Chapter 215: Hammocks and Carpet Tacks
Woodrat made the decision to head back to their little pile of wreckage and load up the ship's boat. A camp on the salad was too exposed a place at night and it bothered him. A group of charred sailors could attack, or a beastie from the smoke could find them, or the salad might get frisky. After a life at sea, he wasn’t comfortable without a deck under him. They made it back to the whaler as the light was starting to dim. It took very little work to rig chain to hoist up the ship’s boat above the deck. Then the two of them retired to what had been the captain's quarters. It was at least as comfortable as the decking they had been sleeping on and Woodrat intended to show his mate some things you could do with chains.
After a meal of cold shark and crunchy salad, Woodrat began a class on constructing a hammock out of chain. "There’s nothing more comfortable aboard a ship to sleep in, and using them makes it easy to fit several sailors one above the other to save space. There are endless ways to do it. Beginners tend to make a web of long strands with cross strands between them. Only the two outer chains need to be strong. The rest can be a light weave. You can tell an old hand by his hammock. Some will have a fine diamond weave where you couldn't fit a finger between the strands, and the best of us can make a weave so light and tight it looks like black broad cloth."
Woodrat produced a hammock that showed that he himself was an old hand, handling several strands of smoke at once, and quickly weaving them with his fingers like a loom, ending up with a comfortable looking bed that made Ozzy a bit jealous. He took the beginners method, making two stout chains and then many more spaced out between them with horizontal cross pieces. It didn't look like a hammock, more like something that was going to strangle him in the middle of the night. But it held him, and was a softer bed than the deck.
Woodrat woke him up in the morning with loud laughing. Ozzy's hammock had half dissolved and he woke tangled in his own ruined hammock, face down on the floor. He'd slept well at least. Ozzy dissolved the hammock, and had a question about the floor, which he had gotten a good look at when he awoke. "Why would they tack down an old rug to the floor?"
Woodrat was gnawing on a piece of shark and checking the windows that gave him a good view of the outside. Nothing was moving on the sargasso, but he saw movement around them in the smoke. He looked at where Ozzy was pointing at a worn piece of cloth that covered the floor. "Can't have a lose carpet on a ship, it would slide back and forth as the ship moved, especially in a storm, god forbid. Everything gets put down solid. A rug is for show, or to keep splinters out of a captain's toes. Some aren't as tough as you'd expect."
Ozzy pointed to the tacks that held the carpet to the wood. "I can see multiple holes in the wood, like this corner area was tacked down more than once." Woodrat saw the same, and moved quickly to grab the carpet and pull it back. The seams of a 2'x2' area of planking were obvious. "A hidden bit of stowage, how did you know? Those tack holes are mighty small."
Ozzy shrugged. "Luck. I woke up with my face planted to the deck, and when I pushed myself up, I felt the seam in the wood, running across the planks, and then got curious." He got a fingernail in one seam and pulled the wooden hatch up. Below was a pile of glittering coins. Ozzy reached in to pick one up and sprung a trap. The jawbones of a shark snapped shut on his arm and he pulled back, swearing.
Woodrat had seen such traps before and was surprised Ozzy still had a hand. His mate was bleeding smoke and in pain as the animated jaws kept chewing. Ozzy slammed his arm repeatedly at the wooden wall until he punched through the side of the hull, then moved to another wall and repeated his bashing until the jaw bones shattered. "Damn, but that hurt." He wrapped a tight weave of chain around and around his masticated wrist until he quit bleeding smoke.
Woodrat was concerned, but also curious about what was in the hidey hole besides shells. "What you got excited about are shellcoins. Shiny bits of a larger shell that's been cut up. Some of the islanders use them for trading goods. There's enough in here for quite a few days of drinking. And hopefully some other things of value. That trap you so thoughtlessly destroyed was worth far more than what it was guarding." Woodrat breathed smoke into the hole, and nothing happened. He stirred the coins with a stick taken from the wreckage Ozzy had made of the wall, and turned up a few things that he removed one by one.
"Well, I would say this bit of loot is worth at least a hand, maybe two as long as they weren't my own." He pointed to a fist sized item that had a similar look to the shellcoins. "This is a whale lure. Expensive to make, but effective if you are trying to bring up a large one from the depths. If you put enough heat into them, they sparkle and glow, but they also sing a song only the Leviathans can hear. Only a shaman of the Southern Islands knows how to make them and they charge dearly. The big chunk of oily grey soap is ambergris, or whale puke. Big whales might have several chunks in their guts, and you sometimes find it floating in the smoke. It's used to make powerful potions and delicate perfumes and is worth quite a bit."
"The last item is an odd one. That shriveled looking chunk of meat is the heart of a whale. Usually, the captain of a whaler awards that to his best harpooners or to his best mate. Eating one does something for your strength. Harpooners gain a bonus to the damage they do and I've known a couple captains that could toss bales of cargo around as well as any of their crew. It's odd it wasn't given out, but maybe the captain of this tub was greedy and wanting to sell it in port. We'll never know."
Woodrat lined up the three items. "I propose this: You take an item; I take an item. Then the third and the shells go into our chest to be split in port or used for things we both decide are needed for the ship."
Ozzy agreed. "Sounds fair. I'll take the heart. I could use some help with throwing a harpoon. You say I have to eat it?"
"Yep, eat it all. I'd suggest warming it with some heat and smoke first. It might make it less tough. And I'd do it when you have a bit of time to relax and rest. Most folk get some fierce muscle cramps after making a meal of a good whale heart."
Ozzy took him at his word on that and put the heart into his belt pouch. Woodrat cleaned out the hole of the shellcoins and made a makeshift satchel out of carpet and chain to hold it all. He handed it to Ozzy to pack. "Time to get to work. We have so many more ships to visit and loot, and maybe even find a proper boat to call our own."
Woodrat stepped out onto the deck of the whaler thinking of loot, and was totally surprised as the Kraken's tentacle wrapped around him and hoisted him into the air.
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