“Here’s a silver baby’s rattle,” he said. “A baby rattle. It’s engraved. ‘Elizabeth.’ That’s what it says. ‘Elizabeth.’” He passed it to Arthur.
“He stole a little girl’s rattle?” Dawn asked. “That’s awful!”
BillFi opened a small wooden box, peeked inside, and passed it to Dawn. “And here’s a bunch of teeth,” he said. “A bunch of teeth, all with gold fillings.”
BillFi held up the remainder of the items in the chest: a gold wedding band, a locket with a mildewed photograph inside it, a child’s pewter drinking cup.
“We can’t take these things!” Dawn said. “This is horrible! Blackgoat forced people to give him things that . . . that mattered!”
BillFi dug through the moldy shreds of wood that cushioned the contents, and he pulled out an urn, heavy and about two feet tall. It glinted deep yellow in the flashlight beams.
“Gold?” Crystal asked.
“Brass,” Arthur said. “BillFi, what is that on the front?”
BillFi examined the urn. It was empty. On the front was an engraved coat of arms, intricate and finely wrought. BillFi brushed off two centuries’ worth of dirt and grime.
“It’s Blackgoat’s, all right,” he said. “It’s his. It has his family name carved across the bottom. And on this coat-of-arms thing are a lantern, a pineapple, a tree, and a fish. At least I think it’s a fish.”
“Do you think Blackgoat was royalty?” Crystal asked. “He had a fucking coat of arms?”
“Maybe,” Arthur said. “But it’s odd. Most coats of arms have swords, or armor, or some other war image on them. Part of the point was to let others know that you were strong and willing to fight. But this has nothing like that. These are symbols of food, growing things, showing the way. Not exactly ferocious images.”
“The pineapple is an almost universal symbol of hospitality,” Dawn said. “It’s a very welcoming, generous sort of thing—exactly the opposite of a sword, which tells people to stay away from you.”
Arthur shook his head. “So somehow Blackgoat started out in a prosperous and decent family, but ended up a blood-thirsty pirate. I wonder what happened.”
BillFi sat up tall next to the chest. “Look,” he said. He lifted a book, dark and mildewed. “Look at this. It looks like a Bible. Wish Joy were here. She’d like this. She’d like this a lot.”
“I wonder what a guy like Blackgoat was doing with a Bible,” Crystal said.
BillFi opened the book. “The Holy Bible,” he read. He turned the page. “Someone wrote on it. ‘Presented to Billy Blackgoat on this the Eve of his Christening, September 1782. May God watch over your soul.’”
A small piece of hemp rope, thin and crumbling, jutted from between the pages. BillFi opened the book to the pages it marked.
“Some parts are underlined,” he said. He read slowly and carefully.
I called to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of She’ol I cried, and thou didst hear my voice. For thou didst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood was round about me; all thy waves and thy billows passed over me. Then I said, “I am cast out from thy presence; how shall I again look upon thy holy temple?” The waters closed in over me, the deep was round about me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me for ever; yet thou didst bring up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to thee, into thy holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to thee; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!
The cave was silent for a long moment.
“Noah,” Crystal said. “The Great Flood.”
Dawn shook her head. “It isn’t Noah. It’s the story of Jonah. That’s the prayer he offered when he was inside the belly of the fish that swallowed him. After Jonah prayed, God had the fish put Jonah on dry land, and he was able to warn the people of Nineveh to change their ways and avoid the destruction God planned for them. They did, and their lives were spared. But Jonah was rejected as a liar, because the destruction he predicted never happened. He was a hero, but everyone thought he was a liar.”
BillFi nodded. “It seems to have been Blackgoat’s favorite passage.”
Crystal frowned. “I wonder why he—”
“This might tell us,” BillFi interrupted. “I think I found his diary.” He lifted a thick leather-bound book from the chest. The crew was silent as he opened the cover. Powdery mold filtered up through the flashlight beams. BillFi squinted his eyes close to the elaborate handwriting on the pages.
