She shook off the thought. All that could be done about that problem had been; and there was a raft of new ones about to descend. The rigging lines were humming, like a huge stringed instrument all tuned to a single harmony. A voice cried from the mainmast:

"On deck there! Ease the't' gallant buntline."

Feet thundered across the deck. Alston's eyes followed the motions that let the line out a trifle and then secured it again with automatic ease. The blue-green swell raised the Eagle in its rhythmic grip, and the big ship heeled deep to port. The masts and the humans on them traced circles against the sky and began their cycle again. Alston went forward of the wheel and into the pilothouse.

"Ms. Rapczewicz," she said to the woman at the chart table. "Do you have the plot?"

"Here, Skipper," she said. One of the watch handed Alston a cup of coffee; that was something she was going to miss, when they ran out. "We should make landfall about here, this afternoon. Assuming there's an England here."

"There'll always be an England," she said, and looked at the XO's pointing thumb. Just east of the Isle of Wight, Southampton Water. "In a geographical sense, at least," she added.

"Mr. Arnstein," she said to the professor. He was there with the astronomer, come up from the cubbyhole where they'd been deep in the books from the Nantucket Athenaeum. "Is there anywhere we could expect to get coffee, here and now?"

"Hmmm?" Arnstein looked up, preoccupied. "Coffee? Oh… um, that is, it comes from Ethiopia, originally. Kaffa province, fairly far inland. It went from there to the Yemen, and from the Yemen to everywhere. The Arabs spread it."

"I don't suppose…"

"Well, Captain, there's no mention of it for more than two thousand years after this date. Tea, maybe-"

"Boat ho!" The lookout's voice came faint from the tops through the door of the deckhouse.

Alston turned and went out on the deck. "What do you make?"

"Captain, small boat off to port, a mile and a half!" the lookout cried. Sailors crowded to the port rail.

"Mr. Walker, get those people back to their posts!" she said crisply. "Helm, come about. Stand by aloft, ready to take in sail. Mr. Walker, we'll heave to once we're near."

"Lower a boat, ma'am?"

She shook her head. "Not immediately. I want to take a look at them first. Ms. Rapczewicz, you have the deck."

"Ms. Rapczewicz has the deck, aye!"

Alston walked down into the waist, securing binoculars to her belt. Then she crouched, leaped to the bulwark, caught the ratlines, and swarmed upward, tarred rope harsh under her hands. She climbed, past the tops-triangular railed platforms halfway and three-quarters of the way up the mainmast-higher still, until the ship was a tiny lozenge far below. She nodded to crewfolk as she passed; the rigging was no place to waste hands on saluting, and she was up here fairly often, for exercise's sake. At last she came to the uppermost yard, the royal, where the steel tube of the mast was barely as thick through as her waist. A leg over the yard and her foot hooked through a line gave her a secure brace.

The wind whipped at her, chilly and strong, and the sail bellied out below in a pure white curve. She turned the focusing screw of the binoculars with the thumb whose fingers held the instrument, according to the old nautical rule of one hand for yourself and another for the ship. The boat grew; it was an oval about a dozen feet long, low in the water, with neither mast nor sail and a curious double prow. There were five men-five human figures, at least-lying prone in it, some half covered by blankets or cloaks. The boat rose, hesitated on the height of a swell, then skidded downward. The sluggishness of the motion told her it was taking water and would sink in a few hours. The crew certainly weren't in any shape to bail. She watched until she could see limbs flopping loosely. It would be disappointing if they were all dead… No, one stirred feebly.

"On deck, there!" There was a trick to calling down so you could be heard, a matter of pitch rather than raw volume. "Ms. Rapczewicz, bring us alongside!"

"Alongside, aye!"

Alston went down the ratlines to the middle top, then slid down a stayline, using the soles of her shoes to brake against the hard ridged surface of the cable. When she sprang to the deck the small boat was visible from this level, and a cluster of figures were by the port rail, peering themselves.

"I've never seen anything like it," she said. "Professor Arnstein, what do you make of her?"

She handed over the binoculars. Arnstein pushed his glasses up on his head and adjusted them more clumsily. At last he gave a surprised grunt.

"I've never seen one either," he said. "But I think it's a coracle, a boat made out of sewn hides on a sapling frame. The Irish were using them well into the modern era. Isn't it a bit far from land for a boat that size?"

"Two hundred miles from the nearest shore, and God knows where they put to sea," Alston said. The distance was closing rapidly; she took back the glasses and watched. "There are half a dozen people in that boat. They're not movin', but I thought I saw… Wait, one is moving."

She turned her head. "Get the medic ready," she said. "Severe dehydration, salt poisoning."

"How do you know that, Captain?" Arnstein asked curiously-he was always curious, which was annoying sometimes but a large part of what made him useful.

Not to mention interesting. Her own reading in history had been largely maritime and military. Talking with Arnstein, you always learned something. It might be completely useless, but it would be fascinating… and she suspected that many of the facts that seemed useless would turn out to be valuable later. Glad to return the favor for once, she continued:

"If you're lost at sea in a small boat, and it's not cold enough for hypothermia, the commonest way to die is thirst," she replied. "Or salt poisonin' from drinking seawater; that'll kill you faster, unless you're very careful to take small sips. And from the look of them, I'd say these people were blown out to sea and mighty thoroughly lost."

Ian Arnstein watched with queasy interest as the sailors went down ropes and climbed into the coracle. It bobbed and heaved as two of them climbed aboard, made fast, and began examining the bodies lying in the shallow water that sloshed in its bottom.

One of the sailors vomited over the side. Even at this distance the livid faces and swollen tongues weren't pretty, and seagulls or something had been at them. The other went on with her task, checking the inert shapes one by one.

"Only one alive, sir," she called up after a moment, her fingers on the neck of a figure hidden under several cloaks, as her companion returned to his work. "He's pretty far gone, though. I need a sling lift."

"Lot of weapons," Arnstein said thoughtfully. "Not fishermen."

Alston nodded. "The survivor probably had enough willpower not to drink from the sea." Louder: "Send up the gear, after you've recovered the live one."

Doreen pushed her glasses back with a finger and peered, fascinated beneath her nausea. The bodies were all men, all fairly young. Weapons lay beside them: spears, bows, quivers, axes with yard-long handles and long narrow heads of bronze, the drooping edges shaped like a hawk's beak. The rest of the boat's load was bundles wrapped in hide or basketwork lashed with thongs.

The ship's physician and his helpers swung into operation as the body came inboard. The rest of the crew hung back, but nobody objected when Ian pushed close, Doreen beside him. The stranger was a little above average height, perhaps five-eight or -nine. His body was sunburned and his face, and lips swollen, but you could see that he was young, probably in his late teens. The sparse yellow beard bore that out too, merely thick down. His hair was twisted back in a braid that reached halfway down his back, bound with bronze rings. For clothes he wore a thigh-length leather kilt pyrographed with cryptic designs, cinched by a broad belt of sheepskin worn with the fleece side in; his feet were bare and heavily callused. The face was generic European of a northern or eastern variety, narrow and long-nosed on a long skull, although the nose had been broken at some time and had healed a little crooked. Arnstein could see a blue eye when the doctor peeled back an eyelid and shone a light into it.