The squadrons to starboard, south of theHeron and the flagship, were in confusion, dancing like straws in a millrace. Ships lifted on the rising wave, then slid or tumbled off the back. Some capsized and one trireme, older or harder used than most, broke in the middle like a snake under a spade.

"Ship oars!" Chalcus cried. "Wait for it my buckos, my heroes, for-"

A wave washed the cutter's deck bow to stern. Ilna, caught unaware, grabbed a jib stay. She hadn't been consciously aware of it, but in the crisis her instinct went to a rope and saved her. The sea rushed past, bubbling and powerful, but a lifetime of working looms had given Ilna a grip and muscles equal to this test and worse ones.

TheHeron lifted from the back of the wave and bucked onto an even keel. Here the cutter's short hull glided over what meant danger to a longer vessel.

Chalcus stood silent, surveying the whole situation while the officers under him sorted out their divisions. The crisis was over for theHeron. The wave-crest moved on, shaking ships like rats in a dog's jaws and leaving flotsam in its wake.

"Ahead slow!" Chalcus called. "Holpa, Rennon, Kirweke and Lonn-fetch yourselves lines and stand in the bow. There's men in the water as'll drown if we don't get them out!"

Ilna joined him. Merota, cautiously holding the rail, got up also and took the sailor's hand when he reached back for her.

"There's many that'll drown despite us, too," Chalcus said in a voice pitched for the pair of them. "We're one small ship and there's a dozen foundered or I miss my bet. But we'll do what we can."

"Chalcus?" said Merota. "That was a meteor, a really big one. Can we go see where it landed?"

"Where it landed, child…," Chalcus said, looking toward the pillar of steam now piercing the roiling overcast. "Is a trench deeper than any man's plumbed. There'd be nothing to see, whether it's your scholar's meteor or the Shepherd's sling stone as simple folk like me were raised to think."