The figurehead of the ship shows her best side in vermillion: a weathered bust, erect, exposed, and her diminishing torso half-draped in carved netting, which fills the curve of the navel, and the crease between her hip and thigh, spumes in golden crosshatchings, where below the waist, obscured in the mesh, she tapers to the cutwater stem, the facing bone of the boat which parts the waves. And thus, she announces the story of astonishments both above and below the surface: a love story.

Or, water is the element of seduction and despair.

1. The siren’s wake

The captain intends to put the hag to bed.

Already nearing the far line of islands, from within a certain stupor, he recognises the waters from his distant past. The coffers are full, and the boat is laden, though the men have not been paid. Moving only through smooth waters, they lay above deck in the heat of the day. On occasion they occupy their hands in the rigging.

This is a note of urgency, and a rising wind picks up a swath of sea as if to open its mouth, a wind mouth. Or as if the sea swells momentarily above the clouds, and water floods the sky.

The captain’s intention is partly vengeful: to square an old deal, the secrets of which the crew has long forgotten. At the farthest point, the tale begins with a fatal decision,though somewhat deferred, and a final voyage. The wrack and redemption which will not follow.

The sails wind up lay. Between the captain and his strapping first mate, an argument erupts over any course which puts the vessel in harm’s way. The captain shouts the bearings. Fisticuffs follow. A mutiny begins. The bottles are overturned. A ring of rum marks the table.

A sudden splintering, and the boat arcs up, and then down. The Scarlet Hag descends the waves with her figurehead in profile.

Adrift, in two long boats, in the wake of the sinking Hag, the men are dispersed into the current to drift, as they might, toward Tahiti.

2. The mutineer’s trial

In the oak chamber of this maritime court, those few hardened seafarers are now dressed in finery. The captain and his mate sit hand to hand: the backs of their hands. There is no need for apologies between gentlemen. The captain had been twenty years at sea before this break in the chain of command. Still the ship found her way into the water, and for this he is grateful.

Where is she laid? the court asks him. The captain refuses to reveal her exact coordinates. And it may be a point of sentiment. Before there was the potential of her movement at sea, there was this potential: to hold and harbour her holdings, even as she is now, perched carefully on the rim of an underwater cliff.

And there is the question of the rights to the wealth she holds. Who owns a boat? The one who holds the deed, or her commander? On this final voyage, the crew was seen-off at the dock, not by wives, but by a suit of clothes and a peruke. Hired salts and square-rigged sails for a square-rigged gent, with whom it would seem the captain has an ugly history.

If the toil of air is for the birds, the work of water has fallen at first to green boys, finally, to men ravaged, and the narrow window of their tenderness—this is the story which follows. To measure the value of an element in the weight of the labor it demands from men is to utter, simply, a grim quantity.

The ship’s log reminds. It also watches with a keen sense of how provisional any moment of calm can be, should it be noted, should it be properly recorded.

3. The baleen and the bone

The leisure occupations of sailors are artful: scrimshaw and valentines. On whale ships they etched romantic scenarios onto busks and staves to be sewn into the corsets of loved ones. Deeply buried below the brocade, these scenes could be viewed again only in memory. Support below the heavy swells, in concealed narratives, or incomplete fantasies.

In his youth, the captain of the Scarlet Hag made a peep show. The box of staggered glass panels depicted the narratives of the boat Sea Venture, his first sailing ship. Scenes in pale blue and gold and coral, cut and painted onto the glass, when viewed through the spy hole revealed, rather innocently, a young man struggling with a fish. In short time, he would begin to understand the proportions of a proper peep show.

The inquest is somewhat inconclusive. Though the men may leave the courtroom roughly untouched, there is still the question of how to retrieve the contents of the Hag. The captain will not cooperate with the company. He insists on being the only one to go down to the wreck.

Beyond the courts, in a tropical tavern, an old man fills the gaps in the story for the first mate, who listens. And so the details begin to emerge, shadowed, behind the scrim of a mind in reverie. It begins with an early voyage of the Scarlet Hag who carried passengers on occasion. A plantation daughter travelled between ports. Under the command of the willful young captain, the Hag was cast somewhat off course, and came into the chop of a gale. The passenger did not go below as instructed, but instead had herself lashed securely in the shrouds of the rigging, so as to be present in the spectacle of sailors in the tempest, without moans, without murmur.

4. The heart of Ondine

Countless are the legends of the ladies of the fount and spray, whose golden hair is the instrument of their mischief. They draw men into their tresses, where tangled therein, they are pulled below the surface of the water. In the current, with scant drape and engulfing curls, every part of these women has become attractively elongated. Beware the threat of an ivory comb forgotten on the shore. Golden beach grasses, swirling net of seaweed: at the border between shore and water, there is nothing but tresses.

