by B. L. Morgan
Jumping to our feet, we did exactly that.
The closest entrance to the forest was to our right. Since the sisters that raise blisters ran to the left, right was the best direction for us to go.
We darted through the clearing amid pops and cracks, screaming native women and falling warriors, then ducked into the tree line running full tilt into the jungle.
A pitch blackness darker than a moonless midnight closed immediately around us. We ran and bounced off trees and vines and in the dark it wasn’t long before we weren’t running at all but mostly walking fast and trying to feel our way forward through the black jungle.
The jungle around us was silent so we could still hear the fighting that was going on back at the clearing.
Johnny whispered from off to my right side, “That sounded like gunfire. Did you see any of the guys that were attacking?”
“No,” I answered.
We moved on through the jungle away from the fading shots and screams.
All the bird calls and animal sounds that we heard the day before were gone. The thick silence around us was eerie and heavy on our nerves. Every creature that lived in this jungle, everything that lived on this island, was attuned to the sounds and noises of what was supposed to be here.
Something had invaded this land that did not belong here. Something was here that the native creatures did not understand.
We moved forward through the dark.
Suddenly, like we pushed a curtain aside Johnny and me stepped out past the tree line, out of the jungle and gazed at open space.
I took one step more and almost pitched myself forward off a cliff that fell straight down at least two hundred feet. I slid down to my back and Johnny grabbed me by the arm and jerked me away from sudden death.
“Dam man,” he told me. “You need to watch where the fuck you’re stepping.”
He was right about that.
From where we were a bare three feet ahead the ground dropped off like it had been sliced away with a massive knife.
The cliff face before us was sharp. We looked down and since we didn’t have trees blocking the moonlight we saw waves breaking white upon the rocks at the bottom far below us.
Open ocean stretched endlessly in front and to the left of us.
To the right, and what I was guessing was the south, we saw something that really shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was anyway. Anchored off shore from a narrow strip of beach was a ship. Judging by the number of masts sticking up, it was a large sailing ship.
Now me and Johnny knew where our ticket off this island was so we carefully headed along the edge of the cliff to the South.
Walking by moonlight on the edge of a cliff is not easy business. Even with a grinning full moon looking down on us the silvery light didn’t show us a whole hell of a lot about where to be stepping. A few times my left foot missed the ground completely and I had to grab onto a tree to keep from falling sideways down the cliff.
We skirted the cliff and the trees until the plant life thinned and the cliff became the steep side of a grass covered hill and that turned into a long steep sand dune.
We kept on going, kept moving toward the south.
Then coming up over one more sand dune we were looking down at the narrow strip of beach that we’d seen from the top of the cliff and out past that the ship sat anchored rocking gently in the ocean breeze.
Chapter Twenty
Slumbering Sentries
We crouched down on the opposite side of the crest of the sand dune.
“We got to get on that boat,” I told Johnny.
“No shit,” he answered.
“What if they try to kill us?” I asked him.
“It’ll be just like old times,” he answered.
There were two ropes that held the ship anchored. One was stretching out away from shore. The other one was further out in deep water.
“We’re gonna climb one of those ropes,” I told Johnny.
“We better go up the one coming out of deep water,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because,” he answered. “If anybody’s on watch, I’d have to bet that they’ll be looking toward shore. There wouldn’t be too much for them to see out toward the ocean tonight would there?”
There wasn’t much sense in arguing with him because he was right.
“Sound’s good,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We made a wide detour through the jungle to the far side of the narrow strip of beach and since the shoreline curved around we came out looking directly at the ship’s bow or front.
When we came out of the trees and looked at the ship the word bow popped into my head. Back in my own time, my own place, my own world, I didn’t know a dam thing about ships or the ocean. I’d never even been on the water except for doing a little fishing when I was a kid.
I was guessing that this was just another of the weird changes that were bound to happen to us just like the kind we’d experienced when we jumped back to Caligula’s Rome.
There, kind of like I expected now, we knew things and automatically acquired skills that matched us with the life and times we dropped into.
Only time would tell what the hell we knew this journey.
Looking up from the edge of the trees in the shadows where we knew no one could see us from the boat, we silently observed our target.
No one appeared to be moving on deck. We saw four masts jutting up into the sky from the deck and all the canvas was rolled up and ready to be lowered to sail away. There appeared to be a basket near the top of the second mast from the ship’s bow. A man looked to be standing in that basket.
Johnny leaned over and tapped me on the arm and whispered, “I don’t know about us sneaking on this boat. That guy is in the right place to see everything.”
He was right about that but there was also something else that I saw. The guy wasn’t standing up in that basket. His legs were sticking out at the bottom of it and his feet swayed with the motion of the ship.
Just then a sea gull screeched and soared across in front of the basket, then it dove and grabbed a fish from just under the water’s surface and took off again.
