Read The Death-Defying Pepper Roux for Free Online

then, and Pepper assumed nutmegs must be like onions, for there were tears in the steward’s eyes. “I think that would be a very great kindness to his wife, mon brave .”
    The next thought made Pepper’s gorge heave, but one of his duties as captain was surely to help a dead crew member find eternal rest. “I expect you could make him a nice shroud, Duchesse, if I could just get him off the…get him up out…get him into the sea.”
    For the first time since they had met, the steward was completely at a loss. “Well, he can go down with the ship, can’t he?” he said, hurrying to the door, sickened by the horrific notion of Pepper wrestling with a corpse. Outside, Duchesse recovered his calm, smoothed his red satin, and patted his hair into place. Then he caught hold of the nearest crew member by the shirt, dragged him close, and laid a finger to his lips. Never again did the crew mention the name of Roche or the small matter of his death.
    “Who’d miss a pig like that?” observed Annecy.
     
    Sometimes a shipping company can make more money from losing a ship than from keeping it. After all, shipsare forever sinking, so they are always insured. A ship with a cargo of pianos and porcelain is insured for far more than some rusty, dilapidated hulk carrying scrap iron. And once that ship is sunk and on the seabed, who is to say what cargo she was carrying? She will keep her secret as well as a dead man in his coffin. Maybe that is why such hulks are called “coffin ships.”
    At position 45° 20' N, 6° 54' W, with a dirty sea running and L’Ombrage sitting over 2,600 fathoms of water, the engineer deliberately opened her sea cocks. Sip by sip, she began to swallow the sea. Only the engineer, Berceau, and Gilbert Roux were being paid by the owners to sink her. The Duchess was in on it, of course. But the rest of the crew were told L’Ombrage had sprung a leak and were as scared as if L’Ombrage had hit an iceberg or been attacked by the kraken.
    “Time to go,” said the captain’s steward to the captain.
    “Why?”
    Duchesse looked exasperated. With the ship’s claxon blaring and the air as full of filthy language as spray, even the old-style, drunken Captain Roux might have grasped that the ship was sinking. “Time to go,” saidthe Duchess again. He was dressed once more in trousers and oiled jersey, and had hacked his hair short with a pair of scissors.
    “No. It’s all right. I’ll stay,” said Pepper. He had read enough books, after all, and he knew the rules. It was a shame: Drowning had come very low down his list of favored deaths—somewhere between suffocating and the guillotine. But he knew the rules: A good captain goes down with his ship.
    The scar on Duchesse’s cheek puckered. “That really isn’t required.”
    “Oh, I think it is,” said Pepper. “You see…I shouldn’t be here.”
    “Never a truer word, petite framboise ,” said Duchesse as the ship groaned and began to list. “Don’t forget the log.”
    Pepper fetched the leather-bound log and gave it into his steward’s hands. “There. I haven’t messed it up too much.” There was shouting outside, as those abandoning ship struggled with a faulty boat winch. “I’m a Jonah,” said Pepper, and took one step back. “I’m the one it’s after, you see.” Then he stood, chin up, hands behind his back, waiting for the water to fill the cabin like a fish tank.
    Duchesse’s eyebrows shot up, and after a second, a kind of laugh erupted from his nose. “Is this the kraken we’re talking about here?”
    “You don’t understand.”
    Duchesse looked over his shoulder. He did not understand, no. But there was a very particular timing to these operations; they had not a second to lose. “The owners don’t want this…. This is insane, boy. He must’ve told you! He must’ve told you when he sent you in his place?”
    “‘If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,’” said Pepper unhelpfully, and bent forward the