Once a Bosun

The Dutchman sagged in the water as she drove toward what was left of the pier.

"Mister Jones, Mister Chattroy, stand by to drop the sea anchor on my command," said Captain Turner, who had the ship approaching the rotting pilings much faster than either he or Maccus liked.

There had been a pier, many many decades ago, built from the strange fronded trees that shaded the rocky shore before them. Beyond the pier was a stone wall twenty feet high, with stairs that sloped toward the water, an open archway, and guard towers here and there from which small fires smoked. A man in a chainmail doublet and dented iron helmet waved madly at them from the nearest tower, and from the crow's nest, Jimmylegs waved nervously back at him. The guard jumped up and down, and disappeared back under his roof. "Old nutter," Jimmylegs muttered.

Every pier was different—the shores all varied in their texture and topography, and in the mixture of Earthly and alien plants that greened the soil, and the piers were sometimes half-intact, sometimes completely missing, sometimes in the form of a sturdy stone jetty—but always, there was a stone wall carrying a footpath along its crest, dotted with towers and batty human-looking guards. This guard was called Holler-Hidey, who would wave and shout until he caught someone's attention, then dart out of view like a whipped dog.

"Drop!" said the Captain, and Tom Larekey and eight-fingered Peter Jones heaved a bundle of rope and canvas out over the stern railing to open in the water like a bucket as it dragged along. Its cable drew taut and the ship flinched backward. The ruined pilings stabbed up from the surf, and the men at the side threw loops of hawser around them as they passed. The ship bucked as the first hawser jerked it back, drawing an angry squawk from the timbers and tilting the piling in the seabed.

The hatch to the main hold was already open, a cluster of the burliest sailors ringed a platform on a hoist, and a spar had been slung into position as a crane. Below, they were laying the pale, limp bodies of the dead men on the platform's surface, packing them like lumber, heaving arms and legs safely into place before calling "haul away" to the men on deck with the pulley line, and finally dragging a second platform into place for the next lift.

The souls were quieter, near the land with the smells of plants—strange plants, but plants—and of rocks and surf and seaweed. They murmured more soberly. If they shrieked or gibbered, the despair was missing. Some of them would ask, quite sensibly, what port they had made, whether it was Heaven or Hell or someplace else. The sailors would lower a platform to float where a landing party tread water, waiting to swim it to the stairs and heave the souls to land; and then the wonderful thing, the one truly good, warming thing about serving on a strange sea in a ship with the same men for decades and no hope to make port at home or abroad ever again, would happen: the dead would come alive again.

When they touched land, they would blink, or twitch their lips and fingers, or shiver. Then they would gasp. In a minute they would sit up, laugh or cry or bellow things like "Huzzah!" or "Sweet Bonny, I'm comin' home!" and then they would stand and lend strong, roughened hands to hauling up the other corpses, and soon the stairway would be crowded with rejoicing men, who before had lain pale and mad and gibbering in the hold.

The crew was busy unloading for the rest of the evening. Captain Turner, instead of putting a hand in—swimming with the platform on the water or steadying it as it swung across the deck, as was his habit—never moved from the stern. He stared absently into the forest as the dead men staggered to their feet and laughed in the lush, vigorous air; he left the crew to run their own business as he scraped the wood of the railing with one thumbnail. A small gray not-bird whirred past his head, and he hunched into himself. The light danced on the frondy leaves beyond the shoreline, etching swimming tangles into the backs of his eyes, the wind teased his hair, and he stood like a moldy rock.
With most of the crew busy in one task or another, Jimmylegs had seized the opportunity of the anchorage to scurry down from the crow's nest, belowdecks, and into the galley. The smell of fresh fish caught at him: one of the funny ones they often found in the Undersea, probably scooped up with the dead in the net. It was a fore-arm's length, heavy-headed, hanging by its jaw from a small hook in the ceiling in case anyone wanted it. Jimmylegs, after a solid week with nothing to do but stare at the ship and the horizon, and nothing to eat for the past month, wanted that fish badly. He grabbed it by the tail, drew his belt knife, and sliced off a long fillet.

