“It’s London,” Bly said. “It’s fucking London, washing out to sea.”

The cloud bottoms rushed east over their heads. Looking around Nirgal saw many other small boats on the tossing water of the great rivermouth, salvaging the flotsam or just fishing. Bly waved to some as they passed through, tooted at others. Horn blasts floated on the wind over the gray-speckled estuary, apparently signaling messages, as Ely’s crews commented on each.

Then Kev exclaimed, “Hey what’s that now!” pointing upstream.

Out of a fog bank covering the mouth of the Thames had emerged a ship with sails, many sails, sails square-rigged on three masts in the archetypal configuration, deeply familiar to Nirgal even though he had never seen it before. A chorus of horn blasts greeted this apparition — mad toots, long sustained blasts, all joining together and sustaining longer and longer, like a neighborhood of dogs roused and baying at night, warming to their task. Above them exploded the sharp penetrating blast of Ely’s air horn, joining the chorus — Nirgal had never heard such a shattering sound, it hurt his ears! Thicker air, denser sound — Ely was grinning, his fist shoved against the air-horn button — the men of the crew all standing at the rail or on it, Nirgal’s escorts as well, screaming soundlessly at the sudden vision.

Finally Ely let off. “What is it?” Nirgal shouted.

“It’s the Cutty Sarkl” Ely said, and threw his head back and laughed. “It was bolted down in Greenwich! Stuck in a park! Some mad bastards must have liberated it. What a brilliant idea. They must have towed it around the flood barrier. Look at her sail!”

The old clipper ship had four or five sails unfurled on each of the three masts, and a few triangular ones between the masts as well, and extending forward to the bowsprit. It was sailing in the midst of the ebb flow, and there was a strong wind behind it, so that it sliced through the foam and flotsam, splitting water away from its sharp bow in a quick succession of white waves. There were men standing in its rigging, Nirgal saw, most of them out leaning over the yard-arms, waving one-armed at the ragged flotilla of motorboats as they passed through it. Pennants extended from the mast tops, a big blue flag with red crosses — when it ca’me abreast of Ely’s boat, Ely hit the air-horn trigger again and again, and the men roared. A sailor out at the end of the Cutty Sark’s mainsail yard waved at them with both hands, leaning his chest forward against the big polished cylinder of wood. Then he lost his balance, they all saw it happen, as if in slow motion; and with his mouth a round little O the sailor fell backward, dropping into the white water that foamed away from the ship’s side. The men on Ely’s boat shouted all together: “NO!” Ely cursed loudly and gunned . his engine, which was suddenly loud in the absence of the air horn. The rear of the boat dug deep into the water, and then they were grumbling toward the man overboard, now one black dot among the rest, a raised arm waving frantically.

Boats everywhere were tooting, honking, blasting their horns; but the Cutty Sark never slowed. It sailed away at full speed, sails all taut-bellied when seen from behind, a beautiful sight. By the time they reached the fallen sailor, the stern of the clipper was low on the water to the east, its masts a cluster of white sail and black rigging, until it disappeared abruptly into another wall of mist.

“What a glorious sight,” one of the men was still repeating. “What a glorious sight.”

“Yeah yeah, glorious, here fish this poor bastard in.”

Ely threw the engine in reverse, then idled. They threw a ladder over the side, leaned over to help the wet sailor up the steps. Finally he made it over the rail, stood bent over in his soaking clothes, holding on to the rail, shivering. “Ah thanks,” he said between retches over the side. Kev and the other crew members got his wet clothes off him, wrapped him in thick dirty blankets.

“You’re a stupid fucking idiot,” Ely shouted down from the wheelhouse. “There you were about to sail the world on the Cutty Sark, and now here you are on The Bride ofFaver-sham. You’re a stupid fucking idiot.”

“I know,” the man said between retches.

The men threw jackets over his back, laughing. “Silly fool, waving at us like that!” All the way back to Sheerness they proclaimed his ineptitude, while getting the bereft man dried and into the wind protection of the wheelhouse, dressed in spare clothes much too small for him. He laughed with them, cursed his luck, described the fall, reenacted coming loose. Back in Sheerness they helped him down into the submerged warehouse, and fed him hot stew, and pint after pint of bitter beer, meanwhile telling the people inside, and everyone who came down the ladder, all about his fall from grace. “Look here, this silly wanker fell off the Cutty Sark this afternoon, the clumsy bastard, when it was running down the tide under full sail to Tahiti!”

“To Pitcairn,” Ely corrected.

The sailor himself, extremely drunk, told his tale as often as his rescuers. “Just took me hands off for a second, and it gave a little lurch and I was flying. Flying in space. Didn’t think it would matter, I didn’t. Took me hands off all the time up the Thames. Oh one mo here, ‘scuse me, I’ve got to go spew.”

“Ah God she was a glorious sight she was, brilliant, really. More sail than they needed of course, it was just to go out in style, but God bless ‘em for that. Such a sight.”

Nirgal felt dizzy and bleak. The whole big room had gone a glossy dark, except in the exact spots where there were streaks of bright glare. Everything a chiaroscuro of jumbled objects, Brueghel in black-and-white, and so loud. “I remember the spring flood of thirteen, the North Sea in me living room — ” “Ah no, not the flood of thirteen again, will you not go on about that again!”

He went to a partitioned room at one corner of the chamber, the men’s room, thinking he would feel better if he relieved himself. Inside the rescued sailor was on the floor of one of the stalls, retching violently. Nirgal retreated, sat down on the nearest bench to wait. A young woman passed him by, and reached out to touch him on the top of the head. “You’re hot!”

Nirgal held a palm to his forehead, tried to think about it. “Three hundred ten K,” he ventured. “Shit.” “You’ve caught a fever,” she said. One of his bodyguards sat beside him. Nirgal told him about his temperature, and the man said, “Will you ask your wristpad?”

Nirgal nodded, asked for a readout. 309 K. “Shit.” “How do you feel?” “Hot. Heavy.”

“We’d better get you to see someone.” Nirgal shook his head, but a wave of dizziness came over him as he did. He watched the bodyguards calling to make arrangements. Ely came over, and they asked him questions.

“At night?” Bly said. More quiet talk. Ely shrugged; not a good idea, the shrug said, but possible. The bodyguards went on, and Bly tossed down the last of his pint and stood. His head was still at the same level as Nirgal’s, although Nirgal had slid down to rest his back against the table. A different species, a squat powerful amphibian. Had they known that, before the flood? Did they know it now?

People said good-bye, crushed or coddled his hand. Climbing the conning-tower ladder was painful work. Then they were out in the cool wet night, fog shrouding everything. Without a word Bly led them onto his boat, and he remained silent as he started the engines and unmoored the boat. Off they puttered over a low swell. For the first time the rocking over the waves made Nirgal really queasy. Nausea was worse than pain. He sat down beside Bly on a stool, and watched the gray cone of illuminated water and fog before their bow. When dark objects loomed out of the fog Bly would slow, even shove the engines into reverse. Once he hissed. This went on for a long time. By the time they docked in the streets of Faversham, Nirgal was too sick to say good-bye properly; he could only grasp Ely’s hand and look down briefly into the man’s blue eyes. Such faces. You could see people’s souls right there in their faces. Had they known that before? Then Bly was gone and they were in a car, humming through the night. Nirgal’s weight was increasing as it had during the descent in the elevator. Onto a plane, ascending in darkness, descending in darkness, ears popping painfully, nausea; they were in Berne and Sax was there by his side, a great comfort.