April 12th, 1891 — Voyager, At Sea

With his position as the Captain he could have stayed safely onboard, reviewing charts and taking reports, while the actual rescue efforts were underway. The sea at this time of year could be tricky, though, particularly for a small boat trying to maneuver in tight patterns as was required for rescue efforts, and besides being the Captain he was one of the most skilled sailors onboard. He'd gone down in the rescue boats as often as he could, accordingly. After the tedium of the morning — being in port and waiting for the survivors to disembark when what he really wanted was to be out again — he was eager to go down, to feel like he was being of particular use. They'd sailed south again as fast as they could, while Alfred sent off a report about the offload in Plymouth, and just as he was finishing one of the lookouts shouted that he'd seen a flash of light on the horizon.

It was a good thing that whoever it was had signaled them, because otherwise they never would have seen either the survivor or the little island they were stranded on, but they changed course immediately to steer the Voyager towards them and readied one of the small boats. Alfred was working mostly on adrenaline as he tacked it closer to the little island, but when he'd gotten close enough to recognize the survivor in question he jumped to his feet, the till of the ship entirely forgotten.

He hadn't allowed himself to entertain the notion that Pablo could have been lost at sea, because that wasn't really what the two of them did, dying in shipwrecks, but after they'd found group after group of survivors and not discovered his friend, he had been beginning to worry. Now, he was grinning ear to ear, while his crew scrambled to take over the helm he'd so unceremoniously abandoned.

"Oi!" he yelled, standing at the bow of the little boat and waving his arm at Pablo and still smiling wide. "I was beginning to think you'd died!"

Pablo Medina Roberto Devine

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Pablo, for some reason, had been somewhat expecting to find himself in this sort of situation but even so, actually experiencing a shipwreck had been something else. Adrenaline had fueled him as he swam, making it somehow to a small island. He thanked the stars that his wand had not broken this time though he waited for it to dry out before attempting any magic. His survival skills came in handy as he made himself a shelter and managed to make a fire even without the aid of his wand.

Pablo watched the shore to see if any of the other survivors had made it this way but he remained the lone castaway. The first day had been uneventful, with his wand and clothes dry, he had been able to use magic to make his shelter and fire more adequate. He also periodically set a flare spell into the air to no avail. He found his mind wondering to the cabin boy that had been with him and Alfred. How was he doing? Was he still alive, still living happily with the tribe? Pablo liked to think so.

Going through something like this was a lot worse when you were alone. Back then, he'd had the boy and Alfred to talk to and problem solve situations with. He was also not a man that enjoyed solitude, he was too much of an extrovert for that. Things he had thought he had gotten over years ago kept bubbling to the surface, likely triggered by being in the same shipwrecked situation.

Happily, it did not seem like it would take years for him to return home this time. It had been scarcely four days when he saw a familiar ship in the distance. Was he hallucinating or was that Alfreds ship? Pablo sent a light into the sky, fanning the fire for good measure so that the smoke signal could be seen as well.

Pablo grinned as he spotted Alfred, a welcome sight. He was filled with immense relief that his mind had not been playing tricks on him. "Going to take more than a shipwreck for you to be rid of me, mi amigo!" Though he did mildly feel like he had been caught cheating due to having gone on a voyage on a ship other than Alfreds but he shook the feeling off.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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Alfred laughed and leaned into the lines at the edge of the boat, supporting his weight on them and twining his hand through one and probably making it all the harder for the crew of the small boat to do their job and actually rescue Pablo. "You've got me beat now, you know," he called back cheerfully. "I've never been wrecked at sea. Preferable to the mountains, you think, or not?" The Sycorax being a flying ship meant that during that voyage they'd gotten the worst of both; they'd gone through the storm at sea and dealt with the chaos of a shipwreck, but she'd still been able to limp back to South America before finally crashing in the mountains. Which was probably for the best, because if they'd been wrecked at sea they wouldn't have survived it, most likely. No one had known where they were when it happened, so no one would have been coming to their rescue.

One of his sailors made a vague gesture to try and get his attention, but Alfred wasn't paying much attention. At least, he wasn't until the boat started veering farther from Pablo's little rock, because he had his hand wrapped up in the line they needed to tighten in order to trim the sails appropriately to steer her in closer.

"Oh," Alfred said, jumping back from the lines as he realized. "I guess I ought to rescue you then, hm?" he yelled to Pablo, turning around to reorient himself to what was happening in the boat.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Pablo actually stopped to think about it. "I think being wrecked at sea was worse." Or it could have been the solitude forced upon him that made it feel that way combined with the now years past memories of how it had actually felt in the moment when the Sycorax had crashed. Plus they'd had a mountain to scavenge on and been able to try and find food supply by moving around. Here, he'd had to make do with what he had which had been limited. 

