The Custom of the Sea

Начало книги

The small boat was drifting in a vast expanse of empty ocean. The sun burned down from a sky the colour of brass and even the waves seemed flattened, oppressed by the heat. The oars lay idle and the faint breeze barely ruffled the makeshift sail — four tattered shirts lashed together.

Three gaunt, wild-eyed men sprawled in the bottom of the dinghy. Their skeletal bodies were emaciated and covered in sores, their feet and legs swollen, their lips and tongues blackened. There was no movement but the slow rocking of the boat on the swell.

The dinghy was just thirteen feet long, four feet wide and twenty inches deep. Its thin planking was blistered by the sun and there was a jagged, splintered gash in the port gunwale. There was another hole on the waterline, roughly plugged with mildewed black cloth. Each time the hull flexed in the swell more water trickled from the hole to feed the pool covering the bottom boards.

Читать дальше →