Journal Three
I've been in traps and prisons before and I've always escaped. But this was more than a mere prison.
This was a ship. And those that have romantic notions about one have never been an unwanted guest. It took me days to get out of the hold and in that time, the Beautiful had gotten to the Trade Sea� I knew if I was found that I would most likely be hanged or something otherwise unpleasant. The fact that the Beautiful had left the Freiburg harbor so quickly without the majority of its crew made the ship easier to navigate in the only way that I knew how. But day by day, the ship seemed to get that much smaller. Land was in sight the majority of the time, but my inability to swim made it all that much more fatalistic. I was weak for several days after my escape from the hold as I had had none to eat and little to drink trapped in it. But I managed food with lapses in the crew's vigilance, and water was a bit easier. But my presence was detected by the captain almost immediately after my self release. He directed his crew on several quick searches from bow to stern of the ship. He found nothing each time but their closeness meant that I spent many a time in uncomfortable quarters. Once, I had to drop outside the captain's cabin and almost on the rudder for several hours. When the it was clear, I barely had the strength in my cold limbs to climb back on to the deck above. As for the crew, they seemed decent enough people. Considering their circumstances, I found them comfortingly down to earth. They had a healthy fear of their captain and a blissful ignorance about their journey. I played cards with them once. Or a good deal of them. Good deal. Most of the crew had taken a reprieve from the captain to drink a little ale from the ship's stores. The first mate, bosun, and several more of the crew� Using a bar trick I learned from Charese, the bartender of the Hidden Stag, I increased the potency of the ale so that these others were very drunk. Drunker than they had intended to be. There was a bit of a brawl between the bosun and the first mate, but afterwards they were blissful in their intoxication. I approached them in this state. And bravely offered to play them a few rounds of cards. Some of the crew was unconscious, but including the bosun and the first mate, there were seven sailors that made it to the table. It took several hands before the sailors in their drunken state figured out who I was. When they did, I settled the issue by noting their drunkenness as a defense. Should the captain see them in their condition now, there would be no more nights such as this one. That and I play mean game of cards. And they were very drunk. I tried to gain a bit of information from the first mate or the bosun about their cargo. They had no idea. But they thought that it was likely that they were gunrunning for the wrong side of the war. For the Montaigne. Not the Castillians. But I found out little more than what Berrin had told me in Frieburg. And after spending the entire night with them I learned little for my boldness. And I lost a few guilders as well to the bosun. Oddly enough, he had become better drink after drink. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Fortunately, on his best hand and bluff yet, which would have completely cleared me out, he finally slumped into a drunken sleep. I won a bit of my money back from the first mate, a topman, and a pair of the gunners. But in half an hour, they too were unconscious. So I was there in the first mate's cabin, with nearly half the crew slobbering at my feet, shuffling my cards, and on occasion dealing them, reflecting on how I was going to get out of this one.Return to Uncommon Valor