The original crew of the Pieces of Eight had come primarily from Smuggler’s Bay and consisted of nearly all the able seamen of the village. The only ones who stayed behind when the Pieces sailed were a few fishermen. Two elderly fishermen who’d helped ferry the goods to Jamaica in their boats were willing to come aboard to help rescue their loved ones, but the rest of the crew, Little Jane realized with growing dismay, would have to be recruited from the dockside taverns of Kingston.
Chapter Two
Tale of an Atoll
In the brig of the Panacea “Long John” Jim Silver turned his face toward the tiny cross-hatched square of blue sky, eager to catch whatever whiff he could of the Nameless Isle on the air.
Though it lifted Long John’s spirits, the volcanic scent of the approaching island only seemed to increase Bonnie Mary’s fretful mood. As awful as their imprisonment was, it was trumped by the uncertain future awaiting them on the island.
Bonnie Mary originally assumed Fetz would leave Long John behind when they went ashore. After all, a man on crutches couldn’t help but slow their party down, and the longer they remained on-island, the greater the risk to them all.
It would’ve been the logical decision. But logic, she now realized, held little sway over the mind of the captain. Despite repeated arguments put forward by the good doctor, Madsea held fast to the belief that leaving Jim on board might court mutiny among the captive crewmembers. For her part, Bonnie Mary suspected another reason for Fetz’s eagerness to take Jim, one she dared not voice aloud.
In her mind, Bonnie Mary ran through what she knew of the peculiar geography of the Nameless Isle: It was the type of volcanic island known as an atoll. At the centre of the island rose a tall mountain, the creation of a now dormant volcano, its surface pockmarked with caves created by lava flows thousand of years before. The passages through which the molten lava had once flowed formed tunnels that radiated from the centre of the volcano out to the surface. With the passage of time and the settling of the earth, the tubes had collapsed in on themselves and created the network of caves that now dotted the sloping sides of the mountain. No hiding place could be safer.
In addition, the mountain was surrounded on all sides by a wide ring of ocean water, like the moat around a castle. Around this moat was a circle of sharp basalt rocks that projected out of the ocean like an open mouth of crooked black teeth. The visible rocks were treacherous enough, but the ones to really watch out for were those hidden beneath the surface of the water, lying in wait for any ship foolish enough to sail too close.
A mantle of unseasonable fog had settled into the area as they approached. It rolled up over the ship, surrounding the Panacea in a shroud of white mist. Luckily, Madsea had sent out a small craft to take depth measurements, so they did not have to rely on sight alone for navigation. Even so, it was a chancy manoeuvre. As the ship neared the black rocks, everyone braced for the inevitable crunch.
But thankfully no crunch came.
“Anchor dropped,” came the call.
As the last of the anchor chain clanked off the spool, the curtain of fog parted and the Nameless Isle revealed itself in its entirety at last. It lay like some misty vision from a poet’s dream, with the mountain rising up an eerie blue in the distance. Halfway up it vanished in a low wreath of cloud, only to emerge again on the other side, soaring to even greater heights before disappearing completely among the proper clouds of the sky.
It was the sort of vision that could take a person’s breath away, but down in the brig, Bonnie Mary saw nothing save wood walls and iron bars.
With mounting terror, she wondered what fate Fetz had in mind for her and her husband. She was certain the real reason Jim was chosen for the journey was so that he could witness in person the destruction of all he’d loved and worked for during the years of Madsea’s exile in prison.
Although they’d held out hope that Madsea would remain unaware of the general location of their loot on the island, somehow Ned had pieced together enough from overheard conversations during his time aboard to inform his new captain of the island’s cave network as a likely spot.
Still, she was certain Madsea had no idea what they planned for him in return. Bonnie Mary had never taken the route they would tell Madsea to take to the cave. As far as she knew, no one ever had. In theory it should take them there, but she had no proof that it was even possible. At least if they died on the journey, they’d take Fetz with them, she reasoned, but that was no comfort to her. All Bonnie Mary could think of was how terribly she missed Little Jane and how her arms ached to hold her. To risk her life travelling to the Nameless Isle was not the worst of it. The worst was that she still did not know where Little Jane was, whether she fared well or poorly, was safe or in danger. She had no idea whether Little Jane was even still alive, and to Bonnie Mary’s mind no torture of body Madsea could ever inflict upon her could compete with the pain of not knowing that one simple fact.
