Pirates (scene 3)
It turned out that the second mate's main duties involved scrubbing the deck. Since Doumeki had already discovered by this point that the first mate's main duties were cooking and transporting rum from the hold to the captain's cabin, he didn't see much reason to complain about his lot. Sea-life treated him fine, and the crew certainly never bothered him. It was all pleasantly dull, or would have been if Yuuko and Watanuki hadn't been on board.
There didn't seem to be much actual piracy going on, which was frankly disappointing. The first opportunity they got – a merchant ship which appeared around noon as a sail on the horizon and went on to pass within a few hundred metres of their vessel – went by without either ship so much as acknowledging the other was there. And since a ship like the Butterfly – with a captain with a reputation as wild as Captain Yuuko's – should have been anything but hard to recognise, this surprised Doumeki for several reasons.
"Aren't we supposed to do something?" he asked Watanuki.
"What, like attack them? Just what sort of people do you think we are?" said Watanuki, typically putout by the nerve Doumeki showed by existing all over the place like that.
"Pirates?" Doumeki supplied.
"We aren't that sort of pirates," said Watanuki firmly. "Besides, it's not like they can even see that we're here."
"Of course not," said Doumeki vaguely.
"Are you patronising me?"
"It's hard to tell sometimes," Doumeki muttered.
Watanuki ignored him. "Anyway, we'll have more important things to worry about soon, with the storm coming in," he said briskly.
Doumeki looked up into what seemed to all intents and purposes like a perfectly innocent blue sky. He knew just enough about the sea to have some idea that this didn't necessarily mean anything – storms in these parts could blow in with no warning at all, but in that case… "How can you tell?"
Watanuki started uncomfortably and looked momentarily awkward. "Just because there is, that's all!"
And right up until the gale-force winds started up an hour later, that was all he would say on the matter.