Seventh entry

  It was good to sleep. But now is night. I cannot see, carving by touch. Words to weaken the fear. Need to build a fire. Will burn book as last resort.

  Eighth entry

  Hell is froze over and the devil is here. Smit survived. He has stomped his soggy self over the sand and tumbled down a dune to spoil my holiday.

  Four days since wreck. The science man has been eating seaweed. I couldn’t catch a bird, but got some fish out of tide pools. Smit is grateful for the meat.

  I wish it had been Cap. I would’ve even taken the purpose.

  We watch the surf.

  Ninth entry

  The rain is coming hard. We are confined to the hut. He wants to explore the other huts, but the rain prevents.

  He is so full of knowledge, our Smit. He has ideas of where exactly off the mainland we are, what happened to the crew, what will become of us if we are not rescued. He tells me them all, without me even having to ask.

  I will kill him if he is not quiet.

  Tenth entry

  Smit wants me to come back in the hut, so I’m back now. More days have passed. Rain has calmed a bit. I was on the beach, couldn’t see nothing. No Cap, no boats. No rescue. Smit says I’ll get sick from the rain. Old maid. Promised him I’ll go see what he found in the huts tomorrow.

  Eleventh entry

  Should’ve stayed in our place. We saw in the huts, they are the least of our worries. First hut was ours—nothing in it. Second and third huts had tables, shrines I guess, covered in little men. Faceless statues carved from driftwood in the likeness of gods of the mainland. I recognize some of them, some gods and others thinkers, old men in robes and boxy hats. There are bits of Chinese writing here and there on scattered pieces of crisp paper. This was very exciting for Smit, both the paper and the statues. He tried to read them but the ink has faded. Should have carved it.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Smit kept reaching a hand out for a statue and pulling it back at the last second. Reverent is our science lad. Or was. Until he couldn’t contain it and picked one up. Like a baby with a sweetie. Only made it halfway up to his face before it crumbled in his hand and out of the wreckage crawled spiders, dozens of them in their translucent armor, crawling up and over Smit’s hand.

  He screamed. I laughed.

  He was fine, once he had pawed them all off. Then he soothed himself by listing what sort of spider he thought it was, repeated that there weren’t venomous a few more times than I needed.

  We should have taken it for a sign. Smit says spiders often do this, hollowing out wood to nest in. I never heard of it. I should have known.

  I will say here away from his eyes that my laugh was luck. I had been just as disturbed when it happened and the body just made a noise. I might just as likely have cried.

  But the laughter helped. It caught between us and we waved it in the air like a maid beating out a rug, trying to shake the fear that had settled over us.

  We left the third hut and Smit was glad for the rain, washing tiny footprints off him self.

  The fourth hut was a relief. There were tables here too, but instead of shrines they held ships. Model ships, with sails and all. Now, finally, we had some proof of life. There were ships of many styles, both Chinese and English, ships I’d seen in the Company and some I didn’t know but from the odd sighting as we passed through a dock town. Swift schooners with ribbed sails and large, tiered caravels. The details were rough, but the shapes of each ship were right. I know a sailor built these. I’ve never known someone with a knowledge of ships like this who hadn’t spent some time on the sea. And if sailors had been here on the island before, they may yet be coming back.

  The huts were in fine shape, and though the statues had spiders there was no sign of decay so much to suggest many years passage since the carver was here last. Indeed, I pointed out to Smit that one of the ships on display was only 5 years out of the East India shipyard! I had been a dockhand when it joined the fleet. In order for a sailor to have seen it around these waters, to become familiar enough to carve it? They can’t have been here longer than a half year ago.

  It gave both of us hope. Smit said a prayer, which I thought was funny. I thought science was for heathens.

  But we didn’t stay in the hut with the ships. We went back to the beach. We had gotten ourselves so worked up at the chance of a rescue—!

  It was my idea. Stupid. Thought we might see sails. Watched the dying gray of the horizon together, acting for all the world like two chums watching the ships come in. Fucking Smit.

  He saw it first, cried out with so much joy that I thought, we’re saved, oh God in heaven, I’ll happily live in China my whole life if I could go back to something like civilization!

  But it wasn’t sails. It was the black fin of the purpose.