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LucasArts Fiction

CHAPTER 8: BECALMED

I woke with a start, the scream dying on my lips.
The room was quiet, and still. Dad was gone. Wendy was gone. But the water was still here, a thin dirty layer of brine. Most of the stuff in the room was damp.
I got up and walked through the passage. Most of the water was gone from here, though the walls still had a sheen of water on them.
Dad and Wendy were both on deck. Wendy was making measurements of direction and speed. There wasn't much point really. We weren't moving.
The air was dead and still, the sky above a coppery colour. Even the waves were slack. We just bobbed up and down on the surface of the ocean.
Even if there had been some wind, we were in no position to take advantage of the fact. The sails were torn. One of them had blown off altogether.
The job was ahead of us.
That day me and Dad put our energies to fixing the sails, getting the rigging back up, and cleaning out the above deck area. This took us until sundown. We looked hopefully at the horizon, but there were no clouds, and no wind.
The day after that we went below deck and surveyed the damage. Most of the rooms were waterlogged. They smelt worse than ever. Fortunately all of Wendy's measurements and charts were dry. Funnily enough, so was my first mate's log.
The storeroom, down below, was leaking in several places. We set to with metal spikes and boards and got the worst of them fixed. Some of our food was ruined, which we tossed overboard, but most of it was okay.
But there was no wind. That day, or the next. And for many days to come. Our ship was stuck in the doldrums. We barely moved. Wendy's recordings, starting out as nice long lines, became short dots.
Worst of all, during the day there was simply nothing to do. Wendy coped with this fine - she had her books to study. Peepers probably got along all right, too. But I was bored out of my brain. And I don't think it was good for Dad, either, standing on deck or up in the crow's nest, looking out to sea.
The days got longer and the days got hotter. And now our food supplies were starting to run out. Our meals got smaller, day by day. They were barely enough. Even though I didn't have to do any work, I felt tired all the time. Even Wendy began to look weary.
Peepers was the only thing that kept me sane. I played with her on the deck, and we fantasised about large fish dinners. Eventually I decided to do something about it. The ship was barely moving - why not try and catch a fish?
I got a fishing rod from below deck, and some scraps of meat - nearly all we had left. I cast the line out to sea, then me and Peepers waited patiently.
After a short while, there was a tug on the line. I reeled it in, and on the end of my line was a medium-sized fish, with a pinkish hue. I pulled him off the hook and tossed him down, still flapping, to Peepers. Peepers stopped the fish's thrashing with one paw, then tore into it. In just a few minutes she had it licked down to the bone.
Following this discovery, me and Dad spent most of our time fishing. We eventually hooked enough to last us a while, but Wendy stuck to her guns and just ate food from the storeroom.
She seemed even quieter than usual. I don't think I've ever been worried about her before, but I was now. Then one night, just as we were going to bed, she surprised me - and Dad too, probably - by asking him to tell her a story.
"A story eh?" said Dad. "Let's see... have you ever heard the tale of Raw Throat Hugo?"
"Raw Throat Hugo?" said Wendy.
"That was his name," said Dad. "Raw Throat Hugo was a pirate. One of the fearsomest, most deadly pirates on the sea."
"Why was he called Raw Throat Hugo?" I asked.
"Because he yelled at everybody," said Dad. "He yelled so much, and so often, that his whole throat got infected, and it went all red and raw."
Wendy made a disgusted face.
"Raw Throat Hugo sailed one of the fastest ships on the sea - so fast that nobody could catch him. It was called the Quo Vadis. He and his pirate crew looted towns, sacked ships, and built up so much booty that they couldn't fit it all on the one ship. So they buried it on desert islands, as far from civilisation as possible. He was the most wanted man on the high seas, and nobody could stop him - until twenty years later."
"How did they stop him?" I asked.
"The one person who wanted Raw Throat Hugo stopped more than anything was the Spanish Governor. So he went and found the man who built the Quo Vadis and told him to build another ship, exactly the same. One year later it was finished. They called it the Que Sera."
I sat bolt upright. Wendy raised her head. Dad was smiling at us.
"The Spanish Governor decided to sail after Raw Throat Hugo himself. So he got together a huge crew, and they sailed out to the seas. They visited all the ports Raw Throat Hugo had pillaged most recently, and heard rumour that he was going to attack Port au Paris. They got there just in time to see the Quo Vadis pulling out of the harbour. Raw Throat Hugo sailed away, and the chase was on."
"Who won?" I asked.
"Well, the ships were supposed to have been exact in every way," said Dad. "So neither of them should have won. But the Que Sera was built from better materials, and it travelled faster. After forty-eight hours, it was close enough to fire its cannons. One of the shots struck the Quo Vadis, and it stopped right there. The Que Sera ran forward, right to the side of the Quo Vadis, and then there was a horrible battle, with swords and guns. Half of the people battling were dead, when all of a sudden a terrible storm came out of nowhere and drove the ships apart. The Que Sera barely made it back to port in one piece, and the Quo Vadis was never heard of again."
"What happened to it?" I asked.
Dad shrugged. "Sunk, they supposed. In any case, that was the last the world ever heard of Raw Throat Hugo."
"Is that story really true?" said Wendy.
Dad nodded. "It is, actually. I was pretty amazed myself."
"But this ship doesn't have cannons," I said.
"It does," said Dad. "They're stowed away in one of the holding rooms. I kept them locked in case you did something with the gunpowder. I'll show you it tomorrow."
"Why not now?" I said.
"Because it's too late," said Dad.
Wendy seemed to be thinking about something. "Maybe Raw Throat Hugo's still alive," she said softly.
"Of course he isn't," said Dad. "This all happened over three hundred years ago. Even if he survived the storm, he'd be dead by now. Don't worry about him." And he left, closing the door behind him.