“That’s right,” Devlin mumbled, “you sleep. I’ll do all the work as usual.”
He cast off the bowlines and then fired up the small boat’s engine. A moment later, he was picking his way across the crowded harbor.
Small boats moved here and there. A pair of tugs worked to drag a monstrous bulk carrier out into the channel, while crewmen, painting and scraping and fighting the endless battle against rust and corrosion, scampered over other vessels like crabs on the rocks.
Devlin guided the launch past all this and out into the anchorage. He kept a fair course, moving slowly past the waiting ships, until a particular vessel caught his eye.
Slowing the launch just a bit, Devlin stared at a black-hulled vessel with a dark gray superstructure. It looked vaguely familiar, like a small cruise liner, though the dark paint was neither festive nor striking. The more he studied the ship, the odder her appearance was to him. She didn’t seem to carry any lifeboats, radar masts, or even antennas. In fact, she carried none of the normal appendages that sprout from modern ships.
In his inebriated state, Devlin struggled to make sense of it. He saw no one on deck and no sign of activity. The ship itself reminded him of a derelict, stripped for parts. Her black-gray color was like that of charred steal, but the coating wasn’t soot, she’d been deliberately tinted that way.
Subconsciously, Devlin angled the launch toward her, moving closer and then coming around the bow. There he spotted something new, something unmistakable.
“It can’t be,” he said out loud.
In front of him lay the overlapped plating of a hasty repair job. Plates of different thickness and consistency had been welded and riveted into place to cover a breach in the hull. The heavy black paint covered it all, but the jagged, H-like shape of the repair was unmistakable.
He shouted to Keane. “Wake up,” he said, “you have to see this.”
Keane grunted something and rolled over.
“Keane?!”
No response. Devlin gave up on him and turned back to the ship. He was wide awake now.
“You’re a bloody ghost,” he whispered, edging closer to the black hulk. “A bloody ghost or a bloody trick.”
He was still muttering various curses of disbelief when the launch bumped up against the ship. He reached out and touched her. There was an odd, almost rubbery feel to the paint. But the ship itself was real enough.
A sense of uncontrollable anger began to well up inside Devlin, a dark Irish rage. Years of guilt and self-hatred fueled it. Someone was tricking him, or had tricked him years ago.
He passed around the bow and headed for the stern. A gangway sat in the lowered position, resting diagonally across the aft end of the ship. Its bottom step was eight feet above the harbor’s oily waters. Devlin pulled up next to it.
He cut the throttle and lazily tied a line to the sloping stairs. He didn’t bother with Keane and instead climbed onto the launch’s roof. From there, he clambered awkwardly up onto the gangway.
It shook with his weight and banged against the hull, but it held. Despite the racket, no one appeared to welcome him aboard or shoo him away.
Devlin began to climb. He moved slowly at first on shaky legs, and then faster as he became more certain of the truth. “I saw you go down!” he shouted at the ship. “I saw you bloody well go down!”
He stumbled as he neared the top and sprawled out on the last few steps, breathless and almost weeping. He could see raised letters on the stern. They were hidden beneath the rubbery black paint, but they hadn’t been scraped off before the new paint was slapped over the top.
He ran his hand across the letters he could reach. They were real, just like the ship itself.
Pacific Voyager.
Like a man caught in the surf, Devlin was bowled over by waves of emotion. Confusion, sadness, and elation hit him almost simultaneously, one after another. How could the ship be here? Had someone salvaged her? Last he knew, the wreck hadn’t even been located.
He sat there, sobbing like a child and hoping he wasn’t in the middle of a dream, until the sound of footsteps came from above. The squeak of a gate followed as a section of the rail was pulled back where the gangway met the main deck.
Devlin looked up as a man appeared. The face was bearded now but familiar to him. An odd moment passed as two sets of eyes tried to connect what they saw to distant, faded memories.
The bearded man won the race. A sad smile crept over him. “Hello, Padi,” he said in a kind and melancholy way.
“Janko?” Devlin said. “You’re alive? But you went down with this ship.”
The bearded man offered a hand and helped Devlin to his feet, bringing him aboard and steadying the inebriated old sailor as he stood on the main deck.
“I wish you hadn’t found us,” Janko said.