Sea of Ghosts - Alan Campbell [17]
The skiff pitched and rolled, but Banks and Swan kept her bow pointed towards the waves. The wind was fresh, but manageable, and they made good progress. Every man aboard had sailed in worse. They wore the trovers’ goggles and whaleskin cloaks to guard against sea spray, and they stuffed scraps of sackcloth into the rowlocks to muffle the sound of the oars. They didn’t speak, lest the wind carry their voices back to the shore. Soon they had cleared the breakwater and were heading back into the harbour.
Unseen in the dark, they slipped past the port side of the dragon-hunter. The silhouettes of her harpoons could be seen overhead, pointing at the stars. Her engines throbbed inside her iron belly. The rich odour of meat filled the air here, mingling with the ever-present shipyard aromas of brine and oil.
Creedy directed them to a ladder beside the cannery loading ramp at the rear of the ship, where the sea was red with blood. Granger held the skiff while his men disembarked, then tied her bow line to the ladder and hefted his kitbag over his shoulder before climbing up the greasy rungs after them.
The sea door at the rear of the dragon-hunter had been lowered onto the loading ramp below, revealing the ship’s cavernous interior. At the top of the ramp, a massive steel winch waited beside an overhead conveyor system of hooks and chains designed to uplift carcasses and carry them through an enormous doorway obscured by flaps of whaleskin.
Three big stevedores worked to unload the vessel. Two of them dragged a pair of hooked chains down the blood-soaked loading ramp below the winch and disappeared with them into the darkness of the ship’s hold. After a moment, one of them called out, ‘Pull.’
The third man had remained at the winch. He clanked a lever forward, whereupon the chains tightened and then slowly began to reel back onto a huge spool. As Granger watched, the carcass of a dragon emerged from the ship’s hold. It was a common red from the Sea of Kings, about eighty feet from snout to tail-tip. The chain hooks had been rammed into the flesh between the scales at the nape of its neck. Its crumpled wings scraped over the bloody concrete as the chain dragged it up the ramp towards the huge factory doorway. The stevedores emerged from the ship again, following a few yards behind. The dragon was still bleeding out from a harpoon wound in its chest. At the top of the ramp, the third man stopped the winch. His two comrades unhooked the carcass from one set of chains and hooked it up to another pair fixed to the conveyor system above.
‘That’s Davy,’ Creedy said, pointing to a fourth man who had just appeared through the factory doorway. He was a lean, hard-faced fellow, draped in bloody oilskins. A cheroot hung from the corner of his mouth. He carried a head-spade like a staff. He glanced at the carcass, then pulled a lever on the wall behind.
Another clunk, and the dragon carcass rose from the concrete floor, pulled up onto the overhead conveyor system by hooks in its neck and in the base of its tail. When it was fully off the ground, Davy halted the mechanism and then threw another switch.
The conveyor gave a jerk, a rattle, and then rumbled forward, carrying the suspended carcass through the whale-hide doorway.
‘Davy!’ Creedy called.
The hard-faced man looked up. He frowned and then jerked his head over his shoulder. And then he disappeared back through the doorway into the factory.
‘Come on,’ Creedy said.
Granger and the others followed the sergeant along the edge of the loading ramp, while the two stevedores below returned the chains to the ship to hook up another carcass. Creedy pushed