WHOOSH!

There was a flash of lightning, a cloud of smoke, and the roar of thunder.  Then Llywarch disappeared, leaving everyone gaping at the spot where he had just stood.

“I hate it when he does that,” said Rosa.

Those who understood Spanish agreed with her, while Gretel added, “Oh dear!” and the sailors contributed “Si!” “Bueno!  Bueno!” and “Adios!”

These sailors are anxious to leave, thought Hansel, as he wrung water from his clothing.  His boots squished whenever he stepped.

Christopher Morris, who was used to his uncle, waited.

WHOOSH!

There was a flash of lightning, a cloud of smoke, and the roar of thunder.  And Llywarch reappeared right where he had been before.

“Who was it this time, Uncle Larry?”

“It was your brother, William.  Someone was trying to hang him.  It always surprises people when they find out that’s considered a kindness.  This one wished to become French nobility for as long as he and his descendents should live.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the French Revolution.  In all the excitement, William escaped.  But it’s the thought that counts.”

“William sounds interesting,” offered Rosa, with Gretel agreeing.

Hansel, Gretel, and Llywarch got into the skiff for the row back to the sloop.  When the sailors found out about Llywarch’s peculiar gift, they were anxious to please him.  Each was willing to give up his seat.  Some offered to swim back to the ship to allow him more room.  Several blows were exchanged in the name of kindness.

Chris was used to this reaction to his uncle.  And he knew it wouldn’t be long before they realized that he was a relative, a kindness to him counted just the same.  Life was going to become unbearable.

He put a stop to the contention by giving up his own place and hopping on the back of the oxcart.  Chevy poked Rex and they rolled into the harbor, headed out to the sloop, with Hombre and Harley hog paddling along side.

Chris was tongue-tied seated next to the young Spanish beauty.

Rosa soon changed that.  “Aren’t you a little old to be beating up that young man?”

“What?” said Chris.  “I am only twenty-three.  And I didn’t hit him.  He hit me!  Plus I’m all wet and I lost my money.”  He showed her his empty purse.

“Don’t get water on me!” she exclaimed, as she scooted away.  “Of course he hit you when you insulted his beautiful sister.”

“I didn’t insult his beautiful sister.”

“So!” said Rosa, “You do think she’s beautiful!”

“Gretel?  I suppose so.”  Chris preferred dark-haired beauties, but he wasn’t going to tell Rosa that.

“It’s a shame that I don’t have a brother to beat you up when you say I’m beautiful and make passes at me.”

“But I didn’t say that,” Chris replied.  But that didn’t seem to appease her.

“What kind of boat is this?” asked Rosa, as they drew alongside the ship

“It’s not a boat,” Chris informed her.  “Boats are small.  This is a ship.  It’s called a sloop.”

“Then sloop must mean a very small ship.   No?”

They were able to get Rex and Harley on board by laying the gangplank from the ship across the skiff and into the water, allowing the animals to walk up it.  But they had trouble with the oxcart because the ship’s hoisting crank got stuck.  Finally Hombre grabbed hold of the chains and placed his short but sturdy legs against a cannon and heaved with all his might.  When the oxcart came over the side and onto the deck, the seamen let out a cheer and the ship’s chief offered him a job on the spot.

Soon the cart was battened down with lanyards at the bow of the ship, and Rex and Harley were tied to the main mast.

“When will that pig be fat enough to eat?” asked the ship’s cook.

“IT’S A HOG!” shouted everyone in Hombre’s party.  Anxious to placate the dwarf, the crew had the cook hauled off to the brig.

“It looks like we need a new cook,” said Captain Randolph Earl.  Gretel and Rosa looked at him in awe.  It seemed too good to be true that this gorgeous man could also speak.  Neither of them paid attention to what he was saying.

Hansel nudged his sister.  “Tell the captain you can cook,” he whispered.

“I can cook,” Gretel said, gazing into Randolph’s blue eyes.

“I can cook too,” Rosa insisted.  Then she realized what she had said.  “No…No, I can’t,” she admitted, red-faced.

