Many days later, Dogger Scatt took the United Council Land’s ship, The Puddle Bat, out of the Quidmaiden harbor, and set her racing in the breeze through the open sea.
Scatt was a last minute addition to the crew, after Doctor Pennocker was hastily relieved of his duties as chief navigator; the Doctor was perfectly sound in his theory of navigation, but when it came to turning the large oaken wheel in the right direction at the right time he was woefully inadequate. His first attempt had sent the prow of the ship into a bagfish barge, slicing that vessel in half like an overripe cheese, depositing the bagfish – an excellent fertilizer if buried deep enough – into the waters of the bay, where they emitted a stink that, as Pothouse Annie described the scene later to her friends, “made the young maidens swoom and caused infanks to turn somersaults.”
Dogger Scat had seen the spectacle from shore, where he was lounging and swapping stories with other idled sailors; he quickly rowed a scow out to the stricken barge, to make sure no one was drowning – no one was – and then rowed straight on to The Puddle Bat, which was now headed for some elderly warehouses on the docks that would not have stood the shock of a direct collision. Once close enough Scatt grabbed a trailing line to climb up on deck. He sprinted up to the pilot deck to eject the befuddled Doctor; in a few moments, with a few deft turns of the wheel, he had gentled the ship and brought her to a stop. When everyone crowded round to thank him he verbally beat them off with a volley of nautical curses. He did it for his mates, not for thanks or coppers – he was blasted if he’d let a pack of land crawlers smash about and wreck everything in sight in his home port.
That’s when Captain Strangeheart decided to offer him the Chief Navigator’s job. In reply, Scatt had knocked the Captain down with one blow of his fist. The Captain quickly regained his feet and replied in kind, knocking Scatt across the pilot deck into the scuppers. Scatt groggily got to his feet and waited to be sent to the blinkers, but instead the Captain had walked over to him, offered him his hand, told him they were quits, and again offered him the job of Chief Navigator. This time Dogger Scatt accepted.
Now, as the ship rose and fell with the water’s swell, a crooked smile broke out on his seamed face. These land crawlers were about to experience their first ‘seasoning’. It was a familiar drama that Scatt relished to the full whenever he chanced to see it performed. This time around he had some outstanding subjects to observe. The first one to succumb was the fat merchant; he had been strangely silent since the ship had encountered its first boisterous wave. Up until then the girthy one had been roaring and bawling suggestions and observations to everyone. Now he looked stricken. His eyes tried to focus on the distant horizon, always a serious mistake, as he slowly made his way over to the side where he struggled mightily to delay catastrophe. He mopped his brow with a fancy kerchief as large as a flag, and didn’t seem to care when the wind snatched it out of his feeble grasp. He closed his eyes, he puckered his lips, he pulled savagely on his earlobes until Scatt thought they might actually rip off. But eventually the rolling and churning of the ship became too much. Master Merdin Jernagin gave up the ghost of his past several meals to the grateful fish below.
Scatt did not see that great trull of a red-headed woman, since she chose to stay below, but he certainly could hear her melodramatic bleats as she assured one and all that her final time had come – her guts were being turned inside out.
Scatt prudently put on his oiled rain hat, as he spied members of the crew up in the rigging begin to double over and gag.
Even the Captain could not completely master his innards. Scatt watched him standing at the prow of the ship, looking pale and distracted. But he never lost his mess ticket.
The only other one completely unaffected besides himself was that piddle-headed Doctor. He came strolling up to Scatt at the wheel, enjoying a large wedge of pungent smithy cheese.
