This is a fan translation of The Treasure of the Kapitana (Сокровище «Капудании») by the Russian science fiction and fantasy author Vladimir Vasilyev.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Chapter 21
Alexander Selinium, Prince Moreau, the waters, Tendra, summer of 864
At first Alexander couldn't believe his eyes.
He'd been completely certain that Ralph was going to press the Queen Svenja to the very shore, summon a special wind of some kind and maybe even a wave, and try to slip away from their persistent pursuers.
But that wasn't what happened at all.
Water suddenly roiled straight ahead of the Queen Svenja, eddying, almost boiling. The shore that had been approaching with such frightening speed was suddenly enveloped in either a mist or a haze of the sort that happened on a hot day. It wasn't everywhere, though, just where the ship's sharp bowsprit was aimed at. The water in front of the ship boiled more and more…
And then the shore suddenly started to press down like moss under a man's boot, and seawater rushed into the canal that was growing before their very eyes.
"St. Aurelius…" Captain Philsby muttered in horror, dropping his tricorn hat onto the deck.
Alexander was staring wide-eyed at the unfolding miracle.
The brig burst into the canal, throwing up foam and pushing the floating tumbleweeds with its bow. Following a strange feeling, Alexander looked back to see the water still boiling, but differently from up ahead. He soon saw why: the land that had gone underwater in front of the Queen Svenja was once again rising from the depth. He could clearly see silver fishes flapping and jumping on the wet sand and piles of brownish-green seaweed.
The prince kept running across the deck, alternating between looking aft of the ship, fore, and even to the side, seeing dirty foamy water roil around the ship, with ordinary shore grass, trees, and even a herd of horses in the distance, halfway to the horizon, moving past them.
But he couldn't spend long watching the land, as open water was already visible up ahead, with the canal created by Ralph already connected to it.
The isthmus of the spit turned out to be very narrow, no more than two hundred yards. The crew of the Queen Svenja had barely blinked when land was already aft of the ship. The water around them grew noticeably cleaner; they could clearly see multiple small jellyfish underwater. Even the bottom, occasionally covered in a thick layer of seaweed, could be seen.
More land was visible on the horizon, almost everywhere around them, with only a few places showing small breaks.
"Hard to port!" came from the bow. It was Ralph speaking, but something had happened to his voice. Under other circumstances, Alexander would never have recognized his flag lieutenant.
"Hard to port!" Captain Philsby relayed the order, quickly getting ahold of himself and remembering to pick up his hat. "Get a move on, you nitwits!"
The nitwits worked the sheets as one, while the helmsman spun the wheel. The brig turned north, obeying the crew like a loyal hunting dog.
As soon as they turned, Ralph returned to the bridge with his eyes sunken, as if he'd just spent a long night away, and his hair unkempt.
"Alex! Forgive me, but we have arrived earlier than I anticipated. This is the bay we need! That's Kinburn over there," Kingfisher pointed at the land on the horizon a little to the starboard. "Tendra is fore and aft of us, it curves like a sickle here. And over there," he pointed to the starboard stern, "is just land, not spits, actual land, mainland. That's not Taurica anymore, those are the northern steppes."
So that's how it is! the prince finally realized. We didn't go around the spit, we crossed it! The Kapitana could be right under our feet! Or a little to the side, but not far!
With his hands refusing to obey him from the tension, he reached for the map put together from the cryptograph.
"Here," he wheezed out and started coughing.
Kingfisher wasn't the only one who had trouble speaking.
"Damn it!" after clearing his throat, Alex unfolded the chart and showed it to Ralph.
Tendra really did look like a giant sickle from above, and there was an X marked in the internal bay.
Ralph looked at the map for a few seconds, then looked overboard and stretched out his hand decisively, "It's right there, Alex! Half a mile away! To the starboard, Captain! Even more starboard! And prepare to strike the sails."
Why even more? the prince thought in confusion. Then again, no one but Ralph here knows these depths…
"Ishmael!" the prince barked. "Ready the divers!"
We only have a few hours, Alex thought. Then Socrates and his gang will round the northern end of Tendra and be here. Forget the gold, we need to at least find the Kapitana's main treasure in that time!
"No need for divers," Ralph said unexpectedly and gave him a weary smile. "I'm not yet exhausted. I really am the best shtarkh in these waters… maybe even in the entire Euxine."
