"Quickly or I'll have thee flogged for it. What ship is she? What flag does she fly, outlander? I can't hear thee!"
The shout rose almost to a scream. Ryan had heard the crew say that other captains from the region took good care to steer well wide of Pyra Quadde. One or two that didn't had been found floating belly-down among the fish guts of Claggartville harbor. So another ship coming close to them meant something out of the ordinary.
He steadied the glass on the flag that fluttered from the masthead of the approaching ship, trying to make it out, fumbling with the brass focusing screw.
"Fireblast! Can't... Ah, there it is."
From the earliest days, every ship out of New England had her own pennant, so that she could easily be recognized at a distance by any of her fellows. Even now, in the heart of the Deathlands, a hundred years after the skydark, the practice was maintained by everyone.
Even by Pyra Quadde.
Her flag cracked and snapped in the wind, only a few feet from Ryan's head.
It was a circle of crimson upon a rectangle of plain white. But as the wind tugged at the ensign it distorted the circle, elongating the bottom half, so that it sometimes resembled a bloody skull.
The oncoming vessel sported a flag of blue, with two horizontal white stripes on it. Ryan hallooed that information down to the woman on the deck, cupping his hands against the wind.
"Two slant whites on blue, thou sayest?" came the reply.
"Aye, ma'am."
"That be the Bartlebyunder Delano. Old Preaching Biddy hisself. Does she show any signal?"
Ryan could hardly hear the woman's words, but he leaned half out of the iron-hooped barrel and managed to catch them.
"No signal. But she's heading straight for us, ma'am."
Captain Quadde beckoned him back from the masthead, sending up another member of the crew to replace him as lookout. Ryan sat on the deck and gratefully pulled on his seaboots again. Though he had a good enough head for heights, the rolling crow's nest wasn't the best place in the world to be.
The whole of the crew came out to watch the approaching vessel. Ryan recalled again that such an encounter was very rare, particularly as most of the skippers along the New England coast knew Quadde's reputation and kept plenty of sea room between themselves and the ill-starred Salvation,
Slowly, tacking her way against the breeze, the Bartlebydrew closer. As she did, the wind fell away to a mild zephyr, barely breathing enough air to enable the two whaling ships to maintain their forward momentum through the flattened waves.
Captain Quadde took her place at the port side of her ship. Ryan noticed that she had buckled on the Spanish Astra short-muzzle .44 and wondered whether she was anticipating trouble.
The ships would pass port side to port side. The crew of the Bartlebywas also lined up along the rail, staring in silence at the Salvationand her crew. A short, skinny man in a bottle-green tailcoat stood alone near the stem. He had a mane of white hair that made him look like pictures of Old Testament prophets that Ryan had seen in some of the many Bibles that still survived in the Deathlands. It was an odd fact that around half of the books he'd ever seen in his life had been Bibles from before the long winters. Yet he'd never read anything to confirm that the old United States had been such a profoundly religious country.
"Captain Quadde!" the man hailed, using a battered tin megaphone.
"Good day to thee, Captain Delano. What bringest thee to my waters?"
"The waters are not thine, Captain Quadde, and it be blasphemous to claim them."
"When the Almighty comes sailing and whaling across these banks with a brace of big fish hauled tight to his flanks, then I shall allow him to share of mywaters, Captain."
"Thou art...!" The man controlled himself with what was an obvious effort of will. The ships were still nearly a hundred paces apart, their courses meaning they'd pass within about ten feet of each other on their parallel ways.
"Make thy speech quickly, Preaching Biddy!" Quadde shouted, beaming at the ripple of laughter from her own crew.
"If I did not..." Delano began. "I will not quarrel with thee or damn thee, Pyra Quadde. The savior sees all, and he will judge at the ending of thy life. I seek thine aid."
The request sounded as though it had been torn from the man's soul with white-hot pincers.
"What aid, man? Wouldst thou know where the great whales sport? I slew one within the day, and he be the first of a bounteous harvest in rich lays for my lads here."
"I have hunted well. Too well," Delano replied. Now the ships were closer, the figureheads barely thirty yards apart.
"Then what?.."
"Both my brothers are lost, Captain Quadde. Dearest to my heart."
"Lost? Both?"
"Aye." The man was on the verge of tears, and Ryan could see the whiteness of his knuckles gripping the carved rail.
"To lose one brother is unfortunate, Captain Delano. To lose both seems like foolishness."
"Thou flint-heart! One was tillerman and one the harpooneer in the lead whaleboat. They had struck a massive right whale, bonnet calked thick with barnacles. We had lost a sail from a broken halliard jammed in a block. A sudden fog came down, as it often does upon these waters..."
Now the ships were fully alongside, the crews staring curiously at one another. Ryan found it odd that all these seamen came from the same ville, yet not a word was exchanged. Captain Delano was leaning out over the rail, hands reaching imploringly toward the impassive figure of Captain Quadde.
"And thou hast seen nothing since?"
"Nothing. But the whale was bearing this way. When the fogs..."
"I have seen nothing."
The words were cold and flat. Dismissive.
"The two of us, together... We could quarter the sea and find my brothers."
"We could, but we will not. I am here to hunt the whales. Not to scour the waves for dimwit orphans who know not their trade. Good day to thee, Captain Delano."
Now the sterns of the two vessels were level, the two skippers scant feet apart, gazing into each other's eyes.
"Turn and let us talk longer, Captain Quadde. I beg thee, in the name of thy savior."
"These are my waters, but he is not my savior, Preaching Biddy. Get to thy search."
"One day? But give up one day's hunt. I'll pay thee for thy time."
"Fare thee well!" Pyra Quadde shouted across the widening gap. She turned to her crew. "I can find work for any idle hand I see skylarking out here. Mr. Ogg! Set them to it."
"Aye, ma'am."
Ryan joined the others, scurrying away belowdecks to lend a hand at the noisome task of boiling down the chunks of blubber.
He heard the last, fading words of Captain Delano of the Bartleby, torn away by the wind.
"May thy stone soul sink thee to hell, Pyra Quadde. And may any man who sails with thee join thee in everlasting torment!"
The next time Ryan Cawdor came out on deck, the other ship was a tiny black speck, hull down, on the horizon.
For the next two days they pressed on, sailing deeper into the whaling grounds, but without a single sighting of their prey. And with each hour that passed, Pyra Quadde became more and more ill-tempered, with a curse and blow for any man who came within her reach.
"She's getting hungry again," Johnny Flynn whispered, mumbling through his toothless gums, as he and Ryan worked together on splicing a length of rope.