The Jewel of the Sea (Thomas Nickerson)

Confessions

The silence was absolute, broken only by the sound of crackling flames and the crews staggered breaths. There was little light from beyond the sinking ship, the lamps they had sort providing some relief, but as the Essex's final embers extinguished swiftly into an abyss, the darkness seemed all the more smothering.

The stars were bright, almost reflected in the still water that surrounded the three little whaleboats, floating alone, with nothing ahead of them but ocean. The moon was dark; there was no moonlight to be seen, and the men stared up at the stars begging them to keep their mind off their harrowing predicament.

George was rummaging through the maps he had saved to try and find their bearings whilst Owen fiddled with a rifle. Neither of them could bare to lift their heads and meet the eyes of their crew, afraid that the mask they were wearing would slip, revealing the guilt that was tearing them up from the inside out. Although, one wore it much better than the other.

"Captain," Henry said suddenly, "What about our provisions?"

George stared at his men who stared back at him. His skin was pale and clammy and his normally boyish curly brown locks stuck to his forehead damply. In short, he did not wear guilt well.

The sailors could do nothing but wait and watch for their captain, their leader to console their whirring minds.

"Two ounces of hardtack a day per man and half a cup of water," he finally announced.

The mens eyes' widened in unison. They didn't know what to expect, but they weren't expecting that. They turned and muttered to each other in a flurry of panic.

"Hey, man, we can't live on that," said one.

"Not for more than a few days," concluded another.

Thomas and Elizabeth held one another close, focussing on each other's breaths in an attempt to ignore their ill-fated reality. But it was thrown back in their faces when an ominous bellowing echoed in the distance.

"It's he," Matthew stated.

The bellowing continued and grew closer.

Owen nodded. "Yeah, it's him alright."

And in an odd turn, all of a sudden they were the ones being hunted. The white whale wouldn't let man defeat him. He sort revenge, in a way Elizabeth would have thought only the men were entitled too.

The creature was something of another world entirely. He was too big, too cunning, too exceptional to thread with mere mortals. He looked like the very whale of Jonah's Story, Elizabeth thought, or another mythical dark sea monster she'd heard the sailors whispering about, because it may have been the nineteenth century but sailors were nothing if not superstitious.

This beast was nothing a man could beat. And she wasn't even a man – she was merely a girl, who'd got caught up in something much bigger than her. She looked over at Owen, who was a man, all golden locks and righteous fury, both able to inspire the crew and to give a hand to keep them alive. Whilst others sat cowering in fear, Owen held his head up high and puffed out his chest, an indifferent expression on his face, and Elizabeth wondered how he never let anything scare him, no matter how frightening the situation might be. If there was a man who should be able to harm, to kill the whale, it was him.

"You don't fool me, Mr. Chase."

Elizabeth turned to look at her cousin who had spoken. It's like they had been thinking exactly the same thing, but on complete opposite ends of the spectrum.

"Mr. Coffin?" Her father warned.

"That right?" Owen said flippantly, returning his gaze to the dark horizon.