Percy's point of view
Not long after I scared off the Ra'zac three of the empire's sloops had started to follow us. We'd tried to lose them since then, but so far, they were still following us. We'd hoped to lose them one night when we'd had to go through a rather violent storm, but unfortunately, they were still tailing us. The night of the storm I was the only person on the ship who hadn't gotten seasick so that night was rather unpleasant for everyone.
We were hoping to avoid having to fight the men on the sloops because we had quickly found out that one of the ships had a magician on board and because of that our advantage of numbers wouldn't be much of an advantage at all.
Roran, Jeod, Uthar, and I met in a small fore cabin—since the captain's stateroom was given over to the infirm—where Uthar unrolled sea charts on the table and tapped a point above Beirland. "This'd be where we are now," he said. He reached for a larger map of Alagaësia's coastline and tapped the mouth of the Jiet River. "An' this'd be our destination, since food won't last us to Reavstone. How we get there, though, without being overtaken is beyond me. Without our mizzen topgallant, those accursed sloops will catch us by noon tomorrow, evening if we manage the sails well."
"Can we replace the mast?" asked Jeod. "Vessels of this size carry spars to make just such repairs."
Uthar shrugged. "We could, provided we had a proper ship's carpenter among us. Seeing as we don't, I'd rather not let inexperienced hands mount a spar, only to have it crash down on deck and perhaps injure somebody."
Roran said, "If it weren't for the magician or magicians, I'd say we should stand and fight, since we far outnumber the crews of the sloops. As it is, I'm chary of battle. It seems unlikely that we could prevail, considering how many ships sent to help the Varden have disappeared."
Grunting, Uthar drew a circle around our current position. "This'd be how far we can sail by tomorrow evening, assuming the wind stays with us. We could make landfall somewhere on Beirland or Nía if we wanted, but I can't see how that'd help us. We'd be trapped. The soldiers on those sloops or the Ra'zac or Galbatorix himself could hunt us at his leisure."
Roran scowled as we considered our options; a fight with the sloops seemed inevitable. For several minutes, the cabin was silent except for the slap of waves against the hull. Then Jeod placed his finger on the map between Beirland and Nía, looked at Uthar, and asked, "What about the Boar's Eye?"
To both my and Roran's amazement, the scarred sailor actually paled. "I'd not risk that, Master Jeod, not on my life. I'd rather face the sloops an' die in the open sea than go to that doomed place. There has consumed twice as many ships as in Galbatorix's fleet."
"I seem to recall reading," said Jeod, leaning back in his chair, "that the passage is perfectly safe at high tide and low tide. Is that not so?"
With great and evident reluctance, Uthar admitted, "Aye. But the Eye is so wide, it requires the most precise timing to cross without being destroyed. We'd be hard-pressed to accomplish that with the sloops near on our tail."
"If we could, though," pressed Jeod, "if we could time it right, the sloops would be wrecked or—if their nerve failed them—forced to circumvent Nía. It would give us time to find a place to hide along Beirland."
"If, if... You'd send us to the crushing deep, you would."
"Come now, Uthar, your fear is unreasoning. What I propose is dangerous, I admit, but no more than fleeing Teirm was. Or do you doubt your ability to sail the gap? Are you not man enough to do it?"
Uthar crossed his bare arms. "You've never seen the Eye, have you, sir?"
"I can't say I have."
"It's not that I'm not man enough, but that the Eye far exceeds the strength of men; it puts to shame our biggest ships, our grandest buildings, an' anything else you'd care to name. Tempting it would be like trying to outrun an avalanche; you might succeed, but then you just as well might be ground into dust."
I was wondering what the boar's eye was and why Uthar seemed so afraid to go through it. I was just about to ask when Roran asked first.
"What," asked Roran, "is this Boar's Eye?"
"The all-devouring maw of the ocean," proclaimed Uthar.
I was sure that this boar's eye, whatever it was couldn't be as bad as he made it sound. Jeod certainly didn't seem too afraid of it.
In a milder tone, Jeod said, "It's a whirlpool, Roran. The Eye forms as the result of tidal currents that collide between Beirland and Nía. When the tide waxes, the Eye rotates north to west. When the tide wanes, it rotates north to east."
"That doesn't sound so dangerous," Roran said, and to be honest I was thinking the same thing.
Uthar shook his head, queue whipping the sides of his wind-burned neck, and laughed. "Not so dangerous, he says! Ha!"
"What you fail to comprehend," continued Jeod, "is the size of the vortex. On average, the center of the Eye is a league in diameter, while the arms of the pool can be anywhere from ten to fifteen miles across. Ships unlucky enough to be snared by the Eye are borne down to the floor of the ocean and dashed against the jagged rocks therein. Remnants of the vessels are often found as flotsam on the beaches of the two islands."
"Would anyone expect us to take this route?" Roran queried.
"No, an' for good reason," growled Uthar. Jeod shook his head at the same time. "Is it even possible for us to cross the Eye?"
That's when I decided to speak up, I said, " Probably, I can slow the currents so we can get through more easily," It seemed Uthar's fear lessened somewhat after that, but it still took some more convincing before we got Uthar to agree to try and go through the eye.
