Page 25 of Blow Me Down
“Oh. Right. Sorry. I forgot you put me in charge of the trip. Uh, guys? Can you do the belaying thing? With the running lines? Make them fast and all that stuff.”
Grudgingly my pitiful crew, who evidently didn’t much like a woman being in charge of them, secured the ship to the rickety dock.
“Thanks, guys.”
“Mates,” Pangloss hissed.
“Er… thanks, mates. Yarr ‘n’ stuff. Could one of you get a wheelbarrow and pour me into it? I don’t think I’m going to be able to stand up.”
Pangloss rolled his eyes and dismissed the men, hauling me to my feet with assurances that by tomorrow, I’d have my sea legs.
“Oh, I have sea legs already,” I told him the following day. “My legs feel like they’re made up of seawater, thank you very much.”
“I once knew a man what chucked so much, he started spewin‘ up blood,” Bas said helpfully as I lunged for the railing. “He died two days later, covered in cankers.Oozin’cankers.”
Pangloss shooed Bas off to a maintenance task within the boy’s one-handed abilities, and waited until I was done heaving over the side of the ship before answering. “Some takes a bit longer to get their legs. Here ye be—have a wee sip of grog to settle yer belly.”
I knew from experience that the grog wouldn’t do anything of the kind, but I took it nonetheless, swishing a mouthful of it around to rid myself of the unpleasant taste my seasickness had left.
Pangloss flinched as I spat it out.
I eyed him malevolently as I handed him back the tankard of grog. “Don’t give me another lecture about the sins of wasting rum. Do something to distract me from this horrible up-and-down thing the ship is doing.”
“It’s called sailin‘, lass.”
“Whatever. It’s evil. Distract me.”
He stood in front of me, hands on his hips as he frowned down at me. “What would ye be likin‘ me to do, then?”
I waved a vague hand around. “I don’t know. Talk to me. Tell me about Turtle’s Back. Tell me what it is that Corbin has done that has put a price on his head.”
His frown deepened as he settled on the deck, pausing to call out an order to the twins, who were engaged in whittling obscene shapes in wood. “Now, that be a good idea. ‘Tis only right ye know about the man ye’ll be goin’ up against.”
I lurched off the railing and slid down the curved side of the ship until I was slumped next to him.
“Ye know that he be the most feared pirate in the Seventh Sea,” Pangloss said by way of an opening. I nodded, trying to ignore the roiling of my stomach that seemed oddly out of synch with the ship’s movements on the swells. “No one knows where he came from—one day he just appeared on the horizon, sailin‘ into the harbor as bold as brass and twice as shiny, just as if he owned the island. Naturally, the captain had a thing or two to say about that.”
“Naturally,” I agreed, so far not finding anything that disagreed with my impression of Corbin. Arrogance he had in abundance. But it was the other claims that didn’t mesh.
Pangloss scratched his bristly chin. “From what I’ve been told, the cap’n went down to meet Corbin at the docks and welcome him to Turtle’s Back.”
“From what you’ve been told? You weren’t there?”
“Nay,” he shook his head. “I was off with a crew foragin‘ the Box for game.”
After three days on the island I’d learned that game was pretty much nonexistent here, so Bart’s men made frequent runs to the rocky shores of Pandora’s Box, a nearby island uninhabitable by all but the heartiest breeds of goats, deer, and boar.
“The cap’n, he be a pirate from long ago, and he knows how to talk to our kind. So he was all friendly-like, offerin‘ Black Corbin his finest rum and wenches, but that black hearted devil turned up his nose at ’em, sayin‘ without so much as a by-yer-leave that he’d be havin’ the island instead.”
“That seems rather pushy of him.”
“Aye. Cap’n Bart, he just laughed and told Black Corbin he was welcome to try, but he had a strong crew who’d be givin‘ him no quarter if Corbin attacked the town.”
“Hmm. So what did Corbin do then?”
Pangloss shrugged. “He left.”
I gawked at him for a moment or two. “He left?”
