Blankmap: Book I

4. Across the Chasm

It was as though the ocean had opened at its seams. A bottomless black canyon was in full view from the ship, and even those sailors who had glimpsed it before moved more slowly and turned their heads to gaze as though hypnotized by its sublime magnitude. A fine mist covered everything near the Chasm's edge.

A ship lay across the great divide, dissimilar to the Windjammer in every appearance, and without any figurehead at all. The water at the edge of the Chasm rolled back in on itself by some strange force that Solomon was unable to discern, and this curling back of the waves kept both ships bobbing in place rather than careening over the Chasm's lip.

Jacques Hyrax emerged from below deck and surveyed the scene. He strode purposefully to where the captain stood barking orders at the wheel, and after sharing a few words made his way to the mainmast. Here he opened a wooden chest with a palm-sized brass key, and pulled out a contraption that Solomon had no name for. A sturdy piece of rosewood formed its main piece, and across this was laid a bar of iron. The iron had cables pulled taut from its edges to the back end of the rosewood piece, and resting in a notch which spanned the length of the device was a glittering , wicked-looking spearpoint.

The elder Hyrax sighted along the contraption, and, apparently satisfied, slung it over his shoulder (by means of a cloth strap) and began to haul himself hand-over-hand up the mainmast. His great bulk was not nearly as nimble as Solomon's slender frame at navigating vertical distances, but Jacques was strong and sure-footed as he made his way up the dizzying height of the ship. He climbed about halfway before swinging a leg over a crossbeam and retrieving one of the great coils of rope that the sailors had placed in the rigging that morning. Solomon could only make out silhouettes, as the afternoon sun blazed down from directly behind his father's shifting mass, but he saw Jacques begin securing one end of the coil to the back end of his strange tool and the other end to the spearpoint. Securing these knots took very little time, as his father's hands moved quickly.

Out of the blue Solomon heard a great cry come across the Chasm. It contained no words, at least none that Solomon could understand. It was deep and nasal and rough-sounding, and the young adventurer was even more surprised to hear his father bellow an reply back out across the water in what could only have been the same tongue. A last cry came back to the Windjammer from the other ship, and upon hearing it Jacques hoisted the device to his shoulder, sighted, and fired.

The glittering spearpoint transcribed an arc out, out, impossibly far as it soared across the roaring Chasm. The lengths of rope played out behind it as it flew like some silver bird of prey towards the ship. The fine details of that vessel were impossible to make out at such a distance, but the shining tip of the missile was easy enough to track across the sky. With a resounding thunk it buried itself into the mizzenmast of its target. Mere seconds had gone by before Solomon could see the hazy figures of two men on board clambering up the mast at unbelievable speed. Talent always recognizes talent, and accordingly Solomon Hyrax could see at once that the men on the other ship were climbers of the first order.

They hung from the rope by their hands and to the belly-clenching amazement of Solomon the men began to swing their way across the yawning mouth of the Chasm at the parting of the seas. They were wreathed in mist, an unforgiving spray that erupted from the curling of waters at the Chasm's edge, and Solomon found that the pounding of his heart had become audible even over the sound of the waves pouring their way out and back from nothingness. Had the young adventurer been able to tear his gaze from the spectacle unfolding above he might have seen a few other members of the crew, those less-traveled and more disposed to fear and amazement, gazing upwards in the same terrified awe that he himself felt.

Solomon could not have said whether it had been five minutes or five hours when the two men reached the safety of the Windjammer's upper sheeting. Nimbly they wound their way down the mast in much the same manner that they had scaled their own. And all of a sudden there they were, like men from some half-remembered dream, striding across the deck.