“What’s it say?” Crystal asked.
“The name seems to be Reginald Branigan,” BillFi said. “It isn’t Blackgoat’s. It belongs to Reginald Branigan. It was written—or at least started—in 1799. The first page gives information about the ship Branigan was on. It was called the Wormwood.”
“What the hell is wormwood?” Crystal asked, her blue eyes bright in the flashlight beams.
“It’s a plant that gives off this really strong, bitter, dark green oil,” Dawn explained. “The oil was used to make absinthe, a liquor that people drank even though it was toxic. It’s now illegal almost everywhere in the world. Wormwood can also refer to a terrible, unpleasant, or mortifying experience.”
“So the guy’s a monster,” BillFi said. “Who else would name his boat Wormwood? The guy’s a monster.”
“Or a lover of beauty,” Dawn answered. “Wormwood has very pretty yellow or white flowers.”
BillFi turned some pages. “It’s mostly just information about where the Wormwood sailed and what cargo it carried. It seems to be an actual cargo ship—not a pirate ship at all. It does mention Blackgoat, but he doesn’t seem to be the captain. This Branigan guy talks a lot about a Captain Carr. Seems to have been a decent sort of guy. Captain Carr.”
“What does it say about Blackgoat?” Arthur asked.
BillFi flipped through the book and stopped at a page near the end. “Here’s something. It says at the top, ‘The Tragic Story of William Blackgoat.’ That’s what it says at the top. ‘The Tragic Story of William Blackgoat.’”
“Well, read it,” Crystal said.
BillFi began:
Aug. 17th, 1809. It has been full fourteen months since I wrote in this booke, but yea I never forgot about it. It just seemed there was more to do than I could get done. Had no time to make the usual notations. But as this is my last entry, I’ve a mind to record my recollections of Captain William Blackgoat before I depart this weary worlde.
Never have I seen a more tortured soul. The man seemed obsessed with getting riche, any way he could, and it tore him apart that he never made it.
It started when he was a mere first mate on the Wormwood. He had this idea that he had to be the captain else nobody would respect him. And then, if he became captain, that he had to be the best captain in the North Atlantic. It was all or nothing, for him. He had to be the greatest, or his whole life would be for nought.
Well, after a few years of shipping work—a few years of doing mighty well, too—we all was taking good shares of the cargo we was hauling for merchants in London and New York—and the merchants were right glad for our services, too—well, after a few years, Mister Blackgoat started getting right anxious. Said he should have been captain by now, and that once he was captain, he’d make sure those bloody merchants paid us right. Didn’t know what he was talking about. All us on board thought our pay was right fair. Still, you could see that Mister Blackgoat was getting eager to take charge of the ship and negotiate a bigger cut.
Sounds familiar, Arthur thought.
He got his chance when Captain Carr was out with two men searching out a small island for a good place to anchor. They took one of the dinghies, and they had been gone about half an hour when Mister Blackgoat came up on deck with a flintlock in his hand. He ca
lled the men together, told us all a bunch of lies about how Captain Carr was selling us out to the merchants, and he declared that he was now captain of the vessel. I don’t know whether the men believed what he said or were simply afraid of his firearm—we always knew Mister Blackgoat was a bit daft—but we all went along with him. Shouldn’t have, but we did. We pulled sail and left the three of them on that island. They had some rations, and we all figured they’d manage well enough. But we never heard from them again.
“That’s horrible!” Dawn said.
Crystal grinned. “Talk about bad karma,” she said.
So now we was sailing a stolen boat. We took down the ship’s flag and sanded her name off the hull. And the first merchant cargo vessel we saw, we boarded. Set the crew adrift in the lifeboats, took all the victuals and valuables on board, and sank that ship straight down to the bottom of the ocean.
