Chapter 2.9.- On the Island of Storms
Note: I won’t have time to publish this chapter tomorrow, so I’ll publish it now.
Three days had passed since the encounter with the sea monster when, from the top of the Golden Pearl of the South, they shouted that land was in sight. Andrasio left his cabin and climbed, two at a time, the stairs that led to the deck. In the distance, between the normal fog at that time of day due to the heat and evaporation of the water, a medium-sized port could be seen, headed by a lighthouse at its outermost point like the bow of a ship. The young archer saw in the distance what he sensed should be a large number of flags.
On the deck, there was more and more movement: the sailors climbed the masts to be ready for when they were ordered to lower the sails. The captain, despite all the movement and activity around him and the tension that could be felt on deck, remained calm at his command post: the experience of years in charge of that great ship was evident.
As they approached, it was clear that each one knew what role they had to play, how and when, and that was how they did it. Andrasio, despite having seen similar operations on that ship, was still amazed by the orderly way in which the sailors acted in such complicated moments. They seemed like a well-constructed mechanism.
The ship slowly closed the distance to the lighthouse and, therefore, to the port, and Andrasio was able to get a first idea of the city of Kürtürkärn and its port, which he judged to be of medium size, considering those he had seen in the Empire. Although the city, from that distance, had a very different appearance from those he knew, the port was not very different from those he had already seen, except for the number of very small ships that were anchored on that outer side of it. In the Empire, those would be considered small, just mere boats: those small but very light and, therefore, manageable vessels had, at most, one sail and a few oars. They would be good for going between different ports on the same island or between islands that were not too far away, but clearly one could not enter excessively deep waters or should not navigate a sea that was too rough because anything could sink them. Especially after seeing the monster of the depths…
Foto from Mihran Kes in Pexels.
Photo of Shana Van Roosbroek in Unsplash
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