Solo The Circumnavigation of Mizahar III

[Una Tanta]

~Placeholder

16a, 17a, 18a, 19a

The Sailors' Guild had attempted to sort through the details and the Administrative Committee personally assured me that, as far as they could ascertain, the coastline curved sharply southward perhaps twenty miles west of Novallas Bay. Even given the lateness of our departure, we should be able to escape the far northern seas well before the worst storms began. I took them at their word as best I could, but I was of course aware that neither they nor anyone else could guarantee the accuracy of this information. We were simply going to have to gamble on it being correct. Seafaring is not a vocation for the faint of heart, and one becomes accustomed to taking risks that could well result in one's own death. However, I kept these thoughts to myself for now. This was a celebratory day; it dawned bright and clear, and the docks were lined with people who had come to wish us well. There was the ceremonial raising of the anchor, the sails were unfurled, and slowly we began to ease away from the shore. I stood in the stern of the ship, waving farewell to the assembled throng until I was fairly sure they could no longer see the gesture. Returning to the bow, I found Mr. Plankman at the helm. He smiled when he saw me, and gestured at the water in front of us. ~From Mizahar Wiki

"All we have to do, Captain, is get out far enough that they can't see us at all, wait there two or three months, and then come back. They'll never know the difference, I'll reckon." He punctuated this with a wink. "That's fine with me, if you're willing to make the report to the Administrative Committee, Mr. Plankman." He laughed, running one hand through his hair, which was beginning to gray. "Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea after all." "Your loss," I said. After a few seconds, I added, "Steady as she goes, Mr. Plankman, out to the end of the bay. I'm going to make a first inspection tour of the ship and see how the others are doing." He nodded, and I walked back along the port side of the ship. Several of the sailors were busy adjusting the rigging, and Ms. Mooring was directing them. The sailors seemed to know of her reputation as well, given the briskness with which they followed her orders. “All well?” I called out. “All well, Captain,” came the reply. ~From Mizahar Wiki

[Una Tanta]

20a, 21a, 22a, 23a

I called a meeting. Mr. Plankman, Ms. Mooring, and Ms. Helm shortly arrived in my stateroom. Mr. Frederick Stevenson, the head of the University contingent, also came, bringing with him Ms. Lizbeth Books, a natural history specialist, and Ms. Edgetower. All of them took their seats around the table. “By tomorrow, we’ll reach the entrance to Novallas Bay,” I said. “All of you know the situation we’re in. I’m asking for your advice and opinions here; I don’t want to make a decision without careful consideration. What do you think?” “I think we need more Morwen-worshipers in the crew,” Mr. Plankman said. Soft chuckles were heard. “Sadly,” I replied, “unless you were planning to hold a recruiting meeting, it’s a little late for that.” “Ah well, can’t say I didn’t try to help.” A shady grin was visible on Mr. Plankman’s face. “We've got the best information available telling us that the coastline is about to turn south," Ms. Mooring interjected. "What's it going to do to morale telling the crew that we're going to overwinter here with no storm in sight and the turn just around the corner?" ~From Mizahar Wiki

"I'm going to have to agree," Ms. Books said. "There's a hundred of us. That's ten percent of Novallas' population. Are you sure they would be able to handle our crew? Why test it if we don't need to?" "We don't know about the accuracy of the information though," Mr. Stevenson said with a sigh. "We just don't know enough either way." Ms. Helm was nodding in sad agreement. "And you, Ms. Edgetower?" Our eyes met again. "Who can say?" She half-smiled. "None of us know for certain what the best course is." I looked back at the rest of the group and drummed my fingers on the table. "As I see it -- and let me know if you think I'm wrong, please -- we can choose between what might be damaging in sailing on, or what will almost certainly have negative repercussions in staying here. The crew will be restless, we'll be short of food, and given that they're not expecting us in Novallas, we're likely to incur considerable ill will. The Administrative Committee has already spent considerable time trying to see if anyone in Novallas has tried going more than a day's journey into the tundra west of the city, and their efforts have turned up nothing; we're unlikely to find anything that they haven't uncovered, and at any rate, it would take time that we don't have. I think I'd rather risk something bad that might happen as opposed to taking a course that will almost certainly prove unfortunate." Heads nodded in assent. ~From Mizahar Wiki

[Una Tanta]

24a, 25a, 26a, 27a

A chime later, I made the announcement to the whole crew, explaining to them the reasoning behind my decision. I felt that I owed it to them not only to tell them what we were doing, but why we were doing it. I could see discomfort in some of their faces, but no one disagreed openly with our course of action. I think they understood as well as I did that anything we did at this point was nothing better than an educated guess. The heart of any voyage of exploration, after all, is confronting the unknown. The first two days passed uneventfully, though we were always attuned to the voice of the lookout atop the foremast. However, no cry alerting us to a turn in the coastline came. There were inlets and bays, which I charted carefully, but nothing representing a serious deviation to the south. After that, both I and the crew became increasingly nervous. We were now sailing on borrowed time, and the promised turn had yet to arrive. The twentieth passed, and the twenty-fifth, and still there was no sign of anything. Even Mr. Plankman’s face took on a somber cast, and his jokes became less frequent. ~From Mizahar Wiki