At Uthar's orders, we worked to tidy up the ship after the storm and prepare for the ordeal that was to come. We stopped at nightfall when we extinguished every light on board in an attempt to confuse our pursuers as to the Dragon Wing's heading. The ruse succeeded in part because when the sun rose, we saw that the sloops had fallen back to the northwest another mile or so, though they soon made up the lost distance.
Reyna and I stood on the deck of the Dragon wing as we continued sailing toward the boar's eye. We couldn't see it yet but was sure we would soon enough. I was pretty sure that I could slow the whirlpool's currents enough that we could make it through safely, and if the sloops try to follow us through it I could speed it up to make sure they wouldn't make it through. I didn't really want to do that second part but it was the best option. If they managed to follow us through we would most likely end up having to fight them and we weren't sure if that would be a fight we could win.
For starters, they had at least one magician, possibly more, and even if Ágrios came to help us we might not win. I also didn't want to put him at risk, we didn't know what the magician might be capable of so I would n't let Ágrios attack the ships. He'd been keeping his distance from the ship ever since we'd first noticed the sloops. Obviously, we both wished he could stay closer, but we didn't want the men on the sloops to see him and possibly contact the king. The longer Galbatorix didn't know about me the better.
We eventually reached the boar's eye, and as we were just beginning to enter it, I concentrated on slowing the currents of the immense whirlpool. I felt the familiar tugging sensation as I began using my powers. As I concentrated the Boar's Eye began to slow down. The whirlpool was strong so I couldn't stop it completely. Honestly, it kind of made me think of Charybdis minus the disgusting teeth and braces. Reyna stood beside me at the prow of the ship, she seemed confident that between my powers and everyone else's hard work we would be able to make it out of the immense whirlpool.
I could hear Uthar giving orders, and many men had already gone below decks to row. Even with me using my powers it would still be difficult to make it through the Boar's eye. The one thing in our favor, other than my powers was that we were sailing with the Eye's current and not against it. If it had been the other way around, we would have had no choice but to wait until the tide turned.
As we got closer and closer to the center of the eye, I started to worry that we might not make it through. I tried to slow the currents as much as I could without completely draining myself, but I was still worried.
Despite our progress, the sloops continued to gain on us. The enemy ships sailed abreast less than a mile away, their oars moving in perfect accord, two fins of water flying from each prow as they plowed the ocean.
Then the Dragon Wing tacked port, diverging from the current in Uthar's bid for the open sea. The keel chattered across the puckered water, and the ship's speed dropped in half as the Dragon Wing fought the deadly embrace of the Boar's Eye. I eventually noticed Roran talking to Uthar, who was manning the wheel. I also noticed that Reyna had gone belowdecks to help the villagers row.
I could see the three sloops perhaps a half mile away and slightly more to the west, closer to the center of the Eye. The sloops appeared motionless compared to the Dragon Wing. At first, the positions of the four ships remained unchanged. Then there seemed to be a shift in the Dragon Wing's speed, as if the ship had crossed some crucial point and the forces restraining her had diminished. It was a subtle difference and amounted to little more than a few additional feet per minute—but it was enough that the distance between the Dragon Wing and the sloops began to increase.
With every stroke of the oars, the Dragon Wing gained momentum. The sloops, however, could not overcome the whirlpool's dreadful strength. It seemed I wouldn't have to do anything to stop them. Their oars gradually slowed until, one by one, the ships drifted backward and were drawn toward the veil of mist at the eye's center, beyond which waited the gyrating walls of ebony water and the gnashing rocks at the bottom of the ocean floor. I had realised that Their crews are too small and they're too tired so they couldn't continue rowing. At that moment, an arrow sprang from the nearest sloop and burst into green flame as it raced toward the Dragon Wing. The dart must have been sustained by magic to have flown so far. It struck the mizzen sail and exploded into globules of liquid fire that stuck to whatever they touched. Within seconds, twenty small fires burned along the mizzenmast, the mizzen sail, and the deck below.
"We can't put it out," shouted one of the sailors with a panicked expression. I had stopped slowing the currents after I felt we were safe, but now I used my powers to bring up some water to try and put out the flames. Their colour made me think of Greek fire, but thankfully they weren't impossible to put out. While I was attempting to put out some of the flames Uthar shouted, "Chop off whatever's burning an' throw it overboard!"
Once the cry of "All clear!" was sounded, Uthar relaxed his grip on the steering wheel. "If that was the best their magician can do, then I'd say we have nothing more to fear of him."
"We're going to get out of the Eye, aren't we?" asked Roran, eager to confirm his hope.
Uthar squared his shoulders and flashed a quick grin, both proud and disbelieving. "Not quite this cycle, but we'll be close. We won't make real progress away from that gaping monster until the tide slacks off. Go tell Bonden to lower the tempo a bit; I don't want them fainting at the oars if'n I can help it."
Reyna soon returned from rowing, and eventually, the whirlpool was subsiding. The vortex's ghastly howl faded into the usual noise of the wind; the water assumed a calm, flat quality that betrayed no hint of the habitual violence visited upon that location; and the contorted fog that had writhed above the abyss melted under the warm rays of the sun, leaving the air as clear as glass. Nothing remained of the immense whirlpool that had previously been there.