Abel says nothing, bracing herself for a possible attack.
Abel's cautious attack gets nowhere, but G'*larik manages to get a good blow in on one of the thugs.
Sandara seems oddly pleased to join in the scuffle, running up near the grippli and throwing a punch of her own.
She nicks the the pirate G'*larik hit. Taiquin, meanwhile, seems much less enthusiastic about this, but does step up with Abel and swing a punch.
His blow is wildly off-center and easy to dodge.
Four of the thugs pick targets and throw punches.
The one attacking G'*larik manages to land a blow on him, but the others miss.
G'*larik just keeps up the attack from his raised vantage point, roaking under his breath about the pointlessness of the whole mess.
Abel easily dodges the fists swung at her
and tries again.
Sandara and Taiquin keep up their part of the fistfight.
She clips the side of the head of the thug she and G'*larik had struck before, and he goes down for the count. The other thugs look a bit uneasy about this, but keep swinging.
They land blows on Taiquin and Sandara.
Trying a different tack, and figuring that knocking another one down might break the thugs' morale, G'*larik shifts up the wall above the remaining thug near him, and then suddenly lashes out with his powerful legs, aiming more to topple the thug than injure him.
"You don't look so good," Abel scoffed. "You're not scared, are you?"
Seeing the little frog manage to knock another of their number off his feet does seem to unnerve the thugs. They hesitate a moment, then one on the stairs says, "They ain't worth a lashing for being late. Come on!"
As one, they sprint for the stairs and up towards the upper decks.
The one G'*larik is on tries to throw him off to follow.
But the grippli is surprisingly hard to dislodge.
"Come on, they probably want us to be late, the dogs," Sandara says.
G'*larik gave the thug he was sitting on a dispassionate look.
*roak* "Sea dogs should remember not bother tougher things, even in pack. Be good, do work, ship sail. Storm always coming, all need be ready. Don't distract, or may be washed away."
After this piece of vaguely threatening and undecipherable speech, he hopped off of the thug and moved toward the stairs, pausing to wait for the others.
"I get the feeling this is only the beginning of our troubles," Abel groaned, turning to the others. "We'd best get going ourselves."
As soon as he's let up the thug jumps to his feet and bolts up the stairs.
"Right, up we go!" Sandara agrees
Master Scourge glares at you as you reach the top deck, but you're on time, so he can't justify any kind of punishment.
The officers hand out assignments for the day, and you get to work. G'*larik gets some different work to do in the rigging, but he's just as capable with it as the tasks yesterday. Fishguts the cook seems a bit more drunk than yesterday, but somehow it doesn't seem to keep him from cooking well.
G'*larik looked around for Conchobar, meaning to keep his promise to teach the gnome a thing or two about sailing. He doubted he could get too much in a single day, but maybe enough to get by until learning by experience kicked in.
Abel pretends to share a bottle of liquor with the cook whenever they take a break, seeing what information she can glean, while attempting to win him over to their side.
Conchobar is quite glad for G'*larik's help... and a couple others seem to be listening in, too.
**************
'Fishguts' is a friendly sort, and it hardly takes anything at all to get him talking. Abel pretty quickly picks up on the fact that he's been on the ship for a lot longer than most, and knows most everyone on the Wormwood.
G'*larik is clearly knowledgeable and trying to be helpful, but is somewhat hard to understand.
Conchobar is definitely glad for the help, but it doesn't take long for G'*larik to lose the other listeners.
Abel notices that, even drunk, 'Fishguts' won't quite say anything about what he thinks of the captain. He's definitely not a fan of Master Scourge or Mr. Plugg, though, and he talks extensively about how things on the ship are even worse than usual since they've had to take on so much new crew of late. He doesn't seem particularly happy with his job, though Abel gets the impression he does love cooking. He doesn't talk about having many friends other than the quartermaster, though.
You work hard through the day, and soon enough it's evening. Abel and Fishguts hand out the evening meal, and then you have a bit of free time before night.
G'*larik considered if maybe he should bring in someone a bit more well-spoken to help with these lessons next time. He'd have to see if he could find anyone with both the know-how and the agility of speech.
In the meantime, he decided it was about time he started taking a good look at this ship, but thought it was best to start with somewhere not too suspicious. So he took some time to look around the main deck, away from the carousing.