And where were his drinking companions? Clearly, Caramon had been left behind.
The deck shifted violently beneath Sturm's feet. He braced himself against the side of the cabin, gauging how difficult it would be to drag Caramon into the slight shelter offered by the interior of the cabin, then shake him awake. After that, Tas still needed to be found, Sturm thought to himself grimly. And this all presumed there were still enough crew members aboard to bring the Venora under control.
Keeping one foot braced against the cabin wall, Sturm leaned over to grab his friend. Although the deck was slick from the rain, it would be difficult to budge Caramon's bulk. It was then that Sturm noticed that Caramon's weapons were missing. Before he could contemplate this odd fact, he heard a scuffling sound. Sturm looked up, but it was too late. The young Solamnic felt a thump on the side of his head, followed by the sensation of falling down a deep, dark, bottomless hole, with the wind shrieking in his ears.
* * * * *
Tasslehoff had been absorbed in finishing his letter to Raistlin. When the ship's increasingly turbulent motion caused the oil lamp to slide off the writing desk and shatter, the cabin was plunged into darkness. Tas looked up expectantly, just in time to grab the magic message bottle before it rolled off the desk.
"Oh . . . the storm. I forgot," the kender muttered to himself. Quickly he rolled up the parchment and stuffed it into the bottle. He pinched off a piece of the cork and crumbled it inside, then watched as the letter took on a golden glow before it vanished. Following the instructions he recalled, he swiftly corked the bottle and held it up. It appeared to be empty.
Standing on his tiptoes, Tas pressed his face against the porthole. In the dim light, he could make out little except that this was certainly a fine storm. He rugged the porthole open, and with a mighty effort, hurled the bottle into the churning sea.
As he stepped back from the porthole, the cabin tilted at a crazy angle, and the chair Tas had been sitting on crashed into his shins. Flashes of lightning filled the porthole with brilliant white light, extinguished almost as soon as it appeared. Loud cracks of thunder followed. In between two thunderclaps, Tas heard something else up on deck.
Trying unsuccessfully to ignore his throbbing shins, Tas began hopping around the cabin, gathering up the rest of his pouches and shoving them into his rucksack. He had no intention of leaving any of his treasures behind. "No telling what might happen in a storm like this," Tas mused aloud. "Sounds like it’s even more exciting up on deck. Sturm and Caramon must be having a great time up there. I bet they can't wait for me to join them." He took a moment to strap his hoopak, the fighting weapon prized by kender, to his back.
Tas paused at the door to the cabin, casting a quick glance behind him. Another flash of lightning at the porthole momentarily blinded him.
"I wonder if it's okay to use the magic message bottle during a storm," he reflected. "Oh, well. Too late now." He turned and bounded through the narrow passageway leading to the cabin, then up the stairway to the deck.
Prepared for a warm greeting from his friends, Tas was disappointed when he didn't see anyone. There was no sign of Sturm or Caramon, or even Captain Murloch. With typical kender agility, Tas managed to keep his footing on the rolling deck as he looked around. The mainmast appeared to have broken and toppled into the sea. The sails left attached to the stub of the mast whipped around wildly. The Venora careened dizzily. Where were Sturm and Caramon, not to mention everybody else?
Sensing some movement behind him, Tas whirled around and came face to face with Captain Murloch . . . old Walrus Face, The captain grinned at the kender, his yellowed teeth sticking out over his lower jaw. Swell, thought Tas. Despite his ship's dire predicament, the captain was managing to keep in good humor.
"Hi, Captain Murloch," Tas shouted into the wind and rain that lashed his face. "Quite a squall we're having. I bet it's going to give the ship a bit of trouble. I'll stay by your side and help you out. I've been on many ships in such circumstances . . .well, not too many, actually. Seven or nine, not counting this one. But Sturm and Caramon can be a big help, too. Do you know where they are? Good thing our friend Flint isn't along, because . . ."
Tas took a few steps closer to Captain Murloch, to make sure he was being heard. Somehow nothing seemed to be registering on the captain's grinning face. Perplexed and distracted, Tas failed to see the captain's arm swing up or notice the club arcing toward his head until it was too late.
"Damnable kender! They'd talk your ears off in the middle of a hurricane," Captain Murloch muttered to himself. But the captain's club had put a stop to the kender's chatter. Tas lay unconscious at Murloch's feet. The captain seized him by his topknot and dragged him toward what was left of the main mast. Beneath the shredded sails lay the unconscious forms of Sturm and Caramon.
Captain Murloch dragged the limp bodies closer to the mast and began to rope them to it as he had been instructed. He worked as quickly as he could in the fury of the
