Walking down the street running along the harborfront, the seabeasts were surrounded by the sights and sounds of Crossports Slizzer. The town was gradually coming back to life following the daily Snooze. Eating establishments crowded every street and disorderly seabeasts of every rank and condition swarmed the dives and vendors nearest the harborfront.
Red Whale, although he had sailed many seas and visited endless exotic ports, felt that he was thousands of miles from anything familiar. It was not that the houses looked strange—they did not. It was not that the beasts were curious in dress—they were no more odd-looking than other beasts he had encountered in his travels. No, it was the smell of the place that turned his senses upside down.
There was a muscular, thick-coated Badger roasting nuts in a spicy-smelling oil; a dark, broad-faced Fox, with pigtails reaching to his ankles, juggling burning incense balls; some swarthy Sheep, with dirty matted hair, selling pungent salamander kabobs; a big, round-eyed Goat, wearing a lizard-tail hat bristling with colorful fishhooks, smoking fish on racks in the street.
Everywhere they looked, Red Whale and BorMane saw braziers smoking, cook pots steaming, and fish, seaweed, clams, and every other type of seafood being unloaded at eating houses that stretched in every direction down the streets of Slizzer. On every corner, there were vendors with carts selling their stock in trade. Not only boiled lobster and baked fish, but also Most prepared their goods on small braziers, lighted with charcoal. There was even a strolling vendor, with a tiny brazier hooked over one arm, roasting corn and potato cakes. All of them sang their wares:
“Six o’clock and time to eat! Snapped n’ pickled lizard’s feet!”
“Frumming with toast! Frumming with toast!
Slapped and slathered Frumming with toast!”
“Pearl a pound! Pearl a pound! Pissts on sticks, Pearl a pound!”
Along the more crowded streets, some of the larger cafés had troupes of musicians and performers calling customers to come in and eat. At one such establishment, where a surging crowd of rough seabeasts was elbowing to get in, a vile-looking, hulking Boar was pounding on a drum and singing out:
“Here’s Muck, and fine Crots, from Yobmahoy Bay,
They’re never more Slammed than they are today!
They never are roasted, and never are fried,
And never, never, ever artificially dyed.
Stuff them in now, and Snooze it off later,
Our Muck & Crots with cold jugs of d’Flater!
Check your knives at the door, put your cutlass at rest,
Suck up our Muck, and toss down our fine Crots—
There’s no other way, but to say they’re the best!
Beyond the prodigious eats, there was also a monstrous fights going on. Beasts going down the streets simply stepped aside as beasts flew through the air, fighting and wrestling. The fighting seemed so normal a part of life in Slizzer that—despite the struggling masses of beasts, punching and swearing at each other, and the flying bricks, rocks, and furniture—it went almost unnoticed.
CRASH! Two seabeasts whirled past Red Whale, grappling at each other’s throats, smashing into a sidewalk café table, where several other seabeasts were eating. In an instant those offended beasts joined the fracas—now ten beasts were cursing, biting, kicking, and howling for blood. BorMane jumped out of the way as a huge Boar dived past and tackled another seabeast, who struggled free and pounded on the Boar with a chair. In an instant, a first-class brawl was spreading down the street. Except for the beasts involved, no one seemed to care. Everyone else went on with their business, seeming unconscious of the angry swearing, ferocious fighting, and flying blood and fur.
“So you see the wonders of Crossports Slizzer,” BorMane laughed as he and Red Whale worked their way through the fights and crowds. Red Whale agreed that the sights, sounds, and smells of Slizzer were, indeed, hard to resist. At one corner there was even a jovial seabeast brandishing a cutlass, herding customers into a lizard roasting dive. Had Red Whale not had an urgent need to find the Whale freighter station, he might well have stepped into one of the joints and had a plate. But instead he pulled on BorMane’s arm every time he seemed to be wandering toward one of the cafés.
“Eye’s to the front, BorMane!” Red Whale said as he once again guided his wandering mate away from particularly enticing odors wafting from a Shark Chop House. “Our mates need our help—no time to stop and eat now.”