Episode 10

And So The Weeks Slid By…

And so the weeks slipped by, the long days cooling and shortening as the ship sailed north. Tortoise slowly worked out where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing, though the ship was so large and so busy that he often felt like he didn’t know what was going on beyond his little corner of it. As for Gecko, he was mostly wherever he wanted to be, doing whatever he wanted to be doing. Molly often had sharp words for him, but she didn’t seem to do much else about it. Tortoise supposed that was because there actually wasn’t much she could do about it. And, in any case, the way of the ship seemed to be for people to do whatever they wanted to do: the organised were organised, and the disorganised fitted in when needed.

Their training schedule began a couple of days after they’d been rescued from the Beagle. After some initial safety lessons with Old Gudge, mostly checking to make sure they’d listened to Penny, Tortoise and Gecko joined the others from A1 and A2 who were still in basic training. Gudge was generally the teacher, assisted by Dee and Flip, a friendly mouse. Miguel had already been apprenticed to the carpenter, and Ibrahim was an experienced sailor, so they mostly only saw them when they were off-duty. For more advanced lessons, the trainees from A1 and A2 were joined by Wei from A3 and a couple of tall sailors from B1, the first room on Deck B (which, confusingly, was above rather than below Deck A). Anastasia, the ostrich, talked a lot more than Bill, who she seemed very protective of, sometimes even speaking for him when he was asked a question.

To show someone the ropes, Tortoise learnt, meant understanding the names, functions, and operation of the many ropes criss-crossing the ship, especially “the rigging”, and to do that you needed to know the names of the sails, what they were for, and how they were handled. And to do that, you needed to know more words. It occurred to Tortoise that he actually hadn’t volunteered to join the crew. But he could hardly say no to helping out after everyone had been so kind and, after all, he’d agreed to go on an adventure. So there was nothing for it but to learn how to be a good pirate, and that meant learning the words they used and what they did.

As well as training, there were chores. At first Tortoise did a lot of deck scrubbing, which seemed to be a job for recruits only, but after a while, as he started to get to know the ship, he was put to work doing other things as well, usually shadowing a more experienced crew member.

He was always glad when he was assigned to shadow Miguel.

Miguel led Tortoise into the next room and put the box down. Wan light filtered down from the wooden grills above, illuminating rows of raised planter boxes, many of them bare soil.

“This is the forward grow room,” Miguel said. “Is mostly cabbages and onions at the moment, but after we go south we have very nice crops of strawberries and tomatoes, and also the tasty herbs.”

“Where does the soil come from?” Tortoise asked.

“We make it,” Miguel said. “Tonnes of it. In fact, is one of our most valuable goods. People pay large money, especially in the north. We can go down and see if you like.”

The soil rooms were, understandably, directly beneath the animal pens, which were in turn below the galley. In the first room, the stench was overwhelming. A pirate was turning the waste with a pitchfork, more or less in the dark.

“Not much to see,” Miguel said apologetically. The big iguana shared a sympathetic word with the pirate, who was fortunately just finishing his shift, and led Tortoise down to the bottom room, in the hold, which was also dark but smelt a lot less. Miguel reached into one of the open pens and grabbed a handful. Tortoise held up the lamp and Miguel held out his cupped hands, the rich soil wriggling with huge earthworms and other little critters.

“See? Beautiful,” he said. “Is bagged and stored here until we arrive to port.”

They went back upstairs to the grow room and began harvesting some onions.

One day when Tortoise emerged onto the deck he found Gecko and a few others gathered around Dee and a koala. They were sitting and playing a game moving seeds around a carved oblong board with 12 small pits, and a larger one at each end. The game attracted lively commentary from the spectators, but the players played silently, picking up a pile of seeds and holding them in their hands for a while before redistributing them one by one counter-clockwise around the board. After a while, Tortoise worked out that if there were two or three seeds in the pit after the move, the seeds were captured and placed in the player’s larger pit. Also that placing seeds was called ‘sowing’, the smaller pits were called ‘houses’, and the home was skipped if there were 12 or more seeds, ensuring that the home was always empty at the end of a turn.

Killara was good. She had a habit of holding her fist to her mouth and looking thoughtful while she counted the seeds. When she won the game, she and Dee both smiled, and immediately began a new game, with much ribbing of Dee, who, it seemed, was being trounced.

Tortoise couldn’t really follow what was happening, so after a while he left them and ambled along and up to the fo’c’sle, or forecastle—the deck with the foremast.

Some pirates were dancing, and dolphins were off the starboard bow.

Penny was plucking a dead chicken.

The wet feathers went into one bin, which was overflowing, the guts into another, and soon enough the rubbery body slid off the bench onto a huge pile of naked chickens in the third bin, their feet sticking up at odd angles. A couple of bedraggled chickens lay slumped on the ground by her feet. Penny picked one up.

She looked up from the bench. “Tortoise! What are you doing here?”