Now it might be sounding like Captain Blackgoat was nothing but a miserable fellow, but that wouldn’t be an accurate understanding. In fact, I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for Capt. B. I was climbing rigging a few years back, lost my footing, and went over. We were in right shallow water, just a fathome or so, and I must have spooked a shark that was sleeping on the bottom. The next thing I knew, the beast had a hold of my leg and was dragging me under. I couldn’t move, and I knew that I was going to die. As I looked up at the ship through the silver surface of the water, I saw Capt. Blackgoat climb the rail. He jumped into the water and landed right on top of that shark. The shark let go of my leg in a trice, and some mates pulled me into a lifeboat. I looked back to see Capt. B wrestling that shark, sticking it in the eyes, twisting its flippers, and I could see it was hurt. I figure that Capt. B broke its back when he landed on it, and so he was able to get the upper hand in the fight. Well, it took about twenty minutes, but Capt. B killed that fish, and he didn’t suffer a scratch! We hauled that black-eyed shark on deck and carved it up in a hurry. There’s nothing in this world I like better than a good shark steake, and Capt. B gave me first choice of the fillets. That dinner was the best I ever ate!
“Sometimes a man has to fight the sea,” Jesse observed. “The good ones win.”
I ended up losing the leg a few weeks later—the blood went bad, and there was nothing else for it. But I’d be long dead if it weren’t for Capt. B, and my only regret is that I didn’t have the dedication to return the favor and stay by his side until the end.
And then there was that gale that bloody near killed us all. It happened a few years back. We could see that some weather was coming. The wind was backing around toward the northeast, and we could see dark lines of storm clouds far off on the horizon. So we dropped anchor in a safe harbor, used the lifeboats to set some extra anchors, and made sure the hatches were tight and the sails were furled.
Through his glass, Capt. B could see a small cargoe ship sailing south right along the storm line. He couldn’t figure out what the devil they were doing out there—couldn’t they see that a gale was brewing? Well, he watched until he saw the ship disappear in the squall line. He knew it couldn’t survive out there in that storm, so he gathered us all together. He told us that he wanted to go out and rescue the crew of that ship, fools that they were. He also said that we might not survive it, either. He said that we were safe, here in the harbor, and that anyone who wanted to go ashore and wait there could do so. Three people left. They took a lifeboat in while we raised our anchors. Then we went out to see if anything was left of the foolish little ship.
It was a bigger storm than we had thought. Waves took out our foremast and half our rigging. A few of the cannon got loose and crashed about the deck, doing a great deal of damage. The ship pitched so hard that no one could keep their footing. We had to tie ourselves to our stations and do our work as best we could without moving.
We got to that ship just as it was going down, and we used a lifeboat to get the twelve crewmen out of the sea. Capt. B was in the lifeboat, of course, with a line tied around his waiste, lunging out over the gunwales and grabbing at any waving arms he could see. We saved them all, the fools, and we brought them back to the harbor. They said their captain had died of dysentery just a few weeks before, and no one on board had much experience. They had thought they could outrun the storm.
Well, rather than rob these people blind, as we had done with that first ship, Captain Blackgoat up and decides to help them out! Said it wouldn’t be sporting to plunder an inexperienced crew that we came across in distress. Wouldn’t help his image as a pirate. He wanted to take on the biggest and the strongest, not some sodden crew we had to pluck out of the sea. So we put them down on the mainland and gave them some food and told them to be on their way. Odd fellow, Capt. B.
“No shit,” Crystal said.
We lived off the booty from our first plunder for about a month, then we ran down another ship and did to it what we’d done to the first one. This crew put up a bit of a fight. Fired pistols at us and even tried to wheel a cannon into place. But we was too fast. The Wormwood’s a fine ship. We came alongside and took that vessel in a few minutes’ time. Got a little bit of money and some food. But not enough to satisfy Captain Blackgoat.
Nothing ever seemed to satisfy Capt Blackgoat. That eventually was the end of him. We gathered more money and more supplies with each attack, but it was never enough. He once told me that he planned to attack an Armada vessel or a ship from the British Naval fleet. I told him he was mad, that we’d all be killed and deserve the dying. But he wanted the world to know that he was the most fearsome pirate in the sea. He wanted to attack a British Naval vessel, strip it clean, and leave the crew naked on board to sail her back to England and tell the tale.
