"Four-ace lucky!" shouted one of the middle-aged men watching. "Do it again, outlander!"
Donfil More did it again, five times from five casts.
Nine times out of nine throws.
The cheer nearly raised the steep-sloping roofs of the houses of Claggartville, the noise sending a flock of feeding gulls screeching from the calm waters of the harbor.
The watchers broke ranks and pressed in on the strangers, but Ryan and the rest were almost forgotten. It was only as friends of the Mescalero that they were slapped on the back, their hands pumped, grins shining in their direction.
"I'll give thee a twentieth part of a voyage if thou wilt ship with me as harpooneer!"
"An eighteenth!" a second captain yelled, jumping up and down in his anxiety to secure the services of this amazing giant who could thread the iron through the eye of a needle.
"No. No, thank you all. But I am here with my friends."
"Thou needest work. All of ye," warned a chubby man with a stovepipe hat, tarnished green with age. "I'll find labor for all seven of ye. E'en the snow-head mutie and the wenches, if thou signest on for a year's hunting the right whale."
"Aye, Boaz, but what lay dost thou offer the heathen ironman?"
"Enough, I'll warrant."
The sailor who'd pressed the question bellowed with laughter. "Best lay thou hast ever offered a harpooneer was one-seventieth." He paused to make his point stronger. "And that was for thy wife's sister's oldest son, was it not, Boaz?"
The plump captain was not in the least set back by the gibing. "Aye, that be so, neighbor. And the worst hand with an iron I ever did see. When he fell from the top foreyard ten days from harbor, it was for the best."
The crowd joined in the general merriment.
But beyond them all, at the farthest end of the crowded quay, Ryan could see the quarterdeck of the Salvation. And the dark-clothed figure of its sinister skipper was leaning on a rail, smoking a white clay pipe. When her glance met Ryan's the woman straightened and spit in the water, turned away and vanished down the nearest companionway.
It cast a chill over the cheeriness of the moment for Ryan, though he said nothing to any of his friends.
Back at the Rising Flukes, while they waited for Rodriguez to call them down to their supper, everyone congratulated Donfil on his uncanny skill with the unwieldy harpoon.
"I swear it was the most stunning example of skill I ever did see!" Doc exclaimed, trying to flatten his straggling gray locks over the planes of his skull with the palm of his hand.
"Bastard double-chiller," Jak said, sitting cross-legged on a bed, honing one of his knives on the sole of his boot.
"How'd you get that good, Donfil?" Krysty asked, leaning against the wall by the window, one arm across Ryan's shoulders.
"Hunting. The war spear is not as long as the whaling iron, but it requires much the same skill. I have always had a good eye."
"Ten out of ten," J.B. said quietly. "Most men couldn't do that with a handblaster."
"Wins the gentleman a ten-cent stogie or a Kewpie doll of his choice," Doc barked, banging on the floor of their room with his swordstick.
"What's a Kewpie doll, Doc?" Lori asked.
"I fear I... I don't recall, my dear child."
They were interrupted by the landlord of the Rising Flukes calling them down to eat.
Unless something went dreadfully wrong with their plans, it would be their last meal in Claggartville.
Chapter Sixteen
The clam chowder was superb, rich and thick, steaming in the handmade pottery bowls. Rodriguez brought in a great pot of it, glowing from the fire, ladling it out in giant portions. A serving girl brought over a loaf of new-baked bread and a crock of salted butter.
The tavern was oddly empty, with the exception of a dozen hard-faced men who'd commandeered the two tables on either side of the main door into the Rising Flukes. They spoke little, concentrating on their tankards of ale. Ryan hadn't noticed them before and tugged Rodriguez by the sleeve.
"Outlanders?" he asked.
"Who, master?"
"Near the door."
The landlord glanced around, rather too casually, thought Ryan. "Oh, the lads. Just a few honest whaling men."
"From which vessel?"
"Which vessel?" Rodriguez repeated, trying to paste a smile more firmly in place on his pale face. And failing.
"Would it help your hearing if I cut off your damned ears?" J.B. asked in a penetrating whisper.
"No, no, masters. I'm not certain sure which sailer they hale from."
"But?" Krysty prompted, wiping a dribble of chowder from her chin with a linen napkin.
"I think it may be the..." His voice dropped so much that all they could hear was an indeterminate mumbling.
"I believe that our jovial host mentioned a name not unlike that of the Salvation," Doc said, tipping up his bowl to drain the last of the chowder.
"Is it that?" Donfil hissed. "They are all from the Salvation!"
Rodriguez nodded. "They be."
Ryan glanced around again, finding that every single man jack of them was looking at him. He raised his mug of beer to them with a half bow. "They look no worse or better than any other men around the ville."
Rodriguez couldn't wait to explain things to them, his tongue tripping over the words.
"Don't think that 'cause of Pyra Quadde bein' the sort of a... she's got the best record any skipper from Nantucket and beyond ever got. She can catch the scent of a whale across a hundred leagues of sweating ocean, and that's... Some men sails with her year in an' out. Taking all the goods like the jack she brings to... and the bad an' all an' there's plenty of that and some don't come back."
"There's a spar breaker of a hurricane from thy flapping gob, Rodriguez," said one of the men near the door.
"Aye, masters, aye. Don't rock the boat is what Jededian Hernando Rodriguez always says and always does."
"You say some don't come back?" Doc asked. "Why would that be, my jovial host? Some accident of the seas?"
"Rodriguez," warned the man by the door.
"I cannot say, lords, masters..." the man muttered. Despite his pretty clothes, he suddenly looked old, tired and drab, like a guttered whore. "There's many returns and a few as doesn't. But that's the way with many a vessel out of Claggartville when the large seas rise and the creatures rage from the sweltering deeps."
He saw that the bowls of chowder were finished, and he made haste to clear the table himself, not bothering to call on any of his serving girls. He bustled out, reappearing almost immediately with the main course of the supper.
He was still nervous and avoided eye contact with Ryan or any of the others as he laid out clean plates, hand-decorated with blue patterns of shark fins and whales' tails. "Finest in the house. From before the long winters came. Only for special guests. Food's coming. More ale?"
Taking their lead from Ryan's shake of the head, everyone refused more of the cool beer.
The chicken had been cooked in a way that Ryan had never seen before, in tender portions covered in bread crumbs, with baked potatoes and turnips. But when Ryan poked his knife into the side of the chicken piece, hot butter, laced with herbs, came spurting scaldingly out.
"Fireblast!"
Rodriguez couldn't conceal his amusement as Ryan wiped molten grease off his hands and jerkin.
"You think that's rad-fire funny?" Ryan asked, readying himself to stand and reach for the landlord's throat.
"It's just that the dish is so well named, as thou has found out. It is a very old recipe, masters, very old."