"Steamers reached the edge flat-on, and rolled terribly and ponderously over, houses and towers spilling from them like crumbs, a rain of masonry and bodies, hundreds of bodies, pitched kicking and convulsing into the air and down, down many miles. Past all the inner layers of the world.

"I wasn’t even praying. I had no will. I could only watch.

"Bridges and tethers snapped. Trawlers came apart as they fell. Barges and lifeboats, and tugs and wooden warships. Splintering. Bursting, exploding, on fire as boilers spun and red-hot coals spewed through them. Ships six hundred feet long and centuries old cartwheeled as they went down.

"The Grand Easterly’s aft was over the Scar now, jutting out into the air.

"Armada spilt over the lip of the ocean and broke down into a random, plummeting constellation of parts, the live and the dead falling through an avalanche of bricks and masts. I could hear nothing except the splintering water and the avanc’s cry.

"Three hundred feet of the Grand Easterly was jutting over the void now, and all around it much smaller ships spewed into the ravine. And suddenly its weight told, and I heard a cracking like some god’s bone breaking, and the rear third of the ship, to which I was tethered, split and hinged down, hauling me with it, clinging with my arms locked around a girder, down, into the Scar.

"You wonder how you’re going to die, don’t you? Bravely, screaming, unaware, or what? Well, I met my death in a stupor, my mouth hanging like a fucking fool, as a steamer’s arse pulled me down.

"The edge of water rose up past me as I plummeted past the Scar’s lip, below the surface level of the sea.

"For a second I could see through water to the keels of ships that were above me, watch them plow on to their destruction. I was rushing down, and the rest of the Grand Easterly and every ship of the city was collapsing toward me.

"Once or twice, for moments, I saw dirigibles. Little cabs, men in harnesses, who’d managed to leap from the decks of their vessels as they went over, and were caught in the slipstream fighting to haul their balloons skyward. They were crushed and killed, again and again. A falling hull or shards of towerblocks would smash them out of the air.

"The Arrogance was accelerating down. I closed my eyes and tried to die.

"And then, four miles below me, the avanc moved.

"It must have been in agony, its body bursting and hemorrhaging in the air, folding over and bending double as it came out of the water wall. Half a mile of its back was through into the Scar, now. Maybe it was spasming in pain. It pushed itself very suddenly out, bursting right out of the sea, into the Scar, and down.