The Ebb Tide by James Blaylock & J. K. Potter

Author:James Blaylock & J. K. Potter [Blaylock, James & Potter, J. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781596062283
Google: RIYmOQAACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 6233723
Publisher: Subterranean
Published: 2009-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The Undersea Graveyard

We had wandered a quarter mile or so out onto the sands when Fred once again stopped to study the map. Kraken had fixed the location of the sunken device by lining up a blasted tree above Silverdale with a chimney pipe atop a manor house beyond it and away to the northeast. Fred walked along a line defined by the tree and the chimney pipe until he was very near dead center on yet another pair of conspicuous points, the spire-like pinnacle of a high rock atop Humphrey Head, and a stone tower on a hill off in the distance toward Flookburgh. He gestured the wagon forward, stopping it a few short feet from the edge of what turned out to be a broad pool of quicksand.

“This is what we call ‘Placer’s Pool,’ hereabouts,” Fred told us. “It’s always quick, never solid. A man named Placer and his bride went down into it in a coach and four, with their worldly goods, because they were in a flaming hurry and didn’t bother to hire a pilot, but left it up to the driver to find a way. The fool found it right enough, but it wasn’t the way they had in mind. If your man was bound from the shore opposite to Humphrey head, then…” He shook his head darkly. “The good Lord alone knows what you’ll find down there, because no one else has stepped into Placer’s Pool and come back out again.”

It was then that I began to grasp the obvious truth, although of course it should have been plain to me all along: we weren’t plunging into a pool of water this time, but into a pot of cold porridge, so to speak. It came into my mind simply to admit to St. Ives that I’d rather be pursued by axe wielding savages than to drop blind into a pool of quicksand, but I sat there mute, trying to distract myself with the goings-on outside, looking at the grappling hook where it dangled in the grip of one of the craft’s pitiful claws. My mind argued senselessly with itself—whether it would be courageous to admit my cowardice and stay topside, or cowardly to fear admitting it, descend into the murk, and risk going insane. There would be no opening the hatch in these waters, I told myself insidiously. I pictured Bill Kraken, hurriedly sketching his map in the moonlight, corking it up in a bottle, and heaving it end over end toward solid ground, and I very much hoped that there had been something in the bottle to drink before it became a mere glass mailbag.

But of course there wasn’t a moment to lose. Fred looked at a pocket watch, shouted, “Thirty minutes by the clock!” and St. Ives shut us in tight. We were lifted bodily by the crane, Hasbro turning away with one arm on the windlass crank as if letting down an anchor while Fred held the horses steady. The

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