I too thought of my father’s demise. “This man Edward Teynte—he led the mutiny against my father?”
He nodded. “His hand held the whip that scourged your father. His voice pronounced sentence, and at his command Captain Jim Cook was tossed into the sea.”
My heart swelled again, at the thought of my father’s brave death, but there were no tears; instead there was only bold determination.
“I will feed Teynte to the sharks myself, whenever I find him,” I answered. “What does he look like?”
“Like a man who fancies himself a magnet to the ladies. He wears bright dandyish colors, and is always careful not to stain his coat with the blood of his victims.”
“And the ship that attacked us—that was the Alice, yes?”
“Aye, that it was.”
“Is Teynte still aboard?”
“I have no idea. I imagine so.”
“Is that why it was near your island? Was Teynte still looking for you?”
His brow wrinkled. The very thought of Teynte made him uncomfortable. “I find that hard to fathom. It’s been some time since I was marooned, and Teynte must have thought me dead. He couldn’t hate me that much, could he, to pursue me for—what is it?—fourteen years? Perhaps they came to the island for provisions. There is fresh water if you know where to look, and crabs scuttling everywhere. I can’t believe they were looking for me.”
Another silence, and my heart spoke its need.
“Tell me more of him,” I asked. “Tell me more of my father. You called him Jim?”
“When we were alone, yes. He was a fine companion and a highly educated man.”
“He went to Eton, I know. He made quite an impression. They speak of him still. What do you know of his family?”
“You never met them?”
I shook my head.
“You were fortunate, then. It was not a pleasant one. He was the second of three sons. His mother died in childbirth, so he barely knew her. His father was a merchant, relatively wealthy, but a strict religious man believing that all but a handful of mankind—himself excluded, of course—were doomed by destiny to the fires of hell. Jim told me this one night when we were both many sheets to the wind.” Raleigh smiled at the memory of that night. “He wouldn’t speak of them otherwise—never said an unkind word about anyone.” Raleigh’s wistful smile faded. “His older brother, the only member of his family he was fond of, was a wastrel who spent their father’s money, and spent, and spent, until he was disinherited. After which he drank himself into an early grave. His younger brother, Arthur, remained at home, taking after their father in his beliefs and joining the ministry. When Jim met your mother—” He paused here, as if wondering if he should continue.
“Please go on,” I begged, emotion rising in my throat.
“Because she was not of his father’s faith, his family instantly disapproved. He feared that if he died, or was lost at sea, they would leave her destitute.”
“They did not. They gave her a house to live in and me an education.”
“Sufficiently Christian of them, I suppose. I met your grandfather once, when your father brought me to his home for a brief visit between voyages. A hard man, and that’s the nicest thing I can say of him. And that was before your father chose a woman who did not meet their”—he searched for the phrase—“strict moral standards. She danced, she sang, she even dared in public to hold your father’s hand. I daresay the old man grew even harder then.”
“Did you ever meet my mother?”
A brief sigh. “He showed me her likeness, often. She was beautiful. I teased him that he was lucky I didn’t find her first.”
“And did he speak of her?”
“Constantly.” His face softened. “He loved her dearly, and once we were lost he agonized that he might never see her again. Or you. Your mother was soon to give birth, I believe, when we were transported here. He wanted a boy, I can say that much.”
And now my tears flowed freely. I wiped them away, but others followed quicker than I could dash them from my cheeks. Raleigh too became misty-eyed, and reached out an arm to pull me close. Now it was I who wept on his chest. And the more he pressed me to his bosom, the more I imagined that it was my father’s heart I felt beating there, my father’s love that enveloped me.
We remained thus for some time. When I was recovered I had one last question to put to him.
“All this happened,” I said, “in the winter of 1860, in the month I was born. Fourteen years have passed since then. How old were you when you took ship?”
He looked more than astonished. “I was thirty-four. It was my third voyage, the second with your father. I can’t believe so much time has passed!”
