J.B. was constantly on the move, restless at his inability to do anything, staring out toward the quay and the harbor beyond. "Must have sailed with him by first light. Offshore wind and they're probably close on a hundred miles to sea by now."
"Think he's still alive?" Jak asked, lying on his bed with his arm thrown across his eyes.
"Ryan? Probably. Bitch'll use Donfil. Ten from ten with the spear. She'll know about that. Ryan? She wanted him dead, then that's what he'd be by now."
"We got a chance?" Lori asked.
"While we live, we have hope, my dearest child," Doc told her.
Krysty couldn't speak. She felt too close to choking on hopeless tears.
Chapter Nineteen
The Salvationwas a typical whaling ship. If a skipper from Victorian times had been time-trawled along with Doc Tanner and dumped aboard her, he'd have felt completely at home.
She was one hundred and twenty feet long and just under thirty feet wide. The crew comprised thirty-two officers and men. Pyra Quadde had her cabin in the stern, beneath the afterhouse that held the ship's wheel. The two mates had their own tiny cabins under the midship shelter. Everyone else messed together in the forecastle, in the rounded bow of the vessel.
The Salvationshipped three masts. From the bow they were the fore, main and mizzen. She carried four whaleboats, each thirty feet long, slung on davits, two to a side. A few paces forward of the mainmast was the tryworks, the ovens that would render the flesh of the whales, providing the clear, valuable oil that would be stored in the hundreds of barrels that rested in the depths of the hold.
The only large space in the whole of the whaler was the blubber room. It ran more than two-thirds the length of the ship and was where the busiest and bloodiest work of the long cruise would take place. The carcasses of the slaughtered creatures would be hauled alongside and tied there. Men would scramble down onto them, using long-handled knives to strip away great chunks of blubber. This was heaved aboard and cut up in the open space to be boiled down in the brick-and-iron oven.
One of the sailors pointed out to Ryan during that first afternoon that the Salvationwas bark-rigged. This meant that the stern mast, the mizzen, carried a fore-and-aft sail rather than being fully rigged like a normal sailing schooner, enabling the actual running of the vessel to be worked by fewer men. That left as many sailors as possible to man the fragile whale-boats once the prey was sighted.
To the surprise of both Ryan and Donfil, the crew seemed to accept them on board without any obvious hostility. It became clear that Clegg hadn't been the most popular of mates, too ready with his fists. Most of the men were happy to show them around, telling them what their duties would be in such and such a situation. But any attempts to press them about their captain met only sideways glances and a tightening of the lips.
After their confrontation with Pyra Quadde, Ryan and Donfil were kitted out with seaboots and marshaled along to meet the first mate of the ship, Cyrus Ogg.
Ryan had once witnessed the impaling of a child-killer in a frontier pesthole, near the old Idaho panhandle. He had been the mildest, gentlest-looking man you could see in many a country mile: rimless glasses behind which merry eyes twinkled; a halo of silver hair, brushed back off a high academic's forehead; neat little hands and feet hands that had rammed a full beer bottle down the throat of a pretty little girl of twelve summers. Feet that had kicked her upper body so hard the bottle had smashed within her. His even white teeth had bitten at the dying child and... Ryan preferred not to recall the rest of the revolting details.
But at a first meeting there was much about Cyrus Ogg that put him in mind of the Idaho butcher. He had the same fluffy white hair and round, benevolent face, the hint of a smile at the corner of the full, cherubic lips. No more than five and a half feet tall, Ogg looked as though he might just tip the scales at 120 pounds, sopping wet. He wore black pants and jacket, like a deacon out to bless a summer barn raising.
He had greeted the two new recruits to his whale-boat's crew with a nod of the head. "I have heard of both of ye," he said quietly. "Master Ten-from-Ten, the Indian, and Master Deadman, the one-eyed outlander."
"Deadman?" Ryan asked.
"Some come to the Salvationliving and slip into the waters to feed the fishes with not even a prayer to their names. Some come as men already dead and live to walk down the gangplank into Claggaftville town with jack in their pockets and a song in their hearts. Who knows which thou shalt be, Master Deadman. But it is no secret how Captain Quadde thinks of thee." He shook his head. "With a sorry lack of affection, I do fear."
"She'll chill me." Ryan was careful not to even hint at it being a question.
Ogg pondered a few moments, tugging at the lobe of his left ear. "She will, I think. Pyra Quadde is a mystery shrouded in a puzzle, Master Deadman. The finest skipper to sail these waters. Generous in the 'warding of lays to ironsmen and crew alike. Yet there is a shadow that sits 'cross her soul and cannot be denied. Step always to windward of her and jump when she speaks. And who knows what might await thee at journey's end."
It was to be some days before Ryan and Donfil had the opportunity to witness the skillful aspect of the woman's character. But they were treated to a glimpse of her dark side before that first day had run its course through to evening.
Ryan and Donfil had been sent to the workbench, just aft the tryworks, running the strong line between them that would set in the main-line and spare-line tubs in each of the dories.
They talked quietly as they worked, but not of escape or revenge. That was pointless. Unless they could rouse the crew to mutiny there was no chance at all of escape. And such things only happened in the old vids and stories.
The Apache spoke to Ryan of hunting trips as a young man, across the crimson and ocher wilderness of the Southwest, chasing a mutie cougar that had carried off a dozen young children from their rancheria. He told of how a bullet from his buffalo rifle had put the beast down as it darted for cover in a narrow arroyo.
"More than half of a mile," Donfil said, his hand describing the classic rainbow arch of the long .50-caliber bullet.
"Good shot."
"What is your best shot, brother?"
"Like asking me what's the best breath I ever drew. Can't recall. Been too many."
"Those that saved your life, or the life of a friend?"
Ryan straightened a kink in the coil of rope. "Still too many, Donfil."
They worked on in silence for several minutes, only looking up as the first mate walked slowly past, hands clasped in the small of his back.
"Man as quiet as that is either a saint or a demon," Donfil whispered.
"I see him as a dangerous son of a bastard that we gotta watch real careful, Donfil. That's what I see."
Ryan and Donfil were ordered aloft with the rest of the deckhands to shorten sail and reef back as the wind began to blow with a serious intent. Chem clouds, rolling banks of deep purple, lowered over the eastern horizon directly ahead of them. They could see the frail silver of lightning and hear the sonorous drumbeat of thunder, flat and menacing so far out to sea. The rigging was cold, and Ryan found his hands clumsy on the sodden cordage. He and Donfil had begun to climb toward the mainmast when Ogg beckoned them back onto the streaming deck.
"Captain Quadde would not deal kindly with me if I let ye drown on the first day of our voyage. Wear those boots aloft and ye are both dead. Naked toes, my lads. Naked toes."
It was wise advice. Ryan was able to hang on to the loops of ninny-shrouds with his feet, battling the flapping canvas, risking, at the least, broken nails as he fought to give the wind less sail to bite upon. Rain beat on his face, soaking his hair and clothes. A few of the men wore waterproofed coats, but they caught the gale and made the reefing even more dangerous. One man slipped and would have fallen if Ryan hadn't reached across and grabbed him by the wrist, steadying him until his scrabbling feet found a safe purchase once more.