Kat laid me flat on that open boat to recover myself. An ashy fire came down with the rain and the last traces of Bounty burned like a Viking funeral over the choppy water.
"Godwin?!" wailed Harmony, over the sides. "Godwin?! I can't see him Kat! The smoke…it's too thick!"
Drifting between the bobbing shrapnel, she and Kat searched for Eddinray. Nauseous, I sat up to gasp at the dead mutineer beside me, his face riddled with splinters. Without warning, our lifeboat tipped to one side, and Eddinray climbed on-board. "Can't hear a thing!" he yelled, spluttering. The knight fell over me like a wet fish, and Harmony embraced his sopping shambles, while our open boat sailed free from the wreckage…
***
The last of the well water was gone, some used on the bite at my neck, the rest used to heal burns and burst eardrums. Those disappearing drops of precious gold unnerved us all — our security blanket was gone.
Most of my clothes had gone up with Bounty, I claimed the dead man's moth-eaten blazer before Kat threw his corpse overboard. Drying out was impossible in this permanently wet environment, and floating aimlessly in the dead of night, it was hard to be optimistic about our chances.
"A watchful eye on stirring waters people!" said Eddinray, taking prominent position at the bow to observe one of many developing whirlpools. "I will guide us through this minefield!"
With no moon to light the way, Kat sat in the centre of the boat and pulled on two oars; meanwhile Harmony, focused her eyes over the horizon. "How to get out of this one?" she pondered.
"We don't." I answered, body wasted.
"Resignation?" she said, surprised. "Doors do not appear as such here, Daniel. Open your mind. There will be a way!"
Kat's grunt seemed to agree, but he gave no opinion as to what this magical door may look like.
"My hearing is improving!" announced Eddinray, louder than necessary. "Yes it is! And I couldn't possibly assist you with the rowing samurai; alas my strength is weak still."
Kat expressed only contempt for Eddinray, to which the knight remained oblivious.
"During his time here," said Harmony, thinking aloud, "Captain Christian said he came across no land whatsoever, therefore our door must be in the sky, or on the water itself."
"But where?" cried Eddirnay, slapping a fist into his palm, "Perhaps underwater?"
"Of course!" Harmony exclaimed, suddenly. "There! Look there!"
Bright faced, the angel pointed out a whirlpool growing dangerously close to our little boat. "That is our door!” she announced. “There is our portal!"
We all creaked our necks to this guzzling vortex. It sure didn't look like a door, but Harmony insisted, and her angelic intuition somehow gave the notion credibility; after all, no sensible mariner would run his ship into a whirlpool, and that logic would ultimately contain men and ships alike here forever. "Row boys!" urged Harmony. "Row!"
Backs facing the swirl, all of us grabbed the ends of unused oars and rowed toward the churn. Several heaves later the oars became unnecessary, for we had reached this black hole's event horizon, and there could be no turning back. "Don't be scared!" yelled Harmony, so certain as our boat began to turn and descend.
"I'm going to be sick!" announced Eddinray, throwing his mouth over the speeding sides.
We four collected in the centre of the boat, whilst the water grew like walls on all sides. The sea like a closing hand, it then began crushing our boat into leaks and splinters. "Hold your breath!" I howled. "Hold your — "
The boat imploded, and the instant our bodies touched water, the hammer of the sea fell hard upon our heads.
***
My forehead thumped against ice — trapped underwater — the lungs were like lead weights in my chest. Darkness all around me, I punched at a glassy ceiling, but it would not crack. The water was thick like oil, sapping all the energy from my beating fists and kicking legs. I could no longer hold my breath, and when the last of it burst from my mouth and nose, a miraculous hand reached down from some unseen hole to save my second life.
Harmony and Eddinray dragged my sopping body from a broken pocket over the ice, and on my hands and knees, I puked out a litre of slurry over my stomach.
"Kat!" yelled Eddinray, returning to the hole and reaching in as far as he could.
"Find him Godwin!" shivered Harmony, her hair and clothes glistening wet. "He must be there!"
"I have him!" he cried. "Got him!"
I screwed up my eyes to witness Eddinray hauling an unconscious samurai from that same watery grave, then settle him over a sheet of mirrored ice. "That's not Kat." I said, coughing.
This person was frozen stiff and grotesquely bloated. I looked again at this man's armor, at his swords, and at his scars, till my head could no longer doubt what my eyes were seeing.