Chapter Three
Captain Ishiro
If Jonesy, Ishiro, or Harley had any qualms about taking a twelve-year-old girl on a tour of dockside sailors’ taverns in Kingston, they did not express them.
Truth was, the three men had so long been used to seeing Little Jane at the Spyglass that they had quite forgotten that another watering hole might not be so convivial to the young sailor girl, nor provide quite as wholesome an environment for her edification. As for Little Jane herself, she was entirely aware of her parents’ prohibition toward such, but with them absent at the moment, she found no occasion to enlighten her friends about the rules she was breaking.
“Why in the world would anyone want to go inside one of these places?” Little Jane asked Jonesy, wrinkling up her nose upon entering a bar known locally as “The Chamber Pot.”
Jonesy made no comment. He was too busy thumping on a table with his beefy fist, calling the drunken patrons to attention.
“Listen up, seadogs!” Jonesy’s voice rang out above the general hubbub of the tavern. “Any sailor here looking to sign articles, we’s seeking a crew for a few weeks’ jaunt in the islands.”
“What ship?” asked a curly-haired sailor with a red-veined nose.
“Truthful Jack’s new sloop,” answered Jonesy. “Straight out of the stocks she is, with the paint not even dry upon ’er. So, who here’s got the spirit to join us?”
“A week’s jaunt t’ where?” piped up a grizzled seaman at the bar.
“Uh, yes, well, our destination be the Nameless Isle,” replied Jonesy, nervously readjusting his neckerchief.
A buzz of whispered conversation sped around the room.
“The Nameless Isle?” asked a heavily freckled man, as if he hadn’t heard quite right.
“The Cursed Isle, you mean,” said another, spitting into a nearby cuspidor.
“Ain’t it bewitched?” asked someone else.
“No, it ain’t,” replied Jonesy defensively.
“Aye,” added Harley, trying to be helpful, “It’s just a rumour. No one’s been killed there in a dog’s age.”
Jonesy shot the ex-butler a look that could’ve withered wet grass. Luckily, he was distracted by yet another grizzled seaman (this particular bar did indeed seem to be lousy with them). The man squinted at Jonesy like he was a bit of irritating sun in his eyes.
“If ye were Long John Silver yerself, I wouldn’t go with ye, ye was going there,” he pronounced querulously, taking another swig of his brew as if to say that was the end of that.
“Here! Here!” agreed several others.
“Listen,” cut in Ishiro before they all got back to their beers. “We’re on a rescue mission to get back the crew of the Pieces of Eight, kidnapped less than a fortnight ago by pirate hunters and the ship sunk out from under them. You may see some action, but you’ll be paid well and no one’ll make you set foot on the island, I promise you that. Ask anyone here, they’ll tell you Ishiro Soo-Yun’s a man of honour. You sign on with us, I’ll see to it personally that you’ll get
half your wages right now, a-fore we leave Jamaica.”
This strange offer, accompanied by the news of the Pieces’ destruction, set tongues wagging again.
“And who’re you, Chinaman?” snorted the red-faced sailor.
“Actually, I’m half Korean, half Japanese,” replied Ishiro, a fact that he had grown quite tired of repeating during his long life in Western lands.
“What business it be to you where he’s from?” growled Little Jane. “He’s our captain, so you best not get on the wrong side of ’im.”
“Jane!” gasped Ishiro, feeling his heart jig up and down in his chest in a most unwelcome manner. “You know I can’t captain a ship.” But his voice was drowned out in a flurry of renewed conversation.
“That’s right. Captain Ishiro!” Little Jane shouted. ”The hero of the Newton and the Golden Fleece. Him what brought three hundred men out of hell after the death o’ Old Captain Thomas Bright all them years ago. This be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to serve under a decorated war hero, or are you all so cowardly and shy of glory?”
All eyes in the tavern were now on the young girl.
