"Downey," Bill said quietly, turning the tooth between his fingers as if reading his answers in its wicked edge, "send a few of the men back over for bayonets."

"What fer? There ain't no one here to fight."

Bill turned to look at Downey over his shoulder, and the incredulous expression was wiped from the other man's face without a word being spoken.

"Bayonets," Downey repeated. "Right. How many?"

Bill rose from his crouch, tucking the tooth into an inside pocket. "All we've got."

……………………………….

Captain Yearwood accompanied the requested weapons over from the Northern Beacon. Bill met him as he boarded, and the captain gave a low whistle as he took in the bodies that had been dragged into something resembling a row. "I don't know what party you're preparing for, Bootstrap," he commented, "but it looks like this one's over." He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the dead with grim but businesslike assessment. "Just these eight up top?"

"That's hard to say." At the captain's frown, Bill explained, his voice low and tight. "There are...we've found some remains that...aren't complete. Makes it difficult to get an accurate count."

Yearwood stared at him, then back down at the bodies. "These aren't the worst?" he asked, studying one that was missing the lower half of its jaw.

"Depends on the size of the box your idea of 'the worst' fits into."

A muscle in Yearwood's cheek ticced, and Bill suppressed a grimace when he heard the captain's teeth grinding. "And below?"

"I'm getting ready to go down now."

Yearwood nodded. "Wonder who it was got to 'em first. Charlie Hess is bastard enough, but he'd 'a burned the ship out from under 'em after."

"They weren't raided."

"Ah, you reckon that poor bloke there split his own ribs open, then?"

Bill carefully quelled his impatience, and gestured to the line of corpses. "For all the bits these men are missing, Captain, they aren't light their weapons. Or their jewelry. Or their boots, for that matter." Keeping his voice pitched too low for the other men to hear, Bill continued severely, "Any pirates down on their luck enough to hit a bloody fishing vessel might have at least a passing interest in those sorts of things, wouldn't you say?"

Yearwood scowled, but he was considering while he scowled. "Could'a been somethin' personal."

"These men weren't attacked with weapons. They aren't cut up, Captain, they're torn apart." Bill reached into his coat and pulled out the tooth. "I took this out of the first man we found," he said, holding it out to Yearwood. "It was lodged in him where his arm should've been."

The grey-haired captain studied it. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it without doing so. "Shark," he muttered after another moment.

Bill inclined his head obligingly. "I once saw a bull shark take three of a man's fingers while it thrashed around in the bottom of his boat, dying," he recalled, running his thumb over the tooth. "But I'd be real curious to know what kind can hold its breath out of water long enough to rip through a whole crew." He tossed the tooth up a few inches, closing his fist around it when it landed back in his palm. "That's what I would call one fucking formidable fish. Sir."

Yearwood looked again at the line of ravaged bodies, and he nodded. "McLaughlin!" he called sharply, without moving his gaze. "Get those bayonets handed out. No one goes below without one."

…………………………..

The smell was worse below, but as far as Bill could tell, it was because it was enclosed, and not because there were more dead than up above. Those that had been slain down here hadn't had the same opportunity to air out that their mates above had.

"Most of them were up top when they died," Bill observed aloud, carefully sidestepping the now-blackened and dried liquid that had spilled down the steps. The unfortunate individual it had once belonged to was sprawled at the top of the steps, his spine glistening through the hole that used to be his throat.

Remarkably, it managed to be less horrible than the damage done to him lower on his torso.

Downey followed, not watching his step as carefully as Bill, and slipped. He caught himself on the bulkhead, swore, and glared down, irritation warring with disgust. "Ain't there supposed to be more inside than this?" he demanded, pointing with his blade-tipped rifle.

"Choice cuts," Bill muttered under his breath.

"Whassat, Bootstrap?"

"Never mind." He made his way forward, the bayonet preceding him. The sound of the men behind him was all that cut through the smothering, chilled silence; ahead, it was quiet, heavy and unbroken.

And then, abruptly and almost imperceptibly, it wasn't.

Bill froze, and held up a hand to halt his crewmates. With their movement paused, the interior of the ship was utterly silent, and Bill tilted his head, listening.

He couldn't even say what it was that he'd heard, so soft had it been. But for a few seconds, the shroud of oppressive quiet had fluttered with...something.

Eyes sweeping the gloom ahead, Bill took a step, then another, and stopped again, his hand still up to hold the others where they stood, his rifle balanced against his hip.

He advanced on the doorway just ahead and to his right slowly, pushing visions of the butchered men laid out in a line up on deck from his mind. The bayonet's tip rounded the corner first, and Bill slid along after it, finding himself in the galley.

Something at the end of the narrow room rustled, and Bill drew the weapon up higher, allowing him to aim slightly downward. There was a large, open crate shoved into the corner of the room, and Bill determined it to be the source of the barely-there sounds he'd heard. He drew a deep breath, and then closed the last of the distance to the crate in three long, fast strides, rifle positioned to be emptied into whatever it held as soon as Bill laid eyes on it.

And then Bill saw, and his jaw dropped.

"Mother of God."

TBC