Someone clattered past the galley, and Jimmylegs pressed himself to the wall. Deciding that it would be bad for his health to be found skulking about belowdecks, he chewed on the fillet, scraping the sweet meat off the scales with his teeth, and clumped toward the stairs. A board creaked, and he spun, fish in his mouth like a dog, to see Greenbeard and Ogilvey Fergus step out of the shadows. He backed up the stairs, but Greenbeard, now tall and straight-backed, with stern lined Danish features, grabbed his elbow in a stony paw. Jimmylegs managed a nervous smile.

"What'you got that little sticker out for?" Ogilvey fairly purred, eyeing Jimmy's belt knife. "T'ain't no way wise t'carry it about like that, not sneaking about below, ts'not." He shot cold, glittering cat's eyes at Greenbeard, who shared the look. "Man might think sommat afoot, he might."

Ogilvey caught Jimmy's other elbow and pried the knife from his hand. The fillet dropped to the floor.

Greenbeard bared his teeth. "Ogie. See that, Bosun made a mess to clean up. How then," he said, looming over Jimmy's pale face. "Shall we bend our backs and clean that up, Bosun? You want to see us turn our backs on you? Finally come down from your little perch to have some fun, did you, little Bosun?"

Ogilvey hissed, and helped Greenbeard swing Jimmy around to slam his face against the hull. Jimmylegs' knees buckled, and he whimpered.

"Naughty pup," Ogilvey murmured. "I've a mind to call Quittance on ye, ye little sneak, 'cept he's got such a humanly hand on th'whip."

"Eye for an eye," growled Greenbeard. "You know the Bible, don't you, little Bosun? Time to right some wrongs, methinks. Ogie, fetch a plank. And a rope."

Ogilvey grinned with hate in his eyes, and let Greenbeard grab Jimmy's other wrist before he tromped off into the dark. Jimmylegs flinched at Greenbeard's breath over his head, and with a buck like a frightened calf, threw himself upright, catching Greenbeard's chin with his skull and stomping on the arch of his foot. The other man grunted in pain, and Jimmy elbowed him in the ribs and spun away, leaping up the steep stairs to burst back onto the deck. Greenbeard was behind him in an instant, and Jimmylegs barely made it to the rail before he caught him, twisting one fist in his hair and bending an elbow behind his back.

"Cap'n!" squawked Jimmy, hoarse. "Cap'n!"

Captain Turner looked down at him with hooded eyes, then looked down at his own hands, as though caught in some internal muddle.

"Cap'n, help!" Jimmylegs panted, as Greenbeard cranked on his arm.

Captain Turner blinked and observed the scene. He seemed lank, defeated, as the crew had never seen him before. "Sort it out yourselves," he said, and returned to staring at the trees.

Jimmylegs stomped, kicked, scratched Greenbeard across the face, and flew to the ratlines, skimming up like a frightened squirrel to curl once again into the crow's nest, out of sight. Greenbeard wiped blood off his cheek as Ogilvey caught up to him, holding a club and a length of worn-out lashing. "We'll get him when he crawls down," he muttered.

"If he crawls down," said Ogilvey, swinging the rope around his fist. "T'was me, I'd stay 'till th'last trump an' kingdom come."

High on the mast, Jimmylegs saw his future, confined to the rigging until all who had known him from Jones' crew passed on or he dared to leave the ship for death. Without the Captain's protection, he was safe nowhere else.

At sunset, as the Dutchman slipped away from the pier, the dead men on the stairs sat watching the trackless woods, dabbling their feet in the water, and little by little, they ventured up the high road to wherever it was they were going, where the ancient guards pointed the way.
A sea anchor on a fluyt? I really don't know. They screwed up the timing pretty bad to need a parachute as they ploughed up to the pilings.

So, welcome to the hell that is Jimmylegs' new life. Remember, people: Solar plexus! Instep! Nose! Groin!

More Will angst looming ahead.