Hugh Cook - The Walrus and the Warwolf

'Drake,' said Arabin, seeing the Stokos steelworker down there. 'Drake, my son, what say you?'

'That I dare not advise the Warwolf, lest he take insult and kill me for his pride.'

'Aagh!' said Arabin, spitting at Drake but missing. 'Enough of your nonsense! If you've got a thought in your head, let's hear it!'

'Hear this!' said Drake. 'These buckets are bugger-all use. We'd, be better off drinking the stuff. Get some pumps, man, that's what I say.'

'We can't, they're needed elsewhere. It's no use skinning our kneecaps to cover our elbows.'

'Then,' said Drake, 'pump out just this velching muckle of a gork-sprigging hold and waterproof the god-rutting whore-mother.'

'We've done our best with the leaks,' said Arabin. 'We can do no better.'

'Then shift the pumps,' said Drake. 'Pump it out, lay down barrels, nail them down then shift the pumps back elsewhere.''Bravo!' cried Arabin.

And had pumps shifted, then used to rip the water out of the treasure hold. Men laid down a layer of barrels, stretched planks across to hold them down, and nailed the planks to the sides of the hold. That gave them one layer of air – but they had by then run out of barrels. They wrapped sails around assorted rubbish – kitchen firewood, bits of bamboo, old wineskins inflated by those with the strongest lungs, straw from the crew's bunk-mattresses – and secured these makeshift flotation bags with additional timbers.

Then shifted the pumps. . Perhaps this did no practical good. Perhaps, like Arabin's practice of using men for sails in extremis (or his anchor drill, his navigation or a thousand other technical details), it would have roused the ribaldry of a better sailor. But it did wonders for the morale of the crew. It gave them hope, united them for coherent action, renewed their vigour and sent them back to work with a will. Even a partially recovered Simp Fiche was seen to do some honest labour.

Arabin worked variations on the theme. A forward compartment was pumped dry, then tar was scavenged together, heated, and used to paint the place in an effort to keep out water. That exhausted their tar supply. Another compartment was pumped dry, the fo'c'sle broken up for timber, and an extra layer of planking nailed over the floorboards.

Arabin would have painted the ship with shit and spit if there'd been one chance in fifty thousand that such would do any good.

He talked bravely to his men, telling them how the ship would scrape round to the North Strait, make for Tameran's coast, find a quiet careenage then repair. No fool suggested their crippled ship should instead claw back down the long leagues to D'Waith – for the variable winds were all from directions south of west, and had been ever since the sea serpents attacked.

By dayfall, the Warwolf was still afloat. But Arabin knew he no longer commanded a ship but a waterlogged wreck.

'Keep your eyes skinned, boys,' said Jon Arabin, when dawn came. 'There used to be a floating island in these parts.'

'Aye, Falatavith, no doubt,' jeered Slagger Mulps. 'We've heard that fairy tale before.'

'True,' said Arabin, 'and I've seen the place, for I've sailed this way before.''What? Up to the Eternal Ice, I suppose!'

'That I did. Some forty years ago it was, when I were a lad and you were a red-raw abortion scrawling your hands over your pig-mother's twenty-seven tits. I sailed the Hauma Sea, man, with Scurvy Brew and old Trim Bugger-man. There were real pirates back then – and real sailors they were, too, not like the new generation. Why, I remember-' •

'Cut this old man's crap-talk,' said Mulps. 'You've yet too many teeth in your head to talk doddering. Tell what you saw!'

'All kinds of things,' said Arabin. 'The Hauma Sea. The shores of ice. A port called Stranagor and the river, ah, the Yolantarath. Aye, and the whores of Sho-na-sing, and five different kinds of pox. Yes, man, I remember -all that, and me own legs black with scurvy.''But the island, man, the island!'

'You don't believe in it,' said Warwolf to Walrus. 'So why ask after it?'

'Point ahead!' cried the lookout, giving the traditional pirate call to indicate something seen but not yet identified.

'But, mark me,' said Jon Arabin, 'belief or no belief, maybe that's the island now.'

Upon which the ship shook as an undersea rock raped her – Jon Arabin had known them too close to the coast for comfort, but had been unable to do anything about it – and shortly she was sinking in earnest.

So all the barrels and wood which had gone into the holds was ripped out again, and fashioned into rafts. Whale Mike made one all for himself. Nobody argued with the logic of that.

Finally, the Warwolf, with a little whimper, went murmuring under the water.'We sing song!' yelled Whale Mike. 'Happy song, eh?'

But, today, everyone was too exhausted to take up a song.

Falatavith: most northerly of the five Floating Islands of the Central Ocean's sea-legends; described variously as 'thorny wilds hunted by ores, giants, trolls and worse', a 'nest of dragons', a 'bony rock with greedy caves where ghouls and ghosts go mucking about with clubs and hatchets', and, more optimistically (by a man made rich by selling maps of the place), as 'a golden palace littered with perfumed damsels with silver skins and eyes of diamond'.

On rafts rigged with rags of sails, the survivors from the Warwolf 's wreck struggled north towards what they very much hoped was an island. With long bamboos they fended themselves off from wave-lashed teeth of rock threatening to terminate their passage prematurely. To their right, waves thrashed the battlement-cliffs of Penvash, the north-west peninsular of Argan.

As the day wore on, the 'point ahead' revealed itself as an island indeed, sunlight flashing from its metallic heights, waves foaming on the rocks beneath it.

Near dusk, they hauled their rafts onto those rocks, and stared up at the bright-polished underside of the island. Reaching down until it almost touched the rocks was a sheer semi-circular chute of metal, about as wide as a piece of Green Island kelp is long (i.e. about seven quarvits – or, to put it another way, nine Standard War Paces). It looked, to those who had any feeling for metal-work (which was Drake alone) like one half of a gigantic piece of bamboo split lengthwise then cast in steel.'That must be the way up,' said Jon Arabin.

'Must be?' said Slagger Mulps. 'You mean you don't know? I thought you said you'd been here.'

T said I'd seen the place,' said the Warwolf. 'But that was from ship-deck three leagues distant, in weather nigh rough enough to curdle a crocodile's milk. We didn't think for no landing then, being all too young to die. But look – there's an arsehole of sorts to the place.'

And Arabin pointed upwards to a bright-lit circular hole at the top of the chute. It was roughly twenty-seven strings across (i.e. large enough for a horse to fall through).

'Right, boys,' said Slagger Mulps, setting his back to the chute. 'Let's be throwing someone up there. Then we'll sling up a rope.'

Other pirates willingly threw their backs against the chute, and their fellows began to climb up them. With a high whine, thousands of razor-sharp metal blades started to push out from the steel, which had till then looked seamless. In a great big hurry the pirates collapsed away from the chute.

Drake watched in dismay. He was cold; he was wet; he was hungry. He wanted, above all else, to get out of the blade-sharp evening wind.

'Bugger!' said the Walrus, who had been slightly cut by one of the blades.

'Not yet, darling,' said Jon Arabin. 'Work before pleasure! Let's try throwing a rope up anyway.'The sharp blades were already retreating.

The island's arsehole was close – only twice man-height above them – and stone-weighted ropes went up easily. And found nothing to cling to. Loading them with grapples and fishhooks brought no improvement. They rattled on bare metal and came straight back down again.'Back to back,' said Drake, to nobody in particular.'Good thinking,' said Ish Ulpin.