Little Jane and the Nameless Isle

by Adira Rotstein

  Long John shifted awkwardly with the ship’s motion, unaccustomed to the crutches the doctor had given him.

  “You all right there, Silver?” asked Doc Lewiston.

  “Right as rain, me good man,” Long John replied, feeling good to be up and about on the deck of a ship again, even if it wasn’t his own. As he watched the gulls wheeling above the mainmast and the men scampering up the ratlines, any cobwebs still left clinging to his mind from his time in the brig blew out to sea. His senses felt fresh as a new coat of paint.

  Upon seeing his former crewman Lockheed sitting by the mizzenmast with his back to the sail, busy splicing a line, Long John tugged on his leash, angling for a chat.

  Bonnie Mary’s mood darkened as she watched the warm exchange of pleasantries between Long John and the group of crewmen from the former Pieces of Eight.

  Talkative and showy as always, she thought, shaking her head. Any advice about keeping a low profile had clearly gone in one ear and out the other. What was it her father always said at times like this? It’ll all end in bloodshed. And he was usually right, at that.

  What did Jim have to be so cheery about anyway? They were this close to death and here he was jawing away with the crew like they were back at the Spyglass and not on the deck of an enemy ship with a few inches of timber separating them from someone whose greatest desire in life was to kill them both, preferably in the most painful way possible.

  She resigned herself to being the one, once again, to work out the logistical details of yet another of her husband’s crazy plans. But it was a relief to see him smile again, at any rate. What was the other thing her father always said? If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

  The plan could wait for the moment. All she really wanted to think about for a few seconds was the liberating feel of the west wind in her hair. So she headed up to the waist of the ship to join Jim, letting the sailor holding the other end of her “leash” trail after her.

  Weaponsmaster Jezebel Mendoza looked up from picking oakum to see Captain Bonnie Mary Bright being led by a huge bearded sailor across the deck.

  “Captain,” Mendoza said, rising with a reverent salute to her superior officer.

  Bonnie Mary smiled graciously and saluted her in return.

  “Captain Bright,” piped up young Rufus, the cabin boy, who stood at her back. This was followed by salutes from Lockheed and Lancashire. Bonnie Mary smiled at this, for no one had ever bothered to salute the captains back on the Pieces. It seemed too elitist a gesture by far on a pirate ship where they each had equal vote. But here, in this hostile place, it was a sign that they still flew the black flag of the Pieces in their hearts, even though the ship herself was gone.

  “Ahoy now! Stop that!” cried the guard, yanking on the rope and nearly knocking her off her feet.

  Dvorjack and Changez joined Lancashire, Rufus, and Mendoza in shooting the guard some sinister looks. It escaped no one’s notice that at the end of the hempen rope Dvorjack had just finished coiling was a four-pronged metal grappling hook of menacing appearance. The burly former purser of the Pieces of Eight held it now, tapping it against his hand, as if contemplating whether to swing it at Bonnie Mary’s guard. In a split second, the ship’s waist was crowded with the Panacea’s small contingent of riflemen, bristling with bayoneted weapons. The moment passed without any action being taken.

  Only weaponsmaster Mendoza seemed uncowed by this sudden show of force.

  “Phonies,” she sniffed, to no one in particular. “Why, if those rifles aren’t cheap, knock-off replicas, I’ll eat my hat. Who ever heard of a Backer rifle? A standard issue rifle ought to be a Baker — B-A-K-E-R. Are your officers illiterate or simply incompetent? And you call yourselves fighters.” She shook her head in disbelief. “For shame.”

  The riflemen — most of who could not, in fact, read — examined their weapons in confusion.

  “Doc Lewiston,” thundered Jesper, first officer of the Panacea (who could read, but much to his embarrassment had never noticed the name on his firearm). “What in the world do you think you’re doing, allowing the prisoners to fraternize in this way? Did the captain give his permission for this?”

  “You two,” Jesper yelled to the guards. “Take those prisoners back to the brig. They’re not to be let out for anything, do you understand? You may be in charge of a surgery in Suffolk, Doctor, but you ain’t charged with command of this ship.”

