ‘Thank the gods!’ she called. ‘For months and months we couldn’t see you! Are you all right?’ Percy remembered what Juno had said – for months he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. The goddess had intentionally kept him hidden, but why? ‘Are you real?’ he asked Annabeth. He wanted so much to believe it that he felt like Hannibal the elephant was standing on his chest. But her face began to dissolve. She cried, ‘Stay put! It’ll be easier for Tyson to find you! Stay where you are!’ Then she was gone. The images accelerated. He saw a huge ship in a dry dock, workers scrambling to finish the hull, a guy with a blowtorch welding a bronze dragon figurehead to the prow. He saw the war god stalking towards him in the surf, a sword in his hands. The scene shifted. Percy stood on the Field of Mars, looking up at the Berkeley Hills. Golden grass rippled, and a face appeared in the landscape – a sleeping woman, her features formed from shadows and folds in the terrain. Her eyes remained closed, but her voice spoke in Percy’s mind: So this is the demigod who destroyed my son Kronos. You don’t look like much, Percy Jackson, but you’re valuable to me. Come north. Meet Alcyoneus. Juno can play her little games with Greeks and Romans, but in the end, you will be my pawn. You will be the key to the gods’ defeat. Percy’s vision turned dark. He stood in a theatre-sized version of the camp’s headquarters – a principia with walls of ice and freezing mist hanging in the air. The floor was littered with skeletons in Roman armour and Imperial gold weapons encrusted with frost. In the back of the room sat an enormous shadowy figure. His skin glinted with gold and silver, as

Dr. Stewart wiped his eyes with the back of his hands. Ever since Liza Hull’s baby’s death, he’d stopped trying to hold back his tears. Once or twice he’d cried in front of the residents at the clinic. They’d all turned away, embarrassed, from what they clearly perceived to be an old man’s failing. He’d kept quiet then, but what he’d really wanted to say to all those new residents, so blindly sure of themselves, so convinced that the only way to cure was to deny certain parts of themselves: This is what it is. Watch me. This is what it’s like to be human in this world.

Wilberforce manifestly lacked the personality to sit over an account ledger and do whatever was necessary to be a successful businessman in the merchant trade back in Hull.

This was encouraging to the refugees, but what lay beyond was even more so. At Mule Springs they would find supplies and horses and there, if not sooner, they would meet Mr. Woodworth and old Caleb Greenwood with their men. Beyond Woodworth was Captain Kern who had moved up from the Fort to establish a relay camp. Beyond Kern was Johnson’s ranch and beyond Johnson’s was Sutter’s where Sutter, Sinclair and McKinstry were forwarding supplies. Finally, beyond Sutter’s was Yerba Buena where Alcalde Bartlett and Governor Hull were backing up the relief work with money and necessaries. There was something heart-moving in the way that California, war-harried and thinly peopled, had rallied to the cause of humanity. It was as if a strong chain were extending itself link by link across the mountains, finally to reach the camps and draw out the sufferers. The seven had merely gone ahead in the strength of their own stout bodies and stouter hearts, but the next relief would have the organized strength of many men behind it. . . .

Vader looked up at the ship’s hull and said, “I sense something…a presence I’ve not felt since…” Then it hit him. Obi-Wan Kenobi. He’s alive.

Two of these little settlements were made in 1625, on the shores of the bay at the head of which the future town was to stand. One was at Hull, where some men exiled from Plymouth and a few stragglers of uncertain origin gathered together. The other was formed by a trading-party under the lead of one Captain Wollaston, who settled within the limits of the present town of Quincy on a low hill near the shore, which still bears the name of the leader. Wollaston himself soon became dissatisfied and departed for Virginia, where he disposed of his indented servants and sent back for more, the trade in human beings having proved profitable.

