The Ghostfaces Read Online Free PDF

to get her to develop the anticipation that Edvin grasped so easily. The tiller required constant small adjustments as the water flowed around it, she had learned. If you let the wind or the waves push the ship off course, it took twice the effort to get it back on course again.
    Of course, knowing it and being able to do it were two completely different matters.
    â€œWould you like a drink?” she asked.
    Edvin nodded eagerly. Steering was thirsty work, in spite of the cold and damp conditions. “What’s on offer?” he asked. He grinned and the dried salt on his cracked lips stung.
    â€œThere’s water. Or water,” Lydia told him.
    He made as if he were considering the choice. “Better make it water,” he said finally.
    Of course, there was nothing hot to drink, much as they would all have loved to have something. With the deck rearing and plunging the way it was, it would be madness to light a fire on board, even the small gimballed oil burner that Edvin had in his cooking kit.
    Lydia dropped into the rowing well and poured him a beaker of cold water from a water skin, leaning over to shield the beakerfrom the salt spray that cascaded along the deck with monotonous regularity. She climbed back to the main deck and handed the drink to Edvin. He sipped deeply. It was cold, of course, and very refreshing because of it. But with the second sip, he frowned slightly. There was a distinct salt taste to the water now, courtesy of the spray that had fallen into it. Lydia saw his expression of slight distaste.
    â€œSorry,” she said, guessing the reason. “Hard to keep that salt water out of everything.”
    â€œCan’t be helped,” he replied, draining the beaker quickly to prevent any further contamination.
    He studied the sky, taking in the unbroken dark gray of the clouds and the way the wind kept the telltale at the masthead whipping out in a virtually straight line.
    â€œCan’t say the weather’s improving,” he muttered.
    But it was, albeit in increments so gradual that it was hard for them to notice the change.
    By the fourth day, the wind had dropped from the howling, unpredictable force of the first two days to a steadier pattern, without the sudden, terrifying and potentially lethal gusts and lunges that had threatened to overwhelm the ship if the crew let their attention wander.
    There was still plenty of danger in that wind, and plenty of brute force. But it no longer seemed to be trying to catch them unawares. It was simply there, as a backdrop to their day.
    And so they sailed on. Four days. Then five. Then six. And with every hour and every day that passed, they were driven deeper and deeper into the unexplored vastness of the Endless Ocean.
    On the sixth day, the sun actually appeared. Hal watched it travel through an arc above them. He had never seen the sun as high as that before. He took several measurements, using his hinged sighting stick. Even without an accurate determination of the time of day, he knew that they had come farther south than he had ever been before.
    Maybe farther south than
anyone
had ever been.
    He was sitting in the rowing well, slapping his arms back and forth against his body to restore a little warmth to them, when Stig approached him, a worried look on his face.
    â€œWhat’s the problem?” Hal asked.
    Stig glanced round, making sure that none of the other crew members was in earshot. “We’re running low on water,” he said in a subdued tone.
    Hal frowned, not understanding. “How can that be? We’re still on the first cask. We’ve a full second cask to go after that.”
    The
Heron
carried their drinking water in two large casks below deck in the watertight center section. Each day, Stig would fill a large water skin and keep it handy on deck for crew members to drink from. As a matter of course, they had refilled both casks before they left Hibernia. One would have been enough to see