bump-thump, bump-thump in sympathy. He admired the powerful-looking levers, many of which were half as tall as him again, each one governing certain actions of the gastrines and limbers. He looked to the gastrineer with a smile.
'Git!' cursed Shunt.
'Ah… aye! Sorry, Mister Shunt, sir, I…' Rossamund pulled his hand away from the side of the box.
The gastrineer rolled his eyes horribly. 'Git!' he grated again, stabbing a hand at the foundling.
Rossamund blinked in surprise, then realized with horror that there was a weapon in the man's hand-a curved and cruelly barbed dagger. He had never been threatened with a real weapon before. It was enough to send him stumbling back up the ladder and running back to his couch of canvas at the bow.
'I see's ye've got yerself well acquainted with our darlin' gastrineer,' chuckled Poundinch as Rossamund fled past him.
Rossamund refused to do anything so embarrassing as cry-though he very much felt like it and might have once. At that moment, hugging his knees to his chest and scowling back any tears, he would rather have been back in the foundlingery's suffocating halls.
With the dark of his first night aboard descending, Rossamund decided to sleep at his original station at the prow on a pile of old hessian and hemp distinct only from the other piles of old hessian and hemp as stinking less. No one objected, and so he settled in for sleep. If it rained he would rather get wet than endure the disgusting hold.
The night passed mercifully dry, yet dreams of a knife-wielding Shunt, the incessant clanging of the watch bells and the stomping of the crew's bare feet kept Rossamund from restful sleep. By the ringing of the morning watch at around four o'clock, he gave up on the prospect of proper rest and was rewarded eventually with a beautiful, brilliant pink sunrise.
Red dawning, traveler's warning, he thought gloomily.
The Hogshead was now clear of Boschenberg and its jurisdiction and roaming an ungoverned stretch of the Humour.The land on the eastern side of the river remained flat open pastureland. Upon the west it was becoming more rolling and rocky and decidedly more wild-looking. Such places were known as ditchlands, the borders between everymen's kingdoms and the dominion of the monsters. Rossamund could well imagine bogles and nickers prowling about the stunted trees and ragged weeds, seeing who they might devour.
As the day progressed, Rivermaster Poundinch ignored everyone and contributed little to the running of the vessel. Occasionally he would growl a command, but usually he lounged silently at the tiller, his chin in his chest as if he was dozing.
Rossamund was taken by loneliness. At that moment, alone among all these self-interested cutthroats, he would have welcomed even Mister Sebastipole's stiff manners and disturbing eyes.
Poundinch came alive suddenly at the end of the forenoon watch and the beginning of the afternoon when dinner was served by the taciturn, sour-faced cook, and again when there was gunnery practice. Early in the afternoon watch, when the river seemed clear of other craft, he roused himself and bellowed, 'Right, lads! Gunnery practice! To yer pieces!'
A bosun's whistle was blown and the crew hustled to the six cannon on the ladeboard side of the Hogshead. Poundinch strutted at the helm post, bellowing orders, directions, abuse. 'Run them out, ye mucky scoundrels! Come on, Wheezand, I've seen me grandmamma, rest her, move faster than ye, and she's been a-molderin' in th' ground these last ten years! And I should know. I put her there meself!' At this he gave a bloodcurdling chortle and many of the crew joined in.
Rossamund chuckled nervously with them, eagerly awaiting what he hoped would be a spectacle. He had always wanted to see the cannon worked. The foundlings of Madam Opera's had never been allowed near one, regardless of their training in the naval crafts. Suddenly he realized that there were benefits in leaving the foundlingery and its strict policies after all.
BOOM! One after the other the pieces were fired, at a rotten stump or anything that happened to be passing by-the smaller the better, to improve the bargemen's aim.
For Rossamund it was indeed both thrilling and deafening, and completely distracted him from his anxious woes.
Boom! went the guns once more, the crash of their firing hitting him with a thump right in his chest, each blast filling the air with creamy, fizzy-smelling smoke that billowed and lazily drifted away. The whole vessel shuddered with each cannonade, while across the other side of the Humour great vertical splashes were thrown up, or part of a tree would collapse, sending cattle fleeing from the riverbank.
After the fourth broadside, the crew were piped to cease and routine resumed. Rivermaster Poundinch went back to his languor and Rossamund remained alone at the bow, humming within in boyish joy at what had proved a spectacle indeed. That evening was clear and bitterly cold. A three-quarter moon was rising, swollen and yellow in the dark green sky. Muffled in his scarf, his jackcoat buckled right up, Rossamund lay belly down on the deck of the bow and stared at the black water. For some time, he had been listening to the loud concert of a thousand frogs all singing along the banks and watching a small, pale shape dashing upon the water's surface. At first he thought it was a weak reflection of lunar light playing on the bow wave but, as two bells of the second dogwatch rang, it moved oddly, darting out away from the vessel then back again. The hairs on Rossamund's neck bristled and a shimmer of terror thrilled through his belly. He stared as the pale shape broke the surface-it was a head: a pallid lump, unclear in the jaundiced light, showing a long snout full of snaggle-jawed teeth. Its glittering black eyes rolled evilly and fixed him with a terrible gaze. His first monster…
Rossamund had enough wit to grope for his satchel, which he never kept far from him. Perhaps now was the time to use one of his precious repellents. Just as he gripped the strap, the pale lump in the water gave a long bubbling snort and disappeared under the bow and away to the right, toward moon shadows and the root-tangled bank. Rossamund shook with fear. He did not move for a long time but just lay staring at the right bank, trying to blink as little as possible for fear that the pale beast would spring upon him in ambush from the water. His horror was heightened when a gurgling howl rang in the dark. For Rossamund it was pure terror. Among the crew, however, it caused but a minor stir and nothing more.
For the second night, curled up tight in pungent hessian, Rossamund got little sleep.
5
Rivergates (noun) great fortifications built across rivers and broader streams to protect a certain valuable place or as an outworking of a city's more terrestrial battlements. Certain riverside duchies and principalities have long used their rivergates to control trade, not just into their own domains but into those domains beyond as well.
The next day, when Rossamund mustered the courage to tell Poundinch of the previous night's pale monster, the rivermaster showed little alarm, or even interest in, the sighting.
'Just one of those things, me boy, and nowt to trouble yerself over.' The rivermaster stroked his scabrous chin for a moment, pondering. 'River's full o' strange but 'arm-less surprises. Be takin' my word on that 'un-ol' Poundy knows these waters.'
As the day progressed they met many vessels going upriver, and were even overtaken by a faster-moving cromster with a smartly dressed crew. These fine fellows hailed the bargemen of the Hogshead, who only sneered and returned the brisk greeting with sullen looks.
A bargeman coiling rope near Rossamund told him off for waving vigorously as his own reply. 'Fancy-lad good-fer-nothin's,' the crewman growled. 'Reckons they're better than us…'
Rossamund could not help but wish Sebastipole had found him passage aboard the other vessel.
