The 9th Fortress

by John Paul Jackson

  I expressed sorrow with the last of me, sorrow for the both of us; then abruptly and amazingly, I found myself free of him. Only he could explain, but the man willingly released me from his arms, and sunk alone to his fate.

  Breaking the surface, I wretched the salt water from my lungs. Kat's call was clearer now, but with scant energy to swim, I expected my end sooner rather than later.

  "Men overboard!" a new voice howled over the waves. "Men overboard!"

  There was a long whistle too, followed by a tall ship battering the water aside. Three massed and fully rigged, it was a sight of sails fat with wind and rope tails blowing in the gale. Her sailors were thin silhouettes over the deck, but each scurrying to our aid. Fierce lightning cracked the masthead and its electric light revealed the name of this glorious ship, stretched golden across the stern — Bounty.

  31. We Buccaneers

  Seven men hauled us onboard using muscle, mitts, ropes and rings. Restored to our mortal bodies, we lay on a sopping deck before hardy sailors, their faces aged by salt and time.

  "Merci!" said Harmony, breathlessly ringing the water from her gown.

  "Thank-you all so much!"

  "We're lost!" I chattered. "Where are we?"

  The sea pounded this ship from all sides, as if angry for losing us.

  "Pretty girl!" sneered one of the men, curling Harmony's hair through his hands. "She'll wish she was back in the water when we're through! Am I right lads?"

  This grubby sailor laughed with the rest, only to be interrupted by a younger man, the runt of this litter.

  "Back!" he exclaimed, separating them from us.

  "Name's Hallet," he said to me, "John Hallet. You are safe now mister! You and your people. For the time being at least!"

  Filling his naval jacket with pride, there was a kindness on Hallet's boyish face, and honesty in the eyes. It was his voice I heard bawl over the ocean and his whistle too — John Hallet was our saviour.

  "Take what they have!" yelled one, built like a barrel. We were suddenly manhandled by these sailors, confiscating our weapons and flasks. We fought to prevent this but the water made us weak, even Kat slumped a temporary shadow of his former self.

  The sailor who ordered this callous toss of our weapons into sacks had a face peppered with acne and scabs; and his body was as worn as this ship.

  "I ordered these people be treated with respect!" cried Hallet, the spray lashing his face. "They are no threat to us Williams! Now fetch some blankets and see them all to berths below!"

  "Clamp ‘em in irons!" returned Williams, to agreeing grunts from his fellows.

  "You'll carry out my orders!" roared Hallet. "Never again will I repeat myself to a wretched, black-hearted curr like you Williams! Long have you undermined me man, and no longer will I stand for it!"

  Surprised, Williams mocked Hallet's exuberance, his youth and class before rallying the men to his own cause. "And what would the captain say, Mr. Hallet, sir? Pickin' up strays on these seas? Aye it may have been your notion to collect these floaters but it is mine to keep 'em where eyes can see 'em! What do we say lads?"

  "We don't need more strangers!" concurred one, with a gaping hole where his eye should be. "Not this sort anyhow! That scarred bugger there has seen many a battle, and the woman has wings!"

  "They're cursed!" declared another. "A curse from the Devil! Toss em back to the locker I say!"

  "Aye!" the dishevelled lot agreed.

  "But after," added Williams; "after we get our share of the woman!"

  His words inspired a salivating groan from these men, and their greedy hands began to molest Harmony, pulling the sling from her arm and groping her curves. Eddinray found the fight to beat them off, but Williams quickly slashed a warning cutlass across his chest. "Take nay action against us, ye olé knight! Or my next score will cross yer bloody throat!"

  Their calloused palms snuffed Harmony's moans, but before the clothes could be torn from her body, Hallet again pushed the men back and bawled over a storm.

  "Williams you're a bloody disgrace! A bloody disgrace, you hear? You others curse your damned filthy hands to the devil! The captain will see to the matter! The captain alone! For now you follow out orders Williams, my orders, or tonight I'll see you keeping an eye on all of us — from the masthead!"

