Hawk blinked in disbelief.
“Here." Ruiz handed over a spyglass to Hawk, so that he could convince himself of the accuracy of the situation.
It didn't take long to scale the side of the hill, picking a vantage point that would allow him a view of the beach without being seen. And on the other side of the hill...
Gold. Sacks that were splitting at the seams and crates with the lids pried off, glittering in the sun like a fever dream. More crates were being lugged from the sea by exhausted sailors.
“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
He returned to Ruiz only to find Silver emerging from the sea again, bright eyed and grinning the smile of a thousand stars and looking entirely overly pleased with himself. "The gold! Did you see it?"
Hawk drew him close with a chuckle. “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched, pet,” he whispered into Silver’s ear, brushing his lips against the shell as he moved past his lover.
“There’s still the question of getting this gold off that beach,” he resumed conversation with Ruiz. “We’re not going anywhere with theOrcain the shape she’s in right now. And theEstrela, far as I can see, is even worse off. After all that - if we can’t get off this beach, if the Portuguese and the Natives don’t kill us first - we still face a very realistic chance of dying of thirst and hunger, right here.”
“To die in Phallandia,” Silver muttered with a visible shudder, and Hawk cast him a questioning look. The kid was an idiot, but he washisidiot.
“We’ll think of something,” Hawk said, in the most reassuring voice he could muster, and took Silver’s hand into his own. “Believing in you got me this far, hasn’t it? Now, you must believe in me.”
In front of them, Ruiz cleared his throat.
“What should I tell the men, Captain?”
“Take stock of all our supplies,” Hawk began reciting his orders, “make a list of everything. Send out a small troop to find potable water, we’ll have to ration...”
A cry from the shore interrupted him.
“Jesus Christ,” Ruiz scratched his head again. “It’s Henry Pane.”
“Of course it is,” Hawk muttered, lifting the spyglass to his eye again. “And in case I had any doubts, he’s completely naked.”
Well, this was awkward. Silverfin hid behind the rest of the crew of theOrca, busying himself with petting Millie the land crab, while everyone else surrounded the freshly beached Captain Pane, the seeming sole survivor of theTempest.
Leave this crew alone, Silverfin had hissed again at his kin when he'd gone into the sea after Hawk, baring his teeth.If it’s biped blood you want, go after theTempest.I told you:Pane is more delicious!
He washopingthe Mers would just eat him. But by the looks of it... Nope.
“There was something... in the water..,” Pane was saying to Hawk, his voice even more gravelly and hoarse than usual. “Many somethings. I... I don’t know... they touched me... a lot.”
“Clearly Captain Pane has swallowed a lot of seawater,” Doc LeBaron had suggested, much to Silverfin's relief.
Look, Silverfin may have been a Prince of the Sea, but he was not above petty vengeance. Mara had left their family for Elizabeth, and Elizabeth had left Mara for Captain Pane. In a way, he'd really been asking for it all along, to fuck over sea royalty in such a shameless way.
“What happened to your trousers?” Hawk asked, eyeing his fellow captain suspiciously.
"The savage beasts took them," Pane growled. "Tore them right off me."
“The Portuguese?”
"Not the fucking Portuguese! The things! In the water!"
"I did see some sharks," Hank piped in, clearly looking for a chance to be helpful.
"Sharks that only eat pants?" Hawk cast his bosun a dubious look.
"Sharks don't strip you like that," Pane muttered darkly.
Well, pants or no pants, he was definitely alive, Silverfin reasoned. And all of Elizabeth's favorite bits were clearly intact.
