While we've done our best to make the core functionality of this site accessible without javascript, it will work better with it enabled. Please consider turning it on! Remember Me. Jack and Stephen accidentally become telepathically bonded, but Stephen still has to complete his mission in Minorca.
This story departs from a point towards the beginning of HMS Surprise and from then on follows its own path. The mission Stephen pursues in this story is the same one from that book, although things go very differently. See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one. It was undoubtedly the fish that caused the thing, an ill-looking, mumchance creature served to them at a roadside tavern on the way to Portsmouth. A sign with cracking paint hung over the place and it smelt of misery, but it was well past the naval dinner hour and Jack had not eaten since a hasty breakfast bolted at Mapes after receiving his orders from a courier.
Stephen had met the post along the way, having travelled all night from London, and had eaten up all of Jack's sandwiches, lovingly packed for him by Sophie. When the coach stopped for an hour to change horses, Jack was too hungry to pay attention to the particulars, and he immediately dug in to the baked fish, whose sauce - watery, and the colour of the scum that covered Portsmouth harbour - could not disguise that it had been shockingly overdone.
It was only when he turned the fish to pick at its ribs that it became evident that, although in every way resembling your average Melanogrammus aeglefinus, the creature had three eyes. He pushed aside his potatoes. Is it a mutation of birth, or a post-nactial growth? How I wish I had seen it fresh. Can it have been a functional eye, a true oculus?
I am sure it is unlucky. Why, I remember several examples where -". His discourse continued as they re-mounted the coach, ranging over a lamb with six legs born on his cousin's Finlay's estate - conjoined twins - Cleopatra's rumoured eleventh toe - omens of all kinds - Macbeth. Jack was asleep shortly after Cleopatra, however, his stomach full but uneasy. They came aboard the Lively late in the evening, at two bells in the first dog watch, but the sea was high, and they set out immediately rather than miss the tide.
