"Wrong, boy," Hurwood choked. "Just—what're the words?—cocked it, here. Fire it come Yule — Christmas. Margaret stays with … I mean … her … the girl stays with me in the meantime."
"R-right," put in Friend, his protruding lower lip shiny. "W-w-we'll t-take c-c-c—" He gave up trying to speak, and merely jerked his head back toward the boat Bonnett was already sitting in. Suddenly it occurred to Shandy what Hurwood's plan might be—and as soon as he thought of it he had to know if he was right. He had no qualms about upsetting Hurwood, and Beth seemed at best minimally aware of her surroundings, so he held his hot knife up near Beth's throat, covering most of the hilt with his hand to keep Hurwood from seeing that it was the blunt side of the blade that was toward her.
The triumphant expression on Hurwood's face was instantly replaced with one of absolute horror. He fell to his knees in one of the oily pools, and then he and Friend both gobbled wordlessly at Shandy. Shandy, his fears confirmed, grinned at the gibbering pair. "Then it's settled." Walking carefully backward through the spongy bog, keeping his eyes on them and his knife near Beth's throat, he escorted her to the boat where the puzzled Davies waited.
Hurwood turned to Blackbeard and hooted imploringly.
Blackbeard had been watching this torchlit drama with narrowed eyes, and now he slowly shook his head. "Our deal is done," he said. "I won't interfere." Shandy and the nearly catatonic Beth Hurwood clambered into the boat and Davies pushed away from the mud bank. Shandy sheathed his knife.
Bonnett proved unable to do anything more complicated than row straight ahead, so it was Leo Friend whose ample fundament flexed their boat's center thwart, and whose chubby, uncallused hands gingerly took the oar handles. Hurwood was hunched on the stern thwart, facing him, his face lowered into the palm of his single hand and his shoulders rising and falling as he breathed deeply. Blackbeard poled his own boat ahead of the other two and then looked back at them, and with the torch right behind his shaggy head he reminded Shandy of a total eclipse of the sun. "I don't suppose," Blackbeard remarked, "that my boatman is going to reappear." Hurwood lifted his head and, though it took some scowling effort, he was able to reply. "No. No more than … your ghosts will. As long as we … keep the torches lit … and the herb burning, all of them … stay here."
"Then I hope I can remember the way out," said Blackbeard.
Friend blinked over his shoulder at the pirate-king in alarm. "What? But you came up the river. All you've got to do is retrace the course you took."
Davies laughed. "You did remember to leave a trail of bread crumbs, didn't you, Thatch?"
"Naw," said Blackbeard disgustedly, pulling ahead, "but if we get lost we can just ask directions at the first goddamn inn we come to."
Slowly the three boats moved forward, their orangely flickering bow-torches the only points of light in the humid blackness. The white fungus heads along the banks were silent now, except for an intermittent exhalation that flapped their lips. Shandy wondered if they were snoring. After a few minutes the channel they were following broadened out, and normal rowing became possible, and Shandy, crouched once more on the bow, sat down more comfortably, for he no longer had to be ready to lean out and push off encroaching banks and roots.
Then all at once he was aware of murderous anger, and at first he thought it was his own; he glared back at the boat behind his, but Hurwood just looked exhausted and unhappy, and Friend was whimpering softly with each torturing pull on the oars, and he realized that the rage he was aware of was a different sort from his own. His own was usually sudden and hotly choking and strongly flavored with terror, but this was soured and habitual and mean, and it emanated from a mind far too self-centered ever to entertain terror.
Blackbeard had snatched up his torch and was on his feet. "It's our friend the Este Fasta again," he called quietly. "Come back to roar at us again, and wave more bushes in our faces." The jungle presence seemed to hear him, for Shandy now detected a note of bitter humor in the psychic miasma of rage. He felt the thing think, bushes.
Shandy could feel it bending down attentively over the boats—the air was oppressive, and his lungs had to strain to draw breath.
Numbly he fumbled a handful of the herb out of the pouch and tossed it onto the torch flame, and a stinking gout of smoke boiled upward through the thickened air to impact against the vines and moss overhead.
He could feel the thing's sudden agony, but this time there was no scream and retreat. The jungle spirit was sustaining damage but was not going to back off.
The air and water—the whole jungle—began to change. "Keep … moving!" came a choked cry from Hurwood. "Get … out from under!"
"Oh, good luck," rasped Davies bitterly, nevertheless hauling desperately on the oars. The water was shaking like a jelly now, and the air was steamy and full of wet bits of vegetation that were evidently being shaken out of the trees. The structure of the boat seemed to be changing under Shandy, becoming more flexible, and when he glanced down at the floorboards he saw that they were untrimmed branches, sprouting gleaming green leaves. They were moving, growing as he watched — he could feel them heaving under his boots. There was a clump of wet waterweed on his bared forearm; when he tried to brush it off it clung by one end, and, when he grabbed the free end and pulled, he saw that he was simply pulling more of it out of a hole in his arm, and he could feel the internal tug of it all the way up to his shoulder. He let go instantly, and then saw the tiny green shoots that were poking out painfully from under his fingernails. He looked back at Davies; the back of the pirate's head was a mass of flowers, and his hat was being pushed askew by new ones opening up as Shandy watched. In Davies' shadow he could see Beth heaving in the grip of the vegetative metamorphosis, but he shuddered and looked beyond her, toward the third boat.
"Throw him … someone," howled Hurwood as green stalks began unrolling up out of his throat.
"Bonnett," croaked Friend. His fat hands were now just elbow-lumps in the tree trunks that extended from his shoulders, through the oarlocks, and out sideways into the water. "Give the thing Bonnett." Blackbeard raised a face that was a huge, unfolding orchid. The stalks of the stamen spasmed and a voice whistled, "Yes. Bonnett."
Davies' bouquet-head nodded.
Shandy felt cold water flowing between his toes and realized that his feet had become roots and had penetrated the boat's hull. He found, though, that he couldn't bring himself to nod. "No," he whispered through a throatful of twisting reeds. "Can't. Did I … throw you … to the Navy?" Davies' shoulders slumped. "Damn you," he fluted, "Jack." Shandy glanced again at the third boat. Leo Friend was a fat wet trunk with branches like spider legs projecting in all directions. A thing like a fungus-overgrown cypress stump seemed to be Stede Bonnett, and Hurwood, no longer able to speak, was now just a thick cluster of ferns that heaved furiously about as if in a high wind.
Davies labored on at the oars, but their boat was coming apart faster than the other two, and had already sunk almost to the gunwales. Shandy thought there was probably still time for Davies to stop rowing, let Hurwood's boat drift up alongside, uproot Bonnett and pitch him into the water. With such a tribute the thing might let the rest of them go … but Shandy had apparently talked Davies out of that course.
Then Davies hitched himself up, and let go of the oars.