  “And would somebody shut that skirt up!” Jesper pointed at Jezebel Mendoza. “Since when did a woman know anything about weapons anyway? A female weaponsmaster. What a joke.”

  But despite this bluff and hearty show, Jesper groaned as he watched the guards escort the prisoners back to the brig. How could he have gone this long on board without realizing their weapons were knockoffs?

  Bonnie Mary had just lowered her head to duck back down into the evil-smelling hold when she heard an unmistakable sound. Even before she looked up, her heart leapt for joy. Circling overhead, flapping its stubby wings like a frenzied windmill was an utterly ridiculous-looking bird. And it was wonderfully, brilliantly, incandescently orange.

  Bonnie Mary caught Jim’s eye as the guards shoved them back through the hatch, and saw her joy mirrored in his glance. They knew what the cry of the peculiar orange bird meant. The Nameless Isle was close.

  The Hallbrooks’ fishing boat, Medusa, arrived in Kingston the next morning, followed shortly by the smaller fishing boats of the citizens of Smuggler’s Bay.

  Little Jane had spent the entire voyage in a whirl of worry. She paced the Medusa’s deck thinking of every horrible calamity that might befall their little convoy until she was certain all the boats would end up sunk, taking all the islanders’ valuables down with them. Eight-year-old Wayne Hallbrook followed her around, imitating her pace and trying to whistle. He was some comfort, it was true, but the tension didn’t leave her until every last object from Smuggler’s Bay was removed from the boats and laid out at the market.

  Unloading everything was backbreaking work, but with many hands working together they managed to move it all out to the market in preparation for the big sale.

  Once they were finished, Little Jane turned to the Hallbrooks.

  “Thankee,” she said solemnly to the captain and his son. “We wouldn’t have survived without you.” She handed Wayne the little bottle of green lichen salve Villienne had prepared for her. “Fer your mum,” she said. “It might help with her cough.”

  “Godspeed to yah all,” replied Captain Hallbrook. He and Wayne waved as they headed back out to sea and homeward. “Remember, Little Jane, yah always got a birth on the Medusa should yah ever need one.”

  Before the sailors of the Panacea knew quite what was happening, the peculiar orange birds had perched on every conceivable surface of the ship from the bowsprit to the forecastle. Much to the deckhands’ annoyance, they then proceeded to soil the newly cleaned deck in multiple bursts of spontaneous defecation.

  However, once the crew realized the obnoxious birds were not some new species of albatross (a bird that was considered exceedingly bad luck to kill), but instead resembled giant pigeons that had been crossed with flamingos, they primed the ship’s kitchens for a feast.

  Tovaliov, the Panacea’s cook, soon had the birds plucked of their orange feathers and mashed up into a delectable stew. There was plenty to go around, but the men of the Panacea made it a point not to share a single morsel with the captive crew of the Pieces of Eight. The Panacea’s men gorged themselves on second and third helpings of the delectable stew, gnawing on wings, legs, breasts, and gizzards, while the prisoners from the Pieces ate hard, weevily ship’s biscuit without a word of complaint. Occasionally, the captives would share a dark look as their foes ate. A word was whispered softly among them and that word was soon.

  As the market began to wind down, Little Jane set out to look for Jonesy. She discovered him holding court amid the remains of her father’s mug collection, trying to palm off the last few pieces
on a group of men from Trinidad.

  “Jonesy!” She waved to her cousin and held up the drink she’d fetched for him from the beer tent before it closed down for the day. The sun was sinking, but the shadeless market still felt as hot as ever. Jonesy mopped his shining bald pate with his handkerchief as he accepted the cup of brew. Using his momentary distraction to their advantage, his prospective customers made themselves scarce.

  Jonesy turned back to the rapidly emptying marketplace with a tired sigh. “I’m knackered. Where’s that magistrate of yours?”

  At the mention of his name, Villienne popped out of a cavernous chest clutching a blue and yellow striped parasol Little Jane hadn’t used since she was six.

  “Cheers all!” he said, twirling the parasol experimentally in his hands. The blue and yellow stripes blended to form a single uniform green as he spun the canopy before them.

