Serial Sunday: The Renaissance Man and the Strange New World, Part IV
- Jul 12
- 7 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
In the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from where there should be any land, Harry Bell and his shipmates stepped tenderly from their launch onto the shore of the mysterious land Harry had spotted the night before. The ground was soft underfoot, in some spots the landing party’s boots sank into the mud all the way to the top and the men had to be pulled out their shipmates. They soon began moving in a file by pairs, led by Chief Officer Chapman.
There had been a lively debate amongst Captain Hill and his officers as to who would lead the first landing party. It had started friendly enough but had soon turned to vituperation. Likely at least one of the four had ended his maritime career that morning. Chapman had won out in the end over Hill and the other two officers by virtue of it being standard procedure for the Chief Officer to take the lead in such a situation.
The reason for the argument amongst usually harmonious colleagues was simple: they all wanted to be the one to first plant a flag in that new land. That flag was now carried in the haversack slung across Chapman’s shoulder. He used the boathook that would serve as an improvised flagpole to test the ground in front of him.
Harry brought up the rear of the column along with Russell, the oldest hand on the ship. They were moving quicker now, the ground was getting more solid the further they walked from the shore. It was still not exactly terra firma, it was like ground after a heavy downpour that lasted days on end. They went further uphill, and their boots sank into the ground less, until finally Chapman tapped his boathook in front of him and instead of a silence it was met with a tap.
They were soon walking amongst large boulders, the spaces between some of which led off into utter darkness despite the high morning sun. Some of them bore porous openings near their tops. Looking down to get a final glimpse of solid ground, he saw seaweed and molluscs littering the stone smooth stone.
They moved through the boulders, now having climbed high enough that the Brunswick could be seen anchored offshore. And the flag could be easily seen through glasses too. After being so grateful for the stone underfoot, Chapman now searched for somewhere soft to plant his boathook flagpole.
He found what he was looking further back from the boulders. A black patch on the ground that reminded Harry of a bog. Chapman stepped, waded to be more accurate, out into it, excited to plant the flag. The other sailors hung back, ready to lend assistance should the eager officer become stuck but not so blind as to follow him into such a situation.
Chapman realised his foolishness but still made to raise the flag. From his haversack he took a carefully folded Union Flag that until that morning hung in the officers’ mess. He affixed it to one end of the boathook and with added emphasis plunged the other end into the ground.
“I, Henry Chapman, Chief Officer of the Brunswick, claim this land for His Majesty’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and…”
He never got to finish his proclamation. The land seemingly did not care for it and began pulsating beneath him. Soon it was writhing. What Chapman had taken to be decaying roots were being drawn back and forth before him.
A pair of the roots rose up and flailed blindly at the boathook Chapman had planted. One of the tentacles knocked it over, whilst the other, brushing Chapman, changed course and wrapped itself around the terrified Chief Officer.
The sailors, all nine of them petrified at what they had just seen, watched as their leader was dragged beneath the surface, his screams soon replaced by bubbles from the black putrefaction beneath him. In its centre, a massive beak arose and gave a single, ululating shriek.
They had all seen enough and as one turned and fled back to the stony trail through the boulders. They did not move in pairs now, but in panicked ones. All except Russell, who pulled Harry along with him in tow. Some of the men tried to duck down those narrow passageways, presumably to hide out from either the stampede or whatever had risen out the muck, but as soon as each of them disappeared from sight a bloodcurdling scream emanated from that passage.
Grey-green, slimy man-shaped creatures were soon emanating from the holes in the boulders or the passageways between them. They wrapped their clawed flippers around the nearest man and began to drag them away, blood streaming from their faces.
Russell picked up the pace, clutching Harry tighter. They had been in the rear again, but soon they were at the front and there was no one behind them.
No one human, at least.
A host of the creatures bore down upon them. Russell sought more purchase on Harry with his free hand and threw his younger crewmate down the muddy hill from whence they came.
“Get back to the launch, Bell!” Russell cried as he disappeared into a mass of grey-green.
His face and front caked in mud, Harry stood as best he could and half ran, half slid back down the hill, never daring the look back.
The prints left by their boots in the mud made his job a little easier and soon he had his footing good enough risk a half-second look back.
He was not being followed.