The guy in the crow’s nest, and that’s another word that just popped into my head, didn’t even move. His feet didn’t jerk. His head didn’t turn. The boy was out cold.
“He’s asleep,” I told Johnny.
“Either that or dead,” he answered.
From where we were the water was a bare fifty feet away.
Wisps of clouds moved across the night sky.
We waited and timed it so that when one of the larger streamers of clouds moved in front of the moon, we darted across the narrow strip of sand and waded out into the ocean.
As soon as we were out up to our waists the both of us dropped down so that only our necks were above water. Then we scooted along the bottom toward the deep.
The water was cool, not really cold. I got used to it real quick. I guess the water felt cold the last time I was in it because just a moment before my skin felt like it was on fire.
The whole time we moved out further into the deeper water I kept my eyes on the legs that were sticking out of that crow’s nest. They never twitched. It ran through my head that the captain of this ship sure chose the wrong man to keep watch.
We worked our way out to where the water was deeper than where we could stand then breast stroked to the ocean side of the ship.
Except for the peaceful creaking of timbers shifting and rubbing against each other with the rolling ocean, there were no sounds to be heard. We swam to the point where the rope came up out of water.
Grabbing the rope I took one good long look up at the crow’s nest. On one moved there.
I looked up and down the side of the ship.
I saw no one peering over and saw no movement at all.
I hauled myself hand over hand up and out of the water climbing the rough anchor rope.
Wrapping my legs around
the rough hemp I shimmied up like it was a pole. As soon as I got far enough along so that my feet left the water and moved up the rope about five feet, Johnny climbed up out of the ocean.
Except for the water slapping the sides of the ship and the creaking of wood on wood and water dripping from us everything was silent. This magnified to our ears every sound that we made. I shimmied up the rough hemp and tried like hell to not make a single sound. Climbing a rope and not even making a grunt is not an easy thing to do but I tell you what, I did it that night.
The hemp scratched and burned the insides of my legs and hands as I climbed.
Finally the rope came to an end. It was tied to the rail along the side of the ship. I pulled myself up and grabbed the rail with my right hand then twisting to the side grabbed the rail with both hands.
I found a foothold to stick my toe in, then pulled myself up and looked in over the rail onto the deck of the ship.
Nothing stirred.
Nothing moved.
Not wanting to stay where I was all night I pulled myself up and over and climbed onto the deck.
All manner of ropes and sailing tackle was strewn all over the place. I was later to find out that the placement of the tackle wasn’t just where it just happened to get dropped. This stuff was next to the location of where it would be used.
I glanced around and saw a sailor lying with his head on some ropes. A bottle of rum was lying beside him.
The thought ran through my head, Yeah, yo-ho-ho, you fucking idiot.
Johnny had reached the rail by then.
I helped him on board.
From the beach we heard hooting and hollering.
That was when we figured we might be in a little bit of trouble.
Chapter Twenty-One
Stowaways
With shouts and curses coming from the beach I looked almost straight up to check on the man in the crow’s nest.
His legs were being drawn back into the basket. He gave a loud yawn standing up stretching as he rubbed his eyes.
The other guy, the one lying on the deck rolled over and farted. It was a big ripper of a fart too, kind of juicy sounding. I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if when he woke all the way up he found out he’d shit his pants. We didn’t want to be standing there long enough to find out.
From over head came a coarse shout, “Ahoy there, you bloody bastards! Did you get them?”
A faint yell came back, “Enough for all, enough for all. These native wenches will screw you bowlegged.”
“I’ll bloody well screw them bowlegged,” was shouted back.
Johnny grabbed my arm. Jerking and pulling me he pointed toward what at first looked like a black spot in the shadows of the deck. After a half second my eyes adjusted and I saw a hole that lead down into the bowels of the ship.
I glanced toward shore.
Rowboats, at least six of them, with men holding torches had cast off from the beach.
The man lying on the deck, farting like he was crapping his pants was starting to stir.
“Kendal, wake your drunken ass up before Carmel gets along side us,” the watchman called down from overhead. “She’ll have your hide if she thinks you’ve been asleep on watch.”
He grunted back a curse then mumbled, “She’ll have both our sodden hides then. You were just as drunk as me.”
Johnny and me ducked our heads and feeling our way down slick wooden stairs went into the ship’s stomach.
Below deck it was as black as the pits of hell.
We felt our way along. My legs bumped into barrels and crates. My hands reached out and grabbed onto swinging nets, hammocks, just like I knew where they were supposed to be.
I was getting strange flashes, picture memories, of where everything was down here. It was strange, almost like I’d been here before. But that was impossible.