  “Can you believe some foolish person would actually part with such a superb demonstration of colour optics?”

  Little Jane blushed.

  Ishiro appeared soon after, looking exhausted. “I think we’ve done all we can,” he said. “What’s the score?”

  “It can’t be time to count up yet,” pleaded Little Jane. “Look, the market ain’t done. Surely, more people’ll come.”

  “I don’t think the rest o’ this is going anywhere,” said Jonesy with a wave of his hand at the mug collection. “C’mon, let’s tally up.”

  Villienne spread out the day’s takings.

  Jonesy and Villienne both came up with the same sum in the end. Although it seemed like a great deal of money to Little Jane, neither of the adults looked happy.

  “It ain’t enough,” complained Ishiro. “Not to get a boat, hire a crew and captain all.”

  “Is there anything more we can sell?” asked Little Jane hopefully.

  “Everyfing’s gone, love.” Jonesy scuffed his shoes disconsolately in the dirt. Little Jane noticed they were missing the brass buckles they’d had the night before. If Jonesy was down to selling his shoe buckles, she knew the situation was even direr than she’d supposed.

  “Nothing for it. We’ll go to the shipwright tomorrow and see what he’s willing to give us,” she said resolutely.

  What the clerk at Truthful Jack’s Honest Shipyard showed them for their trouble the next morning was a longboat last used in the Napoleonic Wars. Its scuppers were clogged with decomposing leaves and its sails hung down from the masts in patchy rags.

  “Leastways she’s a hardy vessel,” announced Harley hopefully, giving the mizzenmast a gentle thump. It split straight down the middle in response and conked him on the head. “Blast!” He rubbed the growing bump on his skull.

  “Uh, I’ll just go get Truthful Jack,” mumbled the shipyard clerk as he ran off.

  “This won’t do,” Ishiro scoffed. “No crew of mine’ll sail the ocean in this.”

  Little Jane looked to Villienne. The magistrate fingered the official royal seal that hung around his neck, his habit whenever he was vexed by a particularly intractable problem. He rubbed his thumb over the relief of Lady Britannia in her helmet, but no inspired solution came to him.

  “What’s that?” asked Little Jane, pointing hopefully at the royal seal. “That might fetch a pretty penny if we were to sell it.”

  “What? This? Oh no, Little Jane, this isn’t mine to sell. It’s my badge of office and property of the Crown,” Villienne explained proudly.

  “But what do you use it for?”

  “Oh, you know, sealing government documents for the British colonial office, letters to my mother, official reports, and —” Villienne stopped in mid-sentence. “Wait a tic. Someone give me a sheet of paper.”

  Ishiro obliged him with a page he tore from one of his drawing books. Villienne borrowed a pen from the shipwright’s writing desk, and scrawled something on the paper.

  “What’re ye doing?” asked Little Jane.

  “Just requisitioning a ship for the Crown,” replied Villienne airily as he continued writing.

  Little Jane peered down at the writing on the paper. This is what it said:

  His Majesty, acting on behalf of the Colonial Affairs Office of the West Indies, hereby requests the use of your best ship in order to catch ×××××× ×××××× ××× an outlaw hateful to British interests in the West Indian colonies. If you comply with our most gracious request, mention of your most generous deed shall enter into our halls of power. We will make sure your great service to our interests is duly noted and you are awarded with a ×××× ××××××××…

  There was more to the letter, further flattering prose, complete with vague allusions to some kind of reward from the Colonial Office that Little Jane was pretty sure did not exist.

  “What’s this part?” asked Ishiro, peering hard at the smeared passages in the document.

  “Smudges,” answered Villienne. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t ask. I couldn’t write a fake name, sign it with the seal, and stay honest. I’m willing to do this to save lives, but I can still only stretch the truth so much in my position.”

  “You can take a ship just like that?” asked Little Jane, incredulous.

  “Not take it, per say. Just sort of borrow it for a specific time,” replied Villienne, uneasily. “Assuming this ruse works, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Villienne then removed a stick of wax from his pocket. “Little Jane, fetch me a candle from my bag.” Once he had lit the candle, he melted the wax down, letting it drip onto the paper. And finally, with a flourish he impressed the seal into the wax, rendering the document an official bequest of the British Crown.

