Drowned Wednesday(11)

‘I ain’t never heard anything so insulting. Us! Pirates! We’re Salvagers, and proud of it. We don’t take anything that hasn’t been thrown away first or sunk and come up. Or treasures left in the open sea.’

‘Sorry,’ said Arthur. ‘It was just the eye patches and the clothes and the tattoos and everything . . . I was confused. But I really would like to be a passenger.’

‘Just because we’re only Salvagers doesn’t mean we can’t dress nice and wear an eye patch if we want,’ muttered Shark-Mouth. ‘Or two eye patches, come to that.’

‘Can’t wear two, you idiot,’ said another Denizen.

‘Can so,’ replied the first. ‘Get some of that one-way leather from the Doctor —’

‘Shut up!’ roared the leader. He turned back to Arthur and said, ‘I’m not saying you can be a passenger, right? I’m only the Second Mate of the Moth. Sunscorch is my name. But we’ll take you back to the ship. The Captain can decide your fate.’

‘Thanks!’ said Arthur. ‘My name’s Arth —’ He stopped halfway through. Better to keep his name to himself, he thought.

‘Arth? Well, get aboard Arth.’

Two of the closer Denizens held the boat against the buoy, and another one helped Arthur across.

‘Gettin’ yer leg ready to cut off, are yer?’ asked the helping Denizen with a grin. He slapped Arthur’s cast and waved his own leg, showing off a wooden peg that started below the knee. ‘They grow back too quick, though, I’m telling yer.’

Arthur grimaced at the sight and quickly suppressed a flash of fear that his leg might have to be cut off. And his wouldn’t grow back, unlike a Denizen’s.

‘I’ve had this one chopped a dozen times,’ continued the peg-legged crew member. ‘Why, I remember —’ He stopped in mid-sentence and recoiled, staring at Arthur’s red-stained hands.

‘He’s got the Red Hand!’

‘Feverfew’s mark!’

‘We’re all doomed!’

‘Quiet!’ roared Sunscorch. He peered down at Arthur.

‘It’s only red tar or something from the buoy,’ said Arthur. ‘It’ll wash off.’

‘From the buoy,’ whispered Sunscorch. ‘This here buoy?’

‘Yes.’

‘There wasn’t any smoke, was there?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about birds? That smoke didn’t turn into cormorants, did it? Smoky black cormorants that screamed out something that might have been ‘Death’ or ‘Dismemberment’ or anything like that?’

‘There were birds,’ admitted Arthur. ‘They screamed out ‘Thief’ and flew away. I thought they must have brought you here.’

Sunscorch took off his hat and wiped his bald head with a surprisingly neatly folded white handkerchief that he took out of a pocket.

‘Not us,’ he whispered. ‘Lookout saw the open buoy and the Captain thought it worth a glance. That there treasure marker must be one of Feverfew’s. The birds will have flown to find him, and his ship.’

‘Shiver,’ intoned the crew. ‘The ship of bone.’

As they spoke, the Denizen with the lantern shuttered it right down to the merest glimmer, and everybody else looked out at the sea all around.

Sunscorch ran his tongue over his remaining teeth and kept wiping his head. His crew watched him intently, till he put away his handkerchief and clapped his hat back on.

‘Listen up,’ he whispered. ‘Seeing as we’re probably dead or headed for the slave-chain anyway, we might as well see what’s below. Lizard? Where’s Lizard?’

‘Here,’ came a whisper from the water. ‘There’s a chest all right, a big one, sitting pretty as you please atop a spire of rock, ten fathom down.’

‘The chain?’

‘Screwed to the rock, not to the chest.’

‘Let’s be having that chest, then,’ whispered Sunscorch. ‘Bones, you and Bottle back oars. Everyone else, hands on the line. You, too, Arth.’

Arthur joined the others to grab hold of the rope. At Sunscorch’s hoarsely whispered commands, they all hauled together.

‘Heave away! Hold on! Heave cheerily! Hold on! Heave away! Hold! One more!’

At the last command, a dripping chest as long as Arthur was tall and as high as his waist scraped over the gunwale and was manhandled into the boat. As soon as it was settled, there was a mad dash to the oars. With Sunscorch whispering more commands and the rowers very gently dipping their oars, the boat moved ahead and then turned towards the lights of the Moth.

‘Hope we get back to the ship in time so as we can all die together,’ whispered the Denizen on the oar next to Arthur. ‘It’d be better that way.’