Pell, Boomy and the now woodenly moving Mister Pringle managed to handle the sails and the rigging as Mister Hitchens piloted them day and night, never resting, around the eastern cape of Hispaniola and north into the Gulf Stream. Up into the limitless ocean they sailed on the ship possessed, never venturing below decks, and never resting, except for Hal, who need to mend.

For days and nights the weird voodoo pigmy continued his ever more frail refrain of, “Oh wee me!” until, on the fifth day of their cruise, something crackled above. Jay was going about feeding mushed hardtack to their possessed captain Mister Hitchens, the disgraced Mister Pringle, Boomy, Pell, and quick reviving Hal, who began to work as a sailor, marines now quite unnecessary in the Reign of the Devil. As Jay fed Hal the black pygmy who had hung by the neck for five days on the yardarm above let out a mournful croak of the ghost.

They all stopped and looked skyward, even Mister Hitchens, his eyes no longer rolled back in his head.

Boomy nearly slipped on the yard.

Pell lost his grip on a hawser, a six man job he had been doing himself.

Hal stopped stone like and listened as if for the call of angels.

Mister Pringle stopped slack jawed and looked to the yard arm, where now little more than a fluttering black hide whipped in the breeze like a tangle of leathery leaves.

The entire, superhumanly active crew seemed to have lost cohesion and energy all at once. And Jay Prescott understood that something had changed in them all, some voodoo spell had fled them and left them wan and listless, lost upon the ocean. His stomach lurched, turned and twisted and he groaned in agony, sinking to the deck, suddenly parched and starving and lost in the world.

The ship seemed to spin as he sat dreaming, dreaming of an audience with a blue-bearded King of Kings, his tawny mane of hair oiled into oily ringlets tight as rope, the ten thousand nameless bearers of the apple spears looking fixedly nowhere, as he was called to account before the magi…

The ship spun the faster, the deck reeling in the whirl that threatened to bring them into the Deep. He steadied his mind and the ship stopped its antics, slowly settling upon its course, cutting through the waves.

He was being dragged by a lion through the bush, his arm flapping uselessly behind him, his head dangling so low he could only see the front paws beneath him as the big fangs held them in its mighty grasp…

The sun was setting in the distance as they stood above him, his caring hands arrayed in a semi circle looking upon him lovingly. This made him swell with life and he rose, but something bore him to the deck—no, this was no deck…

The water tasted so good across his lips, running down his throat, as he squatted, testing his knew club on the rock upon which he squatted at the watering hole—then a deep coughing snarl froze the blood in his veins, sharp claws ripped into his shoulders, long sure fags popped through the base of his skull and he was being born loft, dangling and not yet dead, dragged up into a tree while the hyenas below cackled and laughed for his flesh, and his killer clutched him greedily to its spotted breast, as upward he was dragged…

He woke sitting on the tree branch, suddenly alive. No, this was not a branch but the deck of a ship—a sloop they say, these serious men in their funny way. His hands stood about, all with a bandaged cut on the back of their own hand, as his guided hand poured their blood down his throat from the metal tasting cup and the pulse of life drove through his veins.

He stood, his mouth feeling funny, somewhat too wide, but tasting of good friends. Around him stood his hands, all with slightly bowed head and eyes on him. He felt the need to thank them, to dance with joy, but he was yet weary. A jaunty word he thought, to cheer We, he thought, and addressed his loving selves:

“Sail to Sunny’s first peek,

Me We—

to East We Feast.”

And they danced with joy, springing on newly freshened legs and going about their making of the watery way.

Phenyl sat cross-legged, naked now, in the shadow of the dreg—no, her Dreg. He seemed to be shielding her pale skin from the burning noon sun. For days she had been hauled, the Dreg savagely fighting to retain possession of her against those reeking hairy headed men that has come grasping after her, and had even dragged her about.

She looked up to him and saw how deep the wounds on his thighs and arms were, how one hand was smashed, how five hair-sprouting scalps crawling with lice hung from his—it was a belt, of twisted, hairy, human skin.

The Dreg had bent too drink at this stream, and now bent over her, pried open her mouth, and spit the torrent of warmed water down her throat. It did rejuvenate her enough so that she was able to stand and wade across the stream. Once center stream he let her sit in the cool water, bathe and drink, as he stood sentinel over her. Once she had had her fill and they had made their way to the far bank, he took her hand and led her off at a slow trot up into the forest of rough looking pungent trees that marched like lively stakes up the rising hillside.

The Dreg still smelled offensive, but she clung to him out of revulsion for the more beastly men that had grabbed, dragged and groped her over the past few nightmare days. At last, as the sun sank behind the mountain, they were nearly done climbing, her seated on his thick sloped shoulders. Reaching the crest of the formation she laid down beneath his broad blood-clotted body. It occurred to her that he had done this to her so much that it no longer hurt and she drifted off , rocking beneath his broad grinding form.

A she gasped he fed her, emptying a portion of his stomach—of the raw meat he had eaten after the last of her other suitors were killed—into her waiting mouth. It was the most disgusting taste she ever could have managed. But she was grateful that he had digested it for her, and her body, rather than rejecting it, screamed for it like some starved creature.

Such were her thoughts, of the disapproval of her sisters, as she drifted off to sleep, her vile but thoughtful meal taxing her waking state beyod endurance.