Quintspinner - A Pirate's Quest

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

William followed Smith through the innards of the ship, its unfamiliarity closing in on him like a poisonous fog. The two of them reached a ladder, which rose through an apparent hatch in the roof, up to the next level of the ship. “This here’s the companionway to the main deck, so stay close,” Smith instructed William.

The daylight was nearly blinding after coming from the darkened midlevel. The fresh sea air, however, was as sweet a thing as William could ever remember inhaling. Each breath was warm and clear, filling William’s lungs with an unexpected sense of pleasure, washing the stew of below-deck stench from his nostrils and lungs.

He squinted into the sunlight, his eyes tearing up in response to the brightness of it all. Overhead, an airborne maze of riggings supported the white canvases of huge sails which boomed and snapped in response to the wind’s prodding. The riggings were alive with sailors, all scurrying up, down, and sideways, as gracefully as hungry spiders inspecting a web. Beyond the sails, the vast blueness of the sky stretched to the horizon in all directions. Days with such a clear sky were precious few back on the coastline of Britain. William stared in amazement.

With his eyes having fully adjusted to the light of day, he looked around at his strange new world. The open deck was bustling with young men.

“Them right here are doin’ drills,” Smith pointed out, “and it’s just such drills what’s supposed to make our Brits such a formidable fightin’ force.” He nodded towards the other end of the open deck. “And them there are doin’ the endless chores what keeps the Navy’s fleet afloat.”

Twenty or so crew members, some not much older than William himself, marched in unison along the back lines of the deck, handling their weapons in a perfectly choreographed routine, all moving as one body in a synchronized fashion. “Them boys there be the marines,” Smith explained. “They’ll be runnin’ their drills every day and when they be done with that, it’ll be a wee bit of trainin’ fer the rest of us. Backups, sorta. Ever used a gun?”

William shook his head.

“No matter,” Smith continued good-naturedly, “’cause they’d not be lettin’ us landers have such a thing anyways. How’s about a hanger?” he asked nodding towards a wicked looking blade gripped by one of the sailors. Again William shook his head, never taking his eyes from the marines’ precise movements. “Ya’ had any weapon use at all?”

“A skinning knife,” William replied. “I had my own knife back home.”

“Didcha’ now?” Smith grinned as though he’d unearthed a secret. “A big one, was it?”

William shrugged his shoulders. “Big enough.”

“But not a hanger. Could ya’ do more with one than pick yer ear wax?”

William thought back to his chores at home. For a few moments he imagined himself back in the shed with his father and brother. Slaughtering a pig or goat had been easy enough but a cow or a wild deer had always required much more strength in wielding the blade. And then there was the memory of the smell of the heme, and the warmth of the slippery organs and entrails. William and John had usually managed to turn a day in the slaughter shed into a contest of skills between them. Skinning the carcass as quickly as possible yet carefully enough that the hide was removed intact was William’s specialty. Such a hide could be sold to the tanners for far more than one that had any skinner lacerations through it.

John had always bested William in the carving up of the carcass, being older and stronger. However, the end of each day in the shed had seen the boys finishing up their brotherly competitions with several rounds of knife throwing. At this, they had been evenly matched. The main difference had been that John was right handed, and William had preferred to use his left.

His left hand however, bore a congenital peculiarity. His fourth and fifth fingers were webbed together from the middle knuckles to his hand, resulting in his remaining three fingers having developed the strength of a much more powerful grip.

“Me granddad had a couplin’ with a mermaid what he found washed up on the rocks along the shore, an’ she infused him an’ his future kin with her essence forevermore,” his Da’ had bragged in the pubs. The eloquence of his descriptive words and the outlandish story never failed to earn him a free drink from someone in the crowd. William’s mother had different ideas.

A left hander was the sign of the Devil, his mother had declared, and she had determinedly insisted from the time he was small, that William learn to use his right hand. He had obligingly done so with a great deal of success but had also continued to use his left in most things, his coordination in both hands therefore becoming equally honed. His keen eyesight had allowed him to hit the target pole at the end of the shed nearly every time.

“Well do ya’? Eh?” Smith broke into William’s thoughts with his question. “Do ya’ know how to defend yerself?”

“I don’t know,” William answered truthfully. “Never had to.”

Smith’s eyes narrowed into dark dangerous slits and he hissed through his lopsided grin, “That opportunity will come about ‘afore ya’ even see it comin’, I ‘spect.”