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Chapter 1

He Is Drowned and These Are Devils

We’d been adrift for eight days when the ninny tried to eat the ht, slowly expiring froreat beef-brained boy, Drool,snatches for the monkey, as perched on the bowsprit behind ling his bells in a festive manner

“Sit down, Drool, you’ll capsize us”

“Just one wee lick,” said the giant, grasping the air before hi for his tiny ht Seawater splashed thepoo at the giant, but it had been eight days since any of us had eaten and he could birth no bu

“There will be noas I draw breath”

“I’ll just give him a bit of a squeeze, then?”

“No,” said I On the fourth day, after the water ran out, Drool had taken to squeezing Jeff (thehis wee, but now the monkey was dry and I feared the next squeeze would produce little but a sanguine monkey marmalade

“I won’t hurt hiht as well have tied bells on the truth and chased it around the town square while beating a drum

Drool dropped back onto the seat at his end of the dinghy, his weight sending the bow up so rapidly that Jeff was nearly launched into the drink I caught theit fast until he stopped biting

“But,” said Drool, holding a great sausage of a finger aloft as he searched the night for a point

“Shhhh, Drool Listen” I heard sout

“What?”

I stood in the boat, still hugging the monkey to my chest, and looked in the direction of the noise A full moon puddled silver across the inky sea, but there, in the distance, lay a line of white Surf

“It’s land, lad Land That way” I pointed “Now paddle, you great dribbling ninny Paddle, lest it be an island and we drift by”

“I will, Pocket,” said Drool “I a’s bollocks, ain’t it?”

He showed less enthusiasendered

“Land, lad, where they keep food and drink”

“Oh, right Land,” he said, a spark finally striking in the vast, dark ein

The pirates had set us adrift without oars, but Drool’s arh of a hand in the water to paddle By his sliding frounwale to the other, the little boat sloshed slowly forward My arh the monkey could swim, even with a sturdy cord tied round hisa boat

An hour or so later, what had been a calan to rise up on rollers, and the blue-white lines I’d spotted churned into a briny boil What had been the distant swish of surf now crashed like thunder before us

“Pocket,” said Drool, sitting up, his eyes wide and alight with fear “I don’t want to paddle no o back”

“Nonsense,” said I, with enthusiasm I did not feel “Once more unto the breach!”

And before I could turn to see where ere headed, a great wave lifted the boat and ere driven ahead on its face, racing as if on a sled down a never-ending slope Drool let loose a long, terrified wail and gripped the rails as the stern was lifted, lifted—and then ere vertical on the face of the wave I looked above ht and awith him Then the wave crashed down upon us I lost my hold on the boat and ash in a confusion of salt and chill Over and down and over until there was no up, nowhere to go for air, and no way to get there Then a light Thelife I kicked, hoping to find so but water; then theout of the silver disc above—the boat I tried to tuck my head but too late and then a shock and a flash in the eye as the boat struck me and all was dark Oblivion

There were fla before me when I woke from the dead, which was not entirely unexpected The devil was suessed He danced barefoot around the fire as he stoked it in preparation for h linen, leaves and sticks clinging to it, and a bycocket hat with a single feather in the style of bow hunters back hoe Scrawny and pathetic, really, for the prince of bloody darkness

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As I stirred, the fiend made his way over to h cheekbones, decidedly feave him the look of a cat that has been surprised in the middle of his repast of a freshly killed rat—alert and fierce

“He’s awake,” said the demon

“Pocket!” I heard Drool say, at which point pretending to still be dead was a fool’s errand

I looked over to see the great oaf sitting splayed-legged on the other side of the fire, a massacre of nuts and berries in his lap, the s down his chin in red rivulets “Cobweb saved us,” said the ninny “She’s the git’s tits”

“She?” said I “So not the devil?”

“’Fraid not,” said the girl

Of course, a girl I looked over the figure crouched before ood scrubbing, but I supposed a girl she was And not a child, neither, despite her size

“I didn’t do so e friend,” she said “On the beach I juain He carried you up here into the forest” She leaned into me to whisper “Methinks hethe wreck He seems a bit slow”

“Slow is his only speed, I’m afraid”

“You took quite a shot to the noggin yourself” She touched a spot above my forehead and I winced with the pain “Covered in blood, you were I cleaned you up”

I touched the tender lump on my head and bolts of pain shot across the corners of my vision, a deep ache throbbed behindon a bed of ferns and leaves, naked but for my hat, which had been draped modestly over my man bits

“Your kit is drying still,” said the girl She shot a thumb over her shoulder to indicatewith my jester’s scepter, the puppet Jones “You’ll want to wash it proper in fresh water when you get a chance Most of the blood came out in the sea, but not the salt”

“What about Jeff? Where’s my monkey?”

“Weren’t nobloke and you” She held out a leather wineskin “Here Water Slowly Your friend drank it all in one draft and I had to fetch more at the stream”

“Had a wee chunder,” said Drool

I took the wineskin and thought I ain as I drank the cool water and felt the fire in my throat abate

“Enough for now,” said the girl, taking back the wineskin “There’s food, too, if the big one’s left anything”

“I saved you so outberries as he moved

The girl returned and handed s was for”

“Thank you,” said I My cod was nearly full of berries and nut ht weep for a e ofaway a headache

“Your friend says you are fools,” she said, giving me shelter

“I a upon Ouze, at your service” I tow a train of titles behindof Britain and France—but I thought it illon a litter of leaves with only a hat to cover my tackle d’amore “Drool is my apprentice”

“We are fools and pirates,” said Drool