Stone

Chapter 50 – the Challenge

Jason stared at the muscular chest of the 42-year-old man facing him on the deck. Both were naked to the waist, but the boy had the chest of a child, while the master had the muscles of a man who had spent over 35 years hauling lines and hoisting sales. This might not be a good thing, Jason thought. A knife fight would have been fairer, with Jason able to go into battle mode, but the rules of the contest were bare fists.

The master made the first move, arms outstretched as he ran at the boy, nearly leaping at him. He hoped to pin the boy and end this early. But when he dove, the boy was not there. Jason had ducked and was inside the man’s arms before he could seize him. The boy struck out with all his might, hitting the mate on a shoulder.

Shit, Jason thought. That hurt my hand more than it hurt him. Something else was in order. Jason had experience fighting bigger boys when he was younger, defending Emily, but never a man before in a real fight. On the trips around the Green Valley, Kalosun had taught the boy Kithren fighting, and Jason had learned many tips. The master was not fighting in the Kithren style. Most ships before the Sun Goddess had a partially white crew, and it was considered wrong to fight Kithren style in front of whites, so sailors tended to fight only with white techniques.

The master leapt again, and Jason dodged again, not bothering to hurt his fist on the sweaty muscles facing him. This continued for another 15 minutes, with the master jumping and the boy dodging. Finally, Jason felt the foremast at his back, and smiled. The master took the smile as a taunt, and furiously ran at the boy, who dodged again. But this time there was a foot-thick mast behind him, and the master crashed into it, smashing his face into the wood. The man was groggy now, but Jason still didn’t see any hope of an offensive move. Worse, when the master’s eyes finally cleared, it was certain that he was no longer planning to pin Jason. There was a murderous gleam in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“Stand still, you little bugger,” the master screamed as he ran on Jason again. This time the boy dropped to his back in a last-ditch effort. Either this worked, or he would be dead. The master had sped up but was not expecting his foe to drop on his own. As he flew over Jason, the boy grabbed the man’s shoulders, and the master managed to finally grab the boy’s arms, making a squeak of glee.

But Jason planted his feet onto the thighs of the man and kicked out with all his power. The master flew into the air until he was upside down. His momentum, and the force from Jason caused him to flip in mid-air and he came down on his back with a thud. A split-second later his head crashed into the oak deck with a sickening sound. Of course, the master’s hands had left Jason as he flipped.

Jason rolled over and looked to see the unconscious man on the deck and then crawled over and put his hand on the mate’s shoulder. After a second someone in the crowd shouted “ten” and soon every man on the deck was counting down to zero, at which point they erupted in amazed glee that the boy had beaten the man.

The captain, standing on the forecastle with the other officers, announced Jason the winner, and the crew carried him on their shoulders onto the steps to the forecastle, which would now be Jason’s territory as a mate. The captain hugged the boy and proclaimed him second mate, by conquest.

Jason only spent a few minutes on the forecastle before coming down to the deck to thank all the men, one at a time, for supporting him in the contest. The master had been carried away to Kalosun at sick bay without regaining consciousness. Finally, the boy regained enough calm to head to his little closet where he crawled into his hammock and was deeply asleep. He had missed a lot of sleep over the past few days, and at midnight he would be in command of the ship.

Kookla woke Jason just before noon. The boy sent the smaller boy to wake Kull, the master on Jason’s shift, and then find Kertle, the master of the evening shift, who was off duty, but probably not sleeping. He asked for both the men to come up to the aft map room. On the way there Jason saw Kilmer, the man he had fought the night before. “I’m giving a lesson on navigation to the other masters. I thought you might like to join them.”

“You thought wrong. I want nothing to do with you, pipsqueak. I have work to do.”

Jason ignored the mean-spirited slight and headed up to the map room, arriving just as the other masters arrived.

“It’s a quarter hour to noon,” Jason said. “I want to teach you how to make sightings with the sextants and then calculate our position from them. Of course, we won’t be accurate at this time. You need to sight at noon sharp to do that. But the sextants are free now and won’t be at noon when the captain and first mate come to take their readings.”

For the next few minutes Jason showed the men how to take sightings, a refresher from when Captain Snow was running his little evening school. As the men were finishing up Kalso went to the sun dial behind the map room and rotated the sundial so that it was aligned north. “Three minutes to noon,” he announced.

He and the captain picked up their sextants, and Jason took his. When Kalso announced “noon” the three of them took their sightings. Then all five men started doing their calculations, with Jason also helping the masters, who seemed to have trouble with the math. Both the captain and Jason finished early, and plotted their pins to a near identical point, about an inch from where they had been yesterday. Kalso finished up soon after and plotted to the identical spot. “Good job,” Jason commended, and the first mate was proud that he hadn’t located the ship 100 miles onto dry ground again. The two masters were not so lucky, with one a half inch from the three correct pins, and the other on land again.

“It isn’t easy,” Jason said. “You would be a bit off by taking your sightings early. Let’s go through the math and see where you went wrong.” It turned out that Kertle had made an error in his math early, and thus was far off. Kull made a mistake later in the calculations, and as a result was only a bit off.

It had taken nearly an hour to run the master’s through the exercise, including having the masters make a second reading and calculating again. The masters were dismissed from the map room, and only the captain and his two mates remained.

