Prometheus Descending
By Bria Stile
Gentlemen of the jury-landed too long, you sea-searching men-I submit this evidence for your approval. We damned of an afflicted ship stand now before you, twice cursed: by man and by sea. From the lines of the sea, from the siren-song of the wind in the masts, we have been cast away; spewed as Jonah from our whale's belly onto the wooden walkway to our fate. You can always count on a mutineer for a fancy prose style.
Archie Kennedy. Kennedy: my savior, my despair. Fierce Kennedy in battle, plain Lieutenant to his betters, Lieutenant Kennedy in public. To me, he was always Archie. A sacrificial oceanite offered up to Poseidon several times over.
Did he have a precursor? He did, indeed he did. There might not have been an Archie at all if a Bird hadn't swooped me up in a cataleptic soggy state, if a brash Hunter hadn't fired and saved me to sail (foolishly, foolishly!) deep into the coy fingers of a fog. I was his redemption, his malady.
Was H. H. deserving of all this attention? Maybe he was. After all, you gazed at him like he was Prometheus descending triumphant with the fire of the gods; after the Marie Galante, after his soul-breaking, putrid stint in the hole, after a gun with an empty belly spat harmlessly at his chest. Sometimes you looked at poor Horatio-not-in-battle, but simple, logical Hornblower who held your friendship, your confidence.
Our friendship was far-flung from perfection. We argued, we debated, we fought, we sulked, we made up. But we needed each other. In the competitive, desperate, and rarified atmosphere of the Renown (oh, it was! and how eager we schoolboys were for it, groping for some quicksilver slice of glory), we had no choice but to cling together in the feverish hope we could survive.
Because, you see, we had absolutely no where else to go.
Oh, those unbearable, dark, and treacherous weeks (how long ago, now? A lifetime to me; I have aged irreparably). They flutter around my thoughts like green-gold flies around a fallen, broken body. I knew, once I breathed those thunderous words into receptive ears, that we were drifting away from our asylum (it wouldn't be like that; it would be *just* like that), from sluggish, sucking waves to pounding, tempestuous waters. We sailed away, and as I braced myself to shatter into the rocks, to splinter into a thousand minute pieces, he stood up, unsteadily, and strapped himself to our mast.
And now I. I will succeed him by many years. So, dry men of the jury, write down your judgment; mark him guilty and let his sunset extinguish early and ignobly. Let me walk from the room with my black mark in hand, carved into a dry piece of paper and into the hollow and echoing annals of history: Commander.
This is the only immortality you and I will achieve, my Archie Kennedy.
By Bria Stile
Gentlemen of the jury-landed too long, you sea-searching men-I submit this evidence for your approval. We damned of an afflicted ship stand now before you, twice cursed: by man and by sea. From the lines of the sea, from the siren-song of the wind in the masts, we have been cast away; spewed as Jonah from our whale's belly onto the wooden walkway to our fate. You can always count on a mutineer for a fancy prose style.
Archie Kennedy. Kennedy: my savior, my despair. Fierce Kennedy in battle, plain Lieutenant to his betters, Lieutenant Kennedy in public. To me, he was always Archie. A sacrificial oceanite offered up to Poseidon several times over.
Did he have a precursor? He did, indeed he did. There might not have been an Archie at all if a Bird hadn't swooped me up in a cataleptic soggy state, if a brash Hunter hadn't fired and saved me to sail (foolishly, foolishly!) deep into the coy fingers of a fog. I was his redemption, his malady.
Was H. H. deserving of all this attention? Maybe he was. After all, you gazed at him like he was Prometheus descending triumphant with the fire of the gods; after the Marie Galante, after his soul-breaking, putrid stint in the hole, after a gun with an empty belly spat harmlessly at his chest. Sometimes you looked at poor Horatio-not-in-battle, but simple, logical Hornblower who held your friendship, your confidence.
Our friendship was far-flung from perfection. We argued, we debated, we fought, we sulked, we made up. But we needed each other. In the competitive, desperate, and rarified atmosphere of the Renown (oh, it was! and how eager we schoolboys were for it, groping for some quicksilver slice of glory), we had no choice but to cling together in the feverish hope we could survive.
Because, you see, we had absolutely no where else to go.
Oh, those unbearable, dark, and treacherous weeks (how long ago, now? A lifetime to me; I have aged irreparably). They flutter around my thoughts like green-gold flies around a fallen, broken body. I knew, once I breathed those thunderous words into receptive ears, that we were drifting away from our asylum (it wouldn't be like that; it would be *just* like that), from sluggish, sucking waves to pounding, tempestuous waters. We sailed away, and as I braced myself to shatter into the rocks, to splinter into a thousand minute pieces, he stood up, unsteadily, and strapped himself to our mast.
And now I. I will succeed him by many years. So, dry men of the jury, write down your judgment; mark him guilty and let his sunset extinguish early and ignobly. Let me walk from the room with my black mark in hand, carved into a dry piece of paper and into the hollow and echoing annals of history: Commander.
This is the only immortality you and I will achieve, my Archie Kennedy.