Something banged into the side of the ship with a loud THUNK and even through the wood of the hull I heard curses and someone yell, “Tie the bleeding boat off for God’s sake.” That voice was high pitched, like a woman’s.
The boat banged into the ship’s side a few more times and it was followed by more boats bouncing off the hull.
Johnny whispered to me, “Come on, this way,” and tugged on my arm.
Everything was pitch black.
“Where the hell are we going?”
“Down into the cargo hold,” he said and I got another of those visual memory flashes of a damp place with piles of crates, food and other supplies.
I didn’t know how he knew where the trap door was but I didn’t know how I was remembering the inside of this ship even though I’d never been here before.
I heard the trap door creak open as Johnny lifted it up.
We went down into the deeper darkness of the lowest part of the ship.
We felt around, shuffled forward through the pitch blackness moving by touch and a strange instinct that I couldn’t account for that told me generally where everything was. It was like moving through my bedroom in the dark. I knew from memory where the big objects were, even if some of the smaller ones had been moved around.
I put it down immediately to being acquainted with this type of ship but discounted that almost as fast as the thought hit me. These types of ships might all generally be built the same but each captain wanted their cargo holds set up different.
These questions of where memories of a seafaring life came from were brought to a halt when we simultaneously came to the end of the ship and a loud thud came from over our heads.
The thud was exactly the sound you would guess would come from someone jumping onto the deck after climbing the boarding ladder. This thud was followed be at least ten others.
A row of crates was to our left.
We grabbed them one by one and built a wall between the end of the boat and the middle.
Just as boot stomps started coming from the boards directly over our heads, the level where the crew slept, we ducked down behind our wall and hid.
All night long the sounds of partying came from above us. At first we crouched down, then we sat down and finally after a long while we stretched out.
A few times we heard the clump of feet descending the stairs. There was some rustling around for a few minutes, and then the clumping would head back up.
We heard the singing of pirate songs. The yo-ho-hoing and a bottle of rum type shit and laughing and curses.
We also heard the grunts and groans and female sounds of begging. My guess was that the pirates raided the village and stole some women. Boys will be boys and they had to play with their toys.
There would definitely be some fucking going on, on this boat.
We waited.
Then we waited some more.
After what seemed like forever, the party quieted down and the only sound that came from over our heads was snoring.
After a good long period of this passed I whispered to Johnny, “I think it’s time we came out.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “I wasn’t planning on spending the entire year down here.”
We really had no plan.
I guess the idea was just to come out and find out what the situation was.
We’d climbed aboard because we needed a ride to Eastern Europe where Elizabeth Bathory was. Or at least a ride to the mainland, then we’d make our way to Elizabeth’s country.
We came out from behind the boxes, creeping like two alley cats in the dark.
I tapped Johnny on the shoulder and leaned close enough so that my head was almost touching his.
I whispered, “I should tell you something that’s really weird man. I remember this boat and I don’t know what the fuck to make of that.”
We were at the stairs leading up to the second level.
“That ain’t the half of it,” he whispered back. “I’ve been remembering one whole hell of a lot more than just this boat.”
He started up the stairs before he went further with that and the feeling I got fr
om him not continuing was not a good one.
At the crew’s sleeping quarters a few lamps were dimly burning so we were able to get a lot better look than before.
Filled hammocks swung. Several of the buccaneers had native women in the hammocks with them. They had them wrapped up in their arms and legs. Those girls weren’t getting away.
Everybody was drunk and passed out and were sprawled everywhere.
We stepped over unconscious pirates and slid in puddles of vomit and piss and shit. Somebody was going to have one hell of a mess to clean up tomorrow.
The ship rocked with the waves and the breeze made a mournful sound that was like an old man’s dying breath.
All was quiet as far as words being spoken or human sounds were concerned.
We tiptoed quietly up the second set of wooden stairs and stepped out onto the deck.
The island was but a small hump on the horizon in the distance. The moon was setting and the sky to the East was starting to glow pink.
Johnny came out onto the deck and looked around and stretched. I did the same. Everyone appeared to be deep into a drunken slumber.
From the shadows in the direction of the Captain’s Wheel there came a voice, a feminine voice that had steel in it, and it was a voice that was accustomed to giving commands.
“May all the Olde Gods be praised,” the voice called out. “My Third Eye knew, but my wits would not believe. Jonydavid, you came back to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Risen From the Dead
“Back I am,” Johnny answered. “Tell me my dearest Carmel, did you really believe that throwing me from your ship off the coast of Tortuga with an anchor tied to my legs could really do me in?”
A woman stepped out from behind the Captain’s Wheel.
“I had hoped so,” she answered in a thick accented voice that resembled Cajun but had a heavy hint of an African tongue. She was a slim well built black woman clothed in a loose-fitting buccaneer’s shirt and breeches. A cutlass dangled at her side.