Well, he did it. We came across a British ship, the HMS Queensborough, and Captain gave the orders to attack. Now I’m no coward, but I know when I’m outmatched. I grabbed a chest on deck, put in some provisions and a fair bit of our treasure, and snuck off in one of the dinghys.
I watched the battle as I rowed away. The Wormwood didn’t last an hour. The Navy ship put its first cannonball right through the deck. The next cannonball was heated red hot—I could see it glowing as it shot through the skye. When it hit the Wormwood, right in the main cabin, the whole ship seemed to burst into flames.
The Wormwood went down in a trice, and I believe all hands went with her. Captain Blackgoat, gunner Mitchell, Roberts the sailmaker—they all went down, God rest their souls. And everything on board went down with her.
I made it to this island in short order, and I hid out among the caves to avoid capture. I was hoping that some of my mates would make it to the beach, but none of them showed up.
It’s been nineteen days now. I’ve used up the food I brought with me. So I’ve made up my mind to turn myself in, and I’ll be heading off soon. I’ll stash this book and the sea chest deep inside one of these caves. It isn’t much, but it’s all that’s left of the Wormwood, the ship I called home for more than 10 long years.
The crew was silent for a long moment, thinking about history and ships, loyalty and death.
“What about this other trunk?” Crystal asked.
BillFi looked at her, sighed, and lifted the lid of the other chest. The objects inside this trunk were much newer. BillFi pulled out a pair of black high-heeled shoes, a woman’s navy blue blazer, a leather-bound book. He handed the book to Arthur, who unzipped the cover and opened it.
“It’s a daily planner,” Arthur said. “A calendar book. From four years ago. And it’s filled with appointments and lists of things to do. ‘Contact Alberts in Chicago.’ ‘Check on timetable for focus group.’ ‘Notify Bradley about Singapore opp.’” Arthur looked up. “I think it’s Bonnie’s. This is how she planned her work marketing washing machines.”
“What the hell is it doing here?” Crystal asked.
Dawn smiled. “Don’t you get it? Bonnie carried this stuff around with her on the boat for a while. Maybe she thought she could go back to this life someday. Then s
he found the cave, read Branigan’s diary—just like we did—and she turned her back on her old life forever. She put these things next to Branigan’s because they go together. The last remnants of a mindless quest for wealth.”
“So where’s the loot?” Crystal asked. “This stuff doesn’t look like a fortune to me.”
It was Arthur who answered. “Listen to this. On the last page of the planner, in really big letters, it says: ‘Whoever finds this should know. I tossed most of Blackgoat’s riches into the Atlantic Ocean. Trust me, you should thank me for saving your life. Now go home and be good to your children.’ It was Bonnie’s last message.”
“That bitch!” Crystal exploded. “She had all this great stuff, and she chucked it into the damn sea? We could’ve sold it and gotten really rich. What the hell was she thinking?”
Dawn nodded. “She was following her heart. That’s why she told us about this place. So we would understand the lesson she was trying to teach us. So she told us about the caves, and the low tide, and—”
“Low tide!” Arthur said. “Oh, shit. What time is it?”
Crystal held her watch in her flashlight beam. “Twenty minutes after nine.”
“The tide!” Arthur said. He grabbed Dawn’s arm. “Dawn—when would this cave—”
“Now,” Dawn said with horror. “The mouth is probably underwater already.”
They scrambled down the passage that Crystal had climbed, gathering Marietta and the still-shaken Logan with them. Below the small room at the bottom, they found nothing but murky saltwater.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“We’re trapped!” Marietta screamed. “We can’t get out!”
The crew sat down quietly and didn’t say a word. The only sound was Marietta’s panicked breathing and the soft plopping of water dripping off some stalactites.
“Dawn,” Arthur said at last. “We know that the tide doesn’t go as high as that upper room, the one with the chest in it. How long could we last up there?”
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