Daniel turns round and looks out the window to see the ketch being left behind, fine on the lee quarter. * It is no longer recognizable as a ketch, though – just a hull heaped with tangled, slack rigging and freshly splintered blond wood. One of her guns sparks and something terrible comes out of it, directly towards him – big and spreading. He begins to fall down, more out of vertigo than any coherent plan. All the glass in all those windows explodes toward him, driven on a wall of buckshot. Only some of it hits him in the face, and none in the eyes – more luck than a natural philosopher can comfortably account for.