Kristal McKinstry, Feb 2000, June 2001

A wet rolling fog awote them; unseemly some’d say, so away from the waterfront. But the cock couldn’t crow seven {or were it twelve? What man could be the wiser in these ethers of barrel dregs?}, for his gizzards hung now as chew toy to that ungodly Afrikaan shroud climber, with it’s fangs, fur, and talons like the gristly mollusks it screechily devoured.

"I’w’d burn that compact now Guv’nor, less’n ye’d have it turn the otherwise" fretted the mistress Sylvania most convincingly as she eyed through dripping panes her stumbling rogues make hay of the Ladies gardens.

"Leave me" wailed the statesman, forgetting her carriage house apartment was not his drawing room. With the night’s burning of Havana tobacco and bayberry whale oil, it had come just so. Swimming in the watered whiskey he kept for scoundrels would not quench the burning beneath his wig. Was this the cost of secreting away his navy to better fill his coffers?

On sea legs, Phaestus, Gallagher, and lo, even the rapier boned creature, rolled, trod, and tramped through treasures only a traveled botanist might surmise: bewildering paintings made of sirupy fruits and flowers that ate giant bees and spit dreams into people for the pleasure of the guests to Lady Harbinger’s masquerade garden concert balls.

"He shan’t have m’cutlass, as mark to his men t’was I there besieging his stores." bellowed Phaestus. "M’hat, t’will be, for I could make another of that. He drummed a marching tune on his trousers and took to howling."

Gallagher, who’s eyes rarely reached the horizon bot an eyeglass from a perch, beheld the grand key in his charge. "I say we smelt it" once upon dowsing the Guv’nor’s powder store.

"The bloody sun is in your eyes. Bend or scratch it; ‘Tis clearly iron as the bars it will open. No, this will live in me best box as testament for the tale-tellers when I go gloriously into my last battle, accompanied by a symphony of cannon fire from a vast armada, only to die in the love lost embrace of a wench with a poisoned dagger, for the reason that some forgotten son of mine should take my helm, and quarters, and good fortune. For this day it is that you keep my maps and logs, lest I lose my memories. And erstways, yet behold, to that purpose as well, is it that I have secreted Lord Harbinger’s exquisite quill, which is indeed wrought of gold. It is a lovely souvenir to this occasion and our cock’s blood witnessing." He savoured his tongue about it, where upon it caught like a fish. He hunched, amidst his garbled and wreched cursing to be clear of his spittle, now riddling his beard in red blood, tobacco chaw, and an acrid ink of india as tears came from his eyes.

Phaestus held a shorn piece of stocking wrap to his ramshackle tongue. "Let not the men know of this key. I’ll gather them at our stilt shanty in Black Swan’s lagoon. Rest thee some, and drinkn’t much, I pray thee, but leave some sun to scout out errant guards in the keep, most especially those at the Guv’nors flagship. His trusted traitors will wear white sashes, but they are still no party to us, but to foil the vessels defenses. Attack only when attacked was our word and we shall keep it, lest they raise pistols or muskets, then not be burdened with mercy. Leave map of their battlements in our oarboat for my review. Oh, what a glorius fleet I shall have. And what a knave the Guv’nor is to think that I would take but half his ships to profiteer for him. God’s ivory, that schooner is a goddess I tell thee. She has a true masthead that rivals Athena, that’s the first sailors goddess, mind thee, as if surely the pyres of Rhodes (or were it the ports of Thebes?) burn in her bosom. I hear tale her sextants are hammered in gold and the stateroom has portals of stained glass. Her guns will sing, sing I tell you, not like the Guv’nors musicians playing to his exiled aristocrat’s, not even like the piper’s at King James’s dirge, but as the planets would sing in battle with the stars."

Gallagher had penny-whistled a note or twain when Phaestus rejoined "Just before day’s last shadow bring a rank of men to meet our show of a siege at the gunners battlement. Have them carry pairs of pistols, one just with powder at their sinister hand, and the other with powder and shot at their dexter hand. Now adieu." "Why standest thee there? Have I not made something mindful?"

"Why, your hat of course" durst guffaw Gallagher, Orion twinkling in his eyes.

"Grrr.. " rumbled Phaestus, handing him the embroidered trefoil cap, upon which Gallagher bounded and frolicked lickety split o’er hill and dale like a leprechaun, leaving his master alone to trod the quagmire, draw from his pipe, and wash his mouth with a hip flask of bourbon. His mind drifted to flotsam and jetsam, like the carving of a walking stick of cherry, perhaps even ivory, now that the spirited lift of his skipper had diminished, but ebbed back necessarily to the work at hand, tactical planning for the vesper siege of the naval yard. A blood moon that had crossed Venus sunk below the edge of the world. It was an omen of victory he imagined, and imagined rightly, though he couldn’t see that t’was Venus that was his own star, that he was for the time present but a pawn to his mistress, truly Gallagher’s mistress, the Governor’s poison, the blood moon harpist Lady Sylvania Pickthorn.