The Walrus and the Warwolf

the floor. He's tired enough

aren't you boy? Aye. You'll nod away to never in an instant.'

Drake was in no state to argue otherwise. Jon Arabin knew what he was talking about.

The Warwolf stood off from the Greater Teeth that night, and put in to Gufling the next day. A slow and weary business it was, with much sounding, towing and warping before they eased the ship in to a sea-cleft which fitted them as tightly as a virgin. Gufling, Drake learned, was the smallest Tooth where a ship could berth; Jon Arabin had been exiled here by debt.

From the deck, Drake looked around with eyes which had widened to accommodate the gloom. Overhanging cliffs tossed around the echoes of boots on stone, harsh laughter and shipwork hammering. The place stank of sewage, smoke and fish heads. Dogs were barking, babies bawling, and fat women yelling in a Galish patois at times scarcely comprehensible.

'Come along, boy,' said Jon Arabin, striding down the gang-plank. 'What are you waiting for? A whore-money proposition?'

Dumbly, Drake followed his new master – wishing, for a moment, that he was a fish, free to take the sea- path back to Stokos. They fumbled their way down cockroach-haunted tunnels to Arabin's living quarters, where a confusion of women and children filled the air with tears and laughter.

Drake was shown a place where he could sleep, a side-kennel in Jon Arabin's cave complex. It was a warehouse of sorts, holding baulks of spare timber, buckets of tar, lobster pots, fishing floats, harpoons, chunks of cork and hundreds of odds and ends of rope.

'You say you know rope, boy,' said Arabin. 'Well, have we got work for you! Look on it as a challenge. Do you accept?'

'Plen pro!' said Drake in his native Ligin, meaning 'avec plaisir'.

And he sat down on the spot and began rummaging through the ropes. Jon Arabin laughed.'Lunch first!' said he.

Lunch was three different kinds of seaweed, assorted seaslugs, lobster, whore's-eggs, raw fish and roast seal, all obtained locally. Drake was glad he had learnt that raw fish was safe to eat – otherwise he might have disgraced himself by accusing Jon Arabin of trying to poison him.'Good fish,' he said.

' You' 11 find, boy,' said Arabin, 'that the Teeth must feed themselves, more or less. You'll be busy enough when the Warwolf's home. Aye. Working sealing boats and fishing.''Do I start that after lunch?' said Drake.

'Nay,' said Arabin, with another laugh. 'After lunch, it's ropes. Rope is your future, boy, till I say otherwise.'

Drake was glad he had not been bluffing about rope. He knew knots and splices, and used them well, fashioning serviceable rope from the wreckage he was given to work with. At first he worked without ceasing, thinking himself a slave. But Jon Arabin paid little attention to his rope production, so Drake soon eased up.

And, before very long, he discovered that they practised religion here, too, albeit in a fairly disorganized fashion.

Jon Arabin gave Drake some beer money. Once he had mastered this strange coinage – a mixture of brass triangles, bronze hexagons and copper squares, all written over with alien hieroglyphics – he multiplied it through cards. No pirate played without cheating, but, as the saying goes on Stokos, 'The Demon takes care of his own.' Drake reaped the rewards of the truly devout.

After scarcely five days on Gufling, he had made himself so unpopular by his large-scale winnings that nobody on the island would play with him.

'Never mind,' said Arabin, when he heard of Drake's plight. 'After our next trip, we'll buy back into Knock. There's ten times the people there.'Knock, Drake learned, was the largest of the Teeth.'And when is the next trip?' he asked.'We leave tomorrow,' said Arabin.That night, Drake indulged himself with wild imaginings in which rape, slaughter and pillage took pride of place. However, the next day, as they laboured at the tedious business of putting the Warwolf to sea – more warping, towing and sounding – he learned, to his disappointment, that on this trip they were to be engaged in strictly legitimate trade.

To be precise, they were going to make the pearl run down to Ling, about a thousand leagues away, in the Drangsturm Gulf. Few would dare the pearl-run risks, not even pirates. But Jon Arabin, who had chanced it first a decade ago, risked it every second year.

