The thing which surprised the boy most was the silence. On Favourable's deck, everything had been noise and colour – cannons booming, lieutenants shouting orders, men yelling in surprise or screaming in pain. But here, below the waves, everything was silent, dark and cool.

The Lion had been sighted off of the starboard bow just as the midshipmen were commencing their trigonometry lesson. The boy was not a midshipman, but he wished he was. The youngest of the midshipmen were only a couple of years his senior, but they had respect among the crew, and were better paid. Besides, they did the most fascinating thing. They studied trigonometry.

Something about the neat little triangles and the strange words – sine, cosine, tangent – appealed to the boy. And of course, to know that those numbers could let you know where to steer a ship – that was practically sorcery in the boy's mind. Not that he understood the trigonometry, not yet; he had first observed a lesson only three months ago. Afterwards, the Captain had laughed when the boy had mentioned that ‘angle’ was a fancy word for ‘corner’. To the boy's surprise, the captain had issued standing orders that the boy was permitted to watch the lessons. Even more surprisingly, on Sunday afternoons, the captain himself was now tutoring the boy in arithmetic – so that someday he would understand the trigonometry – and, because the boy had asked about the large books in the captain's glass-fronted bookcase, there was also tutoring in natural philosophy, Latin, and the works of William Shakespeare.

Not that any of that mattered now. Latin and trigonometry couldn't pull the boy's head above the water. The cold silence tempted the boy; it would be easy to give in, his very soul dissolving in the brine as his body gave out. It was only a moment before the overwhelming urge to breathe ended that line of thought, and the boy kicked his way to surface, his head breaking through the waves just in time for him to hear the almost perfectly synchronized blast of 40 of Favourable's cannons firing a broadside at the Lion.

The sight was glorious, but the smell of gunpowder was nauseatingly strong, even out here on the water. The boy also realised that he was in more danger than he had thought; plunging off the deck of Favourable had landed him right between the ships, a dangerous location.

The boy was not a strong swimmer, and he floundered in the water. He kicked madly with his feet as the Lion returned the volley. Her broadside echoed just above the boy’s head, spraying the water with razor sharp needles of splintered wood when a ball struck home. The boy ducked to avoid the worst of the shrapnel, a surprise wave forcing him to gulp a mouthful of cold water. It tasted of salt, of course, but also sourly of something he could not identify. He thought maybe it was the taste of the two giant wooden ships themselves. A white plume of water shot up almost directly in front of the boy, the result of an errant cannon-ball coming too close for comfort. The boy could actually feel the pulse of water wash over him.

He could not force himself into the direction he wanted to go, at least not fast enough for it to make any difference. His muscles were starting to grow numb, stiffening painlessly in the cold water. In a detached way, as if watching himself from a great distance, the boy realised that he could no longer uncurl his fingers.

He wondered what was going on up on Favourable's decks. He wondered if anyone had noticed he was missing. The captain probably hadn't, the boy thought. The boy hardly remembered his own father, but he had a feeling the man had been something like the captain. The boy's stomach hurt when he thought of how badly he'd disappoint the captain by drowning. He wondered if they'd bother collecting his body. There didn't seem to be much point in fishing him out of the water just to sew him up in his hammock and say a few words before tossing him in again. And that assumed that there would be a ship left to fish him out, something that the boy was no longer sure of, given the damage done by a single broadside.

He watched with sickening dread as the mouths of Favourable's cannons began to appear again in the gun ports. The other boys would still be running with powder and shot, helping to prepare the last few guns that were only now nosing out over the spray. Lion was much closer now. The shrapnel would be extensive. The boy watched in fascinated terror as the last gun rolled out.

Again, there was that terrible noise as Favourable fired. Less than half a second later, the boy felt a terrible pain as something struck him in the head. That was the last thing he knew for a long time.

The boy woke up in a dark, noisy space, full of familiar smells and the press of bodies. He blinked up at the wooden planked ceiling. His head ached terribly.

“Not dead?” He moaned, surprised.

The cheerful face of the ship's surgeon swung into his field of view.

“No, not dead, lad,” the man smiled. “How do you feel?”

“It hurts,” the boy admitted, weakly lifting one hand to his head.

“That's to be expected,” agreed the surgeon, looking carefully into the boy's eyes.

The Captain pushed the surgeon aside slightly, looking over the other man's shoulder. The boy looked away.

“Concussion, I should think, coupled with near-drowning,” the surgeon said, “At least – hmm, pupils behaving normally – do you remember anything of what happened, lad?”

The boy thought for a moment. He remembered something, but he was sure there had been more than that. It took him a long time to say, “Hitting the water.”

“Nothing after?”

The boy shook his head, then winced as the pain flared up.

The captain and the surgeon exchanged glances.

The captain looked at the boy sternly, saying, “It is a good thing you did not drown. Drowned boys will never be midshipmen.”

The boy looked up at the captain, his eyes wide. He could not quite make sense of this statement. Was the captain saying that perhaps, he could be a midshipman someday? Probably not. He sat, puzzling.

Both the surgeon and the captain frowned at the lack of response, exchanging serious glances.

“Well, nihil ex nihilo fit, you know,” the captain said, watching the boy's face carefully.

Even in its disoriented state, the boy's mind supplied an answer, knitted together out of barely remembered words. “Nothing . . . is made from nothing?”

The captain let out a sigh of relief, “Close. You're sure it is a concussion?" He asked, turning to the surgeon.

"Nothing worse, I don't think, sir," The surgeon nodded.

"In that case, excuse me. I must go see to the upper gun deck.”

As the captain walked away, the surgeon shrugged, “The literal translation is 'nothing comes of nothing,' but if you wish to impress him - ”

The boy looked at the surgeon eagerly, his expression almost hungry.

With a sigh, the surgeon said, “In King Lear it is rendered 'nothing will come of nothing'.”

The boy could not help but smile.

                                                                                                          The End