Chris was used to this reaction to his boss’s looks.  But for some reason, today he wanted to smash him in the face.

“She can help me,” Gretel offered.  “I’ll teach her how to boil water.”  She grabbed Rosa’s hand, as Randolph led them to the galley.

Chris soon disappeared, too.  The sailors realized he was Llywarch’s nephew; they started trying to be kind to him, also.

Llywarch on the other hand was having the time of his life.  Three sailors so far had managed to do a kindness to him.  One of them was now a hermit on a mountaintop in Tibet.  One was below deck testing his new hammock.  And the third one was on the poop deck with Llywarch having a luau.  A roasting pit had appeared there – along with three hula girls.  One native girl was turning a boar on a spit, while another was fanning the sailor with a palm leaf, and the third was tearing off hunks of meat with her bare hands, feeding them to him.

Llywarch had the string in his beard looped through a buttonhole on his robe to keep it out of the way of dripping grease.  As he ripped off his own hunk of meat, he complained, “Just once it would be nice if someone would wish for four hula girls.”

“I’m sorry, Larry,” said the seaman.  “I wasn’t thinking.”

Hombre’s leather pants and jacket were stretched between yardarms to keep them from shrinking.  No one had clothing that would fit a muscular dwarf.  They were either too long or too tight.  So he was wearing a water barrel with ropes acting as suspenders over his shoulders.

Captain Randolph and Chris came out on deck.  The captain had a parchment and Cumbria pencil in his hands.  Behind him, from the galley, wafted the delicious smell of Gretel’s cooking, while he had the midshipman call all hands on deck.

When the crew was assembled, he said, “I need to know how many ships you saw yesterday for this report.  As I walked down the line, I want each seaman to give me his count.”

He approached the first sailor.  “I counted twenty, Capt’n”, the sailor said.  Captain Earl wrote down twenty.

The next sailor said, “I counted twenty also, Capt’n.”

As he walked down the line, he heard one seaman after the other say, ”Twenty.  Twenty.  Twenty.”

This was very odd.  He asked the sailor in front of him, “How come you only count twenty?”

“Capt’n, with ten good fingers and my shoes off that’s the highest I can count.”

The next sailor said, “Twenty-one.”

“How come you can count to twenty-one?”  Randolph was suspicious.

“You see, Capt’n, I was born with an extra toe on my left foot.”  He paused for a moment and added, “Me mum wanted me to become an accountant.”

“Twenty.  Twenty.  Twenty,” they continued.  The Captain accepted “Sixteen,” from a sailor who had a hook instead of a right hand.  And the same from another with a peg leg.

“Ten,” said the last sailor.

“Ten?” questioned Captain Earl, “You counted half as many as the others, but you have ten good fingers and ten good toes.”

“That’s true, Capt’n,” replied the sailor.  “But I only got one good eye,” and he pointed to a black patch on his face.  Randolph added his count to the total.

Gretel and Rosa came up the passageway of the galley bearing a meal.  On the poop deck, the boar, the roasting pit, the hula girls, and the remnants of the luau disappeared.

“It was great while it lasted,” said the lucky sailor.  Then he belched.

Gretel had done wonders with the limited supplies in the galley.  She carried a platter loaded with slices of venison, steamed lobster, salmon, sausage, and light creamy Bavarian pastries.  Rosa carried a covered black kettle and a ladle.

The entire crew sat down on the deck and started eating with their fingers.  Except for two crewmembers that took it upon themselves to go down to the brig where the old cook was incarcerated and weld the door shut.

“Gentlemen,” said Gretel.  “Do you believe that it’s good table manners to eat with your fingers?”

Gretel was too sweet and beautiful for anyone to remind her that they weren’t eating at a table.  Instead everyone picked up what utensils they had.  Soon people were eating with dirks and daggers, cutlasses and axes.  The ships carpenter was making do with a crowbar and a claw hammer.

Satisfied, Gretel turned to her own food.