  Williams set his withered eye to that high and hellish spot through torn canvas and rigging, then resentfully nodded at his younger superior. It was then, whilst examining the ship that I noticed — despite having enough seamen here — there was no hand at the helm of this ship. At the quarterdeck, thick rope held the wheel in place and on course, whatever diabolical course that may be.

  Without warning, two heavyset men handled Kat by the armpits, and he immediately shoved the pair aside.

  "He doesn't need assistance!" I yelled. "Leave him alone!"

  Kat's ungrateful attitude did not please the ugly Williams, who wasted no time smashing his boot heel into the samurai's face.

  "We've done nothing!" Harmony sobbed, watching Kat collapse. "Let us be!"

  The rest advanced. Harmony was thrown over one man's shoulder; two dragged my limp body over the deck whilst the last of them tugged Eddinray along by the wrist. "I can walk!" he complained. "My legs are functioning perfectly!"

  On his back, blood oozed from Kat's nose, and when it touched his tongue, his old self returned with a vengeance. His head butt staved one's cheek in and his punch blew the teeth out another's mouth. Quickly set on, all six crew dropped us to swing their fists and boots into our bullish friend.

  "Leave him!" I moaned. "Kat!"

  My sound could never penetrate the storm, and although Kat was typically tough in defending himself, he took brutal hits enough to kill a lesser man. "Don't fight Kat!" I cried. "They won't stop if you keep fighting!"

  Through walloping arms and legs, I noticed Williams brandish a blunt shank. Kat saw it too, and without mercy, he grabbed the Seaman's wrist, broke it with a downward snap then forced the shank through William's ribcage. The pit faced sailor spat red over the samurai, before thumping dead to the ever-washing deck.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed the bulging sack containing our weapons and the flasks to save this soul — but there they would remain. Expectantly, the subsequent dispersion of William's body only encouraged his fellow sailors to finish Kat off.

  "Look out!" yelled Harmony suddenly, as Kat was knocked out cold.

  "Get us all murdered!" exhaled Eddinray, the culprit holding the club. "Bloody madman!"

  Hallet snatched the wood from Eddinray's hand then ordered his remaining men to escort us below, as the soul of seaman Williams became a shrimp in his own bloodied pool.

  ***

  We idled in a shell of old wood and creepy crawlies. A burning oil lantern smearing yellows and oranges hung near five steps ascending to a locked door. That door was the only way in or out of this hold, and we weren't going anywhere near it. On our asses side by side, all our hands where uncomfortably held above our heads by bronze cuffs at the wrists; similar locks also snared our heels. We shared our cell with dozens of barrels, many feet of rolled up hemp and a grainy black powder draining out of fat sacks. The curved walls of this ship cracked like knuckles from the pressure outside; accompanied by clunking footsteps on decks above.

  "Should we wake him?" asked Harmony, chained next to the dozing Kat.

  "Let him sleep,” I said, frustrated. "The man never sleeps."

  Her gloomy expression agreed.

  "Killed one of their crew," I muttered. "They won't allow us to leave this ship."

  Eddinray was unusually quiet between me and Harmony, the knight daydreaming the time away with nothing clever to say.

  "Anything the matter?" Harmony asked him. "You don't seem yourself Godwin?"

  "Dandy,” he replied, after a dry swallow. Just I…suffer from the most appalling seasickness, my dear. I'm afraid I feel a spell coming on."

  A lingering groan left his stomach, and Harm
ony and I slid as far as possible from any oral projectiles.

  "That was very clever of you to knock out the samurai,” said Harmony to Eddinray. "The sailors would've killed him otherwise. Yes, the correct decision Godwin. Well done. Still, let's not inform Kat of your actions. His temper will only cloud his better judgement."

  It was now my turn to give a lazy nod of agreement. "Perhaps I should have drunk from the canteens after all?" she added, examining the discoloured skin at her elbow.

  Suddenly, a rattling of keys sprang us from our stupor. The narrow door at the steps screeched open and the young seaman, John Hallet, now entered the hold. He was obvious in his discretion, and grimaced at every creak his descending footsteps made.

