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known for yet a year as the 36 Mariners’ Widows of Bethelhagen.

The thought-dead fleet returned a full score and four months later. 

I

In the time before, law and rule, like Tide, would ebb and flow, to and from the rocky, rime-swept hamlet. At Sea, the men were bound by the law thereof. Ashore, the wives 

Returned, they were as sailors are ashore: rowdy and untamed. When the season asea returned again and the men again set out, the wives of Bethelhagen would begin to restore order to the

II

Those many lost months were never discussed. 

The mariners bore back scrimshorn trinkets and tattoos that told tales of other lands, other peoples, of paradises beyond words and unspeakable tragedy. Of wealth, earthly and otherly. But the men themselves said naught. Too, they brought a diversion, thentofore unknown in this continent.