The Nautilus Sanction

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The lookout in the crow’s nest of the H.M.S. Avenger had been the first to spot him, clinging to a floating piece of wreckage off the port bow. They sent a boat out and discovered he had lashed himself to a large section of what had once been the mainmast of a ship. He was half dead from thirst and badly burned, both by fire and by the sun. His lips were cracked and parched and his skin, where it had not been blackened by flames, was red and blistered, oozing with infection. They feared they would lose him. Admiral Lord Hood, anxious to learn the fate of whichever ship it was the poor devil had come from, gave strict orders to the Avenger’s surgeon to call him at once should the man regain the power of speech. No such summons proved necessary. The entire ship’s company heard it when, on the second day following his rescue, the man began to scream.

They had managed to calm him down somewhat by the time Hood arrived in the sick bay. The man was thrashing on the surgeon’s table, and for all that he was little more than skin and bones, it took two men to hold him down. He was struggling against them, his eyes rolling wildly, while Dr. Graves attempted to administer some laudanum.

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