Another floating corpse was sighted, too far off to starboard to be visible from the deck, but the one that the lookout had seen bobbing ahead was hooked as it slipped past the bow. The sea birds squawked angrily as the floater was lifted out of the sea and dragged aboard.

"Saints preserve us!" exclaimed one of the men who lowered the sopping corpse to the deck. "It's Georgie de Burgo!"

"We're on the fat boy's track, right enough," said Davies flatly,

starting forward. "De Burgo was one of the dozen men that were aboard the Carmichael when she was moored."

Davies was clearing a way through the crowd on the deck by cuffing men out of his way, and Shandy hurried along behind him before the path could close again. He was wishing he'd got a better look at the corpse he'd seen tumbling away in the wake, and he was torturing himself by trying to remember whether the cloth the thing had been wrapped in was the same color as the cotton shift Beth had been wearing when he'd seen her last.

By the time Davies and Shandy got to the bow the crowd had begun parting for them, and Shandy was able to glimpse de Burgo's corpse while he was still several steps away from it, and it was this moment of preparation that probably saved the contents of his stomach, for Georgie de Burgo's head had been all but cut free of his body by what seemed to have been one stroke of some very sharp and very heavy blade.

Shandy was staring down in queasy fascination at the thing when the lookout yelled again. "And another one to port!"

"Put him back over the side," said Davies tightly, turning back toward the stern.

He and Shandy didn't speak until they had elbowed their way back to the tiller and their eerie navigator. "I think," said Davies then, "we can assume that he's killed all twelve and heaved 'em over the side. I can't imagine how, but that's not the main mystery."

"Right," said Shandy, squinting at the empty blue horizon ahead. "Who's he got crewing for him?"

For a full minute neither of them spoke, then Shandy glanced to starboard at the Spanish galleon. "Uh ... Phil? Didn't you say we're faster than that Spaniard?"

"Hm? Oh, certainly, on her best day and our worst." Davies too looked to starboard - then froze, staring, for the galleon had moved well ahead of the Jenny. "God's teeth," he muttered, "that's not possible."

"No," Shandy agreed. "Neither's the fact that she's leaving no visible wake at all."

Davies stared for a few more seconds, then called for a telescope. One was brought, and for a long minute he peered through it at the receding galleon. "Get the men busy," he said finally, lowering the glass. "At anything, mending line, hoisting and lowering sails, man-overboard drill, even - -just keep their attention off that Spaniard."

"Aye aye, Phil," said the mystified Shandy, hurrying forward.

He assigned so many jobs so quickly that one man who had been furtively smoking a pipe - forbidden aboard ship - managed in the confusion to ignite a puddle of Mr. Bird's rum and set half the bow ablaze; greasy hair and tarry clothes sprang into flame and a dozen suddenly burning men, hooting in alarm, went rolling and diving over the rail.

Shandy instantly ordered the helmsman to come about, and within minutes Davies' constant drilling had paid off - the fire was out, and the men in the water were all dragged back aboard before any of them had time to drown. After the excitement had died down and Shandy had had time to catch his breath and gulp some of the surviving rum, he went back to the stern. Hurwood, though he had probably protested when the Jenny came around, was staring silently into his wooden box again, and when Shandy looked ahead he saw that the Spaniard was by nowjust an irregular white fleck on the southern horizon.

"When I said to keep them busy," Davies began, "I didn't mean ... "

"I know, I know." Shandy scratched at a scorched area of his beard and then leaned back against the taut shroud and looked at Davies. "So why? Just so they wouldn't notice the lack of a wake?"

"Partly that. But more important, I didn't want any of these lads to get a chance to turn a glass on her stern and read her name. She's the Nuestra Senora de Lagrimas," he said thoughtfully. "You may not have heard of her, but probably half of these men know her story. She was carrying gold from Veracruz and had the misfortune to meet an English privateer, the Charlotte Bailey. A couple of the Englishmen survived to tell about it. Terrible sea battle - lasted four hours - and both ships went to the bottom." He looked over at Shandy and grinned. "This was in 1630."

Shandy blinked. "Nearly a century ago."

"Right. You know anything about raising ghosts?"

"Not really - though the way things've been going I think I'll have it down pat long before I really understand sailing."

"Well, I'm no expert at it myself, but I do know it ain't easy. Even to get a misty, half-wit casting of a dead person takes a lot of sorcerous power." He waved ahead. "And here somebody's raised the entire damned de Lagrimas - sails, timber, paint and all, and crew too, to judge by the way she's handling, solid enough to look no different from a real ship, and in bright sunlight at that."

"Leo Friend?"

"I kind of think so. But why?"

Shandy glanced at Hurwood. "I'm afraid we'll probably find out." And I hope, he thought fervently, that he's been too busy - what with murdering pirates and conjuring up ghost ships - to visit his attentions on Beth Hurwood.

Chapter Seventeen

From where she crouched in the corner of the cabin Beth Hurwood could see only disjointed segments of Leo Friend's mincing advance across the deck toward her, for he had shut the door behind himself when he came in, and the only light in the cabin was the quick, regular blue-sky-flash of a bulkhead window that kept appearing and disappearing, evidently in time to the fat man's heartbeat.

She had awakened at dawn to find herself walking down the chilly sand slope toward a boat that rocked in the shallows. When she had seen Leo Friend sitting in it and grinning at her she had tried to stop walking, but couldn't; then she tried to slant her course away from the boat, and couldn't do that either, and was not even able to slow her pace as she waded helplessly out into the icy water and clambered into the boat. She had tried to speak then, but hadn't been able to tense her vocal cords or open her mouth. The boat surged out past the breakers toward where the dim silhouette of the Vociferous Carmichael stood; the ride out to the ship had taken only a minute or so, during which time Friend never touched the loosely dragging oars and Beth never managed to move a muscle.

Tags: Tim Powers Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net