"I watched him!" Harmony sobbed. "He cut the ice with his sword then pushed me up through the hole."
"Why didn't you come up for air?" I yelled down at the petrified warrior. "Why didn't you?"
"He returned for you Daniel." she added. "Only you!"
Thinking back, I had no recollection how long Kat or I were trapped underwater. This moment now, however, was horribly vivid. "He doesn't have long." said Eddinray, and bending to the samurai's lifeless body, he cleared Kat's mouth with his fingers then listened down his throat. "He's not breathing." he added, methodically tilting Kat's head back, elevating the chin and blowing several deep breaths into his mouth.
The world moving too fast for thought, a concerned Eddinray pressed two fingers over the samurai's neck.
"Nothing…" he said."Not a bloody thing!" Growing desperate, Eddinray began to compress Kat's chest using hands on that old armor. Push. Push. Push.
"What are you doing?" asked Harmony, scared. "Get off Godwin! Get off!"
"He's trying to save his life!" I cried, pulling her back.
Eddinray vigorously pumped on Kat's chest for sixty more seconds, and with no response, madness suddenly came over the Englishman. He beat at Kat's heart with his wet fists, he bashed and he pounded, grunting and panting, spitting and screaming.
"Godwin!" shrieked Harmony. "Stop! Stop!"
Kat's ribcage ghoulishly cracked inward, and seeing no further point, I attempted to put a stop to it, but utterly hypnotized, Eddinray fought me off, and then lashed a final strike on our friend's chest.
Kat returned that instant, vomiting oil and blood. Harmony and I sighed so deep with relief; Eddinray on the other hand, expressed nothing. Still on my hands and knees, I viewed the gaunt face of Eddinray with admiration. Strangely, he didn't look pleased. "He's okay Eddinray." I said. “Where…did you learn that?"
Eddinray smeared at his bloodshot eyes then turned away. Almost immediately, a belligerent Kat attempted to sit up, but a stabbing pain in his chest put him down.
"Rest silly man." Harmony, snivelled and cried. "We won't be moving an inch 'till I'm satisfied!"
Resting his head on her lap, Kat allowed the angel to tend to him, and looking at me through her caressing hands, the samurai's bear husky voice asked — "Who revived me, Fox?"
"Eddinray." I whispered. "It was Eddinray…"
***
Despite the black rings now permanently marking Kat's eyes, his strength soon recovered, and his pigheadedness too, as he ignored his broken ribs. We trailed him over a barren dark plain; a flat and frosty mirror was our surface, and it reflected all the twinkling stars and space above us. Unusually, Kat did not keep his sight ahead, but on his own shimmering image on the glass. "Hurry!" he badgered. "Keep up!"
"To what?" asked Harmony, frustrated; but like an energetic Labrador, curious by a scent, Kat kept his focus to the floor. Our reflections were as clear as the faces next to us, and with nothing but walking to do, we examined them.
Harmony was disturbed by the blood and dirt staining her wings and once spotless gown, before attempting to untangle the knots in her ropey yellow hair. Eddinray's features were sunken and his figure looked emaciated under mail, but his mind was clearly elsewhere right now.
I was far from pleased with my own face, generously wrinkled with patches of grey in the hair. I wonder what Missy would make of her Daniel now, and if Kathy would still recognise this beat up old man as her father.
Kat did not care for his grim looks of course, something much more imperative concerned him. Faster than I've ever seen, he drew out his katana and began slashing and growling at thin air behind us.
All of us startled, we could only wait for him to stop swinging, and when he did, there sat a fragility over Kat's face, a fright he could not control nor conceal; and that fearful expression on the fearless sent shivers running down my spine. "There's nothing Kat." Harmony said, coming to caress his shoulder.
Shaking off her hand and his own paranoia, Kat returned his sword to its sheath and gave no explanation for his actions. A question appeared ready on Eddinray's lips, but he held it in when Kat dropped to his ass and frenziedly began dusting at the mirror under his nose. His predator eyes hungry, the samurai was smiling now. Mystified, we others gathered round, and smiled too at what Kat had discovered. There where two steel rails and many sleepers under our feet, under the ice; train tracks running in an easterly direction.
A content Kat now rose from his crouched position, patted the cold from his palms then said -
"The Fortress is close."