Pirate Pete's Arc

Chapter 12 of 14

The rotted barrel gave way before Pete found a plan. A dark stream ran out from the bottom hoop and spread across the deck. The smell of rum rose thick in the sun. Pete dropped to his knees and pressed both hands over the crack, but the rum pushed through his fingers. "Rusty! Slappy!" Pete shouted. "Get down here!" Rusty came first, red beard bristling. He looked at the puddle and his jaw tightened. Rusty had panicked before and dumped Pete's rum overboard to hide it. Pete saw the same twitch in his hands now, the same wish to solve a problem by getting rid of it. "Just tip it over the rail," Rusty said. "Be done with it." "No," Pete said. "We save every drop. Slappy, the rag pile. Now." Slappy scrambled to the corner and hauled back an armful of frayed old rags. He dropped them into the spreading puddle. The cloth soaked dark at once, drinking the rum before it could reach the open deck. Slappy packed more rags tight against the leaking hoop. The stream slowed to a trickle. "That won't hold long," Rusty said. "You need to plug it." Pete already knew it. The crack was small, no wider than a finger. He needed something to fill it. He dug through the netting box by the mast and found a fat cork capped with red wax, left over from a bottle long gone. He tore the wax loose and jammed the cork into the crack. He drove it deep with the heel of his hand. The trickle stopped. The three of them knelt in silence around the barrel. No rum leaked. The rag heap held the puddle. But the smell still hung in the air, sharp and sweet, and any nose on the dock could catch it. "It's plugged," Slappy said. "But she'll smell it if she comes back." Pete stood and wiped his hands on his shirt. His mother had left satisfied not an hour ago. She would return. The cave rotted his barrels. The hold held Gloria's cargo. Now one barrel could not even sit on his own deck without betraying him. He looked at the cork holding back the leak. A cork could stop rum. It could not stop his mother's nose. "We move it tonight," Pete said. "All three. Off this ship, off that cave. Somewhere dry." Rusty crossed his arms. "And where's that, Captain? You've searched the whole cove." Pete had no answer. He gathered the rum-soaked rags into a bucket and hid them below. The barrel stood plugged and quiet against the mast. He had stopped the leak and saved the rum. But the smell told him the truth. He could not keep three barrels on this ship one more day.