We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

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THE PEAL RESOUNDS through the boat, through the frame of my bunk. I feel it in my jaw, my teeth. Reverberation.

And again.

Brother Silas, knocking the rusty-headed mallet against the hull.

The boat is a bell.

Three deep, resonating tolls. Thong. Thong and thong. Waver and fade.

Call to Matins. The Night Office.

The compartment pitches downward. Weight shifts. Cold toes tingle, alive. The deepest dive of the day. One hundred fathoms.

Bodies turn, roused from first sleep. Old metal springs plink. Sleepy shapes roll languidly from their bunks. I know them all, even in the dimness. Lazlo, lean and short, but strong. Caleb, mousy and frail. St. John with his large knobby head, and tall, soft-padding Ephraim. Stifled coughs. No talking. Silence is observed. Must be.

I follow, though my belly aches to move. More than hunger, I worry, for I know those pangs as I know my hands. Something else. A two-day malady thus far. But I move, climb down from my bunk, stacked third highest. My toes know their purchase. Salt-corroded frames. Grit-grated deck. We don our gunnysack robes in this perennial dusk. One sculpin-oil lamp hangs at a tilt from the forward berthing bulkhead. Fat-gummed glass. Sputter and fishy reek. In a line, we work our way aft, up the main corridor at a slant.

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