Chapter eighteenThere was just time for me to bellow up: “You nurdling great onker! Don’t drop me this time, you fumble-tentacled apology for a Scorpion!” before I went hurtling headlong into a purple-tinged mist of blue infinity.
Twice, three times, I rolled head over heels along wooden planking. Gasping, I sat up to see I was in a narrow, double-ended craft bobbing upon a blue sea under a shining silver sky.
All around stretched sparkling water. A faint zephyr blew across the deck. The boat was upflung, curved of line, with benches for a single bank of oarsmen along each side. She was similar to those swift piratical dwaprijjers that pester the trade among the Ivilian Keys. The scent of the sea mingled with her own smells of wood and tar, and the breeze bore in the fresh tang of ozone
