In the eighth century b.c., a passenger pays a heavy silver fare and boards a Phoenician cargo ship at the port of Joppa. The Mediterranean wind hits the water with sudden violence soon after departure. Salt spray coats the wooden deck. Sailors haul heavy tackle and strain against thick hemp ropes. The storm brings deep fatigue to the experienced mariners. Men hurl valuable grain and iron ingots over the rails to keep the hull afloat.
The passenger flees a direct assignment from the God of Heaven and runs west toward Tarshish, an ancient mining colony on the Iberian Peninsula. The foreign crew operates on sheer survival instinct while the storm rages. Mariners across the Levant used marked stones as a standard legal method to resolve absolute disputes. The crew casts lots to identify the source of the chaos. The marked stones single out the sleeping man in the lower hold. He tells the men to throw him overboard. The Gentile sailors row hard against the waves instead. They refuse to commit murder until the timber nearly splinters.
The wooden ship serves as a floating prison rather than a vehicle of escape. The men toss a fortune in trade goods into the water to buy another hour of life. Material wealth loses all meaning when the deck starts cracking under the force of the waves. The fear of immediate drowning strips away all political and regional differences. The crew abandons their familiar pantheon and begs a foreign Maker for mercy as they throw their final passenger into the freezing current.
A man can buy passage to the edge of the map, but the deep water always collects the final toll.
The battered trading vessel limps toward land with an empty hold and a terrified crew. The heavy sea swallows the fugitive whole and returns to a dead calm.