The waves crashed upon a smooth, gently-sloping beach. The mid-afternoon sun hung in a cloudless sky, the summer heat tempered by a cool breeze that blew in from the sea. Just beyond the reach of the breakers, a pair of green-backed peckers darted to and fro, poking their narrow snouts into the wet sand, searching for edible bits of sea life. Further up, the beach was littered with the debris of high tide: mats of seaweed, driftwood, dead fish, the detritus of the shipping lanes. Beyond that, the wreck of a two-masted dhow rested among a cluster of boulders, a wide furrow in the sand leading from the high-tide line to the broken stern.
Nothing moved around the wreck but another pair of peckers, which froze when an unnatural groan issued from a nearby pile of kelp, thongweed, and bladderwrack. The pile stirred, groaned again, then begain to rise. The fox tod buried beneath the seaweed climbed to his hands and knees, then cast off the leafy blanket and stood. Brushing sand out of his russet fur, he surveyed the beach and the wreck.
“Sheesh.” He ran a hand through his prominent forelock, and sand trickled onto his snout. He began searching the nearby piles, similar to the one he’d been covered by, looking for his companions. They’d all been held captive aboard the dhow after their own vessel had sunk, but had managed to free themselves and overpower their captors, although they’d caused significant damage to the ship in the process.
Portia caused it, he reminded himself. The rest of us didn’t do anything at all, stuck down in the slave hold. He would not panic yet, not after what they’d all endured, but his search carried an urgency that an everyday beachcomber’s could never have. “Hello!” he called out. “Dozer? Stillwell? Are you there? Portia? Sashi? Anybody?”
A head appeared above the dhow’s ruined stern, the broad bovine face and horns of Vacamar, their former employer and then their fellow captive aboard the ship, when it had been crewed by slavers. “Ahoy, Mister Yerzle!” the sailor called out. “Up here!”
“Vacamar! Have you seen anyone else?”
“There’s a rope ladder on the port side,” the former captain said. “Get yourself up here!”
The bull had not answered Yerzle’s questions, but he followed the directions and hauled himself up the lines. As he topped the gunnel, he noted with some exasperation that Vacamar reclined in a chaise lounge, his sleeves and trouser legs rolled up, with several other empty lounge chairs beside him on the deck. A brightly-colored pavilion shaded him from the sun, and a small table crowded with several large bottles stood amidst the other furniture. “Catching some sun, are you?” he asked.
“I was,” Vacamar said, a bottle in his hand. “It got pretty hot, though, so I moved into the shade. There’s not much else to do, right now. Mister Pauly is in the galley, getting the rest of the buffet prepared.”
“Buffet?”
Vacamar nodded and took a pull from his bottle. “Those slavers had all sort of loot stored aboard this tub. Food, liquor, clothing, weapons, you name it! The salvage on this will set me up fine!” He took another drink.
“What about the others?” Yerzle asked, and Vacamar gestured towards the bow with his bottle, indicating three of his friends clustered around the stump of the foremast, then took another swig.
“Yerzle!” Stillwell called out to him as he approached the group. His elephant bulk was sunk deep into a deck hammock. “You made it!”
“To find the rest of you drinking rum and sunbathing while I was passed out on the beach,” Yerzle grumbled. “Was I the only one who fell overboard when we ran aground?”
“Sashi pitched over the bow just afore we hit the rocks,” Dozer said, turning from where he and the rat were examining something upon the deck. “Me and Vacamar had to haul him aboard, so that we could all pull Stillwell up.”
Yerzle turned to Stillwell. “Why? What happened to you?”
“He rolled forward into the fo’c’sle when we ran aground,” Sashi explained, his long naked rat’s tail lashing back and forth. “That’s where we found the hatch to the larder, and the shuffleboard supplies.” Looking over Sashi’s shoulder, Yerzle could see the lines of a shuffleboard court marked out upon the deck, and tangs and biscuits scattered about.
Yerzle grimaced. “So you decided to play shuffleboard instead of looking for me? Nice to know I inspire such loyalty. So, where’s Portia?”
“She’s resting below,” Stillwell said. “We didn’t forget about you, we just had bigger problems. First, they had to pull me out of the fo’c’sle compartment.”
“Then the shuffleboard?”
“No,” said Dozer. “Then, we had to set the big lug up in the hammock, since he busted his leg in the fall.”
“Really?” Yerzle asked. He belatedly noticed that the bull elephant’s right leg was propped up on large pillows and splinted with a shuffleboard tang. “How’s it feel?”
Stillwell raised a large golden goblet with a small paper umbrella poking out of the top. “The mai tais help,” he said. “I can’t walk, though. That’s not because of the mai tais,” he added hastily.
“It doesn’t appear to be a serious break,” Sashi said. “On the other hand, he’s got a lot of meat between the skin and the bone, so I can’t be entirely sure.”
“I get to use a tang as a crutch!” Stillwell called out. “Also, I’m running low on crushed ice!”
“Mister Pauly is steward fer now,” Dozer reminded Stillwell as he practiced his launching technique on the court. “I reckon you can bring that up when he comes by next.”
“So you were delayed a bit,” Yerzle said, exasperated. “But you still didn’t come looking for me.”
“Well,” Stillwell said, “after hauling all the equipment out, it seemed like a waste to not make better use of it, so we were organizing a shuffleboard tournament. Then, you showed up. So, problem solved, right?”
These were the sorts of conversations that always made Yerzle’s blood pressure rise. “You got somethin in yer eye?” Dozer asked, scratching his chin. “It’s started makin a funny little twitch.”
Yerzle sighed and silently counted to ten. “Never mind,” he said. “I want to talk with Portia.”
“She’s restin,” Dozer said. “Gettin us ashore took a lot out of her. You might want to let her be, for now.”
“I’ll just look in. If she’s sleeping I’ll be right back.”
“We put her in a nook below the forward hatch,” Sashi told him, pointing it out just behind Stillwell’s hammock. “The fore is separated from the aft slave pen.”
“Thanks.” Yerzle opened the hatch and descended into the gloom of the dhow’s lower deck.
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