Shh,” I murmur, taking care to keep my voice low. “It is only a dream. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” [...] "A dream,” she repeats, pupils dilated as she stares up at me. She licks her lips, and I follow the movement with my eyes, a heat pulsing low at the base of my spine. “It was just a dream.” I nod, trying to angle my hips away from her in a futile attempt to hide my thickening cock. But her body is pressed close to mine, tucked beside me under my and Jadi’s wool traveling blankets. I see the moment she realizes, my preternatural vision able to take in the details of her shock. I see the way her pale eyes go wide, cheeks flushing pink. Hear her breath hitch in surprise. I feel my own cheeks heat in response, a flush of shame tightening in my chest. Shame at how much I want her. At how I’ve treated her. Shame at how jealously I guarded Jadi’s affections. At the way I cruelly tried to drive him away from her. “Asterion?” My name is barely a whisper on her lips, but she doesn’t pull away from me. Instead, her thigh presses against my hardening length. Almost like she’s seeking me out. But of course, that can’t be right. No woman would seek me out. Not after the way I’ve treated her. “Yes?” My voice catches in my throat, but I don’t dare look away. “Do you – are you…” her voice trails off, but she keeps her eyes locked on mine. Guilt tightens its hold behind my ribs, but I nod. There’s no point in denying it. No point in lying to her. Not when she can feel the proof of my attraction to her pressing against her. “I’m sorry,” I grit out, pulling my hand away from her face. “I don’t mean to… Please, just ignore it.” I roll away until I’m lying on my back, my erection almost painful as it pushes against the weight of the blankets. “Because of Jadi?” she asks, her voice thready and uncertain. I furrow my brow, glaring with irritation into the darkness. “Jadi? What does Jadi have to do with it?” “I mean – just that you and Jadi are together. Lovers? I not know word,” she babbles. “And I know that. Respect that. I not want come between you and Jadi. At party, he asked if he could court me,” she confesses. “I sorry if I…” I cut her off with a frustrated hiss, hating myself even more for this proof of how I’ve hurt Jadi. How successfully I have pushed her away from him. “You have nothing to apologize for,” I grind out. “Jadi has every right to court you. Every right. The only one who could deny him that is you.” “But you and Jadi…” “Are lovers? Intertwined as closely as two threads woven into the same cloth? Yes.” I bark out a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Which makes my treatment of him – of you – even worse.” The words are spilling out now, like water into the hull of a ship once the wood has cracked. Now that I’ve started, there is no stopping it. “I’ve known for moon cycles that he cares for you, and I hurt him for it. I was cruel to him and tried to chase you away. Because I was afraid you would steal him away from me, and he’s all I have. He’s everything to me. He’s my heart. My heart.” I clutch my fist against my chest in emphasis, still staring at the ceiling, not daring to turn and meet her eyes with my own. “I was jealous, and it was wrong, and now the gods are probably laughing at me. Because I want you. I want you. After trying to drive Jadi away from you, now I want you for myself. But I don’t deserve you. Not after the way I’ve treated you. And even then, even if I hadn’t…” [...] “I want you too.” Her words are no more than a whisper, and I tense, my first instinct to dismiss them the moment I register what she’s said. “I want you. And Jadi,” she admits, and there’s a raw vulnerability in those simple words that I don’t understand. “I shouldn’t, should I? Want you both, I mean? Like that?” I roll to my side to stare at her in disbelief.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash. I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.” Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff’rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn’t it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they’re both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that’s upsetting, but I’m not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore. The next thing I’m going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I’m going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it’s not summer, it’s not winter, and it’s not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it’s fall, fuckers. Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well, then you’re going to fucking love my house. Just look where you’re walking or you’ll get KO’d by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you’re going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned. For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer. Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!

That was the moment I went from despair to hope.” She pulled back and gestured at the gold lettering on the ship’s hull, spelling out Respair. “It’s an old word, meaning to recover from despair.” Despair. Hope. Respair. It all knotted Vice’s throat, making words impossible

The ends of his moustache have been waxed into little tips. Here on the Lower East side, he is the absolute pinnacle of sophistication. McAvoy cannot help but think that back home, in Hull, he would be found in a wheelie bin with a cocktail shaker wedged somewhere invasive.

weight of the ship. One of the pulleys broke; pieces of it whistled over the ship and flew far out over the cove before splashing into the water. Two men—one pirate, one Mollusk—collapsed. Urged on by Hook and Fighting Prawn, the other men kept heaving on their ropes, backing step by agonizing step away from the water, up the beach, toward the jungle. With each step more of the ship’s dripping hull appeared. Finally the hole in the hull was visible. Water gushed from it as it cleared the cove surface. Now they could patch it. Fighting Prawn and Hook ordered the men to stop. The ropes were tied off to trees, and a cheer rang across the cove. And the men fell silent, as they got their first good look at the ship that had been mostly underwater for more than two decades. It looked impossibly well-preserved. Yes, there was a bit of slime on the hull, and there were fish flopping on its deck. But except for the hole, the ship looked sound. It looked almost new. None of the wood had rotted, not even the smallest piece of a rail. More

