Fleet ‘To see, if any, are still alive.’

Send us Fan MailBarrels and kegs, bobbed in a dispersed crowd of debris. The winds howled and raged, the sky stripped and torn, as the rising moon seemed to race across the beaches like ships overhead. They were knee deep in the waters that frothed and foamed around them. There were fewer cries of help now, the rocks just off shore, jagged and razor like, had done their worst. Men lay on the beach, dead or exhausted, bedraggled and bundled, like sacks of stones, flesh and sand.Some lived, some were dead, eyes open, seeing nothing, faces frozen in masks of terror and oddly, he thought,  submission: the boundaries between life and death, broken.They pulled sailors onto the shore, a few were strong enough to help them. The crates and bobbing casks of contraband they avoided, knowing their weight, worth and danger, even this close to the shore.‘The last?’ He asked of Emily. She looked exhausted, her skin as pale as the ribbons of moonlight, her hair in waves and tangles of salt and seaweed. Her clothes pressed unseemly against her body, revealing every curve flattened and forgotten: her beauty crushed by the tide. He pushed his thoughts aside and asked again,’Emily, surely, the last, come let us sit, rest awhile and see, if who and any, are still alive.’[email protected]