Son of Fortune Read Online Free Page A

to assemble in his brain.
    A polar bear was starving and he shot a seal and a shark ate half their boat. The ocean was cold and Fish was terribly heavy while drowning. The hard jab against his back had not been the huge shark returning but the jagged gunwale of the sinking rowboat. He remembered hands grabbing hold of him, then a rope digging under his arms and pulling him up through the air. He remembered feeling amazed to be back on the ship, separated from the evil ocean. He remembered Fish’s blond hair swinging back and forth as the other men rolled him across a barrel, and the magnificent gasp as his lungs came back to air. Then he remembered the warmth of the polished deck against his cheek, and nothing else.
    Aiden tried standing and found it possible. He felt his way through the narrow passageway toward faint daylight. All five of the Swedes were on deck, with Captain Neils at the helm. A watery gray light made everything flat and slightly unreal. The men looked at him, and Aiden couldn’t tell what anyone was thinking. He had worked with Swedes in the lumber camp and knew them as a mostly taciturn bunch, so this didn’t surprise him.
    “Is it evening time?” he asked.
    “Morning,” Captain Neils replied. “Morning of tomorrow. You slept a long time.”
    “Sorry,” Aiden said.
    “It’s fine.” The captain smiled. “Have some coffee.” He said something to Sven the Ancient, and the old man went below and returned with a coffeepot, mug and plate full of food. Aiden devoured the breakfast: fried apples and onions, some kind of pickled fish, fatty bacon and biscuits with jam.
    “You should have seen the mama bear eat!” Captain Neils said.
    “Eat what?” Aiden asked, puzzled.
    “Too many knots!” Captain Neils yelped his strange burst of laughter. “Too many knots!”
    “The shark bit through the seal’s body just as you cut the rope,” Fish explained. “The cut end of the rope snagged on the broken boards, still tied to a good chunk of meat.” He held his hands out to show the size. “Maybe thirty pounds.”
    Aiden felt himself suddenly gagging at the image of the torn seal flesh, guts swirling around his feet, weird prehistoric flipper scrabbling at his knee.
    “So she ate it?” He tried to picture the little cubs instead.
    “Oh
ja
!” Captain Neils nodded happily. “She has milk now for the little ones!”
    “That’s great.”
    “But I am sorry to say your bow and arrows are gone,” Captain Neils went on. “Everything in the boat was lost. Except for one oar and all the men.”
    “Oh,” Aiden said dumbly. “Yes. I don’t suppose they would have floated.” The news hit him like a punch. He had had the bow since he was ten years old. It was the last bit of anything left from his old life. He looked out over the low swells and worked to make his voice sound normal. “Is this the real ocean now? Are we out of Puget Sound?”
    “Ja,”
Captain Neils said. He waved a gnarled hand toward the western horizon. “China is just over there.” He laughed and nudged the wheel.
    Sven the Ancient began clattering loudly in the little galley, washing up the breakfast dishes, while the other men went about their ordinary tasks. In the sanctuary of day, on a sturdy ship with a fair wind filling the sails and genial dolphins escorting them along, they had little work to do, yet there is never time for real idleness at sea. The sailors passed the morning splicing ropes and patching up the dinghy. The sight of the torn wood made Aiden shudder. He could clearly see tooth marks in the wood, as if an expert carpenter had cleanly struck his sharpest chisel there. The men talked in Swedish as they fitted new planks across the gap. When they saw Aiden and Fish, they began to laugh and talk with more animation.
    “When a bad time is over and we tell the story afterward, everything changes,” Fish explained. “Now you are the warrior king who has split open the head of the sea monster with one