The Sandy Bluejacket

Chapter 4

"Well, I'm sittin' by the river on the levee, waiting for the steam-a come down, them cotton bales are lookin' mighty heavy, for miles and miles around—"

"Please! Stop! Why must you do this?" Dorian shouted, trying to walk faster to get away from me.

"Well, if you knew your way around, this wouldn't be an issue." I smiled and jogged a bit to catch up with them. "And besides, shantying keeps your spirits up and Willard always said that a happy crew is 110% more likely to survive the night." Dorian slowed down a bit and chuckled.

"Yeah, ok." They snorted. "Who did that math?" They rolled their eyes and shrugged off their dark jacket.

"It's just an expression, genius." I replied with a smirk. "Like... 'it's either runned or ruined'." I added, using one of Peal's many sayings as an example.

"Runned? Really? Are you sure it's not supposed to be ran?" They asked, smirking at me as they strode forwards, stepping over some large rocks.

"I don't know, could be either." I didn't think too hard about it as I raised my hand up and shielded the sun from my eyes. Dorian rolled their eyes again and sighed.

"Has no one on that ship ever gone to school?" They seemed to be trying to mean or sarcastic by their tone of voice, but I didn't quite understand the joke.

"Whatever." I sighed taking down my hand and hopping up on a large rock to look out on the horizon.

"You're not going to see anything!" They warned from below me. I indeed didn't see anything, so I sighed and jumped back down.

"Alright. Since we don't have a map, I'm gonna try this." I made an 'X' with the heel of my boot. "The X will represent the valley. So yesterday afternoon was when I left, and I remember running north for maybe three miles..." I took three steps north from the X and making a dot. "Then Willard caught me and started driving what felt like southeast for maybe... a mile or so..." I took one step down and one step left from the first point. "Then we both ran away from her... which would be northwest and that felt like two and a half miles or so to get to the bar." I started taking a couple steps to the right when Dorian stopped me.

"We weren't running in a straight line though, not close to it either." They interjected, looking down at me.

"Wait..." I looked over my shoulder at the crude footstep map. "We weren't? I was so sure..." I murmured, trying to re-think last night.

"I couldn't tell where I was going in the dark, so I could've doubled back or made drastic turns." They added, making my job even harder.

"Well, then this was just a waste of time." I grumbled, kicking sand over the little map to erase it. "Do you have a compass or anything?" I sighed, even though the answer would be the same as the answer I got hours ago.

"Nope." How did I know? I must be a prophet. I started walking again in the direction I thought to be east since that was where the sun had rose and, in theory, where the ravine was.

"Am I allowed to shanty yet or are you just going to yell at me some more?" I rolled my eyes and kicked some sand again.

"Depends. Is it an annoying one?" They snapped back with a cocky smile while readjusting their leather belt.

"What do you mean annoying?" I glared up at them. "Those shanties have been passed, Navy sailor to Navy sailor for more than 200 years!" They turned to look at me and lifted an eyebrow like they didn't believe me. "Yeah! That's how we passed time on the ship. Well... sometimes."

"Sometimes? What else would you do if it's just a boat." They asked with a confused glare.

"Well, there were some board games, cards—sometimes we would all play poker, I was always pretty good at that—we even had a net set up so we could play badminton or volleyball. Peal could always crush anyone that ever challenged her though. She always teamed up with Admiral Milbower so they were the team to beat." I smiled, remembering the good times we had together before that fateful battle...