Chapter 267: The Wild Goose

The Black Fortune sailed like a hot knife through butter.

James stood at the quarterdeck with nothing to steer, feeling the boards hum through his boots like a string plucked too hard. The water spray came off the bow in white sheets, the black canvas pulled tight as a drumhead, and her wake clean behind her.

Where the Rose shoved the sea out of her way, the Fortune slid across it. The wind filled her forward of the beam, and she took this close reach so neatly the crew might have thought the gust had been paid to do the work.

Behind him, Bonnet held the wheel with two fingers and a cautious expression. By his side, Crick leaned against the binnacle and spat to leeward.

Amidships, the shantyman swung a boot up onto the fife rail, drew a chestful of sea air, and let fly in a voice that had clearly been marinating in rum and salt spray since the cradle.

"Did you ever see a wild goose, sailing o’er the ocean?"

The watch threw their backs into the beat, a dozen fists snapping down together, and the answer came up out of them.

"Ranzo, Ranzo, weigh heigh!"

The Fortune rose over a swell and left it behind, then the wind freshened and shifted hard enough to put a lesser ship on her ear. She heeled until green water kissed the lee rail, then came upright again without giving up a yard of speed.

⚙ [PERK ACTIVATED] — Wind Dancer

James grinned, turned from the quarterdeck, and looked down the length of the ship, just in time to see the crash.

One of the cannon carriages had broken loose during the heel and run straight across the planking. It slammed into the bulwark, its trucks screaming and its breeching dragging behind it.

Mary rounded on her crew with the offending knot dangling from her fist like a cutpurse caught by the scruff. The shantyman, who had a gift for timing and no sense of self-preservation, chose that very moment to deliver the second verse.

"They’re just like them pretty girls, when they gets the notion."

"Ranzo, Ranzo, weigh heigh!"

The gap-toothed gunner brightened like a drowning man who’d just found a plank. He jabbed a thumb at the singer. "The gun has the notion, Mark! Sheh got the notion, same as the song says! ’Tain’t no fault o’ me knot, ’tis the lady’s own whimsy! I swear it on me mam’s good name!"

Mary looked him over slowly, and the whole gun crew seemed to hold its breath. "Is that what ye call a knot? Mother of God! I’ve seen a dead man’s hand rig a cleaner hitch than that, and that hand had come clean off the arm at the time, God rest it!"

She began low, like a gale, and climbed. "Retie her afore this shanty is out, ye slack-fisted pack of omadhauns, or by all the saints I’ll lash the three of ye to that gun and let her carry ye wherever she damn well pleases, and may she please to go straight to the bottom!"

James dropped to one knee on the planking, and remarked.

"Och, haven’t you a wee duty for a passenger, Mark? I’m that bored, really."

Mary jerked her chin at the loose carriage.

"Sit on her, then, be ballast. ’Tis the one use I’ve found for you yet."

He straddled the gun carriage while the gunners hauled the new lashing tight.

The next gust laid the Fortune over, and while the new lashing held like iron, James went down the waist on his backside, coat-tails flying, to the thunderous applause of the crew.

Mary watched him go, then pronounced the sentence for the whole deck to hear. "There, knot’s sound, so it is. ’Tis the passenger that wants tyin’ down, so fetch a spare length next time, lads, for the gun, and for his gob."

James laughed together with them.

At the foremast stood two identical men, one on each side of the braces, each hauling his rope for all he was worth. The yard had to be hauled by one brace while the other was eased, and neither twin would ease his, so the yard stayed square, and even the gull above the foretop seemed to decide that enough was enough and flew away.

"The other morning, I was walking by the river."

"RANZO, RANZO, WEIGH HEIGH!"

The larboard twin hauled with every sinew he owned, jaw clamped, face gone purple. He never once took his eyes off the rope, but he found breath enough to bawl at the sky.

"Cap’n! CAP’N! For the love of God and all his angels, tell this rotten bit of plank he’s Silas! Ma named me Ezra at the font, with the vicar lookin’ on and the water wet on me head, and I’ll swear to it on the Bible, Articles, the bleedin’ almanac!"

From the starboard side came a snort like a bull, and the twin, matching him sinew for sinew, replied in a voice that dripped scorn. "Swear it on a rum cask, he would, and kiss the bung after! Cap’n, that’s the law of the thing, and I ain’t been Silas one day in me whole misbegotten life, nor I won’t start now to please this lyin’, thievin’ mongrel!"

Overhead, the fore-topsail had begun to shake, a pale tremor in the belly of the canvas. The shantyman, who missed nothing that could be turned into a joke, took aim at it with the next couplet like a man leveling a musket.

"When I saw a young girl walking, with her topsails all a-quiver."

"Ranzo, Ranzo, weigh heigh!"

While the ruckus happened, James followed a dry voice and the scratch of a quill aft to the main hatch. Whitlock sat there with his tally board on his knee, scratching down the verse as it was sung while a ring of sailors crowded around to read over his shoulder.

