Everybody was eyeing The Princess with concern, from the moment she pulled herself from the ship she was prancing around like a woman possessed and cackling.

Captain Acab approached her warily. “What’s going on Princess? He asked bewildered, and more than a little pissed off, he had just lost his ship and here she was celebrating.

“Get your crew together now, all of them, if any towns folk are willing to help drag them in too, we still have time.”

“Drag them into what?”

“Did you miss The Goddesses words? Repeat them back to me.”

“The moment you touch the ocean floor you’re mine.”

“So tell me, at any point in that entire journey from hell did you see her hull touch the ocean floor?”

“Nope, but she’s aground now. what difference does it make?”

“Last I checked twenty meters up the beach and way above the tide line was not ocean floor.” She replied with a grin worthy of a lawyer who just spotted the fine print the devil missed.

In Acab’s brain the hamster seemed to have gotten back on their little treadmill and started running again, as, slightly delayed realisation finally dawned.

“ALL HANDS ON DECK, we need all crew out here right now, fetch the block and tackle, Sen, go buy the strongest A frames you can get, I don’t give a damn if it costs my entire share of the reward from this job. It’ll be worth it. She aint sunk yet. Everybody watching, if you want to help out we’d appreciate it, this ship saved the town, now it’s our turn to save her. Now who’s with me?”

I would love to say at that moment that not a soul in town didn’t lend a hand, but that would be lying, there are always jerks. But plenty of people with a conscience did in fact step forward, and plenty without one too. Who nevertheless were fans of a little drama from time to time. So before too long the empty barrels from the local tavern were rigged up into a kind of pontoon. (The barrels that weren’t empty? Well a fair number of people were happy when they were offered, in return for their assistance, the opportunity to empty them. It’s amazing how many self interested people are happy to be philanthropic for a little while, in exchange for a little booze.

Next, on this little rigged up island the A frames were set up, and then lashed beneath the hull of The Wellerman, lifting her clear of the sand, and holding her at a good height to start work. Then the real task began, Mibbet offered a little of the funds she had on hand to help with this task, and the crew too offered a little of their reward, pulling together to get her patched up as quickly as possible. Every roofer in town was called in to help tar the hull. While the towns cooper figured out that he could have actually become a shipwright, despite what his dad had told him.

The elderly people? Well they started off patching up the many lumps and bumps gained in the voyage. (Getting skipped across the ocean by a deity leads to so many boo boo’s you wouldn’t believe it.) Then moving on to helping feed the workers, (once they were properly paid of course. What kind of stingy bastards would try to screw somebodies granny out of a payday? Ingredients aren’t free, even the ones rummaged from the bottoms of cupboards. At least they had no shortage of cooking equipment, as everybody knows nanas, great aunts, and “Aunties,” who are usually an Auntie to half the town, in an informal sense of course, accumulate cookware at an alarming rate. Nobody knows where they get it all from, even two weeks after a clear-out it seems more magically appears out of nowhere. Everybody grumbles about it when it’s time for the next Spring clean, but nobody will ever admit to having provided it, and nobody ever steps forward to reclaim it. There’s no point in trying to figure it out, it is an immutable law of the multiverse, and if you ever did figure out the secret behind it nobody would ever believe you anyway.)

The grandfathers sheds were politely visited, and tools borrowed, (this is another example of nana’s cupboard physics. No matter what the tool, grandad will always have it, or at least something close enough to do the job, alongside millions of assorted screws, nails, pegs, doohickeys, doofyhingmies, doodads, and what’sit’s from goodness knows there, all neatly stored in carefully labelled drawers, that could not possibly all fit into a shed that size. Nobody knows how the hell this works, and honestly? it’s best not to ask.) Allowing the workers to probably do a better job fixing her up than she had probably had in decades. Yet through this entire process, not a single scrap of wood, not a single nail, bolt, or screw, that could be salvaged was thrown away. They were all carefully placed aside, and wherever possible reused. Even the bits too broken to be saved were carefully shaved down, and mixed with resin to fill the gaps in the new repairs.

Nobody wanted to be the person who threw away the wrong bit and made it so this wouldn’t work. A few of the crew had sailed on poorly salvaged ships before, and hated every second of it. It felt weird, horrible, and wrong. They wouldn’t wish that for The Wellerman.

************************************************************************

Back at the temple, Briony Deyp split her attention between her new champion, dealing with the Vampirate menace, one overly depressing looking ship at a time, and the salvage operation going on on shore. They’d figured it out it seemed. She was the sea, she wasn’t supposed to take sides. But something in that crew today, and that ships courage, had gotten through to her. She really didn’t want to be the one to split them up before their time. When she finally sank it would be fair and square, and she’d keep the crew too. Until then? Well as I previously said, The Gods love a loophole.