Our ship has come in. An old, old phrase, from old seafaring days, full of hope and wonder. An investor could spend all he had, building a ship, fitting it out, hiring a crew, or more than all he had, if he was borrowing. Then the ship would sail into a years-long void, unimaginable distances, unfathomable depths, incalculable dangers. There was no communication with it. No radio, no phone, no telegraph, no mail. No news at all. Then maybe, just maybe, one chance day the ship would come back, weather-beaten, its sails hoving into view, its hull riding low in the channel waters, loaded with spices from India, or silks from China, or tea, or coffee, or rum, or sugar. Enough profit to repay the costs and the loans in one fell swoop, with enough left over to live generously for a decade. Subsequent voyages were all profit, enough to make a man rich beyond his dreams. Our ship has come in.

What a coincidence it was for me to see the SS African Moon in Dar-es-Salaam! After leaving Farrell Lines I thought that I would never get back to Kenya but here I was. It was just like home coming when I came aboard and saw Eddie the first mate. Everything was just as I left it three years before so as we celebrated our reunion over a cup of coffee. Although I hadn’t planned it, I suddenly got an idea. This would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring something worthwhile back to The United States. So, I asked Eddie if he could bring something big back to New York for me. “What might that be” he asked suspecting that I was up to no good. “No, it’s not narcotics, it’s a dug out native canoe.” I replied. “Well, I won’t have room in any of the holds but we can lash it down on deck. “Good I’ll have it to you within an hour!” I left and found someone who was willing to sell his dug-out to me and deliver it to the Meteor for under fifty dollars, which at the time was a lot of money but the price included the delivery charge. My, newly acquired well used dug out canoe, was the last thing that crossed the fish plates of the African Moon. Talking to Eddie we watched as the crew professionally lashed it down just forward of the #1 hatch. Shortly thereafter the African Moon backed down and headed out into the Indian Ocean. As for the rest of the story… When the Moon returned, I picked up the dug-out dockside in Brooklyn. With a little help I got it into my pick-up and brought it to my father’s house in Jersey City.  Later without my knowing, it he drilled holes into its hull and decided that it would make a good planter. It didn’t take long for the dirt in it to cause the rot to set in. Within months my canoe was destroyed, however I still have the paddles which sadly but reminiscently serve as a decoration in my Florida home.

In the German and French pensions, which twenty-five years ago were crowded with American mothers and their daughters who had crossed the seas in search of culture, one often found the mother making real connection with the life about her, using her inadequate German with great fluency, gaily measuring the enormous sheets or exchanging recipes with the German Hausfrau, visiting impartially the nearest kindergarten and market, making an atmosphere of her own, hearty and genuine as far as it went, in the house and on the street. On the other hand, her daughter was critical and uncertain of her linguistic acquirements, and only at ease when in the familiar receptive attitude afforded by the art gallery and opera house. In the latter she was swayed and moved, appreciative of the power and charm of the music, intelligent as to the legend and poetry of the plot, finding use for her trained and developed powers as she sat "being cultivated" in the familiar atmosphere of the classroom which had, as it were, become sublimated and romanticized. I remember a happy busy mother who, complacent with the knowledge that her daughter daily devoted four hours to her music, looked up from her knitting to say, "If I had had your opportunities when I was young, my dear, I should have been a very happy girl. I always had musical talent, but such training as I had, foolish little songs and waltzes and not time for half an hour's practice a day." The mother did not dream of the sting her words left and that the sensitive girl appreciated only too well that her opportunities were fine and unusual, but she also knew that in spite of some facility and much good teaching she had no genuine talent and never would fulfill the expectations of her friends. She looked back upon her mother's girlhood with positive envy because it was so full of happy industry and extenuating obstacles, with undisturbed opportunity to believe that her talents were unusual. The girl looked wistfully at her mother, but had not the courage to cry out what was in her heart: "I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know what good music was; I might enjoy half an hour's practice a day if I were busy and happy the rest of the time. You do not know what life means when all the difficulties are removed! I am simply smothered and sickened with advantages. It is like eating a sweet dessert the first thing in the morning.

