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"In Erebus, as white people call the place. The place where the Fountain is, where ghosts can't be ghosts, where blood grows plants?"
"No no, not me." Shandy shook his head. "Now let go of me, will you? I've got - "
"No? Good. He have ... uses for you, if'n you did. An' when the war was ended and he was still alive an' gettin' so close an' puttin' together a whole nation, it seem like, of badmen, I saw I had to call a death for him from the Old World. When the one-armed man came last year an' knew about ghosts, I was sure it was my man, 'specially since his wife died the same year I sent my summons - if the bigger loas sent him for me they'd maybe have caused her death, as long as the complications of it would drive him out here."
"That's great, really," said Shandy. He made a twisting hop and managed to pull his arm free of the bocor's huge hand. "But right now I've got to see to the crews, all right? Anybody who needs to be killed and burned is just going to have to wait." He turned and ran before Woefully Fat could grab him again.
By threats, and hints that maroonment here was a real possibility, and his own evident consternation, Shandy managed to get a little more than half of the Carmichael's crew accepted by David Herriot, Bonnett's half-bright sailing master, and hustle the remainder down to the boats and onto the water, before the boat that had picked up Hurwood had even reached the Jenny.
The fog was definitely breaking up now, and when the boat Shandy was in plunged out of the last veil of mist, he smiled with affection to see the battered old Jenny rocking sturdily out there in the bright morning sunlight.
"It'll be nice to get back down south where we belong," he said to Skank, who was crouched in the bow near him.
"Oh, aye," the young pirate agreed, "it's risky tactics to get too far from the attentions of Mate Care-For and that lot."
"Yeah." Shandy hastily patted his pocket to make sure he hadn't lost the ball of mud. "Yeah, there's some unlikely beasts in the world, and it's best to stay near the ones that you've bought drinks for."
In a few minutes they bumped the shot-scarred hull of the Jenny, and Shandy reached up, grabbed her gunwale and vaulted over it onto the deck. As he gave some orders about the handling of the tenuously repaired sails and lines, and oversaw the hasty loading of several casks of salt pork and beer he'd managed to commandeer from the camp, he became aware that the planks under his boots were vibrating briefly every couple of seconds, and when he made his way aft to report to Davies that they were ready to go, he saw Hurwood crouched over his grisly box on the narrow poop, and the old man's scratchy breathing exactly corresponded to the deck's vibration.
"Hope he doesn't sneeze," remarked Davies, who had also noticed the phenomenon. "All set?"
"I'd say so, Phil," Shandy answered with a tension-twitchy grin. "Far too many men, nearly no provisions, the rigging all held together with nipper twine, and the navigator a one-armed lunatic taking directions from a severed head in a box."
"Excellent," said Davies, nodding. "Good work. I knew I picked the right man for quartermaster." He looked down at Hurwood. "Which way?" Hurwood pointed south.
"Hoist anchor!" Davies shouted. "And tiller hard to starboard!"
The old sloop came around to face south, and then she sped away so quickly, in spite of being jostlingly overcrowded, that Shandy knew Hurwood must be providing some sort of sorcerous propulsion to aid the tattered sails; and by noon they had ploughed their plunging, wide-waked way down past the tip of the Florida peninsula.
A half hour later things began to happen. Hurwood had been staring into the wooden box since they'd set out, but now he looked up. Shandy, who had been glancing frequently at the old man, noticed the change and walked back to the stern along the railing, balancing himself by reaching out to touch the shrouds every few steps. A few steps from the one-armed magician he paused.
"There are ... others ... ," the old man said.
Several of the pirates had climbed up the shrouds to escape the smell and crowding of their companions, perched themselves more or less comfortably in the loops of the ratlines, and were providing entertainment to those below by tossing an ever-lighter rum bottle back and forth among themselves without, so far, dropping it; but now one of them was staring intently to the west. "A sail!" he yelled. "Ow, damn it," he added as the bottle rebounded from his knee and fell into eager hands below. "A sail abeam to starboard and only a mile or two off!"
That's got to be her, thought Shandy, whirling so quickly to look that he had to crouch and grab the rail to keep from tumbling over the side. As soon as he saw the other ship, though, he knew it wasn't the Carmichael - this ship had a forecastle structure, and an extra-high poop, and had only two huge sails each on its fore and mainmasts, and even from this distance he could see bright patterns of red and white painted along her side.
"I am not a dog!" yelled Mr. Bird, who had wound up with the rum bottle and was backing away toward the bow with it and glaring around at the rest of the pirates.
Shandy stared at the strange ship. "What is she?" he asked Davies, "and how in hell did she get so close without any of us seeing her?"
"Damned if I know how," Davies growled. "We've been keeping no formal watch, but one of those drunken bastards should have noticed before now." He squinted at the ship, which seemed to be pacing them. "It's a Spanish galleon," he said wonderingly. "I didn't know there were any still afloat - they haven't made 'em for at least half a century."
Shandy swore, then smiled tiredly at Davies. "Nothing to do with any of our concerns, obviously."
"Obviously."
"So do we just continue?"
"May as well. Even overloaded, we should be able to outrun that, especially with Hurwood lending his sorcerous push. If - "
"Drowned man!" yelled one of the men up in the shrouds. "To port, twenty yards off."
Shandy looked in that direction and saw sea birds circling over a sodden, floating lump that soon disappeared in the choppy agitation of their wake.
"'Nother one ahead!" the self-appointed lookout yelled. "We may run right over him."
"One of you get a boathook out," commanded Davies, "and snag him."
