Day 48
After a month of sailing, today at 5:00 AM, I woke up to the call “Land Ahoy!” coming from the crow’s nest of the main mast. I hastily moved towards the bow through the cheering crew and used my spyglass to get a better view of the island. In a couple of hours following the initial call, I was disappointed. What we were sailing towards was not the remote island we discussed about, but seemed to be an archipelago of multiple islands. Clearly, the course was faulty and I rushed into my cabin to check the maps and figure out our location, to no avail. The Captain, who apparently handed over the helm to the steersman after seeing me rushing to my cabin, came into the quarters after me and watched silently as I murmured and tried to make sense of the situation through the maps piled on the table. Once I saw that I was completely lost, I burst out to him in rage — “Clearly, you brought us to the wrong waters! You told me that there was a single remote island here, just like everyone else — but there is an archipelago on the horizon! There are no mapped archipelagos here, we will be lost in the Ocean! This is an outrage!”. Baffled by my outburst and the situation in general, the Captain nevertheless seemed confident, and in a calm manner said “Yes, I too am confused about the presence of the small islands, this should not have been an archipelago. However, I am certain that the first island we saw on the horizon is indeed “Oceanland”. I once came here, during my service in the Royal Navy in pursuit of some Castellian pirates. We lost track of them during a storm and had to anchor here for a day. It was said that due to its remoteness, some pirates used the island to hoard their loot, and spread rumors about a curse on the island to drive sailors away. We had to leave quickly to catch on with the pirates and didn’t have the chance to explore the island. If you don’t believe me, I can show you the cove we anchored in when we arrive there, along with several other ones.”
Throughout the day the winds were calm — further leading me to believe that this should not be the island surrounded by treacherous waters that we were looking for. Nevertheless, I went to sleep after a cup of grog, to be awakened by the Captain in the morning, telling me that we have arrived.
My doubts quickly turned into bafflement, once the Captain accurately described the coves he mentioned about and sailed the ship to a cove, without the need to use a lead line to designate how many fathoms the water depth was. Clearly, he has been here before and he must be right about what he said — yet, what were these tiny other islands we could see on the horizon? They were hard to miss.
As curiosity and anxiety grasped my soul, my mouth almost independently uttered the words “Make port. We will camp and begin our exploration”.
