Deep Fire Rising

crew. He didn’t speak Dutch. Yet he had been on this ship several times when searching for the best vantage to watch the eruption and had befriended the captain’s steward, Ping. Han’s Cantonese was fluent enough for them to understand each other. He searched for the old seaman and spotted his skinny figure wiping the bridge windows with a filthy rag.

Moving so he stood directly below the steward, Han cleared his throat to catch the man’s attention. Ping ignored him and continued his fruitless work. “Old father,” Han said respectfully, for the steward was many years his senior. “I would not interrupt you if it wasn’t important.”

“You should be below with the other passengers,” Ping said, a little frightened by the mysterious traveler who he recognized had come from Tibet, a land populated by wizards.

“We have spoken over several trips together, but I have not told you the true reason I left my distant homeland. It is time to tell you that I am here to witness what is about to unfold.”

Ping laughed nervously. “About to unfold? Look around you, man. It’s already happened.”

“This is just the beginning.” Han spoke calmly, so Ping wouldn’t think he was as panicked as the natives and laborers huddled in the crowded forecastle. “There will be another explosion, many times what happened today.”

Ping stopped his wiping. The people of the Himalayas were said to have special gifts that allowed them to survive the harsh climate so close to the top of the world. He’d heard some fanciful stories about the mountain dwellers in his youth and had seen such unexplainable wonders in his time since that he had no reason to doubt them. The Tibetan standing so stolidly amid the swirling ash seemed so sure of himself that Ping wouldn’t be surprised if he really did know something kept from normal men. It didn’t hurt that he himself felt that the volcano over the horizon wasn’t finished yet.

Han continued, “Tomorrow morning the mountain will explode again. When it does, it will destroy everything in the Sunda Strait.”

Ping covered his astonishment with a skeptical look. “How do you know?”

“The same way I knew months ago that it would erupt at all. That is why I am here.”

“The volcano has been erupting for months,” Ping said. “Maybe you heard of this and came to see for yourself.”

The watcher reached into his bag, careful to knock ash from its cover so as not to spoil what was nestled inside. The book he held in the corona of the Loudon ’s running lights was many decades old. Its once blood-dyed cover had turned black, and the brass clasps that held it together were tarnished to the patina of old iron. “I can show you in this journal that I left my village a week before the first eruption to get here in time.”

Han didn’t add exactly how long ago the oracle had known this eruption was coming. It was bad enough he was trying to save the people on the ship in order to save his own life. He would not give up any more secrets than necessary.

“You may have heard that in my lands the rock speaks to us,” Han said, feeding the steward’s superstitions. “The great mountains told us that one of their brothers in the Indies was angry and that it would speak this weekend. They asked me to come to hear what was said and report back.” On one level, the watcher wasn’t lying, only he didn’t know it. The rocks had spoken to the oracle, only not the way he and the old sailor imagined. “If you do not convince the captain to back away from shore, we will all die and the Himalayas will not know what upset their brother.”

Han saw the transformation in the steward. Ping’s doubt turned to interest. It didn’t matter whether he believed the superstitious tales told about Tibetans or that his own seaman’s senses were telling him that the calamities were far from over.

“You must get the captain to move us to shore,” Han pleaded. “Or if not to shore then farther out to sea so we can weather whatever comes.”

As agile as a monkey, the old steward swung around the railing in front of the bridge and lowered himself down a small ladder so he stood next to Han. The two men eyed each other, occasionally brushing flakes that settled on eyelashes and brows. Ping touched the dagger tucked into the rope he used as a belt. “If you are wrong about this, mountain wizard, I will gut you like a fish.”

Han ignored the threat for what it was, an expression of fear. “Do you believe I’m wrong?”

Ping glanced over the stern railing. Because the ash had thinned, he could see an unworldly orange glow clinging to the horizon many miles away. “No. Come with me, the captain might want to speak with you.”

Lindemann had just returned from the head. He’d splashed water on his face and the stray drops had cut channels of mud on his uniform. He paused when he saw his cabin boy with one of the passengers at the entrance to the small bridge. “Ping, you lazy savage, get out there and clean the windscreens.”

“My captain,” Ping said in rough Dutch. He waved to Han. “This man is a learned scientist from China. He is renowned in my country for his knowledge of the ways of the earth. He has traveled-”

“Do you have a point?” Lindemann snapped. “The seas are running hard and if the wind picks up we’re going to be buried under ash.”

“Yes, my captain,” Ping groveled. “This scientist has traveled here to study the volcano and it is his scholarly opinion that it will erupt again. He believes that we must get everyone ashore.” Ping turned to the watcher. “Say something so I can pretend to translate. Make it sound that you are sure of what you’re talking about.”

“But I am sure. Does the captain believe you?”

“What’s he saying, Ping?” Lindemann’s deep voice cut across their conversation.

“He says that sometime after dawn the mountain will explode like a million cannons,” Ping began, embellishing his tale. “He says that the waves from so much force will fill Lampong Bay. He even knows what the Japanese call such waves. Tsunami.”

“Those monster waves are just myths, Ping, like sea serpents and the kraken. Stories told by experienced sailors to frighten the new boys. Surely you don’t believe in them.”

“Captain Lindemann.” The first mate had been listening to the conversation, a clean bandage on the back of his neck where a piece of scalding pumice had landed. “I don’t believe in tsunamis either, but it wouldn’t hurt if we backed off a few cable lengths. The chop is getting worse and the tide’s coming in in a couple hours.”

The veteran ship’s master looked from Han to his mate and then to Ping and was about to speak when the largest wave yet surged up Lampong Bay. The men on the bridge scrambled to clutch handholds, and a lamp attached to the roof in a floating gimbal swung against the ceiling and shattered. The helmsman stripped off his shirt to smother the burning pool of kerosene before it could do much damage.

Lindemann made his decision. “Mate, prepare to raise anchor.” He rang the engine-room bell to alert the engineer that he was going to require speed. “Mr. Van Den Bosch.” A young officer drew himself to attention. “Get on the signal lamp. Alert the captain of the gunboat Berouw that we recommend he gives himself a bit more sea room.”

“Yes, sir.” The subaltern saluted.

“Ping, escort the passenger back to the forecastle and get yourself busy on the bridge glass.”

Han paused at the hatchway coaming. Captain Lindemann was looking at him oddly. The big Dutchman nodded his head, as if to say the warning was just the last nudge he needed to enact the plan he’d already been contemplating.

The chorus of frightened cries from the enclosed forecastle masked the sound of the heavy anchor chains grinding up the hawsepipe while ash obscured the thick smoke pumping from the Loudon’s squat funnel. The man who called himself Han waited at the ship’s rail to see if the nearby gunboat would reply to Captain Lindemann’s warning. He was unable to spot the small craft in the darkness, nor could he see the flash of her signal lamp. In fact, the beam from the Loudon’s light couldn’t cut more than a few dozen yards into the swirling storm of ash.

A few minutes later, the steamship began to swing around in a wide arc, her rigging creaking against the wind while her boiler kept the bronze prop thrashing the ash-choked water.

For the rest of the night the Loudon held station two miles from the town, where the chart said she had seventy feet of water under her keel. She rattled against her anchor chain while the engine- room crew fed coal into her boilers to keep up the steam. The winds were increasing by the minute, stripping the top layer of ash from the sea like desert sand blown from a dune.