The hull went over at 07:40. The Lane Bureau stamped the morning sheet fair at 09:12. Forty-one of the names on the back were foals.
The boat was the coastal lighter Ash-14. She cleared the east mole at Mallow Quay at 04:50 with 146 booked. Harbormaster Ormund Gale logged the lamp at 05:10 and the last blink at 06:15. At 07:40 a fisher on the Cinder mark fired the red tube. By 08:05 the lighter was hull-up in the Split Channel, six miles off the mark. Seven ponies came out of the water. The rest did not.
Clover Margin keeps the window at Mallow Quay. She had the manifest at 05:02. It ran four pages. The fourth page was the back of Form C-2. The Lane Bureau prints that form for fees, wind, and tonnage. There is no box for a foal. She wrote the small names in red ink from the chandlery. At 13:02 she posted the board. It read 146 booked, 7 recovered, 139 unaccounted. She set the foal count under the sum. The number was 41.
"The form has a line for weather and a line for fees," Margin said at the window at 13:16. "I wrote the names on the back. The back is not a line they read."
The Compact Desk released its figure at 16:05. Reader Tess Quill read a half sheet in the side room. The half sheet said 139 dead. It said foals were among them. Quill took no questions past the number. She hung the half sheet on the nail by the door.
At 11:40 Undersecretary August Ribbon read a six-line note in the small hall. The note was Form 12-H. The printed heading is "Conditions Along the Lane." Line one named a light following wind. Line two named the route open. Line three called the capsizing a strain upon the common feeling. Lines four through six wished the towns steadiness. No line named Ash-14. No line named a foal. No line gave a number.
"The decree is the response," Ribbon said. "A longer one would suggest the lane had failed."
Gale said the bureau had cut the day seal at dusk, while Ash-14 was still at the mole. The 09:12 stamp used that cut. The red-tube line stayed in the lamp book.
"We had the lamp log," Gale said. "We did not have a boat."
Dorrie Voss reached the window at 14:22. She asked for three names. Two were her sister's foals. One was her sister. Margin turned the board. On the crown side of the hall an aide had pamphlets. The cover showed a sun over flat water. The inside was lines four through six of the 11:40 note. The aide set one in her hoof.
"I asked for the list," Voss said. "They gave me a pamphlet with a sun on it."
The clearance for Ash-14 was a card the size of a fetlock, punched at 16:40 the day before. It classed the lighter as a seasonal transfer in fair weather, mood of the route intact. The box for hooves aboard was blank on the copy sent to Canterlot. Margin's window copy had the box filled.
The Compact Desk wired the half sheet to Canterlot at 16:30. The wire room filed it with external notices. External notices are read at 18:00, after the lane briefing, by a pony who does not brief. Ribbon's office acknowledged receipt at 17:48. The acknowledgment said the 11:40 note "continued to cover the event." It did not cite 139. It did not cite 41.
Quill, at 17:10, was asked if the Desk would adopt the crown heading. "We use a count," she said. "The count is the sentence."
Voss was on the step at 17:30 with the pamphlet folded small. Margin brought a pencil copy of the three names off the back of Form C-2. The red had soaked through. A harmony extract costs two bits. It does not include names.
The evening boats came in at 18:20 and 18:35. They brought nets, a length of rail, and no ponies. Gale wrote it in the lamp book at 18:44. The word was "none." The hour sat beside it.
The 11:40 note was still on the far wall at 19:00. Line one still said following. Margin added one line under the foal count, in the same red. It read: evening boats, none. The crown note did not gain a line.
