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it first, so I will!”
    “Calm down, my friend. There are no actual burglars aboard,” Jack explained. “This skyboat iscalled the Thief in the Night .” He smiled and tapped at his own chest. “I’m Jack Nimble, at your service. And that’s Princess Esmeralda Lightfoot, the daughter of noble Roamany lineage. And the chappie sprawled on his back there is my very good friend Trundle Boldoak, a brave and bold adventurer.”
    “Ishmael March is me name, me bright young button,” said the hare. “Windship’s cook, thirteen years before the mast.” He pointed to the floating debris. “That there mast, to be exact.” He ran to the side of the skyboat and peered over the bow. “But where’s the rest of the windship gone? Where are me pots and me pans and me knives and me forks and me lemon squeezer and me asparagus tongs?”
    “I think they’re…um…gone,” said Esmeralda, spiraling one finger slowly downward in a significant way. “Sorry and all that. Have you been out here on your own for very long?”
    “A while, your royal majestieness,” said Ishmael,blinking rapidly. “I’ve been drifting adrift all on me tod, as it were, except for the buzzing fellers in me head, ever since the freakish fire drakes burned the Gob Sprite out from under me.”

    “Hold on a minute,” said Trundle sitting up. “The Gob Sprite ? That was the name of one of the pirate windships from the battle!”
    Jack looked solemnly at the hare. “Is that true?” he asked. “Are you a pirate?”
    Ishmael March held finger and thumb a fraction apart. “A wee bit of a pirate, perhaps, on me mother’s side,” he admitted. “But not a fighting pirate, oh, my dear no. Windship’s cook, that’s me. Ishmael March, cook and…what was it they called me, now? It began with L and rhymed with spoony.”

    “Loony?” Trundle offered.
    Ishmael nodded and grinned. “That’d be it!”
    “A pirate!” said Esmeralda, folding her arms and giving Trundle and Jack a caustic look. “We’ve taken a brain-addled pirate on board.” She snorted meaningfully. “Great!”
    “He looks harmless enough,” said Trundle. “It’s not like he’s armed or anything.”
    “That’s what you think!” exclaimed Ishmael, whipping out a small potato peeler from his belt. “Ready for any occasion, that’s me! Bring on the spuds! I’ll take their eyes out in a jiffy! I’ll have their skins from their backs, I will! That’s old Ishmael!” He eyed each of them in turn. “Thank ’ee mightily for rescuing me,” he cackled. “Ye saved me from going mad, me salty herrings! Ye arrived in the nick of time to save old Ishmael from going stark mad!”
    “I think we probably arrived just after the nick of time,” Esmeralda remarked under her breath.

    “Well, now,” croaked Ishmael, “one good turn deserves another. Show me to yer galley, and I’ll fix ye up a meal fit for a king!”
    “We don’t exactly have a galley, old chap,” said Jack. “We’ve been pretty much living on sandwiches.”
    “That’s not fit fare for fighting folk!” declared Ishmael, rummaging through the barrels and boxes and bags of food they had picked up in Swallowhaven. “Blackpowder and treacle,” he muttered shrilly to himself. “With just a dash of brimstone! That’ll wake him up! That’ll blow sparks out o’ his parson’s nose!”
    Trundle gazed for a few moments at the wriggling, skinny back end of the hare as he dug through their provisions. Then he looked from Esmeralda to Jack and back again.
    “I suppose a cook would come in handy,” he said hopefully. “Warm food would be nice—especially as we get farther and farther from the sun.”

    Ishmael’s head popped up, his ears whirling. “Where be we a-going to, me brave hearties?” he asked.
    “We’re looking for the nest of the legendary glorious phoenix bird,” Jack told him.
    “The legendary glorious phoenix bird, is it?” mused Ishmael, licking his lips. “Sounds delicious! I could