After my soup has digested, I rise up out of my wicker chair, just so I can slide down the slimy pole that leads to the hold and the makeshift prison. I orient my eyes to the dark, lamp in my hand, swollen stump on fire. I look at the pale ring of skin where my wedding ring used to be. I traded the jeweled symbol of my long-broken vows, along with the last of our victuals to bribe an Altherian guard to sneak out this old man from his subterranean cell, just so he can heave around in the bottom of our boat and fill the bilge water with his bile. I'm not sure I've done either one of us any good.
He is knee-deep in the filthy water his bony backside on an empty cask, one leg draped over the other, his hand under his grey matted beard. The long beard brushes along the surface of the foul liquid. We didn't bother to chain him, there is nothing of value down here and he is too weak to pull himself up the wooden slats to get to the orlop. I hold the lantern up high over my head, but his pale face doesn't seem to acknowledge the light; he continues to hold his pose, a man in deep thought.
I clear my throat. "What are you ruminating on old man?"
He looks up startled. "Who goes there? Come to put me to the pain? As if I haven't seen the licks a blade can give. All days and nights of my time I've known the binding of chains. Tortured by one lot of filthy beggars so as to give over secrets about some others. It's become a profession, nothing my mother would have thought of, but I know my task, sitting in the dark, waiting for my jailer to come up with some new way to twist, to cut. I've come up with many twists and cuts but I don't dare tell him. It wouldn't be proper to tell a man how to do his task. I was just now chewing away with my mind eating up the first time a man hacked through one of my fingerinos: wack, wack, wack, scream, wack, wack, scream, wack. Got to the knuckle, before I gleaned on what he wanted to hear."
"You've got a gift for gab old man. You like to hear the sound of your own voice, I suspect. I imagine you've got quite an imagination too, but that doesn't change the fact that you are the only man to come back from Island 33. I need to know what you saw, and I don't care to have my ears tickled."
The man twisted his beard around the only finger on his left hand. "I'll spill out what you need. Only I'm getting sleepy from being stabbed, chopped, and knocked. Before I croak, I want to be the one free to wack with the pretty knife."
I look at the nine fingers that I have left. I think of the fifteen men and women in my crew. I try to weigh the merits of losing one or the other. I knock the end of my alabaster cane on the hold wall three times. "Raferty, did you hear what this man had to say?"
"Yes, captain."
"All right detain Mick bring him down here, confiscate one of his butcher knives while you're at it."
"What should I tell him he is being charged with?"
"Tell him the truth. Tell him about the rat hair I found in the soup."
Thwack. The square blade misses Mick's finger and sinks into the back of his hand severing it in two. Mick cries out but the three Serean brothers hold him still. These brothers have been with me for six years and are ever loyal, have hearts of coal, and have been eating Micks slop for most of that time, so for them, this is justice long overdue.
Mick's swearing, his threats of revenge, his throaty wails, they do not move any of us in the least. We are professionals and we know what we are doing. "Take him up to the sickbay, cauterize that wound. He can continue to cook, but from now on soup is off the menu."
Raferty lifts the lamp and takes the stump. There really isn't enough light to see by. I can't blame the prisoner for missing the finger and taking off the hand. Of course, things could be different for the prisoner; he is used to the dark, maybe he fouled up the cut because he was blinded by the faint light. Mick is dragged past, crying like a man who has just had half his hand cut off. They drag Mick into the upper decks, and it's just me and the prisoner and the shadows from the weak lamp. "Well, how did that feel? Was it all that you had hoped?"
"Feels dry, feels alive, feels like I'd like to smell a pretty lady's hair."
"A pity that you didn't think to ask to enjoy that privilege before this other."
"You have a woman on board this ship?"
"Six of them."
"Would one of them let me smell their hair? Let me be their husband?"
"You'd have to go through a lot of trouble first, have to woo them, have to charm them, but it probably wouldn't work out well in the end. Four of them are Yeriveans, women of surpassing beauty but they've pledged their chastity to the goddess of death, and there are hundreds of men that they have dispatched to meet her. Two of them are young women but have seen hard battle, one is missing an arm and one of her eyes, the other is partial to women and besides, she is related to Mick—one of the few people who enjoys his slop."
"I wish I'd made a better bargain, still I am true. I will spill. There were thirteen that landed on that beach. Thirty more stayed on the ship, Heart o' Gold, captained by brave Captain Harry Thera something. That is no worry. The only worry is the three trials, then you can free the treasure that the monster keeps. First are men who are like wolves, stalk the jungle, can be killed with blades of silver. Second test is a path surrounded by sirens, no man with his loins can pass. Final trial is lizard as large as three masts end on end and as wide as this ship is long from stern to bow. They brought me to sacrifice to the big lizard."
"So, what happened?"
"As soon as we landed the ground opened up, dead hands reached and held fast to the living. Most were dragged down to choke to death on sand. Me and the captain survived. He dragged me back into the boat, undid my ropes, so I could row; I cracked his head with the oar, pushed him into the sea."
"I thought there were only three trials? The dead on the beach that sounds like four."
The old man shrugged. "Well, if you want to be technical about it." A thin smile twisted up one side of his face. He reached down to run his finger along the deep groove in the barrel where he sunk the butcher's blade. His smile wavered. "How come there was no blood?"
"Excuse me?"
"When I took off the cook's hand, how come there was no blood?"
"Well, that wasn't the first time he's had that hand off."
"It was made of wood?"
"Whalebone, if you want to be technical about it."
