Disclaimer: The Sentinel belongs to UPN/Paramount and Pet Fly Productions. The song, "Highwayman," belongs to Waylon Jennings,Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Jimmy L. Webb. No copyright infringement is intended and no money has changed hands.
Author's note: WARNING! Character death! (Many times)
Sailor
I was a sailor
I was born upon the tide
With the sea, I did abide
I sailed a schooner 'round the horn to Mexico
Got sent aloft to furl the main sails in a blow
And when the yards broke up, they said that I got killed
But I'm livin' still
1849, SS David, Gulf of California...
Duncan McAllester climbed to the top of the rigging, praying he could get the damned main sail tied down before the storm could shread it. Captain Eric Marley was fighting the wheel with all his strength, trying to keep the ship running with the the blow, but the current wanted to spin and toss them broadside to the wind, a sure-fire way to skuttle the ship.
Eric had known the storm was coming, but the crew had chosen to disbelieve his extraordinary senses, and he'd had to deal with a near mutiny. The Armsmaster had declared that no man could possibly have seen signs of a storm that was yet to rise. Storms in those waters were fast and furious, coming up with little or no warning, but Eric, whose senses were somehow greater than those of ordinary men, had sensed a change in the weight of the air pressing down on him from the heavens. Because of the mutiny, there had been no time to get the ship ready, and now it was going to kill them all. Even the gentle Duncan might have drowned Jacob O'Reiley if he could ever get his hands on him, but that would have to wait. They had a blow to fight.
This was enough to make a man afraid of heights! He'd nearly been blown off the rigging three times already, and he could swear the damned yards were bending. If he didn't get the sails furled soon, the ship would be blown to pieces. Of course, it might help if certain mutinous sailors would get off their arses and help him out, but O'Reiley was just sitting there, staring at the storm like he couldn't believe it was real.
McAllester had met Marley in a small cantina in California. The lure of gold had brought both men from their East Coast homes to that place, and when the claims came up dry, the whisky had called them to drown their sorrows. Eric came from money, so he wasn't hurting, but he was a sea captain, not a miner, so he was completely out of his element. Duncan was a man who could do anything he needed to do, and he had chosen at least twenty professions in his life, but the one he had loved the most was sailing.
He'd told the captain of his family, his sister in the Oregon country and his mother in Boston, and Eric had, in turn, spoken of his parents in New York and the twin brother he never saw. Then, of course, came the discussion of the ladies in their lives. Duncan seemed to blow through the female population of a town two minutes before he left it, where Eric was contemplating marrying the lovely Alice when he returned to New England.
As they both loved sailing, the two men decided to give up on the foolish dream of a fast fortune in gold and throw in their lots together on the sea. Eric spent the last of his traveling money to buy and provision a ship, and they set about trying to gain a goods charter to start their shipping business. They were quickly successful, and gathering a crew was simple enough, what with all the miners who were down on their luck.
It was on their first voyage together when they discovered that Eric had been gifted, or cursed, with extraordinary senses, abilities that he had finally come to terms with when Duncan had managed to show him they could be used to help people. The big captain had decided that, once this term with the merchant company was up, he was going back to New England to join the Navy, and McAllester planned to go with him. He didn't feel it would be a good idea to let Eric go without him, knowing what he did about his tendancy to black out if he was concentrating too hard on one of his senses. If someone wasn't there to bring him back, he could end up getting himself killed, especially on a ship in calm waters. Without the stimulation of at least choppy seas, he could get lost in the sparkle of light on the surface of the water or the movement of a school of fish under the surface. It really wouldn't be good especially in some American waters, like the Gulf of Mexico, where storms could spring up out of nowhere in an amazingly short period of time.
Their lives had seemed to glow with the promise of a future together, but none of that was going to be a reality if they couldn't save the ship.
Suddenly Duncan was brought back from his thoughts by a distinct and eerie sound from below him, that of snapping wood. The yards were breaking!
Captain Marley looked up in horror at the snap of the mast. Time stood still as the man who clung to it spoke to him. "Not your fault, Eric. Please don't ever believe this was your fault. Name your first son for me, all right?" And time resumed and the mast snapped off completely, crashing into the deck.
The only sounds that could be heard were the howling of both the storm and the captain of the ship it was trying to devour.
Eric never joined the Navy. His love of the sea died with the man who had been his best friend. He never set foot on another ship, travelling overland to reach his home in New York. He did marry Alice, though, and she gave him three sons, Duncan, Eric Jr. and William, and two daughters, Summer and Winter. His life was a happy one, but always there was the sadness of living without his brother soul. And strangely enough, after Duncan's death, Eric never experienced another episode of heightened awareness, as though without that man in his life, such things were impossible. He could think of no other explanation.
He died in his sleep on the thirty-fifth aniversary of the death of Duncan McAllester. To her dying day, Alice swore that she had seen a wolf enter his bedroom that night, and when she went to investigate, she had found her husband dead, but without a mark on him. It became a favored ghost story of the family for many years.
Well, this one was hard to write. I don't know enough about sailing to have made this one as acurate as I could have wished. If I screwed something up, somebody PLEASE tell me! I'll fix it! Feed back very welcome!
