As night fell, a thick grey mist settled over the ocean. Like a death shroud drawn over the face of the nameless dead, it softened the features of the darkening water and crept inexorably over the wreckage of battle. Flotsam, bobbing on the waves, gradually faded to nothingness; the hanging pall of gunpowder smoke was swallowed by the night, its acrid reek dispersed and replaced by the wild salt aroma of the open sea.

The mist crept around the crippled vessel's masts in ghostly skeins and wove tendrils through the holes in the sails, which hung like tattered pennants, torn apart by cannonfire. The ship groaned and listed sideways. No man called out a warning as water began to pool across the deck, black and silent, purling over coils of rope and claiming the battered remnants of barrels for its own. The ship groaned again. The sound was amplified by the fog until it resembled the dying sigh of a sentient creature; it drew itself out, agonized and lingering, and only ceased when the last ripple of the ship's passing had been reclaimed by the waves.

Slowly, beneath her impassive surface, the ocean wrapped the ship in her crushing embrace and pulled it down to the lightless depths.