PIRATIANS BEGONE

Chapter two

The gold halves popped open. Saltwater had penetrated the edges of the locket, but the portrait of a young middle aged woman still smiled up at him, her eyes both shyly and merrily rebuking. Harod merely grunted at his find and put it in the pocket of his brocaded waistcoat.

“Captain you know they won't let you keep that. No one keeps anything from the Treasurers Beach,” Ragul pointed out clearly.

“Don't they?” Harod queried in return. He put a twist of amusement in his voice, to watch Ragul puzzle over whether it was self-mockery or a threat. Ragul shifted his weight surreptitiously, to put his face out of reach of his captain's fist.

“It w'hat the' yall say, sir,” he replied hesitantly. “That no one takes home what they find on the Treasurers Beach. I know for sure my uncle's friend didn't. After the Outers looked at what he'd found and told his fortune from it, he followed the Outer down the beach to this rock cliff. Probably that one. ” Ragul lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs. “And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what you call-'ems. . . . ”

“Mounds,” Harod supplied in an almost dreamy voice. “I call them Mounds, Ragul. As would you, if you could speak your own mother tongue. ”

“Yessir. Mounds. And in each was a treasure, save for those that were empty. And the Outer let him walk along tie cliff wall and look at all the treasures, and there was stuff there such as he'd never even imagined. Rear fine tuned teacups done all in fancy rosebuds and gold wine cups rimmed with jewels and little wooden toys all painted bright and, oh, a hundred things such as you can't imagine, each in a mound. Sir. And then he found an alcove the right size and shape, and he put the butterfly lady in it. He told my uncle that nothing ever felt quite so right to him as setting that little treasure into that nook. And then he left it there, and left the Islandes and went home. ”

Harod cleared his throat. The single noise conveyed more of contempt and disdain than most men could have fitted into an entire stream of a***e. Ragul looked aside and down from it. “It was him that said it, sir, not me. ” He tugged at the waist of his worn trousers. Almost reluctantly he added, “The man is a bit of an otherworldly dreamer. Gives a seventh of all that comes his way to Sakiy's temple, and both his eldest children besides. Such a man don't think as we do, sir. ”

“When you think at all, Ragul,” the captain concluded for him. He lifted his pale eyes to look far towards the tide line, squinting slightly towards the side as the morning sun dazzled off the moving waves. “Take yourself up to your swaying cliffs, Ragul, and walk along them. Bring me whatever you might find there. ”

“Yessir. ” The older Piratians trudged away. He gave one rueful backward glance at his young captain. Then he clambered agilely up the short bank to the deeply grassed tableland that fronted on the beach. He began to walk a parallel course, his eyes scanning the bank ahead of him. Almost immediately, he had spotted something. He sprinted toward it, then lifted an object that flashed in the morning sunlight. He raised it up to the light and gazed at it, his seamed face lit with awe. “Sir, sir, you must see what I've found!”

“I might be able to, did you bring it here to me as you were commanded,” Harod observed irritably.

Like a dog called to it's heel, Ragul made his way back to the captain. His brown eyes shone with a youthful sparkle, and he clutched the treasure in both hands as he leaped nimbly down the man-height drop to the beach. His low shoes kicked up sand as he ran. A brief frown creased Harod's brow as he watched Ragul advancing towards him. Although the old sailor was prone to fawn over time on him, he was no more inclined to share the finds/bounty than any Outer man of his trade. Harod had not truly expected Ragul willingly to bring to him anything he found on the gravel bank; in fact he had been rather anticipating divesting the man of his trove at the end of their stroll. To have Ragul hastening toward him, his face beaming as if he were a country yanky bringing his beloved baggage to the yanks, was positively unsettling.

Nevertheless Harod retained his customary sarcastic smile, not allowing his face to betray his thoughts. It was a carefully rehearsed posture that suggested the languid gravel of a hunting Lioness. It was not just that his greater height allowed him to look down on the seamen. By capturing his face in a pose of amusement, he suggested to his followers that they were incapable of surprising him. He wished his crew to believe that he could anticipate not only their every move, but their thoughts, too. A crew that believed that of their captain was less likely to become mutinous; and if they did, no one would wish to be the first to act.

And so he kept his poise as Ragul raced across the sand to him. Moreover, he did not immediately snatch away the treasure from him, but allowed the man to hold it out to him while he, Harod, gazed down at it in amusement.