“And who might you be, missy?” asked the bleary-eyed sailor. He leaned forward menacingly, and she could smell his sour breath on her face. “Nought but a wee lass in pants, says I.”
“I’m Little Ja — No, I mean, I’m Jane, Jane Silver. My parents are the kidnapped captains of the —”
“Har har har.” The bleary-eyed sailor drowned out her voice with his laugh. “Little Jane? Wot kinda name is that?”
“She better not be coming aboard,” snorted the seaman with the red nose.
“Females is bad luck on a ship,” growled another.
“Aye, mates, remember the tale of the chap what brought his lass aboard the Makanaw Mermaid off Boston. Ship sunk not a day later wit’ all hands aboard,” said an ancient white-haired mariner, busy holding court in a corner of the tavern.
“Belay that talk and shut yer gobs!” shouted Jonesy above them all, but his bluster was to no avail. The noise from the crowd rose like flood water above their ears, submerging all Little Jane and her friends tried to say beneath it.
Ishiro’s chest was still too weak from his recent heart trouble to make much of a dent in the din and Jonesy’s voice was rapidly going hoarse. Villienne was too stunned by his unaccustomedly filthy surroundings to think of anything except issues of infection control, and as for Harley, he was rapidly coming around to the tavern patrons’ way of thinking about their expedition’s chances for success.
Little Jane’s face flushed and her cheeks glowed red as pokers in a fire. An onlooker might be mistaken in thinking she was blushing, embarrassed by the sailors’ rough talk, but Little Jane wasn’t embarrassed; no, Little Jane was mad. Mad in both senses of the word. Furious with the constant frustration and humiliation, harried to exhaustion by fear, and touched with just a bit of pure crazy for good measure.
Like the accidental mixture of chemicals in Villienne’s greenhouse laboratory, something strange was bubbling up within her. Her emotions came swirling together in such high concentrations that they catalyzed into a runaway reaction of powerful unstoppability. Then, much like the chemicals in Villienne’s greenhouse, Little Jane exploded.
“Enough!” she shouted, in a voice that travelled out of the bar, all the way down the street, and back again, loud as the sound of a cannon.
Propelled by a fury like none she’d ever felt before, Little Jane leapt up on the nearest table, sending the beer mugs flying.
“Quieeeetttttttt!” she roared at the top of her lungs. And before she knew quite what was happening, the entire tavern fell silent, dumbfounded by the booming shout and its impossibly small source.
Even Little Jane herself couldn’t quite fathom how that shout came to be. It was the kind of bellowing, deep throated shout that comes direct from the belly; the kind of shout that could command a crew over the raging winds of a hurricane; the kind of shout, in fact, that is usually only heard from the mouth of a genuine, full-grown ship’s captain.
Just how such a shout came full throttle from the throat of the twelve year old girl in their midst no one could ever say, yet from that day forward Little Jane always knew that mighty shout was there, coiled like a sleeping dragon deep down inside her, a great power to be called forth whenever she truly needed it.
In the stunned silence of the dingy room her voice rang out loud and clear as she said, “Yes, I am a girl in pants.” (No one even sniggered now). “But I’m also the daughter of Captains Bonnie Mary Bright and Long John Silver — and a bleedin’ fine sailor to boot! I ain’t afraid of the Nameless Isle and I’m younger’n all a you. C’mon, you lot. You call yourselves seadogs? What man among you ain’t afraid of his shadow?” She laughed scornfully. “In fact, I’m so not afraid o’ what’s on that island that I ain’t bringing nothing with me but me wooden sword here. It ain’t worth me steel and neither is you!” She sniffed, cinched her mother’s old red sash about her waist as if that was that, and stepped down lightly off the table. All eyes in the tavern followed her to the doorway, but she would not favour them with so much as a backward glance.
“And you say we gets half-pay before the ship even leaves harbour?” a voice piped up.
“Aye,” answered Ishiro, his voice and manner invigorated by Little Jane’s call to arms. “So make your choices wisely, mates, and sail with us.”
All told, fifteen men signed articles for the Yorkman in that tavern alone.
Despite their success in recruiting a crew, by the time the group from Smuggler’s Bay had returned to their camp at the marketplace, Ishiro had resumed his troubled countenance.