  “What’s this then?” asked Greasy Barnard, the half-honest (if slightly greasy) half-brother of the completely dishonest (and non-greasy) Truthful Jack. “Ain’t the longboat good enough fer you folk now?”

  “I believe there’s been a misunderstanding between us, my good man,” replied Villienne, sounding every inch the well-turned-out gentleman, despite his raggedy clothes and messy hands, as he tried to explain the situation. Still, Greasy Barnard appeared unmoved, his arms crossed over his massive chest. He had barely blinked when Villienne broke the wax seal of the “official” document in front of him with a dramatic flourish.

  “I ain’t gots me specs and me brother ain’t here,” grumbled Barnard, scrutinizing the paper with narrowed eyes. His gaze jumped suspiciously from one word to another, and Little Jane rightly ascertained that he couldn’t read even one of them. “Maybe you oughtta wait till Truthful Jack comes back —”

  “I certainly will not!” yelled Villienne. “To lose further time would be a most regrettable disservice to His Majesty’s Navy! In fact, I lose valuable time in discourse with you here now. Come, sir, I give my word as a gentleman that, as per the articles of the Van Hemphlin Agreement, I shall have your ship back to you in a fortnight. Should this offer fail to suit you, Mr. Barnard, I shall take my complaint up with the governor of Jamaica. Perhaps he will see your shipyard shut down for the foreseeable future. Vous comprendez?”

  “What’s that again?” Barnard asked nervously as he de-waxed his ear with the tip of his finger. Villienne patiently explained himself once more, until the man was nodding in agreement.

  “Oh, yes, certainly, certainly, Yer Magistrateship. Fergive me. Come along. I got a fine ship o’the line, might well suit ya, kitted out with all the cannons an admiral might want. She ain’t got a full job of paint on ’er yet, nor figurehead neither, but if’n you’re not choosy….”

  “That’ll be fine,” answered Villienne stiffly. All this lying was beginning to grate on his fundamentally honest nature.

  Ishiro and Jonesy stared open-mouthed at the fine modern sloop Villienne had procured for them. The hull incorporated the new American innovation of live oak planking that was supposed to render a ship nearly cannon-proof. She was in the shipwright’s dry dock now, just having her first coat of paint applied.

  “Told ye he’d come in handy,” was all
Little Jane had to say.

  A few hours later, their newly commandeered, half-painted ship was pulled out to the Kingston docks. It was quite a sight to see the ship splash down into the harbour. It reminded Little Jane of a duckling taking its first leap into a big pond; only in this case the “duckling” was as big as a whale.

  Little Jane watched Villienne busying himself trying to scrape a promising looking barnacle off the underside of the dock and into one of his many specimen jars, oblivious to the massive ship being lowered down right next to him.

  She couldn’t quite believe what this man had just done for her and her family.

  “Thank you so much for this,” she said softly to him. “Don’t matter what happens next, me and my family are in your debt forever, understand? I may be a different sort t’you, sir, but a Silver’s word is her bond. Whatever help any of us can ever offer you, you just say the word, aye?”

  “Aye?” answered Villienne.

  “Aye.” She winked back at him as he finally pried his barnacle loose.

  “Didn’t think you had it in you!” Jonesy slapped Villienne on the back, causing him to nearly drop the tiny creature. “Why, Long John himself woulda been hard-pressed to come up with anything better!”

  “Please, I deserve no praise,” confessed the magistrate shyly as he closed the lid of his specimen jar. “I just wanted to help.”

  “All well and good, but we still don’t have supplies nor crew for her,” announced Ishiro, bringing everyone back to reality.

  “Ah, that.” Little Jane sighed.

  The supplies were the easy part. A sail to the Nameless Isle from Jamaica would only take two days if the weather held and then another two days back. They could use the money they made at the market to purchase what items they needed for such a short journey, but for the life of her, Little Jane had no idea how to go about finding crewmembers.