A short story.

Transit across the near frozen blue, salt stimulates three senses while the sea dulls the other two. Ivory and various other trinkets needed to get to the unnatural location where they will find their new shelter. In the closet of those who forget such treasure once existed intrinsically in these items, but are now lost forever. What greater fate then to join the company of the miserable symbols of wealthy conquests? They said that he had a solid head on his shoulders and a thick neck connected it to a stout body, which had no doubt the upper body strength to pull hard on his bootstraps. His fortunes brought him the ship and business was his white whale. He counted his coins in the form of boxes in the hold, locking the door to keep the slaves of wage out. The man had hired his navigators and captains, and trusted in his system as he focused on improving every angle of the acquisition process. When the fire broke out in the engine, the captains quelled screams, promises were created that things were fine as they began sending good men into the blaze in hopes of suffocating the fire. The man and his square head took his inventory and dreamed of the ledgers growing, his growing estate followed in mind, and a new horseless carriage to impress. The commotion grew until it could not be ignored, the tails fled towards the holes in the vessel. Fluids in extremes, or hell in flame. Either way the ship was going down. Ring around the porthole, brass, alienates the square-headed man now trying to follow the rats to safety. Shiny, yet soon to be tarnished. Square thoughts were pouring out as water poured in. The dollars he had were meaningless. The crates began to float in the cold water but would never float higher then the ceiling; they would find new depths along with this man and his worthless bootstraps. The sky was not falling, his ground was sinking. Forty minutes stuck in the hold, bleeding from the negotiations with the stubborn hole. Swears and prayers, God obviously prefers rodents. Above the life rafts floated away with the navigators and captains, set adrift by the ship workers who fought the blaze, whose work ran the ship, who were not to blame for the sparks, the ship they maintained collapsed into the abyss. The pragmatic square thoughts drowned with in the square head of the man who owned the vessel known as the American Dream. The rats swam to the Caymans.