Cat worked tirelessly, absorbed in the subtle changes of light and texture and composition. She darted around Travis like a fire, taking photos of the captain and his ship from various angles. Travis didn’t interfere or require her conversation. He could sense the excitement of creation flooding through her as clearly as he felt it in himself when elusive details of hull design would condense in his mind. Smiling, he watched his lover, enjoying her intense concentration on her work. She handled cameras and lenses with the same total familiarity he handled wind and sail. When her determination to catch the sunlight on the rigging made her forget he was alive, he sat cross-legged on the deck and began splicing rope, not at all upset at being ignored. When Cat realized that Travis wasn’t nearby anymore, she lowered her camera and looked around for him. She found him halfway back on the deck, sitting in a pool of sunlight. His head was bent over some task. Sun glinted over his tawny hair like a miser running fingers through gold. Her heart hesitated, then beat with redoubled strength. She set aside her camera and went to Travis. Without a word she took the rope out of his hands and started pulling off his T-shirt. “What are you doing?” he asked, surprised. “Taking off your shirt.” He blinked, then relaxed beneath Cat’s hands with a pirate’s smile of anticipation. She smiled in return, the serene smile of a sorceress, and threw his T-shirt aside. Then she put rope back into the hands that were reaching for her and picked up her camera once more. “Come back here and finish what you started,” Travis said. “I’m finished. “What about my pants?” “They make a nice contrast with the deck.” “Well, damn.” Disappointed, Travis made a face at the camera, then resumed splicing rope. Cat photographed him as he worked, seated like a god in the center of a golden cataract of light. He watched her with intense, blue-green eyes, measuring her progress around him while she climbed the rigging and the sailing in search of a perfect angle. At one point she miscalculated. He came to his feet in a single motion and snatched her off her perch before she could fall. She laughed and let herself slide down his body, her hands savoring his supple, sun-warmed skin.

He could smell the earth and the trees around the shallow lake beneath the balcony. It was a cloudy night and very dark, just a hint of glow directly above, where the clouds were lit by the shining Plates of the Orbital’s distant daylight side. Waves lapped in the darkness, loud slappings against the hulls of unseen boats. Lights twinkled round the edges of the lake, where low college buildings were set among the trees. The party was a presence at his back, something unseen, surging like the sound and smell of thunder from the faculty building; music and laughter and the scents of perfumes and food and exotic, unidentifiable fumes.

by refusing to repeat it, much to the despair of their record companies. Both wrote gorgeous sci-fi ballads blatantly inspired by 2001—“Space Oddity” and “After the Gold Rush.” Both did classic songs about imperialism that name-checked Marlon Brando—“China Girl” and “Pocahontas.” Both were prodigiously prolific even when they were trying to eat Peru through their nostrils. They were mutual fans, though they floundered when they tried to copy each other (Trans and Tin Machine). Both sang their fears of losing their youth when they were still basically kids; both aged mysteriously well. Neither ever did anything remotely sane. But there’s a key difference: Bowie liked working with smart people, whereas Young always liked working with . . . well, let’s go ahead and call them “not quite as smart as Neil Young” people. Young made his most famous music with two backing groups—the awesomely inept Crazy Horse and the expensively addled CSN—whose collective IQ barely leaves room temperature. He knows they’re not going to challenge him with ideas of their own, so he knows how to use them—brilliantly in the first case, lucratively in the second. But Bowie never made any of his memorable music that way—he always preferred collaborating with (and stealing from) artists who knew tricks he didn’t know, well educated in musical worlds where he was just a visitor. Just look at the guitarists he worked with: Carlos Alomar from James Brown’s band vs. Robert Fripp from King Crimson. Stevie Ray Vaughan from Texas vs. Mick Ronson from Hull. Adrian Belew from Kentucky vs. Earl Slick from Brooklyn. Nile Rodgers. Peter Frampton. Ricky Gardiner, who played all that fantastic fuzz guitar on Low (and who made the mistake of demanding a raise, which is why he dropped out of the story so fast). Together, Young and Bowie laid claim to a jilted generation left high and dry by the dashed hippie dreams. “The

And the shadow gathers and becomes a tidal wave a tidal wave with riding sea gulls darkened. And the port-side heart sizzles in a breaker. Death and renewal when the wave arrives. The gathering of white birds grew: gulls dressed in canvas from the sails of foundered ships but stained by vapors from forbidden shores. The herring gull: a harpoon with a velvet back. In closeup like a snowed-in hull with hidden pulses glittering in rhythm. His flier’s nerves in balance. He soars. Footless hanging in the wind he dreams his hunter’s dream with his beak’s sharp shot.

These great troubles, although affecting the rich along with the poor, did not affect rich and poor alike. The rich, when pillaged, had more to fall back on. “Ladies” were rarely raped. When loyalists were exiled at the end of the war, the well-to-do went to England or island plantations, the others to cold and often barren regions in Canada. Commissioned officers, when taken prisoner, were generally placed on parole and allowed to continue with everyday life, while privates languished in the hulls of prison ships. Few rich people and many poor people suffered from diseases related to the unsanitary conditions of camp or prison life.

