D Cornish - Factotum

"Lo and lively, pipsqueak!" one salty jack returning from breakfast below barked to Rossamund as he hustled past, his bowlegged steps strangely soft and muffled by dainty black deck-slippers. "Ye better pull yer legs inboard! We'd rather ye not go baiting the hags by offering easy morsels!"

Remarkably, even as the man spoke, some waxen-skinned thing with an arching, steggled back breached gracefully beneath Rossamund's feet and slipped along beside the rostrum of the Widgeon's ram, pushed along by the vessel's rapid progress. With a start Rossamund pulled his absently dangling legs aboard. A grindewhal! He recognized the creature from a plate in his peregrinat, lost in the destruction of Wormstool. The slimy water-beast let out a soft puff from some unseen orifice and disappeared with a wet slap into the opaque waters.

Suddenly, far to the left, a brilliant orange glare shot into the sky. The pulsating light was speeding in a steep arc; a thin and high keening shrilled above the clash of water and hull, wailing up then down the scale. It was a sibaline flare. Another whistling light quickly joined it, fired from the deck of a distant vessel-long yet oddly blocky-struggling out in the roads, burges flying their urgent message on its single mast.

"A distressed bastler!" cried Fransitart, pointing to the low lumbering vessel with its blunt prow. "They're towing some heavy catch: look how the unhandy butterbox lies in the water. Must've enticed a prowling ambusher by accident. It is a brave beastie to come in this close."

"A thalasmache!" came the general cry.

Rossamund's innards gripped. A thalasmache! A battle of nadderer and ram! Gripping a stay and leaning forward to see, he was able to make out a great churning in the swell not far abaft the harried craft. With a great whoosh and spray of milky waters a black thing leaped, throwing itself at the vessel. At such a distant vantage the nature of the nadderer was still clear: blunt calipaced head, great disc-eyes and snapping, armored jaws. Somewhere between delight and horror, Rossamund blinked in astonishment: here was a kraulschwimmen, one of the terrors of the deeps.

"Stays of bone!" came the exclamations of the crew. "What a beauty."

"A right ugly article!"

"Enough to stretch yer eyes!"

Well away to their right, a dark drag-mauler was racing from the north, coming between two arx maria, all bunting flying, signaling that it knew of the bastler's distress, its powerful over-large ram throwing up a broad bow wave as it rushed on. But even with its great speed it was too far away to be of any immediate help to the stricken vessel.

Seeing that he was in a better position to offer more immediate aid, the master of the Widgeon bellowed in fine navy fashion, "All hands to quarters!" adding to his first mate, "Run up the red Jack, Mister Sage; let them know we're coming!" declaring most emphatically with this order of his intention to intervene. He deferred with a nod of a bow to Europe. "If that be all right with ye, great lady?"

"Carry on, Master Right," the heiress of Naimes returned, nodding politely, a slight and amused arch to her spoored brow.

There was no beating of drums to call the crew to action-the Widgeon was no longer a navy-run vessel-and shouts were enough to get the crew's obedience.

"Ladeboard watch, ahead all limbers to the screw!" came the master's cries, echoed by his first mate to the deck and his third down an ox-horn speaking cornet to the decks below. "Gather as she goes! Strike the nasty hag full abeam!"

With a shiver right through its frame and the planks of its teak deck, the great silent muscles of the gastrines in the organ deck below turned harder. The Widgeon gathered speed, and its sharp bow came about several points to steerboard to make directly for the bastler and its monstrous harasser. Once a properly commissioned frigate in naval service, the vessel put on a fair pace, and Rossamund was astonished at the great lathers of vinegar that began to spume from the proud and deadly ram.

"Steerboard watch to quarters!" rang the commands. "Spring the lambasts! Run out the guns!"

"Come on, Rosey me lad," Fransitart called, catching himself expertly as the vessel smashed over a rolling wave. "We'll be better service on the gun deck."

Below in the low width of the gun deck-painted a pleasant duck-egg blue rather than an efficient, gore-hiding red-Rossamund and his old foundlingery master offered their service. Undergunned to better serve her more mundane role, the Widgeon had barely a dozen long twelve-pounders on either broadside. Even then, at only seventy-odd crew, she did not have enough hands to work her gastrines and man her armaments too, and every soul available and willing was called from among the dozen passengers sharing the ride to serve a gun.

As boys ran between them bearing prefashioned cartidges carried in pails from the powder room to their assigned gun crews, the flustered second mate directed Rossamund to join these scurrying lads.

"I'd rather 'e fought with me, if ye don't mind, matey," Fransitart offered with the knowing look of a fellow seafarer.

At first the mate seemed fit to argue, but knowing Fransitart to have once been a gunner-the seniormost gunnery officer aboard proper naval rams-he agreed and promptly gave the ex-dormitory master charge over number three gun, Leaping Ladie scrawled by some eager crew member on its truck.

Fransitart easily took on the role as gun captain, organizing the brave yet clearly ignorant passengers whom need had pressed into service with an eagerness Rossamund had never seen in him before. "Cast loose yer gun!" the old salt cried, the command echoed by other gun captains up and down the deck. "Take out yer tampion-aye, the plug at the front. Now, grasp them handspikes, gents-aye, them long posts there-and lift the breech-aye, the barrel; we need to get it depressed so's to have good shot at the slug…"

Joined by two rather refined-looking gentleman passengers, cheeks flushed with excitement, and three crew members, Rossamund did all that was asked, careful not to put too much weight into his actions and therefore reveal himself as an aberration.

"Shot and wad 'er!"

A cloth cartridge of powder, a heavy iron shot and finally a wad of junk-old cut-up rope-were rammed home.

"Run 'em out! Heave on the rope there, ye happy gents, heave!"

In all it was clumsy work, yet there were enough seasoned seamen among them to get the task done.

"Steady, now," Fransitart warned when Leaping Ladie was loaded, run out and fixed with a couple of turns of the breeching rope about the cascable of the twelve-pounder, "an' wait fer the word to fire."

"Look at 'er!" someone farther down the vessel cried in fright. "The whole sea is alive with the terrors!"

Bending to peer through the open port, Rossamund caught tossing glimpses of the beleaguered fishing vessel coming closer and closer. Smaller creatures were assailing it, leaping from the water, trying to snatch fishermen down into the caustic brey.

"It's pro'bly blighted wee lagimopes," one of Rossamund's own gun crew muttered. "They like ta follow and feed at any sheddin' o' blood."

"Steady…," Fransitart growled with grim authority, immediately calming not only his gun crew but those on either side.

Another muffled command from above decks and the Widgeon shuddered again, a deep noiseless quake, gaining yet greater speed like a colt let free from its winter stall at last, sending spray even past the midship gun ports.

"Brace yeself tight, gents!" barked Fransitart, planting his feet wide and grasping an overhead deck beam. "We're goin' to strike hard!"

There was a yawning moment of horrid, expectant silence, then the crash! of a great shock that rang like thunder in the closeness of the deck, flinging Rossamund forward then quickly back again, sending his senses spinning. Several men fell, yet the young factotum kept his feet. Something massive and glistening black heaved and thrashed in the milky waters directly ahead, and Rossamund was shocked to feel the recoiling shudder of living flesh scraping under the blade of the ram, quaking along the entire length of the Widgeon. Rossamund could see, running out abeam from the vessel, a great coil of scaled back heaving out of the water. By the power of ancient muscles of incomprehensible pith, the front of the vessel was lifted, toppling many crew.