But at once he scrambled back to his feet, rushed to the cabin door, slammed it shut and jammed a bar down across it.
It didn't make the ROAR recede to a roar. It remained a ROAR, growing louder if anything. The door began to rattle and shake against the bar.
Vangie saw Gabe brush sweat from his brow and lean shaking against a rusty ventilator hood.
The gold wagon was up on the planks now, with Sea Wolf's crew cringing under Crung's shouts, trying to manhandle it across to their ship.
But the two vessels were riding up and down on the water, not in unison, and the planks kept tilting back and forth, so that the wagon rolled forward and back, forward and back, never quite making it all the way to the deck of either ship and never quite falling into the sea between them.
Vangie saw Gabe react to the sight of all that gold out there swinging precariously above the frothy sea. His face filled with pale alarm; he moved forward with arms outstretched, calling something. It was as if he wanted to gather the wagon into his arms and bring it gently and safely to the deck of Sea Wolf all by himself through sheer strength of will.
And then the tilt of the ships sharpened. The wagon careened forward onto Sea Wolf's deck, scattering sailors like birdshot.
The wagon made a sweeping curve around the deck with Ittzy steering madly on top. It teetered near the far rail, and Gabe was running after it like a crazed jilted lover, waving his hands in the air. It began to topple over the side. Gabe jumped up and down, yelling.
The sea lifted. Sea Wolf tolled a few degrees. The wagon was returned to the deck by that motion; it kept on moving, and Vangie suddenly realized it was juggernauting directly toward Captain Arafoot's cabin. With Gabe still in hot pursuit.
The wagon swept past a tangle of ropes and barreled with a tremendous crash into the cabin.
It demolished the outer wall. Dense dust and debris flew in all directions. Everybody stopped to stare.
In the sudden silence the ROAR climbed to a ROAR that vibrated through both ships, shaking them to their keels.
Vangie blinked. She tried to stare through the pall of dust and flying objects. What was happening?
From the cloud emerged a giant figure draped in the tarp that had been covering the gold.
The tarp walked on legs. It was tied around with ropes, and with every ROAR, it shimmered and vibrated like the asbestos curtain at the finale of a cancan show.
Behind the canvas-wrapped giant there emerged from the dust a sword. After the sword came Ittzy.
The point of the sword was lightly prodding the rear of the ROAR.
As the two figures progressed out of the cloud, Gabe stepped in front of the ROAR, stopped it with a hand in the middle of the canvas, then bopped it on the top with a belaying pin.
The ROAR modulated through ROAR to roar to roar to a kind of clogged silence. The tarped figure swayed on its feet.
Gabe yelled across to the San Andreas: "Crung. Hey, Crung!"
"Yeah?"
"Get all your crew over there with you on Captain Flagway's ship. Every man-jack."
"Yeah? What for?"
"Just do what I say."
Crung walked out onto the planks between the ships and stood there steady as a rock. Vangie shuddered. Crung said softly, with menace, "And if I don't?"
"Maybe," Gabe told him, "I'll release Captain Arafoot here and let you explain to him why you wouldn't obey orders when I was holding him hostage. Or maybe I'll just throw him over the side and feed him to the sharks. I haven't quite made up my mind yet."
Crung nodded thoughtfully. It wasn't that he was giving in. It was just that he was thinking, and with Crung that was obviously a slow process.
His one eye blinked. His one hand toyed with the marlin spike. He turned slowly and surveyed the deck of San Andreas. His eye flicked from Francis to Vangie to Captain Flagway. "Well now," he said slowly, "if it don't look like I've got me some hostages, too. How about that now?"
Vangie whipped out the knuckle-duster. "Forget it, buster."
Captain Flagway staggered out from the tiller, braced his feet and addressed himself to Crung. "Now, look here. I'm a peash-peace-loving man. I have never disemboweled anyone in my life. I'm a bit long in the tooth to start gouching-gouging men's eyes out and chopping their heads off, and crashing-cracking their skulls with clubs. I just don't think I could stand to do things like that."
"Yeah?"
"So I wish you would just pay attention to what Mr. Beauchampsh tells you, and do what he says, and not make any fuss."
Crung blinked at Captain Flagway. He blinked at the knuckle-duster wavering in Vangie's hand. He turned his head and blinked at Ittzy and the sword. He blinked at Gabe, and saw him holding the flask. In a tone of exasperated despair, he cried, "And what's that supposed to be?"
"It's supposed to be a flask," Gabe said, and fired a shot in the air. "But it's a gun."
Crung turned his head back and forth, looking from one of them to another. "You're all crazy people," he said. "All of you. All except that fruity-looking one there."
Francis stiffened. "Anyone who dresses himself in that overmasculine way," he said coolly, "and chooses to spend utterly months at a time at sea without women, nothing but men for companionship, is hardly in any position to cast aspersions. I've met a goodly number of you sailor types, believe you me, and if there's one thing I've learned it's that…"
"Alright! Alright!" Crung turned very quickly toward Sea Wolf and bellowed: "All hands!"
"Fruity indeed," Francis said.
Vangie said, "Never mind, Francis, just consider the source."
"Oh, I do."
"Get over here onto this miserable hulk," Crung yelled at his crew, and at once they slunk and slouched across onto the San Andreas, never meeting anyone's eyes.
After the Sea Wolf had been emptied of all its original personnel except for Captain Percival Arafoot, Gabe cried, "Vangie, come on over! Francis, Captain Flagway!"
Vangie had been propping the knuckle-duster on the tiller. "Francis," she said, "would you mind terribly holding this for me?"
"Oh, my dear, of course not. How remiss of me. Here, I'll carry it."
The knuckle-duster looked, if anything, less appropriate in Francis' hand than in Vangie's; still, he wore it with a certain dash.
The three of them skirted the muttering crew and crossed the planks to Sea Wolf. Midway, Vangie looked down at the water heaving between the two ships and for the first time truly understood Gabe's reaction to the sea. But she forced herself to keep moving, following the weaving, perilous Captain Flagway, and once aboard the solid Sea Wolf, she felt better again.
"Okay, Percival," Gabe said. "Time for you to walk the plank."
"ROAR."
"Move, now," Gabe insisted. "You can take your teeth with you, or you can leave them behind. Which is it?"
"Roar."
Ittzy pricked the tarp with the point of his sword, and the tarp-wrapped figure felt its way out onto the planks, guiding on the sound of Crung's voice: "Keep that son of a bitch off here, damn it! He'll kill all of us. Can't you have a little goddamn decency and shove him overboard?"