Chapter 240: Congratulations

Chapter 240: Congratulations

Woodrat noticed immediately when Ozzy came on deck for his next shift. To the captain, it was obvious that Ozzy had moved to the third tier. He clapped his mate on the back, shook his hand, and congratulated him. "I'm a couple of leagues behind you, but a few more adventures, and I'll catch up."

The rest of the crew waited for him to come down to the lower deck and congratulated him one by one. Butterbelly grabbed the Butcher, gave him a bear hug, and patted him on the head. "Keep growing; I want you at least two feet taller by the time you meet my family." Mariah whirled around him and then gave him a deep bow before racing to the top of the mast where Derek was on lookout.

The young man leaped from the crow's nest, drawing his sword. As he was about to land hard and break a leg, winds swirled from his blade, slowing his descent. Landing, he sheathed his blade and gave Ozzy a smart salute. "You don't have a deck of your own, but I can tell by looking at you that you will stand on one soon."

Woodrat allowed the crew some time to congratulate his first mate and then yelled for their attention. "We'll have another little party tonight. But for now, let's get back to work. Mariah, I want you and Derek to check the navigation and switch the lookout each hour. I want fresh eyes up there. The course I've set is back along the route Mr. Ozzy and I took to get to the salad. We left the Dauntless behind while we went whale-surfing, and I'd like to find out what happened to her. She's a well-built ship with a strong crew. You could have survived."

The crew went about their duties, and Ozzy joined Woodrat on the bridge. "You think they made it?"

Woodrat shook his head slowly and shrugged. "I can't say. That was one hell of an eruption. You and I survived the heat because of strange circumstances. Dauntless certainly had captains about who could put shields on the ship, but the blow-up was so sudden, it might have took them by surprise. Their sails were in tatters, and the crew was scrambling to clear broken chains and relight the sails. If the right people survived the first part of the eruption, they might still be on the smoke. Or she might be a ghost ship full of charred."

"And since then, this blasted heat has made life difficult. Half our crew would have been dead with burst furnaces if you hadn't pulled out the excess heat. If Dauntless isn't a ghost ship by now, she's bound to have a lot of ailing crew."

Ozzy looked out over the smoke. The surface was still choppy, with big swells rippling out from the eruption. There was more time between the waves, but they were getting larger. "How long does the sea stay like this?"

Woodrat looked in the direction of eruption, just over the horizon. A glow lit up the area, and an angry rumble now and then. "This is a big one, but I think it's subsiding. It's still pouring out some heat but it will go away in a month or two. But the damage to the smoke has been done. Things are too damned hot. The little fish have run for cover, and the big stuff is dying off or being eaten by bigger things. And if the monsters from the deep wake up, everyone has problems. Well, everyone who doesn't have a fast ship as we do."

He made the mistake of looking at the notification, and it almost got him thrown overboard as Captain Woodrat turned the helm hard over to starboard. He didn't trust grabbing ahold of the rail as he fell and instead reached out to the mast. His chain tattoo became a thick chain that shot out and wrapped around the mast. He grumbled under his breath and made sure to turn off notifications.

The smoke boiled up and three humongous tentacles, each bigger than the Splinter, broke the surface. One of them made a grab for the ship, but the sudden turn and burst of speed allowed the ship to escape by a distance of a few feet. "Top off the sails, Mr. Ozzy. I need all the speed we can get. Butterbelly! I want two staysails set at the bow as soon as the first mate has the jib sail heated. Mariah! Make sure the chains are set correctly for the top sail. It will be hard enough for the first mate to light it, and I don't trust him moving around up top."

Ozzy carefully moved forward to where he could heat the jib sail. As soon as that was done, he moved back to the mast and looked up. "Stay put, Derrek! I don't want to hit you". He threw the Trammelian Chain hard, and the end wrapped around the top of the mast. He ran up the chain ladder as fast as possible, keeping the tension on his safety chain tight. The ladder had taken some time to create. Every bit of it was done with a Kraken weave and could support even Butterbelly's weight. Derek was looking in all directions and calling directions to the captain. Mariah was hovering in mid-air, looking almost transparent.

"Clear the sail!" Both of his crewmates were well clear, but Captain Woodrat wanted a tight ship run, part of which meant a safety warning before you spewed out enough heat to char a man. The top sail was only a fraction of the size of the main sail, but he needed to use enough heat to both create it and bring it to full. Hanging by his chain and feet on the ladder, he breathed out fire that filled the area between the chains, the sail glowing brighter and brighter as he added more heat.

Mariah was observing. "She's full; back off the heat and head down." She was glancing worriedly around the ship. Ozzy also paused to look and saw several more denizens of the deep emerge from the smoke. "What are those, Derek? Kraken?"

The lookout nodded, but his attention was on the smoke. "Aye, Kraken. Big ones from down deep. That first one almost got us. I can't identify them, but it doesn't matter. Any one of them could crack us open and eat us for breakfast. Somehow, we are drawing their attention."

"Captain! Look to the Skye. We've got more trouble coming!" Mariah was pointing to Skye.

Against the grey-white of the Skye, a dozen titanic cyclones could be seen dropping towards the smoke. Each was bright blue.

Ozzy had dropped down to the deck and moved to where woodrat was chained to the poop deck. "We have trouble, Mr. Ozzy. One of the greatest terrors of the smoke; it's going to rain."