The coastline of northern Taldera is as desolate as one can imagine. The shoreline is largely composed of sharp, angular rocks, with almost no vegetation aside from occasional tufts of sad-looking moss. At times, one can glimpse the boreal forest in the distance, but in others, there is nothing visible but the tundra. There are no dolphins in the water here to follow in a ship’s wake. On the thirtieth day of autumn, we reached a headland, which we named Glacier Cape, after the large tongue of ice which came down from the highlands and licked the water. As we rounded it, the coastline fell away to the south. There were cheers all around, and the crew’s attitude became noticeably more sanguine. For a moment, anyway. ~From Mizahar Wiki

[Una Tanta]

The lookout sighted the clouds the evening of the thirty-second, coming out of the north-northeast. They were a hellish shade of purple, made more lurid by the declining sun, and they seemed to be advancing rapidly. We were still only a mile or so out from the coast, but the shore as far as we could see in either direction was made of the same jagged basaltic boulders, and I was afraid that if we were to anchor too closely, we might be dashed against them if the storm proved severe. Mr. Plankman and Ms. Mooring agreed, and as such, I made the decision that we would try to ride it out in open water. We furled the sails as much as possible, and tried to wait patiently. Near the twenty-third bell, it started raining, moderately at first, and then progressing to a steady downpour. The wind increased, still from the north-northeast, and the waves became rougher, with higher swells. It was difficult, in the near-darkness, to see precisely how high they were, but the ship was beginning to rock severely. Mr. Plankman, who was at the helm, attempted to keep us steady, but there was only so much he – or anyone else – could do. ~From Mizahar Wiki

Sometime around the first bell, the rain turned to ice. Moving about the deck became a challenge, especially as the ice began coating more and more of the exposed wood. Shortly thereafter, the wind increased again, this time at least to the force of a severe gale. The ship was pitching violently now. Mr. Plankman’s face was white, and the strain of the hours he had spent at the helm was visibly showing. I relieved him; he attempted to return to the stern of the ship, but it was now impossible to cross from one side of the deck to the other. Defeated, he remained with me, trying to keep a lookout for any hidden obstacles in the swirling darkness of the storm. I tried to keep the ship turned so that the wind wouldn't blow us into the rocks, but maintaining any control over the vessel was a quixotic task at best. Nonetheless, we remained far enough out to sea as to avoid that danger for now. The crew were doing their best to chip the ice off the deck and masts, though keeping up entirely with that task under these horrendous conditions was beyond anyone's abilities. ~From Mizahar Wiki

Perhaps at the third bell -- there was now no way to keep track of time -- I heard a voice, either Ms. Helm or Ms. Edgetower, calling out something about the sails. I couldn't make out the words, but I suddenly understood the meaning, as without warning, the ropes holding the fore-sail snapped. The sail billowed out to the wind, and was immediately ripped in half. To our great fortune, it did not blow entirely away, but it was gone for all practical purposes, at least for the moment. Five minutes later, the mizzen-sail followed suit. It did not blow away either, but it was quickly reduced to shreds by the ice-laden winds. We struggled for another bell, or two, or three; I cannot say for certain. Then, shortly before sunrise, the ferocity of the storm began to abate. By the eighth bell, it had entirely disappeared, leaving the air clear but bitterly cold. ~From Mizahar Wiki

[Una Tanta]

Insert 33, 34, 35

We now had only one operational sail, and it would be impossible to continue without repairs. However, it appeared that there was a large inlet slightly to our west, toward which we had been blown during the night. I turned the helm over to Ms. Mooring, and gave the order that we should make our way in that direction. Fortunately, the sea was now calm, and we were able to limp into the shelter of the bay, dropping anchor as close to the shore as we could. As we moved into the inlet, I took a careful survey of the coastline. To my dismay, I could now see that there was no opening to the south; we had been following the curve of a bay with no outlet. We hadn’t rounded the corner of the continent after all. Our information had been inaccurate, and we had no way of knowing how much so, because to our west, the coast turned north again. ~From Mizahar Wiki

Once we stopped, we began repairing the sails as quickly as we could and otherwise trying to make the ship seaworthy again. I used what I had learned from my father, and pitched in as best I could. We had on board one Mr. Edward Saworth, who had been trained as a sailmaker, and he directed the effort. The damage was extensive, and precious days began to slip away, though Mr. Saworth and the others worked long into the nights. The chill remained, and four days after we had anchored, the lookout spied sea ice forming along the shore. We redoubled our efforts, but still, another seven days passed by before the sails were in workable condition. It was only the forty-fifth then, with more than half of the autumn still before us. The ice was quite thick around the bay, and only a small channel remained for us to sail out. ~From Mizahar Wiki

We raised the anchor and unfurled our newly-mended sails. However, any anticipation we had was short-lived once we reached the head of the inlet. The ice had spread further, and our channel ended half a mile past the headland. We were surrounded; we were trapped. The Seafarer turned around, and we eased it back into its former anchorage in the bay. Desperation Bay, Mr. Plankman said, and the name stuck. Although the official start of winter was still dozens of days away, for us, it had already begun. ~From Mizahar Wiki