Pablo had a mild, momentary moment of panic when the boat veered farther from him. "I would like that very much, thank you." As soon as the boat was close enough, Pablo climbed on. If he didn't think he might end up chucked back at sea he would have huddled against one of Alfreds sailors for the extra warmth and reminder that he was now among fellow humans and not all alone on some small island that was little more than a rock.

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Once Alfred had gotten himself out of the way and started being helpful, getting the boat near enough to Pablo for him to climb aboard wasn't difficult at all. They had good seas for maneuvering, at the moment, and he had a skilled crew out today.

"Welcome aboard," he said with a grin, dropping into a seat next to Pablo and propping his legs up on a pile of rope so that his knees were close enough to lean his elbows on. Without bothering to ask if his friend was thirsty or hungry, Alfred grabbed a nearby pack and rifled around in it for provisions. He knew what it was like to be stranded as well as Pablo did, after all, and he could tell from just the sight of the little rock he'd found his friend on that if he'd had anything to eat or drink since leaving the Santa Antonina it must have been long gone by now.

"Water," he said, handing over a full leather water skin. "Bread. There'll be hot food once we're aboard the Voyager," he explained. He continued fishing in the bag for a minute, his fingers scraping the bottoms of the magically enlarged bag as his arm disappeared inside up to the shoulder. "Annnd — here it is. Cigarette," he announced, handing one over.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Relief rippled through Pablo as he settled into the rescue boat. He was parched but before he even brought it up, Alfred was rifling through a pack. Pablo treated the water like it was nectar from the Gods as he drank it down. He had to be careful to not gorge himself on it. There would be more water on the Voyager, he was certain.

He nodded when Alfred told him that there would be hot food on the ship. He nibbled at the bread as he wondered what else Alfred was fishing out of the pack.

"Alfred, you absolute angel of a man," Pablo said brightly as he accepted the cigarette. "Has there been many people rescued?" Pablo had made some new friends during the length of the cruise and he was very hopeful that they had survived.

  

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Alfred grinned at being called an absolute angel. He knew a few people (mostly related to Zelda) who might take exception to that. A cigarette wasn't much, in the grand scheme of things, but Alfred knew that for people who smoked regularly it was the fastest way to bring on a sense of comfort, of being safe at home, so he'd packed a few into these little rescue kits and he knew Pablo would have wanted one.

"A fair few," Alfred said in response to Pablo's question. "Seventy-three we offloaded in Portugal a few days ago, and another sixty-one this morning in Plymouth." Those were only the living survivors; there were many other bodies that they'd recovered and then offloaded. That was something Alfred hadn't given much thought to, moving forward. They had taken on an assortment of portkeys scheduled for the next several days to get survivors back in smaller bunches, but what were they supposed to do with the bodies? Presumably no one would want to hug one while taking a portkey, but having them onboard the Voyager for too long wouldn't do. Sailors were suspicious sorts, and it was bad luck to keep quarters with the dead.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"A good number," Pablo said, wondering how many among them were his new acquaintances. "A fair few of the people on board were dandies, debutantes and socialites. Not the sorts that could withstand too long lost at sea without going batty." Of course, some would prove resilient if pressed but a lot had seemed the sort to lose their marbles at the slightest of hardships.

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"Nah, some of them are batty already," Alfred agreed. Maybe it was being out in life boats for one or two days before being brought aboard the Voyager, or maybe it was the traumatic experience of the shipwreck itself. It might have just been the way they were normally — while Alfred could put on a good show when he needed to brush shoulders with the types of people who might donate money for an expedition, he was hardly a society darling himself. He'd always been on the rougher edge of respectability, due to his profession, and having spent years in the wilderness and then subsequently being rumored a cannibal hadn't helped him fit in any better. He had nothing in common with debutantes, so it was hardly surprising he tended to find them exasperating in most circumstances.

"There's a portkey leaving for England tomorrow," he continued. "Of course you're welcome to stay aboard the Voyager, but I expect after that little interlude you're eager to see real land again."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"Much as I enjoy being on the Voyager, I ought to go show my family that I did not go off and die again." They had only just managed to get his grandmother to realize that he was not actually some sort of specter. "That teaches me to go on a ship that is not yours, I suppose."

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Alfred laughed at that, although he wasn't the jealous sort when it came to these sorts of things. "Yeah, maybe," he said, shaking his head as he did. "Next time you get underway, make sure it's with me. Then if we get shipwrecked at least it'll be somewhere a little more scenic than your rock over yonder," he teased.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"Any plans in the future for that? Somewhere in the tropics, perhaps?" He was still a little chilly from his unplanned stay on his rock. He took another sip of water.

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"I'll keep you posted for next winter," Alfred ribbed lightly in response. He had been too busy with plans for the summer — plans that he would have been surprised if Pablo hadn't at least heard rumors about yet, given that he'd been working on them with his relatives the Fudges — to focus much on where the Voyager would be going once she got back out of storage, but somewhere tropical certainly sounded nice.

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER