The Tides of Avarice (24 page)

“Why, you—!”

“Cap'n's orders,” responded Cheesefang smugly.

“He never ordered you to do that.”

“He would've if he'd thoughta it.”

Sylvester began to speak, then stopped. There was no arguing against that sort of logic.

Past Cheesefang he could see Cap'n Rustbane standing apart from the rest of his crew, who were moving about in organized chaos as they prepared to enact the punishments the Cap'n had specified. The fox looked vaguely lonely for a moment, but Sylvester knew any fleeting sympathy would have been misplaced. This was the way the gray fox preferred things to be. He was in his element. He had created his own world aboard the Shadeblaze, a world designed to be exactly how he wanted it.

“Bladderbulge!” the Cap'n was bellowing. “Where in the blazes is that blasted badger?”

“Right 'ere, sir.”

“Ah, good. As soon as we've done with these two scoundrels, have my supper ready for me in my cabin, d'you hear?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And make sure it's nice and spicy.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And piping hot, too. The muck you served me last night was hardly more than lukewarm.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“You get it right, Bladderbulge, or one of these days it's yourself you're going to be cooking for my breakfast, understand?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And no blasted broccoli, either.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And stop saying ‘aye, aye, sir' to me the whole blasted time.”

“Aye, aye—aye'll remember that, sir.”

“Good. Now get moving, you fat oaf.”

“An' you git movin' too,” growled Cheesefang in Sylvester's ear. “'Less'n you want another jab fro' Old Molly here.”

Old Molly, Sylvester realized sickly, was the infernal sea rat's cutlass. No, Sylvester didn't want another jab from its rusty point.

He got moving.

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

Both Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry were waiting for him in his cabin when he reached it, sitting side-by-side on his narrow bed and looking worried.

“Where in the world have you been?” cried Viola, leaping to her feet as the door opened.

Taking both her forepaws in his, Sylvester told Viola and her mother how he'd spent his day. It took him surprisingly little time. Surprisingly little because, as he realized almost at once, if he'd tried to give them even the most rudimentary explanation of the many things he'd done and gadgets to which he'd been introduced, it would have taken him hours.

“Then, just before he sent me down here,” Sylvester concluded, “the Cap'n told one crewman he was going to be keelhauled, whatever that means, and another that he was,” Sylvester felt a blush begin to spread across his face, “going to kiss one of the gunner's daughters a lot.”

Mrs. Pickleberry, still sitting on the bunk, looked at him grimly.

“I know what keelhaulin's all about,” she said. “Cheesefang told me about it. It ain't no summer stroll in the grasses, I can assure you, young Lemmington. No, that it ain't.”

“Ain't—er, isn't it?”

“Nope.”

“Then what exactly does it involve?”

As if in answer to his question, somewhere beyond the open porthole screaming started.

Very loud screaming.

“They've started,” announced Mrs. Pickleberry. “Started keelhaulin' the poor beggar.”

“Oh.”

“He'll be lucky he has any skin left on him, when they're done.”

Mrs. Pickleberry carried on to explain what happened during a keelhauling. By the time she'd finished, it was she who was standing and Viola and Sylvester who were sitting on the bunk, leaning against each other for comfort, holding each other's paws and significantly green in the face.

“As for kissin' the gunner's daughter,” said Three Pins Pickleberry, “that means gettin' lashes from the cat-o'-nine-tails.”

“There's a cat with nine tails?” said Sylvester dazedly. “I didn't see any cats out there at all.”

“It's a type o' whip, see?” said Viola's mom with a certain amount of unconcealed relish. “It's got nine …”

That explanation didn't do much for Viola's or Sylvester's digestive comfort either.

“We've got to get off this accursed ship and far away from here,” said Sylvester gloomily. “We've got to escape. Got to.”

Viola sighed. She gestured toward the porthole, through which could be seen an endless expanse of choppy ocean.

“Yes, but how?”

