The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [76]
As they neared the ladder to the deck, her men began to applaud and cheer. She looked up and saw that each had a small cup of rum in his hands.
“Close your eyes,” David said. He led her to the starboard edge and then told her to open wide.
When she opened her eyes, Emer didn’t know what she was looking at. At least fifteen ships surrounded them, mostly frigates like the Vera Cruz, but also several small brigs and a few enormous galleons as well. The crews on each of these ships cheered as noisily as her own, each holding up a cup of rum, toasting.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Twenty ships in all, sir. Good crews, competent officers, and four hundred guns or so.”
Emer looked at the ships, and then looked back at David. “You did this?”
“We did.” He motioned toward the crew. “The Spanish are due tomorrow or the next day. A fleet of about twenty, heavy with trade. We have two sloops tailing them, aye.”
She looked at her crew, and then back at the fleet.
“You’d better say something, sir,” David said, reaching down and squeezing her wrist.
She raised her cup and toasted her own crew first. “To the most loyal men alive! Verily! I owe you my life, I do.” Then she refilled her cup, raised it again, and turned to the new fleet. And though she knew the men on board the other ships couldn’t hear her, she said, “We’ll take the Spaniards to the sea floor, or my blood!! Arg!” She let the rum trickle from the sides of her mouth and held her fist up. The men drank as if she’d always been their captain, and they held their fists up, too.
Men brought a basket of dried meat and a crate of fruit. Similar items were brought to the decks of the other ships, and the party began.
Emer leaned against the starboard rail, searching the decks and sails of her new fleet. She asked the men for a telescope and looked from ship to ship, inspecting her new men and her new guns. She recognized a frigate from Port Royal and waved, and its captain waved back.
Then, David gave a loud order. Simultaneously, all the ships raised a single flag to the top of their mast. It was Emer’s flag—or so David had named it when he’d had women in Tortuga stitch them. It was black, with a red and orange dragon eating a one-eyed man whole. Twenty of these rose in the sea around Emer. She focused on them with her scope—and, in doing so, focused accidentally on a sailor keeping watch from his frigate’s crow’s nest.
From the side, the sailor looked familiar. And when he turned to face her, something hit her like a ton of double shot. She dropped the scope into the sea and grabbed the side of the boat with both hands. Her crew worried that she was relapsing, that the matching flags had been too much of a gesture.
But Emer wasn’t overcome with embroidery.
She yelled for another telescope, and when a sailor delivered it, she carefully focused again on the man in the crow’s nest three ships away. He waved a familiar wave— two fingers up, dancing from side to side—and she waved back, with two fingers, barely believing what was happening. David came to steady her as she began to quiver and sob hardy tears.
“What is it?” he asked.
Emer answered, “Lower a rowboat.”
“What’s the bother?” he asked again.
“Just lower the rowboat, aye, and get in it.”
When they got to the deck above the boat, tears were still streaming down Emer’s cheeks and into the sides of her wide, grinning mouth. David had never seen her so emotional. He asked, “Where am I going?”
“To meet that man, there,” she pointed. He was still waving.
“Who is it?”
“Seanie Carroll,” she answered, her voice shaky. “That’s Seanie Carroll.”
DOG FACT #7
The Pack Is the Safest Place to Be
Dogs have roamed the earth in packs for thousands of years. A pack works well for taking down big prey, which is what dogs originally did. During early domestication, the pack served to keep working dogs in order and obedient. These days,