Funny enough, I received a phone call and an ultimatum from my wife just moments before we untied the dock lines. The offer was to come home now to save this marriage or don’t come home at all. Morning dew artificially rained from the outriggers as I pulled down on the halyards, deep in thought. I got off the boat and paced up and down the dock. I looked back and forth between my phone and the light-blue hull of the vessel before me shining in the morning light. I sighed deeply. In my heart, I knew the truth was that the other ship back at home had already set sail. Heavyhearted, I looked one last time at the phone and jumped on board.

There's a peculiar porcelain bathtub in a field; almost as though it has been placed there for Salvador Dali to come and capture.

green duplex in the side yard of an elderly woman’s home, smothered by pygmy palms and a fuchsia jungle of flowering vines. The landlady was eighty-two and stalked through the yard with a machete in her hand scanning for bougainvillea to hack back.

Her heart nearly stopped when a hand slid over her mouth and another disarmed her. “I’m Commander Rodgers from the USS Washington, and you’re coming with me now,” an American growled in her ear. From the girth pressing against her back, he was solid—but Olivia could take him. Grinding her teeth, she threw an elbow to his sternum. He blocked—so like a hotshot. Few people were fast enough to react to one of her strikes. But she’d nail him with her second try. Whipping around, she aimed a kick at his groin, but he blocked that, too. At least six-two and faster than an asp, Rodgers stopped her next kick by catching her ankle and giving it a twist—a warning. “Enough. Come.” Jesus Christ, his eyes were the color of a teal lagoon and they drilled into her like daggers. She shook her head. God, she wasn’t about to go anywhere with dagger-eyes. Not without a fight. Suited up in scuba gear, his facemask cocked atop his head, the man had to be daft. “What the fuck, Aquaman?” she whisper-shouted. “If anyone sees you, we’ll both be shot before the first question’s asked.” His eyebrows slanted downward over those damned eyes. “Yeah?” he whisper-shouted back. “Everyone on this boat will be dead in fifteen. If you want to live, you’ll do as I say.” Olivia’s mouth went dry. She blinked, shaking her head. He had to be mistaken. One more day and al-Umari’s ass would be hers. “Are you off your trolley? I’ve put too much into this project to have it blown to smithereens. Call off your dogs before you cock-up the entire op. Now.” “No can do,” he said like her hard-earned cover wasn’t about to become the greatest wipeout in MI6 history. “Sorry to ruin your party, but there’s a bomb attached to the hull. Can’t be killed, can’t be dislodged, and if you stand here arguing with me for one more second, you’ll explode into so many pieces, you won’t make a meal for a goddamned minnow.” Those are my choices? “Christ!” She jammed her finger under his nose. “When this is over, your ass is mine.

It's just the withdrawal," I say, and turn back to the water. The moon hangs over it low and bright, casts a long thread of spun silver across the dark ocean as we cut through it on our bare-hull boat, forty knots speed, engine as large as an airplane. It's a beautiful night, an otherworldly night, the kind of night you want to be gazing at the vast, star-studded sky with a dame like Joan. Not with Howie.

They were taken onto the wharves in the port. They numbered more than a thousand. Germans, Austrians, Italians and soldiers. The crew awaited them on the ship. A long gangway led up to it. But what struck Augusto was the immensity of the overhanging hull. He couldn’t recall having seen any others as high as this. Not in Trieste, twenty years earlier; boats weren’t as tall back then. Nor at the Isle of Dogs, as boats there were meant to navigate the river. The men on the quay were ants. A thousand ants waiting to board. Augusto looked upward towards the prow. At the end of the hull something was written. The ship’s name. But he couldn’t read it. I can, though, at the front of the liner. Arandora Star.

The damn thing is big.” “Very,” Borger agreed, nodding.  He leaned back, staring at the curvature of the alien hull.

on November 17, Hull received a telegram from Ambassador Grew “emphasizing [the] need for guarding against sudden military or naval actions by Japan in areas not at present involved in the China conflict.” Grew added that security had become so tight in Japan that “military and naval observation is almost literally restricted to what can be seen with our own eyes, which is negligible.”131 Supported by Acheson and his asset freeze, and despite Grew’s warnings, Hull still thought that the Japanese would back down.132

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