Ten days passed. The three lemmings had seen or heard nothing of Cap'n Rustbane since the day the two pirates had been sentenced to keelhauling and a flogging respectively. For almost all of every day, the only contact the trio had with the outside world was an occasional visit from Cheesefang, who alternated unpredictably between kindly affability and foul-mouthed unfriendliness.

After a while, Sylvester noticed something peculiar. The grizzled old sea rat lost his acerbity and, especially, his atrociously bad language whenever Mrs. Pickleberry was around.

Briefly, Sylvester wondered if there might be some kind of unspoken romance in the air.

But no, that was impossible. Cheesefang was a sea rat, not a lemming. Viola's mom was a lemming, not a sea rat.

Then Sylvester made the obvious connection. Rustbane terrified Cheesefang, who accordingly, in the Cap'n's presence, behaved how he believed the Cap'n wanted him to behave. Mrs. Pickleberry terrified Cheesefang too. It was obvious, from the way she bristled and tutted every time the sea rat came out with yet another of his paint-blistering oaths, that she wanted him to behave just a trifle more like a gentleman ought toward a lady: with some respect and, unless Cheesefang wanted to find himself getting his mouth scrubbed out with soap and water, a certain temperance of language.

The sea rat was doing his best to comply with her wishes.

At the moment, he was attending to other duties around the ship. Mrs. Pickleberry was having “a little lie-down” in the cabin she shared with her daughter. She'd gotten into the habit of taking an afternoon nap and sometimes a morning one too, because there wasn't much else to do. Sylvester was taking advantage of Cheesefang's absence to score another line with his claw on the cabin wall, just above the lintel of the door.

“That makes ten,” he said, standing back when the brief task was done. “Ten days at sea. We're becoming real seafarers now, aren't we, sweetheart?” he added, trying to cheer himself up as much as Viola.

“I suppose so,” she replied dolefully.

“Look on the bright side.”

“I have. It's just as boring as the dim side. Boringer, actually. At least the dim side's broken up a bit by having to be sea sick every now and then.”

“We'll soon be there.”

“Where?”

“The Caraya Islands.”

Sylvester tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. He must have told Viola this a dozen times or more during the past two or three days. Hadn't she been paying attention? Then he realized she was asking him the question just to have something to say. Speaking was her way of keeping her morale up, or at least of stopping it from plummeting, even if what was being said was the same thing over and over again.

“The Caraya Islands,” he repeated, his tone softening. “You remember. I told you about them. The Carayas are that group of islands – an archipelago, to use the proper term – that runs like a chain parallel to the equator. I saw them on that piece of the map I had before I burned it.”

For once, Viola said nothing, just looked at him sourly and crossed her arms ever more tightly across her chest. Her meaning couldn't have been clearer. If you hadn't burned that map, we would all be back in Foxglove, not incarcerated on board a vile old pirate ship where the boards seem to leak mold and you keep expecting something with a lot of teeth to leap up from under you when you're using the lav.

Sylvester stared back at her. The truth is, and you know it, that if I hadn't destroyed the map there'd be nothing left of Foxglove now but a few bits of blackened timber, nothing left of us but the faint smell of roasted lemming still lingering in the air.

Finally, Viola's gaze dropped. She knew he was right. She just didn't have to like it, that was all.

“Once we get to the Carayas, Cap'n Rustbane plans to put into harbor for a while,” said Sylvester. “Maybe we'll have the chance to escape then.”

Not, he added silently, that the idea of escaping into a port called Hangman's Haven seems exactly enticing. Cutthroats on every corner, I should imagine. An awful, lawless place, but it's the same here on the Shadeblaze. At least when we're off the ship there'll be the chance of running away from people who want to slit our gizzards without running smack into a bulkhead before we've properly got our speed up.

Viola looked up at him again. He could tell she was thinking exactly the same thing. He suddenly wished Mrs. Pickleberry were here. Viola's mom would probably relish the prospect of Hangman's Haven, so long as she had her rolling pin with her.