“It was wrong and you know it,” argued the aggrieved sea cook as he paced in front of the fire. “I ain’t captain material no more. And to bring up the Newton and the Fleece like that — what were you thinking?”
Little Jane twisted a braid nervously around her finger. Her stroke of genius in volunteering Ishiro for the captaincy without first asking his permission didn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. She looked down, wishing she could just shout Ishiro into her way of thinking like she had the men at the tavern, but she knew he was one man whose decisions could never be swayed by the power of a mere voice, no matter how loud.
“It ain’t as if the Admiralty’s exactly knocking your door down giving you commissions, is it?” asked Jonesy as he skillfully turned their supper, a meagre-looking chicken, on a spit above the flames. “Me advice to you is just to let it go.”
“I am not letting it go,” declared Ishiro stubbornly. “I’m your elder, Little Jane. I give the commands, you listen.”
“Well, that’s exactly what I’ve been sayin’,” answered Little Jane cheekily. “I’m too young to give commands and have ’em listened to, even if I can shout like a captain. Ain’t likely those seamen at the bar’ll take me as their lord and master. That’s just plain facts, Ishiro. Among the two of us what knows navigation, it’s got to be you who captains the ship.”
“No, no. I can’t.” Ishiro sighed. “You’re too young to remember …” He rubbed a wrinkled hand over his tired face. “Look, long as you sees you’re in the wrong —”
“But I ain’t. It were wrong to volunteer you without your say-so, I allow. But I were right in wanting you for captain.”
Villienne, who was busy drawing diagrams of barnacles in his notebook, looked up with interest. “What’s that now? Ishiro for captain? Who’ll be the cook then?”
“Jonesy cooks,” suggested Little Jane. “We don’t need Ishiro for that.”
“Hmmm, interesting theory,” replied the magistrate with a glance at the barkeep’s unsanitary dinner preparations, “but just because Jonesy can roast a bit of meat on a spit, doesn’t mean Mr. Ishiro here can captain a ship. What experience does he have?”
The rest of the party fell silent. Villienne was the only one present who did not know of the disaster fifteen years before. The memory of it stung so much
that Ishiro, the formerly stalwart captain of the sunken Newton, had refused any position aboard ship of greater responsibility than cook since.
The fear of another such tragedy rested uneasily at the bottom of everyone’s mind. Ever since the incident, no joy on Smuggler’s Bay could ever be complete. That past horror was always there, dirtying the margin of the story of their lives. It gnawed at the hem of every pleasure and smudged the clarity of every bright venture. Even Little Jane, who had been born after the tragedy, felt the subtle influence of the incident on her life. It was due to the destruction of the Golden Fleece and the Newton that there were no other children around Little Jane’s age on Smuggler’s Bay. With most of the island’s men lost in the disaster, it had taken time for the many widows to begin again. Still others had left the island after, never to return.
Now, as Ishiro stomped off to deal with a last-minute supply of rope, Jonesy listened to Little Jane tell the story of the ill-fated Newton to Villienne. Of all the people who’d tried to talk Ishiro into resuming command over the years, Jonesy realized, Little Jane might actually have a chance of succeeding where others had always failed. After all, Ishiro couldn’t very well throw a bottle of sake at Little Jane the way he had at Jonesy the last time the barkeep accidentally mentioned the Newton, now could he? Unlikely, mused Jonesy wryly. After all, he’d been forced to sell every last bottle at the market.
Villienne listened intently to Little Jane’s tale of the Golden Fleece and the Newton. When Little Jane came to the end, the magistrate had to dry his eyes and blow his nose before he could comment in any magisterial capacity. By this time, Ishiro had returned from his errand and stood, arms crossed defiantly, in the doorway.
“Be that as it may, I still feel our Little Jane is correct in electing you captain, if only for purely financial reasons,” Villienne finally said, looking up at the cook. “Between hiring the crew and purchasing our supplies, we’ve completely depleted our coffers. The only captain we can afford is one who’ll work for free. That makes you and Little Jane the only ones with any proper knowledge of navigation.”
Little Jane and the Nameless Isle Page 4