On the deck of a ship, in the torrent of a gale, so began the captain’s love affair with a girl of some means, and by no means easily attainable. He remained for a time on her island. And although she had an older suitor, and the young captain’s reputation had already suffered somewhat, he pursued her with many of the sweet phrases a sailor might garnish, over time, in the company of the elements, from the voices below the waves. For women, one must speak the language of water, of smooth flowing proposition, of continued and continuing caress. In water intimacy.

A sailor’s plea: I hunger for your mouth in the audacious brine. The tempests encourage my passion. Nets cloud the water of your eyes. Make work of these lips, these arms. My back curves to you, Ondine, beauty, enchantress.

Below the dark shadows of the curving palms, there could be little protest.

Or, the bottles overturned, he forgot his manners. A ring of rum marked the table on the balcony, where from behind the floating voile of the curtain, he slipped, bare to the waist, in half shadows, around the first of four posters, so that only the large, shallow muscles of the back of his neck and shoulder were lit, and rounding the second poster, the upright line of the spar of his spine, and at the head of the bed, now fully in sight, his one hand in his other, and the cage of his ribs in motion with his breath.

Mouth like sabre’s edge, mouth which engraved the throat and torso, multiplying mouth, as many mouths as his throat had voices. Into the devouring depths. Ripped back to the bare stave, she offered no hidden markings.

Water is also a type of provocation, a type of anger, variable, unrest and rage. After all, there was no time in the islands to come to know the world with a placid, compliant understanding. Instead, there was this chance to know the world all at once.

5. A cask of pearls

Deep below the surface of the island cove, a cask of pearls was guarded by a giant squid, at the mouth of an underwater cave. Within the cave, which cut through a narrow spit of rock, the cold current of a river emerged from a perpendicular tunnel, curving seaward, and so tropical waters were rendered cold.

There are several ways to consider the choice which followed for the young captain. That he dives while others swim on the surface. That a captain’s needs are more, so he has less to offer. Some sailors seek only the shortest path toward the wealth of these islands.

With dagger in teeth, he plunged into the depths of the cove, tethered to a rock. The spit of land shelved downward, a wall of changing forms. Deeper still, nestled in the sand, the cask spilled forth its charms. His hands shortly were entangled in rough strung pearls. A shaft of light, drawn from the depths, or winnowed from the glinting surface, struck the knotted ridge of an extended tentacle. At the entrance to his cave, the squid awaited with arms flung open. All at once, the Captain found himself caressed. The million mouths of suckers scored his legs and torso. The dilemma of his ensnarement was threefold: arms and legs enlaced, the appendages of squid and man were scarcely discernable; every scrap of his garment was consumed in the cavity of the aggressor; the rope which tethered him to land further limited his resistance. An elegant struggle, extended and slowed in the violent elongation of the current.

The dagger still in his teeth, he cut first the tip of a tentacle which circling his throat sought his mouth. This was the first severance. Next, he cut the rope which secured him to the shore. The squid, wounded, loosened his grip, and the suction of the currents of the cave swept him through the tunnel of rock where he was deposited in open sea. By then, he had lost his breath and consciousness.

The sea beats the surface into raging waves, and so ravishes men. However, there was established already between the man and the sea some understanding. He awoke in the longboat of his shipmen, his arms entwined with pearls.

In the dark circle of a palm-thatched hut, she ladled rum into his throat, and bathed the skin marked darkly with the kisses of a squid. He passed into fever. In his raving, the vast silence between them was broken. Provisional reconciliation after the attack.

But, the island also possessed a voice. Already the thunder of the awaking volcano demanded an offering. The crew quickly assembled an escape. Still, under the palm thatching, she bathed his brow. In the fever of his dreams, his ship approached with sails full frontal. Farewell, and a parting at the water’s edge.

6. The ambiguities

He returned to his ship. Between oceans and sadness: the soundless, delirious motion of the boat. And the continued plunder of the riches of the depths.

On the island, she married the rival, and gave violent birth to a pale daughter. Her sorrow continued unchecked for years, in crippling decadence. It was a terrible melancholy. One which recognised, with disgust, a desire for the further insult of corrupting objects.

Violent waters tolerate repeated assault, though in time they grow tired of us. This is their melancholy, and their ambiguous threat. She began a nightly tincture of laudanum. In the fever of her final hours, he returned to her deathbed, where still in the strength of his youth, he carried her to the balcony, and held her seaward.

Beyond the voile, beyond the harbour, there is a gate in the water. Any ship which crosses erupts in flames.

7. The belly of a witch

The decision of the courts is final.
Below the waves, a wounded inheritance awaits the captain.
He descends in antique diving costume.
On the ledge of a precipice, the ruptured Hag tilts.
This final wave is heavy with its salt. In the drawing weight of the depth, he encounters the scattered virulence of the sea.
If he were to float, everything inside him must be buoyant.
At the farthest stretch of his breathing tube, he enters, and adds himself to her coffers.