  "Rainwater,” he whispered, stooping to place a heavy looking bucket by our feet. Hallet left our hands in irons and took it upon himself to wash us, splashing handfuls of chilly water over our flesh to scrub the salt from our skin. "Salt eats at you like nothing else," he said. "It'll have you raisins before you knew it."

  "Your men don't have much respect for authority,” I said, he rubbing my hair with trembling fingers.

  "They do respect authority, just not that of their midshipman. They are men after all, and no man takes orders from a boy."

  "But you are one of them," queried Harmony; "are you not?"

  John Hallet cupped a watery handful from the bucket and smeared away a pain in his neck. Understandably, centuries of riding the devil's back had taken its toll on the lad's body, and his sanity.

  "Am I one of them?" he asked himself. "Together on this ship we have watched senior officers drop like flies and the chain of command reduced to just two: Captain Christian…and the youth before you now. Some may not agree with the situation, but it is the situation, and here I will always be one of them."

  "How did your crew get here?" Harmony asked. "Of all the loathsome places? Will you share your story John Hallet?"

  After a long pause and short soak, the Midshipman amiably nodded. "The year…" he began, wiping his brow, "was 1787. Seems like a thousand years ago now and perhaps it was. Perhaps it was. The Bounty left Portsmouth bound for the West Indies and the ends of the earth. To this day I can still hear the crowds royally cheering us out of the harbour, can still see the women waving handkerchiefs and holding up sons to see off fathers. How naive I was then, how proud, how adventurous!" He groaned after another ache. "Forty six officers and men under the hand of Lieutenant William Bligh. Never a greater navigator lived, but gifted men have wretched flaws. Drunks pressed ganged into service and able seamen alike suffered ten months under his torture — floggings to the bone, desperate starvation and worse thirst! More than a hard taskmaster, Bligh was a tyrant plain and simple, and we men suffered till we could take no more of it!"

  "You mutinied?" said Harmony, captivated.

  "Led by the master's mate, Fletcher Christian, we cast Bligh and eighteen loyalists on open-boats and seized the Bounty for ourselves!" His dripping, enthusiastic face told us that even now, he did not regret that decision. "We settled on Pitcairn and burned the Bounty on its rocks. This was our hideaway island, wrongly charted on British maps; the Admiralty never did find us…"

  "Pray," pondered Eddinray; "but if you burnt your ship, why is it here now? In one piece?"

  "Why is anyone here?" he returned. "I died on my island an old man with two wives, eleven children and sixteen grand-children. It was God who cast me here, reunited with my younger self, with Bounty…and every last mutineer."

  "And the captain?" I asked him, "Fletcher Christian? Are you aware of his plans? For his ship? For us?"

  "Only Christian could say. Those men upstairs may mock me…but we dearly love our captain, sir. He sails us through Hell keeping hope in hearts; hope that we'll reach land, hope that the Devil will one day spit us out!"

  He sucked the draining water from his cupped palm, then carefully added,

  "Only Christian and I know the truth, the awful truth of it."

  "What's that?" I whispered back.

  Hallet crept closer, eyes becoming strained slits. "There is no way out,” he rasped. "This ocean is for the damned sailors of Earth and elsewhere, for scoundrel pirates and mutineer scum like us. We broke the sacred code of the sea, and for that folly we pay with our souls, forever."

  "God forgives,” said Harmony. "There are pardons for those who earn redemption. Your time will come John Hallet."

  The midshipman sarcastically chuckled, then leant so close to Harmony that she could feel his stubble brush against her cheek. "God…has forsaken us!"

  Stretching upright with his near empty bucket, Hallet peered admirably at the rotten beams and centipedes overhead. "If it weren't for the captain…That man has seen us victorious through many a battle. He is everything — our Father, our Commander, and our God now."

  "Nonsense!" scoffed Harmony. "Talk like that it's no wonder you're in such deplorable condition!"

  Hallet's subsequent scowl seemed to age him fifty years before us. "Captain works his own miracles, angel!” he sniped. “He has given us more than your invisible God ever has!"

  Not the time or place for the argument, I interrupted Harmony's inevitably pious reply. "You've fought here?" I asked him. "On these seas? With other ships?"