He turned and started walking back to the bow, where the cassat had been sitting and staring at the waves all this time. Ralph stood next to him and fell into his working stupor, then tilted his head back, directing his face at the sky, and then raised his hands in the same direction.
Neither Prince Alexander nor Captain Philsby, and not even the sailors would've been surprised at that point if angelic light were to shine down upon him.
They no longer had the strength to be surprised.
Five minutes later, a small island appeared in the bay. It was covered in brownish-green piles of seaweed, with a half-rotted mast without yards sticking out proudly from the center.
"There," Kingfisher pointed with his hand, coming out of his trance. "It's deep enough for even the Queen Svenja to simply run into the sand with her stem. We have about three hours before I need to return the island to the bottom."
He raised a suddenly cloudy gaze at the prince, "The elements are not to be trifled with… And it definitely wouldn't do to make them wait longer than expected."
Then, with plaintive notes in his voice, he added, "Alex, please have them bring some food and wine. Otherwise I'm just going to collapse…"
The sand around the remains of the Kapitana was wet, so digging was easy.
Everyone was digging: the now-quiet divers, the shocked sailors, and the soldiers who'd missed the whole show. There were more of the latter than everyone else put together. Naturally, the soldiers ended up learning of everything that had transpired in a whisper. They just laughed and shook their heads skeptically.
Here and there spades were already hitting the half-rotted wood.
Alexander had sacks prepared.
"Your Highness!" the officer of the watch shouted suddenly.
At that moment, the prince was on the island that had risen from the bottom, not far from the gangway that stretched from the bow of the Queen Svenja to the drying sand.
Throwing his head back, Alexander looked up at the officer. The latter leaned over the gunwale, "Someone is approaching! We can see masts!"
Masts? the prince thought in confusion. But it's too soon, Socrates couldn't have possibly rounded the northern end of Tendra so quickly! Or did he leave ships here too?
But he didn't want to believe in such foresight of the Viceroy of Galita.
Alexander quickly ran up the gangway, turned, and swept the bay with his gaze.
He didn't see a single mast. Not one, only the dark strip of land by the horizon.
"Where?" he asked in bewilderment.
"You're looking in the wrong direction, Your Highness. Over there!" the officer suggested.
There were indeed two masts visible where a canal had been created by the will of the shtarkh and the power of the elements only recently, over the narrow isthmus of the sickle-shaped spit called Tendra. And they were getting inexorably closer.
Someone was crossing the spit the same way the Queen Svenja had been, and almost at the same spot.
"Spyglass!" the prince said through gritted teeth.
He didn't like the masts over the isthmus at first glance. The second glance, through the spyglass this time, only served to confirm his fears.
The sails on the masts were old and torn, hanging in rags. The masts themselves were translucent, ghostly, like a mirage from the distant sandy deserts.
"Right… Our old acquaintances," the prince grunted. "I suppose there's no point calling for the gunners."
Why bother firing cannon at the ghost ship? Then again, from what Alexander could remember, Almea's bodyguards had been fighting the skeletons in Amasra with some success. While the skeletons were winning, there had been more of them than the bodyguards.
Gripping the handle of his sword, the prince once again leapt over the side and quickly ran down the gangway. At that moment, a ghostly dolphin leapt over the water by the port side of the brig. Prince Alexander could clearly see it in the greenish water.
"Judah!" the prince shouted loudly. "Ishmael! Come here!"
The head of the royal guard never had to be called twice. Judah figured everything out by Alexander's tone of voice. So he appeared before him not alone but with the other guards.
Ralph Kingfisher, who, despite the tiredness, had also been at the dig site, seemed to have sensed something and came as well.
The ghost ship slipped like a shadow from the coastal sand into the waves of Tendra's inner bay.
"Your Highness," Judah said. "It would be best for you to step aside. Preferably, as far away as possible."
"I wouldn't even think of it!" the prince snorted. "Not today! We've reached our goal, we found the Kapitana, and you want me to hide? I will not!"
The guards split up into pairs, stood in a line, and started readying their muskets for battle. Officers were already busy by the half-dug out ship, lining up their soldiers.
The translucent ship with torn sails was now close enough to see the holes in its hull and the cracks in the bow. To Alexander's eye, the ship was far too high in the water, as if it was weightless. The remains of the sails and the tattered flag of some dirty color were swaying entirely contrary to the wind in both direction and strength. Still, Alexander could soon easily make out what was portrayed on the flag: a crescent moon and a star.
