The fishing fleet didn’t leave the docks at dawn.
Sixty wooden smacks, ketches, and luggers remained tied to their moorings. Their sails furled was tight against the spars, while five hundred fishermen huddled around driftwood fires on the shale beach. They refused to touch a halyard.
Giles Croft stood at the edge of the breakwater with his drafting board resting on a pile of cured concrete sandbags.
The morning air was sharp, smelling of cold kelp, damp hemp, and wood smoke.
Beside him, high on a wooden platform overlooking the surf, a small gathering of local priests had assembled.
They wore seaweed crowns and long blue vestments stitched with silver cowrie shells.
At the center of their circle stood a tall, pale priest named Father Morwen, who had brought a bronze fire bowl of burning shark fat and three trembling sheep with blue ribbons tied to their horns.
“The Drowned Mother is wrathful,” Father Morwen shouted to the assembled fishermen. He waved a carved driftwood staff toward the open sea.
