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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ITHOUGHTSpits would have a sore head when he awoke, but he was in fine forovers He spent the day tidying up the shack, putting everything in order in case he ever returned He stashed a jug of poteen away in a corner and packed the rest in a large sack he planned to carry slung over his shoulder, along with spare clothes, his fishing net, some potatoes and dried fish slices Harkat and I had alelatinous globes,on to - so we offered to divide Spits’s load between us, but he wouldn’t hear of it "Every man to a cross of his own," hethe day I hacked my hair back from my eyes with one of Spits’s rusty blades We’d replaced our handmade knives, most of which we’d lost in the lake, with real knives that Spits had lying around

Harkat stitched together holes in his robes with bits of old string

When night fell, we set off, heading due southeast towards a lyto a ho away t’ sea when I elve," he sighed - but several swigs of poteen i

I orried that Spits would collapse - his legs obbling worse than the jelly-like globes ere carting - but as drunk as he got, his pace never wavered, though he did stop quite often to "bail out the bilge water" When we ht asleep and snored loudly all day long He woke shortly before sunset, licked his lips and reached for the poteen

The weather worsened over the next few nights, as we left the lowlands and scaled the mountains It rained al our clothes and leaving us wet, cold and miserable - except Spits, whose poteen warmed and cheered him up whatever the conditions I decided to try some of Spits’s holoo for breath, eyes bulging Spits laughed while Harkat poured water down ain "The first drahs, I firmly declined

It was difficult to knohat to make of Spits Abrams A lot of the time he came across as a funny old sailor, crude and coarse, but with a soft centre But as I spent ht that a lot of his speech patterns seemed deliberately theatrical - he spoke with a broad accent on purpose, to give the impression he was scatterbrained And there were times when his mood darkened and he’d mutter ominously about people who’d betrayed hih anddrunkenly under the cloudy sky "Better than dumb old Spits Said I was a monster, not fit t’ share a ship with ’eets me hands on ’em, I’ll make ’em suffer!"

He never said how he intended to "get his hands on" whoever "em" were We hadn’t told Spits what year we’d come from, but he knew tieneration" or said "things was different in my day" I couldn’t see any way back for Spits, and he couldn’t either - a co sorry for himself was, "Here I is and here I’ll die" Yet still he swore to get his own back on "the", despite the fact that the people he disliked would have been dead and buried decades ago

Another night, while he was telling us about his tasks on board thePrince of Pariahs , he stopped and looked at us with a steady blank expression "I had t’ kill every now and then," he said softly "Pirates is vagabonds Even though we didn’t kill those we robbed, we sometimes had t’ If people refused t’ surrender, we had t’ put a stop to ’em Couldn’t afford t’ let ’eht you didn’t board the ships you attacked," I said "You told us you fished out people who jurinned bleakly, "but a le just as much as one on deck A woman too Sometimes I had t’ teach ’erinned sheepishly "But that was rare I only ht spot I ain’t a killer, but I’ll do it if ainst a wall, or t’ save a friend"

Harkat and I didn’t dozeSpits Although ere stronger and fitter than hiot into a drunken fit and took it into his head to kill us in our sleep?

We discussed the possibility of leaving the ex-pirate behind, but it didn’t seeh he was able to keep pace beside us during our marches, he had no sense of direction and would have become lost in no tiht have need of his fishing skills if we made it to the Lake of Souls Both of us could catch fish with our hands, but neither of us knew