“Dry land seems a long way away,” said Viola quietly, “however you look at it. And every hour on board this stinky ship seems to last a year or two at least. Oh, if only there was something we could do now. We could untie one of the longboats from the poop deck and—”

“We'd never get away with it. Who would lower the longboat into the water?”

“Mom.”

“Then she'd be stuck aboard the Shadeblaze.”

“She could jump in after us.”

“The crew'd hear the sound of the winches. Remember how the gears squeaked and squealed when the longboats were being hauled aboard? We'd have half a dozen pirates on us before the boat was halfway to the water. Even if we could escape, your mom would be cut to ribbons.”

Viola sniffed as if she wasn't sure how important that was.

“Then the pirates would come after us,” Sylvester continued, “and catch us, and cut us to ribbons.”

“We could go at nighttime.”

“What difference would that make?”

“In the dark they'd not know where to look for us.”

“These are mariners, Viola! They've been learning the mysteries of the sea longer than either you or I have been alive.” Possibly, looking at some of them, longer than even Mrs. Pickleberry's been alive. “They know how to get around little problems like that. They have mirrored lanterns that can send a beam of light a hundred yards or more. They'd catch us in no time, don't you doubt that at all.”

“I'd rather be dead than stuck on this rotten heap a day longer.”

“It only seems that way. You don't really think that.”

Silence loomed between them.

“Do you?” added Sylvester in a small voice.

“What do you think?”

His mind groped for an answer.

After what seemed like too long, Viola spoke again.

“I'd give anything for a bath,” she said wistfully.

“Wouldn't we all?”

“A long, long bath.”

“Hot too.”

She nodded. “Hot. With lots of that bubbly stuff that smells like a house of ill repute.”

“What's a house of ill repute?”

“You know. A house where females who smell like that bubbly bath stuff live. Loose females.”

“Um, Viola, if you had a bath in that goo, would you have to live in house of ill repute?”

“It's just a figure of speech, Sylvester! Don't be so literal about everything.”

Not long ago I knew what this conversation was about, Sylvester thought. Now I'm floundering.

“Are there any houses of ill repute in Foxglove?” he said.

“Possibly,” Viola murmured darkly. “Have you ever been, you know, just walking along and suddenly the scent of bubble-bath goo has come wafting out of nowhere and … and assailed your nostrils?”

Sylvester thought back. “I can't rightly say that I have.”

“What a very sweet and innocent person you are, Sylvester.”

“I am?”

She giggled.

Sylvester was pretty certain the giggling was about him, but he didn't mind. Anything, anything at all so long as the gloom lifted from Viola's mood.

“Besides,” said Sylvester, “even if we did manage to escape in the longboat, and even if we did manage to lose the pirates' search party somehow, how'd we be able to get all the way to dry land?”

“You'd navigate, of course. Weren't you paying attention when Cap'n ‘I'm So High And Mighty' Rustbane was telling you about navigation?”

“Yes, but I don't have a sextant.”

The faintest glimmer of a grin was beginning to twitch the corners of her mouth. “That's your problem.”

“Or an astrolabe.”

“Pity Doc Nettletree's not here. Sounds like you need some urgent attention.”

“Even if I could navigate us to dry land, how's the boat going to cross hundreds and thousands of leagues to get there?”

Viola snorted. “It's not that far.”

“However far it is, the boat's not just going to go there on its own, is it? And those longboats don't have sails, not so's I've noticed anyway.”

“Easy, you'd row us.”

“I'd row us? But I'd be too busy navigating to pick up an oar.” Sylvester shook his head sorrowfully. “No, no, no, Viola. The person who'd have to do the rowing would be—”

The pillow she threw hit him full in the face.

At first, Sylvester thought she must have thrown it with phenomenal force, because he staggered uncontrollably backward and crashed against the far wall of the cabin. The rear of his head struck the wooden wall hard and he slid to the floor, lights flashing on and off in front of him.

