vaulted himself up onto the arm of the couch and stuck out his hand.
âHello, luv. Donât believe weâve met. Quint Bailey, jack-of-all-trades. Donât mind the legs. Clever men get by without âem.â
Kira shook his hand warily. âKira Zamorazol.â
âYou are easy on the eyes, darlinâ.â He turned to wink at me. âKnow how to pick âem, donât ye, Egbert?â
Guts didnât care for that. âBack off, ye
billi glulo porsamora
!â
Quint just grinned at him. âLook whoâs been hanginâ round Short-Ears!â Then he nodded at Gutsâs stump. âWhereâd yer hook get off to?â
âHad it pinched by Natives,â Guts muttered.
âBought it off Ozzy, didnât ye? Got himself a new one down in the Scratch a while back. Probâly sell that to ye as well, now heâs outta money.â
âWot the deuce!?â
Adonis had wandered off into the den, and judging by the fury in his voice, what heâd found there must not have been pleasant.
âI was planninâ to clean that up!â Quint yelled back at him. âSoonâs I can find the wheelbarrow,â he added under his breath.
âWhat on earth is going on around here?â I asked Quint.
He looked pained. âWhy donât I fix ye a meal? Better we talk on a full stomach.â
LIKE MOST OF QUINTâS COOKING, the stew he put in front of us was filling but not exactly tasty, and we had to eat it fast before it hardened. Most of the dining chairs had vanished, so we stood around the butcherâs table in the kitchen while he caught us up on what had happened.
Leaving fifty field pirates alone with nobody in charge, several crates of weapons, and enough money to get drunk for weeks had turned out to be, no surprise, a recipe for disaster. In addition to nearly wrecking the house, nobody had done a lick of work in the fields for six weeks, and what should have been a manageable case of planterâs blight had now spread over enough of the upper orchard that it was threatening to ruin the entire crop.
The only good news was that the field piratesâ money was all gone, so they couldnât buy any more rum unless they went back to work. And somebodyâQuint wasnât sure whoâhad been levelheaded enough to steal all the weapons in the dead of night and dump them over the cliff at Rotting Bluff.
But not before the fifty men had been reduced to thirty-six, mostly due to arguments over card games.
âFact of the matter is,â admitted Quint, ânone of us is what yeâd call captain material. We can follow orders all right, âspecially with a hard stick backinâ âem up. But leave us be to make our own rules . . . donât go so well.â
âWhat about Otto?â He was the foreman, and heâd run a pretty tight ship in the past.
âHe, ahhh . . . wound up wrong side of the cannon. That rule yer dad had âbout nobody havinâ guns? Smart.â Quint nodded appreciatively. âNo drinkinâ anâ gamblinâ was another smart one, come to think of it. Reckon itâs time to get back to that.â
âGonna get back to all of it,â said Adonis firmly. âMe and Egbert are in charge now. Gonna set things right round here, thank ye please.â
âDunno how the lads gonna take that,â said Quint. âBy now, theyâs good and used to not havinâ no boss on the plantation.â
âBut thereâs not going to
be
a plantation if this keeps up,â I said. âItâll fall apart completely.â
The whole situation was making me feel angryâand helpless, which was worse. Fortunately, Mung showed up just then, with a smile that filled his whole face, and gave me a big bear hug.
Of all the busted-down pirates whoâd worked the fields for my dad, Mung was my favorite. He was missing a good chunk of his