“I think I’m supposed to help you?” Tortoise said. “Miguel said I was on prep duty.” He put the box of onions down on another bench and put the bolts in. He tried not to look at the chickens.

“Oh, well I’m almost ready to start on the offal, but you’re a vegetarian. So you can chop the onions if you like?”

“Alright,” Tortoise said, more than a little relieved. “How many should I chop?”

“All of them,” Penny said. “There’s a sack to do over there as well. I know, right? It takes a while to get used to the amounts. And it’s not even that much by the time it’s in a stew. I find it’s best to peel them all first and then chop them up.” She pointed towards a rack of different kinds of knives. “That’s just my system, of course,” she added after a moment. “I’m sure there are lots of ways to do it.”

Tortoise wasn’t sure which knife to use, there were so many, but he finally chose a medium-sized one without any strange edges and got to work peeling and chopping.

“How are you going?” Penny asked. “With everything, I mean. It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

“Alright, thanks,” Tortoise replied. The knife was sharp and cut cleanly. “It’s a big ship.”

“I know, right? It took me ages to work out how to get around.”

“What position do you want?” Tortoise said. The new recruits mostly hadn’t been assigned a role yet, but had been told to think about what they might like to do. When exactly they would be assigned was unclear.

“Oh definitely the boarding party! That’s the most exciting job.” Penny slashed the air above the chicken with an invisible sword. “My dad taught me how to fight,” she said proudly.

“Where’s your dad?”

“Back home,” Penny said. “In Laudanum. He’s a bookseller now, but he used to be a soldier when he was young. He fought in the civil war, and after that was in the City Guard. That’s how he met my mother.”

“Selling books sounds nice. Why did you want to become a pirate?”

“Oh my god, are you kidding? I get to rip some throats out!” Penny made a strange little purring noise. “And I get paid for it.”

“Have you? Ripped some throats out?”

“Well, not yet. But I’m in training.”

Flip trained them in swordplay most days, with wooden swords. It wasn’t Tortoise’s favourite, though he was slowly improving. Penny was definitely a much better fighter—almost as good as Dee, who she often sparred with.

“What about you?” Penny asked.

“I’m not sure,” Tortoise said. “Maybe something with the cannons? Or one of the doctor’s assistants. But I think Song wants to do that.”

“No, I mean, why do you want to be a pirate?”

One day when Tortoise was weatherdeck he met Old Sabina. The otter was sitting in the sun on the fo’c’sle, knitting, ensconced on a stool near the foremast in a multicoloured cape of wool and feathers and fur and little brass trinkets, and wearing a red beanie.

“Why good morning,” she said warmly as Tortoise stepped up onto the deck.

“Hello,” Tortoise said. “Good morning.”

“A fresh one, isn’t it. And who might you be, young man?” She had inquisitive eyes, and glanced over her glasses occasionally as she knitted, which she did quickly but without rushing at all. There was a calmness about her that pulled you in. Her needles clicked and clacked faintly, the little loops of wool diving into each other again and again.

“Tortoise,” Tortoise replied. “I joined the ship with Gecko.”

“Ah yes, that busy young man. And you, Tortoise, what do you have to say for yourself?”

“What do I have to say? I don’t know.”

She smiled. “Perhaps, perhaps. We’ll see, won’t we. Eight fates, late plates.”

Sabina knitted. Tortoise wondered what she meant.

“You can have this bag when I’m done. Every pirate needs a bag.” The bag was black with a bright red stripe down the middle. “We’ll talk again then.”

Tortoise thanked her, and wished her a good day. He went over to the bowsprit. Something about what she’d said troubled him, but he couldn’t work out what it was. He liked her, at least—he was sure of that.

“Did she tell you your fortune?”

Tortoise looked up from the waves. It was Flip.

“No,” Tortoise replied. He glanced back at Sabina. “At least, I don’t think so?”

“Don’t worry, she’s like that with everyone.” The mouse leapt up onto the bowsprit, holding onto a rope with his claw, made of two hooks. He held out his other hand. “Here, come on up.”

After a moment, Tortoise grabbed his hand, and Flip hauled him up. The mouse was surprisingly strong. Tortoise wobbled and steadied himself with one of the stays.

“I don’t think I’m a topman,” Tortoise said, trying not to look down.

Flip laughed. “Well, we got plenty.”

Tortoise glanced down: the figurehead’s black wings emerging from either side of the bowsprit, grey waves surging way below, dizzy smell of the sea. He steadied. Straps he hadn’t noticed before came up and over the rail.

“She goes below when we’re not the Pegasus,” Flip explained, noticing Tortoise’s look.

“Why does she have—?” Tortoise began.

“Why is she the Pegasus when she’s got a horn?” the mouse asked. “It’s a good question.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. To us, she’s just the Pegasus.”

The ship’s bell rang the change of the watch.

Next episode: Attack!