Chapter 2: The Lady gets a Lady

Captain Harrow had a problem. The Lady was traveling very fast. He had used his dive planes to help him dive into the mist. He needed to change her lift ratio, slow her down and steer her all at the same time. To make it a little more interesting he was in the mist and couldn’t see the bow of his ship one hundred and forty feet in front of him. Since that wasn’t daunting enough let’s throw in the fact he had to do all of this without letting the pirates know where he was. He saw the eel on his port-side drift towards the Lady. He didn’t think, he reacted, he maneuvered the Lady to the right, away from the eel. He called over the aft gunner.

“Set our buoyancy to zero when I tell you. Don’t worry. If we get this wrong, we either crash into the ground or pop out of the mist for the pirates to shoot at some more. Now!”

He brought the planes level as the gunner reset the buoyancy. That taken care of, now all he had to do was slow down before he hit something. He had been slowing ever since he entered the mist. The trouble was, normally he would reverse his thrusters. If he did that, he was afraid it would create a swirl or eddy on the top of the mist giving away their position. That’s why he had simply cut the thrusters instead. The eel on the port-side veered away hard to the left. Jake again followed its lead. He was barely able to turn in time the aft planes scraped the rock wall on the right side. He chuckled to himself. At least that near miss helped to slow them down a bit.

Bringing a two hundred plus ton ship to a stop wasn’t the easiest task in perfect conditions, and these were far from perfect conditions. For the next twenty minutes, he followed the valley they were in. Twice more he scraped the Lady’s planes against the sides. Now she was barely moving at all. Bowman had dropped a sound line and Jake was slowly bringing the Lady down to the valley floor. He had no intention of grounding her. Just sky anchoring the Lady would be more than enough. The thing was, the Lady’s anchors only had one hundred feet of line. That meant he needs to be less than seventy-five feet from the ground. Bowman was shouting out the distance as Jake slowly brought her down through the mist. Finally, they were within range and the anchors were released, and snugged tight.

As she settled to her anchor the eel that he had followed landed on the deck behind him. that had never happened before. The gunner drew his pistol and took aim at the eel. “Don’t shoot unless she attacks. Do you understand?” When he saw the gunner nod, he approached the railing where the eel had landed. “It’s one of the females we released. She has been guiding us through the canyons. I think it would be terrible manners to shoot her now, don’t you?” Jake stretched out his hand towards the eel that had saved all their lives and she stretched forward so his hand rubbed the back of her head. A smile spread across the Captain’s face as he rubbed her head. “You saved our asses back there, young lady. I thank you for that. Maybe the cook has something for you. Paul why don’t you go tell the cook I need a nice piece of meat for our friend here?”

The gunner was off running by the time he finished his sentence. He heard him telling the other crew they wouldn’t believe what the Captain was doing now as he ran by them. Someone was approaching across the pilot deck. The eel raised up and hissed in their direction. The footsteps stopped. The eel moved back to having her head rubbed. Jake chuckled out loud at her actions.

“It would seem you have a new friend Captain,” said Bowman

“Whether you know it or not she is all of our friend. She guided me through the canyons. I don’t know why they do it sometimes, but she stayed on our port-side even when we slowed to a crawl. She had to turn back at least once when she outran us. Without her guidance, we would be splattered on the rocks back there.”

“I guess that means I have to take back every nasty comment I made about you tossing back the females. I always thought what waste. Not anymore.”

More feet were coming on the pilot bridge and the eel wasn’t at all sure she liked that. Her head started bobbing and weaving back and forth. “Everyone stay where you are. You’re making our guest nervous.” The shuffling settled down and so did their guest. She moved her head back for Jake to rub. He was more than happy to resume his task. The clomp of the cook’s cane made the eel turn. Then she let out a sort of chuffing sound.

“So, it true. I’ll be. The boyo he comes down and says Captain, he wants a nice piece of meat for his new pet. Says the Captain has an eel on the railing on the pilot deck. I say he full of it. He says he swears it’s true. I says I been slinging hash in the sky for more than thirty years and that is the biggest load of dung I ever heard. So, I cuts a piece of meat and comes here to prove it. But it ain’t a load of dung, cause, well, there she be.”

“I told you so, and you threatened to starve me if I was pulling one on you,” complained the gunner.

Jake eased back, never taking his eyes off the eel. He had no illusion she was a tamed pet. When he was near enough the cook handed a large piece of meat over his shoulder. Jake took it and slowly moved back to the eel. She was staring at the meat, never taking her eyes off it. When he was close enough, he held it out to her. The eel hesitated then looked him in the eyes. When Jake encouraged her with a nod, she finally darted forward and snatched the meat from his hand. There was nothing dainty or ladylike about the way she ate. She just tilted her head back and the entire piece went into her mouth. Then she started to chew. She took a long time to chew the meat. When she was finished, she looked around for more. When there was no more to be seen, she made her chuffing noise at Jake again as her thick tongue licked the blood from her face.

Jake stepped forward and rubbed her head some more. Then said over his shoulder, “First Mate casualty and damage report, if you please?”

“Um. Well, yes Captain. Um, no casualties a couple bruises and a scrape, is all anyone has. The main mast is sheared off just below the yard arms. It fell over the side. Took most of the sail with it. Starboard bow planes are a little scraped up but still working fine. The port-side bow planes are even more dinged up and need some work. That’s about the size of it Captain. We can launch three solar buoys to replace the loss of the sails but that will slow us down a good deal.”

Jake didn’t say anything for several seconds. “No, I don’t think that will do at all Bowman. If those pirates see us limping back home, we’re done for. Get started removing the main mast and repairing the planes. After we have had a good meal and a rest, I’ll take the twins with me to see if we can salvage a mast from the Raven. I think I can find her again. Not much daylight left for today so we will get started on all that tomorrow.”