That knowledge let him risk a look at the boat anchored offshore. What he saw stopped him dead in his track.
Large green tentacles had wrapped themselves around the Brunswick. He could see the flashes from gunfire.
The wind was blowing in Harry’s direction.
He could faintly here the screams of what was left of his crew.
***
The docks of New York City, like those of most cities, were one of the few areas where people of all walks of life, races, classes and creeds could pass without notice. Even police officers could move unmolested, with the permission of the Brotherhood of Stevedores, naturally. The Renaissance Man and his associates were well-known to the Stevedores, and two of those associates had made a late call to the union office.
Eileen Wong was known amongst the old hands on the docks from a young age. She had been one of many young children trying to pick up the odd coin from doing odd jobs. Once her preternatural ability with machines became known her rates went up. Since taking up with the Renaissance, she had been the one sending the odd coin to some of the same men that had given her odd jobs.
Benjamin Williams had only become known to the New York docks after he had already been part of the Renaissance for years. Even without it, he moved through the docks like he moved through anywhere, with the utmost confidence he was in the right place at the right time. After his first few visits, his war record began to precede even his association with the Renaissance Man.
Together, Eileen and Williams were formidable pair to arrange supplies.
As was their usual repartee, Bauer, the union steward manning the night shift, had taken a bottle of schnapps from his desk and poured three glasses. He poured them so full that the even the least bit of unsteadiness in the hand would cause the schnapps to spill.
And he would then know all he needed to about his visitors.
Eileen and Williams raised their glasses without spilling a drop and knocked back the schnapps.
“Prost!” Bauer bade them.
Their usual etiquette passed, it was now down to business.
“We’re going to need a lot of equipment and supplies,” Eileen began, taking a list from her jacket. “And we’re going to need them fast, sorry, whatever you have at hand.”
“This is the Port of New York and New Jersey,” the Stevedore smiled. “We have everything at hand.”
Bauer accepted the list and read through it.
“Setting out for the lost continent?”
Williams and Eileen exchanged a glance.
“Is that what they’re calling it?” Williams asked.
“Well,” Bauer chuckled. “Sailors would have to have been pretty darn stupid to have missed something that big for hundreds of years. It must have come from somewhere.”
“That’s a fair point,” Eileen offered. “The press has been calling it the New World and so have we.”
“Last time someone discovered the New World, things didn’t go very nicely afterwards.”
Bauer poured each of them another glass of schnapps and then examined the list once more.
“I don’t see much in the way of weaponry on this list, Sarge.”
Some of the Stevedores had taken to addressing Williams by his former Army rank. To them, it was a term of endearment.
“We’ll be taking a small supply for protection from wildlife,” Williams explained. “This is not a mission of conquest.”
“I can’t interest you in the gross of surplus Old Glories I have out back, then?”
Another shot successfully drank, Williams and Eileen took their leave of Bauer.
“The Renaissance Man himself becoming too famous to drop in on us working men?”
Eileen and Williams had already stood up when Bauer asked the question.
“Mr. Chance,” Eileen began, “will be dropping in before long, he’s arranging a ship and he’ll need to let you know which slip to deliver our supplies."
“I better put this away for later, then.”
Bauer put the bottle of schnapps back in the desk.
Leaving the building, the pair began to walk down the docks towards the bar where they knew Chance was trying to charm a captain into taking them halfway across the world at less than a day’s notice.
They both noticed in soon order that their footsteps were being matched by several more behind them.
“Miss Wong—”
“I hear them too,” Eileen cut in. “On three, run down to that alley on the left, take the next right, then the next left, and follow it through to the street.”
She counted under her breath, and on three they took off.
The footsteps behind them were soon sprinting in the same direction.
Williams followed the directions given by Eileen, memorised from her days as an urchin on the docks. Left, then right, then left.
They stopped dead in their tracks as a gleaming chain-link fence stretched across the alley, blocking their route to the street. Although they could only see the back of it, a cardboard sign on the fence faced the street advising ‘No Entry’.
They turned to face their pursuers, who had slowed down but not stopped.
Five hulking brutes bore down on them. The one at the point of their diamond wore brass knuckles, the two to his left carried axe handles, the one to his immediate right a longshoreman’s hook, and the one at the far right swung a chain.
Eileen and Williams had no escape.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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