The feast was good, but there was never as much food on a ship as hungry sailors would like.

“What’s in the kettle?” a sailor asked.

With pride, Rosa lifted that lid and showed everyone that is was filled to the brim with boiling water.  “I did it myself,” she said.  “It’s the first water I ever boiled.”

“It looks like good water,” the sailor said.  He picked up the ladle and tasted it.  “Needs salt,” he added.

”I have some salt,” a sailor responded.  He opened a pouch and dumped a handful of salt in the pot.

“That’s better,” said the first sailor, smacking his lips, “but I think it also needs carrots.”

“I have some,” another sailor contributed.  He reached into his shirt and drew out a bundle of whole carrots.

“That’s the thing,” said sailor, as he tasted Rosa’s boiling water again.

A seaman piped up and said, “I have some potatoes,” and he pulled several of them out of his pocket tossing them into the pot.  Another sailor had some onions.  Two contributed celery.  “We’re on a diet,” they explained.  Yet another ran to his bunk and came back unwrapping a roast of salted beef.  “I was saving this for a special occasion,” he said.

By this time the boiling water had turned into a delicious stew.  And everyone was commenting on how it tasted.  “This is as good as Gretel’s cooking,” someone said.

Rosa was pleased.  “I didn’t realize I was such a good cook.”

The tide was turning and the sun was lowering in the sky by the time the feast was over.  The remains were stowed back in the galley.

Sailors started climbing riggings and unfurling sails.  During the morning, Chevy had improved the operation of the stubborn crank by putting a sail on it, borrowed from the top of the mizzenmast.  When the wind hit the sail, it added enough force to turn the handle and the anchor came up easily.

As the sloop started towards the mouth of the harbor, all on board held their breaths.  This was the time to find out if the fortress was fooled into thinking they remained behind the Armada on purpose.

“What do you see in your nuts, Uncle Larry?” asked Chris, as they neared the mouth of the harbor.

Llywarch reached into his bag and pulled out a handful of sunflower seeds.

At Chris’s surprised look, Llywarch explained, “Someone ate my walnuts.”  Rosa, Chevy, and Hombre looked elsewhere.  “I picked these up while I was with your brother, William.”

“They’re awfully small.  Can you see anything in them?”

Llywarch held them up to the setting sun and said, “It’s what I don’t see that counts.  I don’t see any cannon flashes, or other ships, and the sea is calm.”

“That’s great!” said Randolph.  “Let’s steer right under their noses.”

“Si!”  “Bueno!  Bueno!” and “Adios!” called out the crew and they waved, as they floated past the many cannon of the fortress to the safety of the open sea.

“We did it!” They all cheered.  “We’re safe.”

No one noticed the chicken circling overhead before heading out to sea.

WHOOSH! 

There came a flash of lightning and a roar of thunder.

Everyone looked at the poop deck to see if Llywarch had disappeared.  But he was still there.

“It’s just a storm,” Llywarch explained.

“He’s like that little boy who cried wolf,” Rosa said.  “Is it Llywarch or is it a storm?  Soon nobody will believe a real storm when it happens, because he claims there isn’t going to be one.”

Llywarch apologized for the bad weather forecast.  “I really can’t see far with sunflower seeds.”

Suddenly there came bearing down on them a privateer.  A privateer is a pirate ship modeled after the Galleon, only sleeker and faster.  Most of them carried one hundred cannons to the sloop’s mere twenty-two guns.

“Who is it?” wondered the Captain and Chris.  The telescope hadn’t been invented, so they shaded their eyes and stared at the approaching vessel.

“Its masthead is a swan,” said Chris, who had the best eyes.  “And on the bowsprit a brown chicken is pointing at us.  Blimey!  It looks like the chicken’s directing the ship.”

“That’s Don Swan,” said Rosa, peering over their shoulders.  “The ship is named after him.  It’s called the Swan.”

“Then that must be a Devil Chicken” Chevy and Hombre added.

“Don Swan is the blackguard who’s threatening my people,” Hansel informed them.

