The Island

"Get up! All hands to the deck! Land Ahead! We will get ashore today! Move you lazy b******s, now!"

"Rolf, get up"

I slowly opened my eyes "What is it. "

"Land, straight ahead"

I felt the waves rocking our ship, Novus Fornatus, our home. Its an admireable ship, not alot of armament, afterall its only a merchant ship. The waves are much higher than what they were a few hours ago.The Eastern Sea brings often some nasty storms, some of which seem to follow you wherever you want to go. The storm has been chasing us for two days now. We are almost out of food, it being rationed alot. Today we only got bread with sauce, ugh, I would give a lot for something better, even rum, but there is no rum anymore. Apparently the men in charge of supplying made a mistake and took only eight crates of rum instead of ten. Mistakes, ofcourse there was a mistake, because guess who isnt onboard the ship. Damn b******s, two crates of rum, one for each.

"All hands to the deck!"

I slowly got up and the waves really started to influence me. At first, I stumbled and kept going with the waves back and forth. I fell down to the floor once as I tripped over a rope. But after a while it was better. It's always hard to get your muscles working immediately if you are on a ship. I would say working on the ship especially when helping out with the sails has helped with my stamina and strength. Not much but something is always better than nothing.

I went up the stairs. I have always hated these stairs since the beggining of our voyage. The oak planks out of which the stairs were made were narrow and the spacing was awful aswell. Going down the stairs was always tricky, even to the most experienced of sailors. Maybe this is also the reason why the captain is hardly seen on the lower decks. Countless times I have missed a step of the stairs and have fell down it. Once I had to stay in one place or a seat because my foot hurt as hell after I fell down the stairs for several days.

As I got up to the main deck, some of the cargo was already being hauled up, mostly food and weapons. On the deck, there was alot of activity going on. Sailors were working full-time, officers running to the captain and delivering orders to other parts of the ship. Row boats were being prepared and I went to help with one of the boats. While untying the boat, I looked to the east, sun slowly going down behind me and noticed the Island, fairly large, in front. Single mountain, lots of trees, and what appeared to be a wide sand beach. I did not think about the island that much though, as there was alot to be done and so I continued to prepare the boat with others.

A short moment after I was finished with the boat, the captain came out of his cabin. The door, which was rather nicely ornamented with rose vines and other flower details on it, although you could hardly tell them apart, as the years of seafaring had done its work, opened and the captain walked out, as always, wearing his sword. The sword the captain wears was slightly curved, with a golden trim on the cross-guard. The scabbard had a similar trim running through the middle of the scabbard itself. The captain himself is liked by his crew. He isn't that tall, roughly the same height as me, but unlike me his size gives him a strong look. He wore his blue coat today. He only has 3 coats that I know of and have seen, the blue one he was wearing. He also had a grey coat, which had blue trims and the black one, which the captain wore only on special occasions, for example when meeting with other ship captains or when he was walking in a port town. The captain looked at the work all the sailors were doing, gave a few orders to one of the officers, who immediately rushed to the front of the ship. He then said with his loud voice: "Good work men, we must be on the shore by this evening. Otherwise, we shall meet the storm. So keep moving and prepare the boats!"

Yes, the storm, it had chased us for two days, not willing to lose us and slow down. It had caused alot of dissatisfaction among the sailors, adding to the lack of rum and other food, it was fortunate, things didnt go bad.

Throughout the afternoon, most of the sailors on the Novus Fornatus were busy on the deck. Muskets were cleaned, swords sharpened. I wasnt allowed to do that and to be honest, I didn't really want to either. Weapons both with gunpowder and steel isn't really my comfortable area. Soon, after all the boats were ready to be released to the sea, an order came in to take the sails off the foremast, something which we found peculiar, but nonetheless, orders were followed.

Soon after that, everything was set and the boats were being lowered to the sea, the ship rocking more and more heavily. I stepped on the third boat to leave for the shore and with me were seven others not including the men rowing the boat itself. The two sailors rowing the boat had to do it three more times.

As I was sitting on the boat, uncomfortable with the waves rocking us up and down, somebody put his hand on my shoulder. I turned around. It was Garlo, a close friend of mine. Garlo was from the same area as me, and we had become really close. He was really tall and due to that spent most of the time in the upper deck as lower decks were abit too low for him. In the beginning he kept hitting his head to the horizontal beams. Garlo also had a scar on his left chin. He says he got it when he was duelling a drunkard of his village. I don't see a reason why he would lie about that. He has black hair, fairly short, and also a full-grown beard. The captain doesn't like Garlo for his beard that much, some say he is jealous and competitive about beards, as captain himself has a full-grown beard. The captain's ofcourse is more majestic, accordingly to a captain of a ship. I looked at Garlo and quietly asked him what he wanted. Garlo hesitated at first, but then said: "What do you think we are going to do on the island?" He tried to say it as quietly as possible, but I saw another sailor turn his head towards us, problably trying to listen to what I would say. Knowing that, I replied to Garlo in a reasonably loud voice, to make sure the sailor heard me: "I am not sure, but whatever it is, we will have to face it." Garlo seemed to understand why I said this, and leaned back. I turned forward again, thinking to myself. What will we do on the island? I wondered whether the captain knew this himself or not. But there I was, closing in to the island slowly but surely, sometimes the waves being so high that only the mountain top was seen above the wave.

After making it to shore, we joined some of the men, who had already landed, mostly soldiers armed with halberds and muskets. I remember taking a look at the sand, it was much different from what I expected. It was dense, but with large sand crystals. I had expected, or rather, hoped for a fine crystal beach. The men from the first boat were already out in the forest, looking for a place to set camp, to stay the night. Captain, being on the second boat, was still on the beach, giving out some orders to the men. Two men were about 400 meters to the south, heading towards what seemed to be a peninsula. I had not noticed it on the ship. Then we moved towards the trees. The first group had found a suitable place to stay, inside the forest, around 150 meters, on a small hill, high enough to keep away any water that might rise during the storm. Garlo was ordered to stay to wait for the fourth boat, which was already on the way. Only then I noticed, that the mountain we had seen earlier, that same single mountain, was actually a long ridge , surrounding what seemed to be the east coast of the island itself. It was really high, for most of us the highest mountain we had ever seen, and it was extremely steep, with only a few single plants growing on the mountain. However most men did not talk about it during the landing. As the captain followed the men of the first boat, I looked back for a second. by then, my boat had arrived back to the ship, and it was barely possible to see more sailors getting into the boat. I entered the forest, populated by palm trees and jungle plants.