After much labour, they cleared Gufling and set a course for the south. As pirates nimbled through the rigging, Drake wondered when he'd be taken in hand and shown how it was done. He was sure he'd manage splendidly. He was still wondering when a filthy mumbling old man confronted him. The ancient looked Drake up and down with rheuming eyes that were three parts blind, bared his lips to show toothless gums, and said:'You Drake?'

T do have the honour of being Dreldragon Drakedon Douay, a pirate of the Greater Teeth and a henchman of the honourable Jon Arabin, whom I hope to serve well,' said Drake, with all the dignity he could muster.

'Aye,' said the old man, with a cackle. 'You'll serve him well enough. Come with me!'

Drake, not knowing what to expect, followed warily, a hand on the hilt of the dirk Jon Arabin had let him keep after their brusque introduction on the Gaunt Reefs. The old man mumbled to himself as they ventured into the fumbling gloom below decks. Drake caught snatches of his monologue:

'. . . yes . . . valley . . . she and her twat. . . good gold and biting. . .oh you were pretty. . . hot bread for forking . . . dragons may say. . .what's with the warthog. . .'

And more of the same, punctuated with cackles of laughter and the odd bit of shadow-boxing.

Down and down they went, until they came to the deepest, darkest, dirtiest bit of the ship, where a guttering seal-oil lamp fouled the air with smoke, where rats sat on their hind legs screaming defiance, where the scuttling cockroaches were a handful apiece, where the air stank of stale cheese, grease, old fish, dead cat, offal, soft carrots and rotten potatoes. Four charcoal stoves were burning, so it was hot – as hot as sharing a bed with five fat whores and fifty pairs of woollen socks.

'Where are we?' asked Drake with something very much like dread, fearing that he knew the answer already.'We're in the klandlay, boy.''The kitchen?''Aye, that's a name for it.''And what – well, what am I meant to do here?'

'Why so many questions when you already know the answers?' said the ancient.

He plunged his hands into a bucket of white fluid -milk? – and retrieved half a dozen eggs. What happened next would not bear description – but the crew ate the results at meal time.

So Drake abandoned dreams of larking in the rigging, of swashing onto merchant ships with cutlass in hand, of blooding virgins and breaking into treasure chests. He settled, instead, to life as the cook's boy, helping prepare and dish up meals of salt pork, seal meat, sea biscuit, salted cod, stockfish, bacon, grey peas, and rye-flour cakes fried in whale oil and served with a dole of vinegar.

As the ship ploughed south, Drake adapted to life in the fo'c'sle, a crowded bunkroom continually damp with sea-gear and loud with coughing, snoring, sneezing, scratching, farting, gossip and argument. He found it hard to make friends as the crew blamed him (not, it must be admitted, entirely without justification) for some of the more appalling culinary disasters they endured.

In the fo'c'sle there were, amongst others, a huge foul-mouthed muscle man called Quin Baltu; Jon Disaster, who liked to be thought of as hard and dangerous; Raggage Pouch, who stole anything and everything that was not nailed down; Harly Burpskin, who had more money than sense, but was evening up the balance by playing cards with Drake.

There was also Ika Thole, a red-skinned red-haired harpoon man from the Ebrell Islands. Naturally, he reminded Drake of the high-breasted Zanya Kliedervaust, whom he had last seen at Cam's leper colony. Drake, homesick, lovesick, was eager to learn all he could of Zanya's homeland. He asked Thole to speak of the Ebrells – but Thole slapped him down, called him 'you greasy little quat', called him worse, and refused to have anything to do with him.

Even Burpskin, though he was prepared to challenge Drake at cards, could scarcely be counted as a friend. Drake sensed that there were strong bonds of trust and friendship between the crewmen, however much they quarrelled and fought. Working the canvas, riding out whatever weather the Central Ocean assailed them with, they relied on each other for their very lives. Drake, working as he did in the galley, was excluded from this great