Part 23

“OH!” Eowyn’s eyes flew open, and a strangled cry was forced from her lips, as she and Legolas were thrown up in the air, doused in a great, cold wave, then fell back onto the soaking deck with a painful thud.

Legolas helped her to her feet.

“Is everyone safe?” shouted Master Eldacar. “Arador?”

“The flames are out,” replied the boy. “Everything is all right here, Master.”

The scholar looked down his seeing-tube. “We appear to be floating…”

“Is the hull intact?” asked Legolas.

“Our first task must be to inspect her.”

...

Whilst Arador and Eowyn worked on folding and stowing the deflated bladder (each, under protest, wearing Master Eldacar’s insect-armour, complete with mittens and a veiled hat, to protect them from poisonous bites), Legolas and Haldir followed Eldacar below deck, to check for damage.

“Naturally, we need only concern ourselves with the parts below the waterline,” said the scholar, opening a hatch. “Though I must confess,” he added, “that, because the hull was never intended to sail in water, making her fully watertight was not a priority...”

Legolas swore quietly. “Haldir,” he said, “go back on deck and see if Arador has any idea how to measure the depth of the marsh water.”

The big elf squeezed his arm, and disappeared up the steps.

“Here we are...” Master Eldacar lowered his lantern into the hold.

Legolas peered over the scholar’s shoulder. “Water,” he sighed.

“I am afraid so.”

“Let me go down.” Legolas dropped through the hole, and landed lightly on the floor, with the water lapping around his ankles. “Hand me the light, sir.” Crouching in the bilge water, he slowly worked his way around the ship’s sides, gently probing the wood, searching for holes or for obvious gaps in the planking, but he could find nothing. “It appears to be seeping in through the joints.”

“It is possible,” said Eldacar, “that as the water soaks into the wood, and the wood swells, the ship will seal herself naturally—I understand that is why decks are regularly swabbed...”

“I have heard the same,” said Legolas. "But I do not think that, in this case, we dare wait and see, sir.”

…

Back on deck, they found Arador and Eowyn, still in their cumbersome suits, measuring one of the anchor ropes, whilst Haldir, standing at a wooden contraption forward of the burner well, was working its handle up and down. “The shipwrights saw fit to install something called a ‘bilge pump’,” he explained, as the other elf passed. “Thank the Valar.”

Arador, meanwhile, had paced out the rope. “About seventy feet,” he shouted through his veil, “but, beneath that, the bottom is very soft. The ship,” he added, “measures less than fifty feet from her keel to the highest point of her stern.”

Legolas and Eldacar exchanged glances.

“I do not want Eowyn, or the boy, or you, to go into the water, if we can avoid it,” said Legolas, quietly. “It looks innocent enough, but something—a shadow in my mind—is warning me otherwise. There is no telling what these marshes might conceal.”

“I believe there is another option, my Lord,” replied Eldacar.