Read A Twist of Eternity Page 33


  Chapter 20 Escape from Port Town

  Extract from ‘The Journal of a Salt Sea Dog’, by Solin’De’Teinde.

  Ships once plied the ocean regularly. Trade was profitable, as many seaborne vessels as there were airborne carried the goods. Originally the seaborne vessels made land at a point where the great cliffs of the continent dipped down to meet the sea. This was the only place along the thousands of miles of coast where this was possible. It was a dangerous business at first for no quay or jetty was there, a treacherous landing where many a sailor drowned.

  But then the Pnook built a jetty, initially out of an old battleship which they had scuttled near to the shore line. The Pnook started to charge for mooring and the price of goods went up accordingly. But the numbers of ships mooring increased, the increase in trade quadrupled the economy, the Pnook created a full-blown administration and inevitably a town sprang up around it.