He murmured, quill scratching, tongue pinched between his teeth. "A young girl walking, topsails, plural. Now there is a nicety, I shall require the rate of quiver, gentlemen, per glass, for the accounts. It would never do for the Fortune to be careless in her books of scandal."

"Set a hand’s breadth higher’n the Articles allow, Mister Whitlock! Brazen as a bell!"

"Faster’n a gull’s heart, so she were! Flutterin’ like a linnet in a bucket!"

"An’ the slower she walked, sir, the harder they shook, God love ’er!"

Whitlock read it back to himself, and nodded slowly as the verdict made itself. "Slow walk, rapid quiver, one hand above the Articles, slack halyards, beyond reasonable doubt. Whoever rigged that youngster shall be fined, and heavily, for conduct unbecoming cordage."

James stole the quill and signed down with gravity. Then he leaned back, folded his hands over his stomach, and dictated like a bishop. "Pop this in the accounts Whitlock. The armada commodore inspected the topsails, personally, every last inch of canvas, and found them sound. Verra sound. Sound as a bell, and the commodore’d stake his good name on it."

Whitlock wrote it down without so much as a flicker. Then the quill stopped, hovered, and swung slowly up toward the shivering fore-topsail like the needle of a compass finding north.

"That sail quivers too, and I’ll thank you not to suppose I had overlooked it."

He didn’t raise his voice, but it traveled forward across the ship like a cold draught under a door.

"Ezra Hollis. One shilling a glass, compounding, until she draws."

At the foremast, two hearts broke as one.

"SILAS! I’m Silas! SILAS, Mister Whitlock, Put me down as Silas, God rot it, I’m bleedin’ SILAS!"

Both of them screamed it at once, both of them letting go together, and the brace ran free through their fists as if it had been waiting all morning for permission.

The yard swung round, and the topsail filled with a crack like a pistol shot.

Whitlock added another line.

"Sail restored. Girl... not located. Inquiries to continue at the captain’s expense."

James let them to be and climbed the starboard ladder, while the shantyman swung into the next verse and the whole ship seemed to lean into it.

"I said, ’Pretty fair maid, and how are you this morning?’"

"Ranzo, Ranzo, weigh heigh!"

There, Crick kept his eyes on the white wake and spoke in whispers. "Told ’ee, a ship this quick leaves a widow stood in the road, wringin’ her hands, and a widow with no ship to ride will grudge. Best we greet her, afore she takes it into her head to come a-followin’ after."

He held the biscuit out over the stern, crumbled it into the white water, shook the salt after it, and bowed from the waist. "Pretty fair maid, and how d’ye do this mornin’, my lovely? A bite o’ bread and a taste of salt, and no ill will, eh?"

A lone gull wheeled behind them, gave one sharp cry, and flew on. Crick rapped the taffrail three times, and let the breath go out of him all at once.

"She’s heard. aye. She’s heard us right enough."

James swept a bow from the waist, one arm flung wide, hat in hand, as though a duchess had just risen out of the surf. "Ma’am! A thousand pardons for the haste, and on me honor it’s not my doin’. ’Tis the ship’s own wicked ambition, and I merely hold the deed."

Crick nodded with complete seriousness.

"Aye, she took it kindly. Kindlier’n most would."

The last lyrics came aft as James crossed toward the wheel, and behind him Crick went on nodding gravely, as though the sea had sent him a reply.

"She said none the better, for the seeing of you."

"Ranzo, Ranzo, weigh heigh!"

Bonnet’s coat was still pressed, and his face shone like a lantern. His knuckles on the spokes were white as bone, and the words came out of him on a rising breath.

"My dear friend, I must make a confession, and I’ll thank you not to laugh, though I rather expect you shall. I have spent the entire forenoon attempting to command this vessel with dignity, with poise, with, if I may be permitted the word, gravitas. And I find, James, that it simply cannot be done. The wretched creature will not let me!"

He didn’t take his eyes from the sea, because he didn’t trust what his face would do if he did.

"As a boy, James, oh, you’d have laughed, I lay curled in my father’s window seat with an atlas on my knees and Hakluyt open across it, and I vowed upon my very soul that the sea should have me one day. And now..."

His voice cracked.

"Now this lady answers beneath my hands as though she had been waiting for them all along."

He glanced toward the singing men in the waist, and his ears went pink as boiled shrimp. "And I must further report, James, that my entire crew has just roared that poor girl’s rebuff to the heavens, and my ears, sir, are positively scalded."

He laughed like a boy, then caught himself. "Dear me. Dear, dear me, I’ve not enjoyed a full night’s sleep since that stone beat in your hand, and yet, heaven forgive me, I find myself utterly, ridiculously delighted."

James grinned at the horizon, where the French coast waited beyond the edge of the sky. "Easy, my friend, this’s just the start of our adventure. We’ll be dockin’ at Tortuga yet, just off the coast o’ Saint-Domingue, with a fair wind at our backs and the Devil’s luck on our names."