“Don Swan is the pirate and thief I am escaping from,” Rosa explained.

“This Don Swan sure gets around,” commented Chris.

Rosa turned to Llywarch and complained, “What kind of wish is this?”

“Can we out run him?” Llywarch asked, ignoring her.

“As long as the sea is smooth we can,” answered Chris.  “But if it gets rough, then the heavier ship with more draft will have the easier time, while we bounce from wave to wave.”

“That’s when I always get sea sick,” said Randolph.

Both girls looked like they wanted to mother him.

“No time for that now, Captain.  It looks like they’re going to try to board us.”

There was a flash of powder and the roar of cannon.  Then chainshot hit the Good Queen.

“Get me a damage assessment, Chris,” shouted the Captain.  He was all business now.

Chris leaped from the poop deck and ran forward to see what harm had been done.

“It’s slight damage,” he yelled back.  “We have a hole in the main sail and some sliced line.  The crew is already stitching the canvas and tying new bends in the ropes.”

There was a flash of lightning and rain began to fall.  The wind kicked up and the sloop started to bounce.

“I wish we’d known there was going to be bad weather,” said Randolph, as he lost his dinner over the side of the ship.

“How can you expect anyone to forecast weather from tiny sunflower seeds?” Llywarch asked anyone who would listen.

Hombre and Chevy were comforting the frightened animals.

“Capt’n, now they’re firing grapnel at us,” came a shout from above.

“Hard turn to the starboard,” yelled Randolph, to the helmsman.  And the ship tacked into the wind.

But the storm changed direction and the sails floundered.  Before they could adjust, grappling hooks caught the side of the sloop.

“Fire all cannons on the larboard side,” came the order.  Eleven guns flashed.

The foremast of the Swan toppled, and brown chicken squawked and fluttered into the air.

The Swan returned fire, leaving two of the sloop’s guns damaged and silenced.  The Swan drew abreast.  Lining its bulwarks were Swan’s pirates.  Some of them had parrots, while others had chickens sitting on their shoulders.

“All crew to the larboard side,” shouted Chris.  “Defend the gunwales.”

Hansel gave his sister a hug, and placed her behind Captain Earl for safety.  Then he picked up a cutlass and ran to join the fray.  Along side strode Hombre wielding a gigantic broadsword.  Chevy picked up the carpenter’s crowbar.

The pirates from the Swan that swung into the riggings of the Good Queen were met by the sloop’s sailors; bearing short swords, daggers, and dirks.  Soon pirates’ dead bodies fell to the deck below.

Other pirates jumped from the forecastle of the Swan to the main deck of the sloop.  A general melee erupted amidships.

Hansel was hesitant at first.  Until hitting Chris that morning, he’d never fought before.  But Hombre weighed right in and started swinging his broadsword at pirates as high up as he could reach.  Many a pirate lost a lower limb to Hombre.  At the last moment, Hansel parried a sword that was coming down at his neck and from instinct he struck back, under the raised arm of the intruder, putting the blade straight through his heart.

After his first kill, Hansel’s hesitation was gone.  He dumped the dead pirate onto the deck and ran to engage another.

Chris and others were in the middle of the battle striking rapidly and deadly in close quarters with daggers and short blades, and tossing carcasses into the churning waters between the ships.

Chris saw one pirate make a break for the poop deck.  He withdrew a pistol from his belt and shot the man in the shoulder, just as he reached its ladder.

Despite the wound the pirate struggled to climb.  So Rosa, who was guarding the deck with a belaying pin, hit him over the head.  He fell unconscious and bleeding.  She and Gretel climbed down, pick him up by his legs and arms and threw him over the stern of the vessel.  They wiped away his blood on their skirts and returned to guarding the poop.

Randolph ordered another round of cannon fire and more holes appeared in the side of the Swan.  Then he picked up a musketoon and started firing at the wheel of the Swan, trying to hit its helmsman.

Llywarch tried to use a blunderbuss, but he got his beard caught.  And set it on fire.

