Page 38 of Maggie and the Pirate’s Son

Langley shrugged. “Traded with the Butcher.”

Bash set his mouth in a firm line.

“Spread the word, aye. Anyone who glimpsed the Woebegone Whale should come and speak to me, understand? Now go on back to your post.”

“Aye, Nav,” Langley said, looking out towards the ray and crossing himself once more before he hurried off.

Maggie had overheard bits and pieces about Willy Walsh since coming aboard, but she couldn’t reconcile the excitement of most sailors with Bash’s present agitation.

“Who is he? Willy Walsh?” she asked, peering earnestly up into Bash’s dark, stormy face.

“No one, if he knows what’s good for him,” Bash replied.

“I take it you’ve heard?” the quartermaster asked, coming to lean against the rail on Bash’s other side.

“Ravings of drunkards, nothing more. Wishful thinking. What would Walsh be doing all the way out here?”

“Captain told them he returned to Scotland. As far as they’re concerned, he’s but one step ahead of us and losing ground.”

“You and I both know the value of that story,” Bash grumbled.

Dutch merely shrugged. “Maybe you and I were wrong.”

The two men exchanged a dark look that Maggie couldn’t interpret, and then Bash turned back to scan the ocean again. “Well there’s no sign of him now.”

“You think it was a ghost ship?” Dutch asked in a voice so low Maggie wasn’t sure she heard correctly.

“Or our old friend from the navy. He does so love a game of cat and mouse.”

Dutch’s mouth was drawn, but he nodded in what looked like agreement.

Maggie wasn’t sure which she preferred between a ghost, a whale, and the navy. She’d much rather dancing devil rays and stolen moments below deck in a certain navigator’s hammock. She didn’t know if she believed in signs good or bad, but the air still felt different today, and that made her ill at ease.

“Gentlemen,” the captain called, striding up the deck with an unusually energetic gait. “I understand we dine on whale tonight.”

Bash’s heart sank. If there was no ship, the men would be all riled up with nothing to do. And if there was one, how was he going to protect Maggie as they went charging into battle, cannons blazing?

He was third in command of a ship of one hundred men, the only expert in navigational science, and yet he’d never felt so powerful as he did when she allowed herself to come apart in his arms—when she allowed him the chance to take her to that height. He wanted a thousand more chances and a thousand after that. He was far too distracted to face the likes of Willy Walsh or an angry mob of his own men, either one.

“ ’Tis a rumor, Cap. You know the value of that,” he protested, but Mad ignored his words, as well as the presence of Dutch and Maggie, stepping up nose to nose with Bash.

“That would be a personal disappointment, boy,” he said. “You know I’ve a very fond taste for whale meat.”

“We’ll double the lookouts up top,” Bash assured him.

The captain’s lips curved into a sneer. “Double zero is still zero.”

“Zero?” Bash craned his neck to scan the platform at the top of the foremast, then, seeing no one, he stepped around Dutch to glimpse the main mast. Both empty. “Where are the watchmen?”

The captain jerked his head towards a nearby circle of sailors hurling eggs up at the mast shouting and being shouted at by Roo.

“I’ll fry up your liver and loins when we run out of grub, you rutting kloothommels!”

“Attempting to de-kestrel the tops,” the captain explained gleefully. And sure enough, a bird flapped and squawked around them. But a kestrel?

The Butcher stepped up with a blunderbuss, took aim, and fired, the lead ball tearing right through the recently mended main sail. Furious, the bird flew directly at him, flapping its wings defiantly in his face, dodging the men who attempted to hit it with shirts and neckcloths they’d stripped off to the purpose.

“Stop!” Maggie yelled, and Bash felt the color drain from his own face just as hers reddened.