《Black Purpose》 Letter To the honourable Governor Christopher Clitherow, I am happy to report my safe arrival in Hong Kong, as well as a vocal and vigorous satisfaction with our wares from the locals. I foresee a profitable future. With our delivery settled, I will spend a week completing business on the mainland before setting sail for home. Indeed, by the time you receive this, I am back at sea already. All in all, my voyage can be marked a complete success. The Company is well on its way to being China¡¯s lifeline to civilisation. A curious update: do you recall the HCS Neptune, lost two years past? Our prediction it ran aground may have been accurate. A pair of blues came to me yesterday to tell me they¡¯d found remains on the Southern side of Pratas. I¡¯m not familiar with the isle, but the proximity to the same reef that has damaged hulls since our arrival in the region cannot be ignored. One of these remains is an intriguing journal; dozens of bamboo strips stacked to make pages, bound into a book. It is half the size of the Bible, with a dozen pages of words carved into the wood. A peculiar thing! The words have not lost legibility, though it almost certainly took a dip. The sailors explained the Chinese make these and tie the strips vertically, as befits their writing. This book had its strips tied horizontally, which made them think it belonged to an Englishman; the owner identifies himself as one of the Neptune¡¯s crew. I have included it with this letter.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. This is why I write. Certainly the descriptions of porpoise, pelicans, and spiders will be of interest to the biologists, but there¡¯s more which snagged my attention. Read through and see what you make of the religious figurines he mentions. I don¡¯t recognise them based on his description, which infuriates. Hoping this might be one of my elusive shen. Poor chap goes quite mad by the end, of course. I don¡¯t expect every blue-jacket to be of strong mind, but this one seems to have been betrayed by his profligate imagination. At a certain point, starvation has clearly set in; I couldn''t read any further. It may be of interest, were someone able to parse it. I look forward to discussing when I return. Your servant, William Hawthorpe First Entry First entry We are following a black purpose. Smit says it is a dollfin but fuck him. Never heard of a doll¡¯s fin, but all of us have seen a purpoose before. Take a sailor over a sciencist any day!Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Cap has given me her old journal to write in. Says I need to practice me letters. Think it is punishment for the fight last week. Not fair. Fun to carve though. Whatever it is, the fish is friendly. It squeals when we wave from the rail. Smit says about behaviors and habitats but Derrs told him shut up. The fish is our little friend. Wait til I catch him and fry him up. Yum! Second and third entries Second entry Don¡¯t know what to write. Spent today in the crow nest. Cap hiding me away. No point being up here. Derrs and Ewan are at the helm, just trying to fight the tide. Some storms are fun, not this one. Maker painted a big fat purple bruise over the sky and it has rained for a week. Wish Cap had called up to me. Report, Ren! Yes, Captain! It is raining, Captain. Carry on¡ª!This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Third entry Purpose has charmed me. He is a happy bugger, and he¡¯s done well to follow us. Seen birds follow ships but not fish. The way he moves looks like he¡¯s dancing. In the moments when the winds calm we crowd the rail and he stands up out of the water almost as tall as a man. We cheer him on. His skin is inky, like pitch. His lines disappear in the foam. We want to take our minds off the wet and the wind, the way the compass lies, the way we keep finding every reef in this godforsaken sea. We have almost scuppered twice. It¡¯s nice to watch the dance. Fourth through sixth entries Fourth entry Smit said he saw the safe path by where the purpose went. But I saw. It¡¯s impossible to see it under the water. The fish lifted out of the water and shook its nose. Fifth entry It happened. We tore a hole in the hull and went under a wave. I was saved. We were all on the deck when the wave hit. I heard a break and my head snapped forward. Woke up on a beach with a chunk of rail still held in hand. Waterlogged, kept me afloat. Small but mighty. Cap¡¯s journal stayed in my shirt. Would have rather returned it.If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Nothing to do. Haven¡¯t left the beach, but getting hungry. The sand is black here. Like home. Sixth entry The island has buildings. Wanted to stay on the beach but the rain makes me mad. I climbed the bluffs and found huts. Simple, one room. I haven¡¯t looked at the others, just claimed mine and laid down. The blessed roof! Small comforts. The neighbors were a surprise. Loads, birds, bugs, and turtles. Will catch one to eat once I have some sleep. Seventh through eleventh entries 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¡ªnothing 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.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. 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¡ª! 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.