A foul stink arose for the midst of the battle.  The Devil Chickens were dropping golden eggs.  It was chemical warfare.

But the chickens were too late.  While the battle raged, Chevy snuck up to the grappling hooks and, with the crowbar, pried each one loose.  Just as the last one dropped into the ocean, the wind changed again, and the Swan was blown away from the sloop.  All remaining pirates were dispatched overboard.

A brown hen alighted on the poop deck eyeing Rosa, as Rosa threatened her with the belaying pin.  “He wants you,” said the hen in a high cracking voice.  “He’ll let the others go, if you give yourself up to him.”  Then the hen cackled and flew beyond Rosa’s reach, just as she swung at it with the pin.  The chicken disappeared into the storm, as the winds tossed back fragments of a vulgar drinking song.

“You’re right.  She doesn’t move her beak,” Gretel said.

 Lightning flashes revealed the silhouette of the pirate ship through the rain as it drifted away from the sloop.  Everyone gave a cheer.  Several sailors lifted Chevy onto their shoulders and started to parade him around the deck.  But they set him down after banging his head against the boom.

Chris put an arm around Hansel and Hombre and said, “I'm proud to fight with two such warriors.”  Hansel and Hombre wiped blood from their weapons on their pant legs and grinned.   Rosa and Gretel hugged each other in relief.  And Randolph helped Llywarch put out his beard.

No one noticed a furtive chicken place a hardboiled egg on the rudder chains.

“Ship ahoy!’ came the cry from the crow’s nest.  Everyone turned to see the Swan bearing down on the sloop again.  This time intending to ram it.

“Hard turn to the starboard,” commanded Captain Earl, to the helmsman.

But the sloop would not turn.  Its chains got fouled on the hardboiled egg.

The Swan came closer.  Its sails were full and its speed was at maximum because it was running before the wind.  A solitary hen was perched on the bowsprit with its wings spread and its head arched.  Its fierce look struck fear into the hearts of those on the sloop.

A dozen more chickens swooped down on Rosa and attempted to pick her up.  She flailed at them with the belaying pin.  Gretel tried to shoo them with her apron.  Then she grabbed hold of Rosa’s legs, as the birds started to lift her.  With the added weight, the chickens could not keep their grip.  And Rosa and Gretel were dropped over the side.

The entire sloop shuddered when the Swan rammed her.  A gapping hole appeared in her hull and she listed to that side.  Then a gigantic wave swept over it and the deck was washed bare, as they all fell into the stormy waters.  The Swan kept going and soon disappeared into the dark and stormy night.

The storm blew itself out and the sea grew calm.  The three quarters moon shone down on the survivors of the sloop, who were treading water and clinging to the side of the oxcart, except for Rosa and Gretel, who were huddled on top of it.  Chevy was clinging to Rex.  Hombre was sitting on Harley and holding up the cage with the cook welded inside.  His leather was shrinking again.  “If I ever get the chance, I’m switching to denim,” he promised himself.

Llywarch was having the hardest time.  He had not tread water in several hundred years.  And a wizard’s robe is very heavy when wet.  He kept slipping under the waves leaving his pointed hat to bob up and down in the waves.

“Oh dear,” said Gretel, as she lifted the hat and pulled Llywarch’s head up by his hair.  “You’re all done in.  Climb onto the cart with us.  We’ll make room.  Won’t we, Rosa?”

 “You know, “ Rosa told him as they hauled him up, “this is the worst wish I’ve ever had.”

“Not all wishes are of equal value,” Llywarch informed her.

“What does that mean?”  Rosa insisted, “I can wish as good as anybody.”

“Humph!”

“I wish we were all high and dry,” said Gretel, in sympathy.

Llywarch felt a ringing on his left ear.  Only he wasn’t sure if it was a bluebell or a sand crab taking up residence in his hat.

WHOOSH!

There was a flash of lightning, a cloud of smoke, and the roar of thunder.  And the ocean was empty.

It was a bluebell, he decided, as they tumbled high and dry into a mountain meadow.