For a moment, he couldn't speak and was barely aware of anything going on around him except for a high, thin wail that he eventually identified as Viola screaming.

There was a puff of brightness, a whiff of scorching.

“Fire!” bawled Viola.

The single word was enough to make Sylvester recover consciousness fast. “Where?” he said groggily, pushing himself up onto jelly-like legs.

“Right in front of you, you idiot,” she snapped.

A glance was enough to tell him what had happened. Whatever had jolted the ship and thrown him across the room had also dislodged the lamp that had been hanging from the ceiling. The lamp had fallen and smashed. Its oil had sprayed across the floor and caught fire, also setting alight the underside of a wooden chair in the corner that no one ever used because it creaked and groaned as if it were going to collapse at any second.

“Water!” yelled Sylvester, taking control of the situation.

“We don't have any.”

“But of course we must have, we're in the middle of the—oh, heck!”

The door was flung open.

“Cheesefang!”

Sylvester wished momentarily that Viola's cry hadn't sounded quite so welcoming, then forgot about it as a tongue of flame seemed to show an interest in his foot.

The rat dumped a brimming bucket just inside the cabin.

“More buckets at t'end of the companionway,” he grunted then turned to go.

“Wait!” yelled Viola.

The sea rat paused, looking back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“What about my mom? Er, Three Pins, I mean.”

“Three Pins is okay. I got my eye on her.”

The rat vanished along the corridor.

It didn't take long for Sylvester to put the fire out. Some spare clothes Cheesefang had given him not long after they'd come aboard were singed beyond rescue, and Viola got rid of them by thrusting them out the porthole. Soon, there was no trace of the fire except a grayness in the air and a poignant stench that reminded Sylvester of his mother's traditional home cooking.

How, he wondered miserably as he put the nearly empty bucket back out into the corridor, trying not to slosh its remaining contents onto his feet, are you getting along without me, Mom?

All the while, the ship was bucking and heaving underfoot as if some giant had picked it up and was shaking it to see if the contents rattled.

“What's going on?” said Viola. She'd been a model of competence from the moment Cheesefang had delivered the water to them, but now she was beginning to give in to fear again.

“A storm. That's all it is. A storm at sea.” Sylvester hoped he sounded calmer than he felt. “They have 'em all the time in this part of the world. It's the tropics, you see. It's a sailor's way of knowing when you're getting into them, a storm is. Nothing to worry about.”

“We're doomed, doomed, doomed!” came Cheesefang's voice from the companionway outside.

The sea rat stuck his head round the door.

“Jus' kiddin', like.”

Viola said something unladylike.

“My!” said Cheesefang and vanished, shutting the door behind him.

Through the crashing of the waves and the sudden howling of the wind they could hear voices from above.

“Stem the tide and make the course good.” That was Cap'n Rustbane.

“Rat overboard.” Jeopord talking, at a guess.

“Good.” Rustbane again. “He was three sheets to the wind.”

I wonder if I'll ever get the hang of these nautical terms, thought Sylvester.

“But Cap'n,” said a different voice, “I dinnae ken if—”

“She can and she will.” There was a cold core of determination in Rustbane's declaration. “No turning back. We're going through it.”

“Aye, aye, Skip.”

There was a pause. Viola and Sylvester could hear, directly above their heads, the sound of countless feet scuttling this way and that as the pirate crew took measures to protect the Shadeblaze from the worst effects of the storm.

A sudden crash made the two lemmings start.

“I think that was a hatch being battened down,” said Sylvester.

“Rat back on board,” came a call from above.

“Jus' a lucky wave,” said a smug voice they'd not heard before.

“So Davy Jones 'as spared yer. Now grab this spar, yer lubber!”

The caterwauling of the wind rose to a crescendo. The nameless giant seemed to be shaking the Shadeblaze harder than ever. The voices were lost to the cacophony of the elements.

Sylvester gave Viola a significant look and she returned it. They could swim, all lemmings could, but could they keep themselves afloat for long enough to have a chance of rescue?