Oddly enough, it was similar to the chart he'd recently drawn: the curved outline of Tendra and the spot in the bay marking the place where the Kapitana had sunk.
The prince ducked his shoulders involuntarily.
The ghost ship didn't run into the sandy slope the way the Queen Svenja had, instead running onto the shore in its entirety, stopping only shortly before the line of guards. It stopped almost instantaneously, as if it really was weightless. The ship was also not making any sounds. All they could hear the dulled splashing of the waves licking the sides of the Albionian brig and the occasional whistling of the rigging.
Then several figures in painfully familiar black cloaks leapt over the side and came down onto the sand as if they were feathers. Again, ignoring wind, as real feathers would've been inevitably blown away from the ghost ship.
There were five figures in cloaks or capes; as in Amasra, they were wrapped tightly, with their faces concealed behind their wrapped keffiyehs.
Each of them was holding a saber and was doing it so convincingly that not even the best fencers from among the guards were burning with a desire to test their mettle in a duel with them. The people in black could be mistaken for people, but Alexander had no doubt that it wasn't flesh and blood hiding under the shabby fabric, but yellowing bones. At night, in the moonlit haze, the sailors of the ghost ship hadn't felt it necessary to wrap themselves in their cloaks and keffiyehs. But now, with the sun pouring down on them…
Alexander suddenly realized that he was afraid of these five. The same way he'd been afraid of the dark nooks and crannies of the royal palace as a child, when it seemed as if there was something scary and supernatural hiding in the darkness, ready to grab and tear him apart if he so much as made a sound or a wrong move.
The five in cloaks were alien here among the people. Even in the entire world, they were clearly not from here. Perhaps their world had been the Earth before the catastrophe, or maybe not even Earth at all. Alexander didn't know. But here, on the sun-drenched island, they looked like a bloody axe in the middle of a neat bed of petunias.
"Clever boy," one of the black figures exhaled. "You reached the Kapudana quickly."
He'd spoken the name of the ancient ship in the Taurican manner, which didn't escape the prince's notice, even though the dull, emotionless voice was giving him a chill.
"So what do you intend to do now, little prince?" the figure asked. "Will you tell me?"
Little?! Alexander thought, getting angry. What the hell?!
It was good that the prince was starting to get angry. Even when angry, he never lost his self-control, but the fear before the figures was starting to melt away.
"Sure, I'll tell you," the prince replied. His voice was firm, confident, full of metal. "I'm going to load up everything I find here onto my brig and sail home to the King and my brothers!"
"Do you intend to rob me?" a hint at an emotion appeared in the voice of the black figure. Alexander thought that there was even some sarcasm in the phrase.
"The treasures belong to the one who finds them," the prince declared. "And I found this ship."
"The treasures belong to the one who owns them," the black figure replied. "I won't even mention that without me you'd never have found that cryptograph in Amasra."
So I was right then, Alexander thought. It's the same one. From Amasra.
"The Kapitana," the prince said forcefully, deliberately underscoring the Albionian version of the name, "was raised from the sea by me and my men. Therefore I, Prince Alexander Selinium Moreau, loyal subject to King Terence of Albion, claim her cargo."
The black figure stood there silently; then it swayed a little and asked, dully and almost expressionlessly, "Do you know, little prince, how many guns this ship had?"
The black figure's saber indicated the remains of the Kapitana.
"If the books are to be believed," Alexander replied without hesitation, "seventy-four. But I think it was more than that."
"How many is more?"
"Going by her size, I'd say at least a hundred," Alexander opined.
"Close enough. A hundred and ten," [Footnote 1] the black figure said. "Can you guess how I know that?"
"I have no idea!"
It was then that Alexander thought that the cloaks, the keffiyehs, the sirwals, the pointed shoes, and the sabers of the black figures — none of that looked ghostly. It all looked ordinary. The clothes and the shoes might have been well-worn, but the sabers were gleaming. Against the backdrop of the ghost ship, it all looked strange.
"Know then, little prince, that I, the Kapudan Pasha [Footnote 2], was once in command of this ship," the black figure said. "My name has died long ago, so I will not be able to give it to you."
Footnotes
1) This is historically incorrect, as the Mansuriye (Kapitana) only had 58 guns.
2) The Kapudan Pasha was the equivalent of a grand admiral in the Ottoman navy.