“It looks like we made seven leagues since yesterday,” Captain Keenmoon said. “That is about a seventh of the distance back to Westport. We seem to have a week’s sailing after that storm.”

“It might be less,” Jason noted. “We only had two masts up for much of the day yesterday, and then we only had partial sails on the yardarms. The Gerry-rig seems to be holding, and we should be able to put on more sail today. As well, we will be able to tack into the wind better as the storm moves on. If we do that it might only be five or six days to port.”

“Good point,” Keenstone said. “You know Jason, I called you to the wheelhouse yesterday to ask who you thought would make a good second mate. You seem to have a good feel for the men. When you fixed our navigation problems, it was clear to me that you were the right man, even if you are still a boy.”

“Well, thank you,” the boy said. “But I want to check on the main mast before you throw more sails on it. See how it is making out.”

The ship’s carpenter was doing the same thing. “It’s holding up well,” the older man said. “Captain was clever in not putting much sail on it last night as the storm was dying out. It should be able to take full sails in today’s lighter winds. I would worry if we hit another hurricane, but we should be in port before one hits. Personally, I think that last one will be the final storm of the season. How far is port?”

“Five to seven days,” Jason said.

“Well then we should see whalers coming out as we go in,” the carpenter opined. “They’ve been idle for a couple months now and will be wanting to start making money again: crews and shipowners both.”

Jason’s next stop was sick bay. The seaman still in residence was awake now and griping mightily at having nearly his whole body in a cast. Kalosun just rolled his eyes at the complaints and then shared his dinner with Jason.

“You won’t be getting out of here until we reach port, and I don’t know when that will be,” Kalo said to the complainer.

“We are five to seven more days at sea,” Jason said. “The carpenter said there will be at least a month of work in port to get the ship repaired, maybe more.” Kalo told the sailor that even if the layover was two months, he would be missing a trip or two before he got the casts off and was able to do light duty.

After eating with Kalo, Jason headed back to his hammock for more sleep. He was still way behind in needed sleep. He woke up after dark and realized that would be his new norm. At about 15 minutes to midnight he reported to the second mate and his master, with Master Kull joining him. The four men walked the entire vessel to make sure that everything was ‘ship shape’ before changing shift. All was well, and the first mate and Kertle left to head for their respective bunks.

Jason went on deck, and Kull whistled the free men to the deck. Only the steersman and the two men on watch at the front of the ship did not appear. There were only four seamen, since the ship was short staffed due to the three who had left the ship before the hurricane, and the man in sick bay. All the vacancies had been filled with men from third shift.

“This is all pretty new to me,” Jason said. “What do you all normally do on this shift?”

“Mostly we just find a comfy spot and nap until the watch change in four hours,” one of the seamen said. “It’s too dark to do much else.”

“I dunno,” Jason said. “There is a full moon and a clear sky. We should do something. Can any of you read?”

None could, including Master Kull so Jason spent the next hour giving a lesson on the alphabet, using a damp mop to write letters on the deck. After that there was an hour studying the skies, with Jason pointing out the constellations that were visible. For the last two hours of the watch, Jason quizzed the men, pointing out stars and asking the men to name the constellation and what it meant. Most constellations pointed to others, or certain directions. The Small Cap had the north star at the brim, and the two stars at the end of the Large Cap pointed out the location of the Small Cap.

After the watch three of the men relieved the steersman and the men watching the front of the ship. The other three men got the same lessons, with one seaman and Kull getting a refresher of what they had learned before.

This time when Jason finished the star lesson, one of the seamen spoke: “I appreciates the teaching, mate, but what I really wants to learn is how you managed to throw Kilmer in that fight. Seems that would be more useful to know.”

So Jason spent the next hour teaching the fundamentals of Kithren fighting. The men were upset that there was no actual fighting, since Kithren fighting involved mental exercises that the men must master first.

Dawn broke, and the men on watch went up into the nests on the mizzen mast and the main mast when it was light enough to see from those lofty perches. A few minutes before 8, the Captain appeared on deck, with his scowling master Kilmer following.

The shift-change walk-through started normally until we reached midship. That was when Kilmer pointed to the port and said: “Is that land over there?”

The other three looked immediately. They had been hoping to see land for days since the storm. But the knife strapped to Jason’s leg hummed out a warning and he looked back in time to see Kilmer flick a stack of rope onto the deck.

“No, I think it is just a low bank of clouds,” the captain said, and Kull agreed.

“Look at that mess,” Kilmer said, pointing to the mess of rope he had just caused. He pointed to a seaman standing near the gunwale: “You there, how could you let something like this go unnoticed? You’ll be lashed for that.”

“I am the mate on this shift, Master Kilmer, and I will decide who deserves a lashing”.

“It is a lashing offense, Jason,” the captain said. “At least five strokes.”

Jason sagged. The captain’s comment meant that he could not merely ignore the offense. The captain would be expecting a lashing at noon when all hands would be called to the deck. He didn’t want to make things worse between Kilmer and himself by accusing the master of causing the mess, especially when no one else had seen it. But he didn’t want to unfairly whip an innocent sailor. In five hours he would have to decide what to do.