  "Ships like us,” he answered "Navies from all nations, of all times. Come across one every year or so, and every year or so we plunder the lot. Us against them, and we leave only bloody decks behind us."

  "Is that why so few remain?" Eddinray asked. "Lost in…battle?"

  A petrified pallor came over Hallet now, fear throttling its unseen hand around his neck.

  "Good God!" exclaimed Harmony, startled. "What's wrong with you?"

  Shaking his mind clear of the past, Hallet's following sentence was as lifeless as his expression.

  "The samurai…will be executed tomorrow. Captain's orders."

  John Hallet then returned up the steps with his bucket…to join a scant crew of privateers above.

  ***

  Later, Kat opened his eyes to Harmony's bright smile. "How are you?" she asked.

  Ignoring her, Kat thrust his arms forward and was given a jolt by the chains keeping him to the wall.

  "We've already tried!" I said, exasperated. "Believe me!"

  Kat slumped back to feel the pain of a migraine. "Who…struck me?" he hissed, keen to return the favour. "Tell me who?"

  Harmony and I fumbled our eyes past a guilt ridden Eddinray, who spoke up before we could lie for him,”One of the cowardly sailors clonked you from behind! A tall fellow and brutally ugly! Rest assured Kat, I gave the blaggard what for! No need to thank me of course, I know gratitude is not your way, however some form of appreciation would be welcomed."

  Kat turned his sour face from our sight, examining the lantern, the many open casks of black powder, cannon balls, cables and canvas. "We could start a fire,” he said, his mind enjoying the delightfully dangerous idea. "Take them and their ship out!"

  "Shit,” I said, amused. "There's enough explosives in here to blow us all to kingdom come. None would escape the blast."

  Kat appeared indifferent to the loss of us all, so sullenly, we rested in silence for many minutes. I knew Harmony was considering how to inform Kat of his approaching execution, could see the subject itch her lips. But for all her grace and well-meaning words, she would tactfully beat around the point, so I saved her the trouble. "They're going to kill you Kat. You'll be executed first thing for murdering that sailor. If I can have a word with the captain before then, I'll try to explain."

  "It was self defense!" added Harmony. "That's what to do Daniel. The captain cannot be an unreasonable man."

  Still looking away, we thought it best to leave Kat to his mood.

  "A game then?" suggested Eddinray.

  "Another?" Harmony sighed. "Suppose it will pass the time. What game shall we play Godwin?"

  "How about guess the sea shanty?" he exclaimed. "I'm terribly excellent at that! There…on
ce was a lad named Jack! Who was lost at sea in a hold with three, and now he doesn't know where he's at!"

  "No, no, no!" squawked Harmony. "Dreadful! Perhaps a blinking competition? Yes! The French are renowned holders of the blink you know, and I can confidently boast to be the best in my class!"

  "Nonsensical notion!" jeered Eddinray. "Now arm wrestling my dear, there is your game! Who dare face me first?"

  Harmony rolled her eyes back. "Can hardly arm wrestle in this state Godwin. Besides, your arms appear extremely stringy under that armor; they would likely snap if put against Kat's formidable strength."

  I smirked as she carried on. "But the stare, hardly a mere game knight; it improves focus and concentration; a true commanding of the senses. First to blink loses. Godwin, you and I first."

  Enthusiastically the pair faced, preparing in all seriousness to out stare the other. "Daniel," she said, "you are to judge."

  Eddinray rattled the blinks out of his system before meeting Harmony's bluest eyes; and after a three-second countdown, their duel began.

  One minute passed with both unflinching. I leant closer to fairly referee the contest and suddenly found myself engrossed in this foolishness. Eddinray's eyes watered as Harmony continued to beam them down. In this game, she was merciless. Inevitably then, Eddinray wobbled as if a strained scaffold, and his blink conceded the contest. "I win!" cheered Harmony. "Hurrah!"

  "You cheated!" he protested. "Blew into my eyeballs you conniving French frog!"

  "How dare you!" she returned. "I am no cheat, and to suggest it of an angel is a ludicrous contradiction! What say you referee?"