"Aharr, friend Bludrigg, the best for you. A crown fit for a King!"
Bludrigg felt a sudden rush of confidence; he had done it! Gabool was notoriously mean with plunder, but he, Bludrigg, Captain of the Greenfang, had actually got the better of Gabool. The King of Searats had backed down before him. Bludrigg's chest swelled as he accepted the beautiful coronet from Gabool's sword-blade and placed it on his head. A cheer rose from the company as Gabool spread his arms wide. Extending the sword away from Bludrigg, he addressed them.
"See, yer scurvy wave-riders. Pay attention, you jetsam of the oceans, I am Gabool the Wild, this is how I repay me friends. ..." Without warning Gabool swung a powerfully savage blow with his sword. "And reward my enemies!"
Even the hardened searats moaned in horror as the head of Bludrigg thudded to the floor. The coronet
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rolled in front of Gabool. He picked it up on the dripping sword blade and held it forth to the assembly. "Would anyone else like to wear the crown, mateys?"
oo
Heralded by the call of seabirds, eastern sunrays flooded warm and golden into a sky of calm blue reflected in the millpond sea below. The angry storm had passed, leaving summer serenity in its wake. The sun warmed the wet bundle on the flotsam-strewn tide-line until it stirred. Seawater and bile flooded from the mousemaid's mouth as she coughed feebly. The damp paw set tiny flies buzzing as it reached for her throat and began weakly grappling with the knotted rope. The wooden spar lay across her back. A seabird landed upon it; the added weight caused the mousemaid to vomit more salt water forth with a gurgling groan. Startled, the bird rose noisily into the air, cheated of the carcass it had taken for dead. Other seabirds began to wheel and circle overhead. A tiny crab tried nibbling at the maid's rough wet burlap dress, gave up and scuttled away.
Finally undone, the rope fell away from her bruised neck. Painfully she shifted the spar and rolled over onto her back. The mousemaid lay still awhile; some of the more venturesome seabirds spiraled lower. Rubbing sand and grit from her face with the back of a paw, she opened both eyes, immediately shutting them again against the glare of sunlight. Small wavelets trickled and lapped gently away from the shore; the tide was ebbing. The mousemaid ventured to explore the wound that the spar had inflicted upon her head. She winced and left it alone. Turning over again, she shielded her eyes with her paws and rested on the firm damp sand, soaking up the life-giving rays of the comforting sun. A large speckled gull landed close to her. Readying its dangerous beak, it stalked slowly forward; the mouse-maid watched it from between her paws. Within a neck-length of her prostrate body the sea gull stood upon
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one webbed foot and began bringing its beak down in an exploratory peck.
Thwack\
She swung the wet-sand-weighted end of the rope. It was knotted and her aim was good. The rope's end thudded solidly into the bird's right eye. With a squawk of pain and distress the sea gull did an awkward running takeoff, flopping into the air and dispersing its alarmed companions.
The little mousemaid began dragging herself laboriously up the beach, her throat parched, mouth dry, head aching, limbs battered almost numb by the pounding seas. She reached a tussock of reedgrass in the dry sand above the tideline. Pulling the grass about her, she lay down in the safety of its shelter. As sleep descended upon her weary body, strange thoughts flooded her mind. She could not remember who she was, she had no name she could recall; apart from the stormy seas that had tossed her up, there was no memory of anythingit was all a cloudy gray void. Where had she come from? Where was she now? What was she doing here? Where was she going? Her last thought before sleep enveloped her brain was that she was a fighter. She could beat off a large sea gull with a rope's end, even lying stranded and half-dead from exhaustion, and she had survived the sea.
She was alive!
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Dawn arrived clad in hushed rosiness upon the wake of storm-torn night. Abbot Bernard had not lain abed, he was up and about. Concern for his beloved Redwall had driven sleep from his mind; the ravages of gale-force winds and rain would need repairing. He made a swift tour of inspection, finishing up on the east battlements. Leaning back upon the strongly hewn stones, Bernard allowed himself a sigh of relief. There was not much that any weather conditions, no matter how severe, could do to the Abbey. However, there were broken branches and wrecked tree limbs overhanging the ramparts to the east and north, with here and there some ill-fated sapling or hollow woodland monarch toppled against the walls. Inside, the grounds had largely been protected by the outer structurea few crops flattened, fruit bushes in disarray and a loose window shutter on the gatehouse blown awry. The Father Abbot descended the wallsteps thankfully and went to summon Foremole to head a repair crew. They could attend to the damage after breakfast.
The calm after the storm also had its effect upon the inmates of Redwall Abbey. Young creatures tumbled out of the Abbey building into the sunlit morning. Whooping and shouting, they teemed into the orchard
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to gather fruit brought down by the winds of the gale. The otter twins Bagg and Runn frisked and bounded around the apple and pear trees to the strawberry patch, then lay on their backs, squeaking with laughter as they gobbled up the juicy fruit, inventing fictitious reasons as to why the berries were lying there.
"Heehee, look what was blown down from the strawberry trees by the wind last night. Heeheehee!"
Durry Quill, Gabe Quill's little nephew, joined them. He sat in the strawberry patch, trying to decide which was the biggest berry, eating all the possible candidates as he listened to the otters. Durry was not at all sure whether he should believe they had come from a strawberry tree.
"Strawb'rry trees, 1 don't see no strawb'rry trees. Where be they?"
Bagg coughed hard to stop himself tittering. He put on a serious face as he explained the logic of fictitious strawberry trees to the puzzled little Durry.
"Teehee, er harumph! What? You never see'd a strawb'rry tree. Dear oh dear. Why, they're great giant things with blue speckly leaves, very light of course, only weigh as much as two goosefeathers. That's why the wind blowed 'em all away. Whoosh! Straight o'er the top of the Abbey walls."
The gullible Durry looked from one to the other, half convinced.
Runn nodded serious agreement and continued the story. "Sright, I see'd it meself from the dormitory window. Way away they blowed, all those poor old great strawb'rry trees, carried off by the wind to the Gongleboo mountains where the Grunglypodds live."
A half-eaten strawberry dropped from Durry's open mouth. "Grunglyboo's mountain where Gronglepodds live, where be that?"
Under a nearby pear tree Dandin stood paws on hips with his friend, young Saxtus the harvest mouse. Both smiled as they listened to the two otters leading Durry
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Quill astray with their tall tales. Saxtus bit into a windfall pear and grimaced.
"Don't know why we came out here to eat fruit. Most of these windfalls aren't even ripe yet. Taste this pear, hard as a rock."
Dandin sat down with the otters and Durry. "No, thanks, I'll try my luck with all these berries that fell from the strawberry trees." He looked over the top of a large strawberry at Bagg and Runn. "Strawberry trees indeed! You two should be ashamed of yourselves, telling a poor little hedgehog such whopping great fibs."
Saxtus sat down with them, keeping his normally solemn face quite straight. "Dandin's right, y'know. Otters that tell lies get carried off by the big pink Water-bogle."