“So you’re forty-eight now?”
“Yes, I suppose so. Why?”
“You look thirty-four still.”
He was surprised. From a small table near the bed I took a mirror and held it to his face. He touched his cheeks, his eyes. “How remarkable,” he remarked.
* * *
The sun spinning backward, west to east. The shorter days and nights. The unfamiliar night sky. The rules—the laws of astronomy and geography and physics—even time—all broken. It is these, and perhaps other factors, that contribute to the Strange Phenomenon, I imagine, though there is little logic in this reasoning. But the effects cannot be denied: whoever lives in this archipelago, whether boy, man, or crocodile, does not age.
* * *
“ALL HANDS ON DECK!”
The cry interrupted Raleigh’s self-examination. Ah, God, I thought, paling. Has my absence been discovered? I raced out of the room, clambered up the ladder to the deck. Perhaps I could run to the mast and pretend I had just descended. If something had gone amiss, I might confess that I had fallen asleep—a forgivable sin, and one that might escape corporal punishment.
No such luck.
Sniffles himself had dozed off, and his snores and my absence allowed the enemy an opening. She had been following us, the Princess Alice, and with all lights on board her extinguished, she had crept closer and closer in the darkness. Peering through their spyglass, Edward Teynte (for it was he at the helm) spied our empty crow’s nest and the snoozing lookout, and in a trice they closed ranks. Grappling irons were cast onto our side rails and rigging, and we were under attack.
Reaching the top of the ladder and leaping onto the deck, I skidded in a puddle of blood.
As soon as the three great iron hooks had caught on our ship’s rail and drawn our vessels together, Sniffles awoke. He sounded the alarm, drew his sword, and attacked, but he could not move fast enough, and in a moment our ship was flooded with the enemy. There were probably no more than thirty of them, but they seemed three hundred, and the advantage was definitely running in their favor.
Sniffles thrust his saber through the neck of one unlucky raider and severed the arm of a second. Soon it was his own bloodcurdling death scream that rang from his lips, as a giant of a sailor buried a carpenter’s ax in Sniffles’s broad back. By now several of my crewmates had reached the deck, but many were still groggy with sleep, and so the enemy made quick work of them. Indeed, too many of us died before we could defend our vessel, and for more than a moment the battle seemed a losing one. It was Smee who made the difference.
When he woke from his bunk, the first weapon he seized was his sewing kit, and so it was with fists full of needles and pins that he entered the fray. Being very short and very round, you might imagine, would not be advantageous to a fighter, but it was quite the opposite: the enemy either overlooked him entirely or thought him not worth the effort, and turned their fury on larger, stronger, better-armed men, allowing Smee to take advantage of his insignificance. He leapt on backs and buried long metal straight pins into eyes; he punctured buttocks as though his needles were so many maddened bees on the loose, distracting swordsmen enough so that their opponents could stab them in the heart; one especially long darning needle he rammed deep into the chest of a Goliath of
a man, toppling him instantly to the deck.
Starkey too was among us now, dancing from enemy to enemy as if he were at a public school ball. His talent with the dirk was renowned (bear witness to the unfortunate boy from his public school), and now he wielded two daggers as expertly as if he were carving meat, nimbly slicing here and dicing there, lopping off just enough of a nose, a thumb, an ear to send their owners howling back to their mother ship.
As soon as I recovered my legs, I seized a sword from a fallen enemy and looked for my quarry. The blood of revenge boiled in my heart, and I knew for whom I was searching: one Edward Teynte, my father’s murderer. I knew not what he looked like, but I was certain that as soon as I saw him I would recognize him, and indeed spotting him proved far easier than killing him. He was standing in the rear of the brutes like the coward he was, but his pride of fashion betrayed him: he wore a red sash around his middle and a yellow bandanna on his head, making him a man dashing enough to catch a lady’s eye, to be sure, but also an easily spotted target for an angry boy. I charged.
He saw me coming and smiled as he raised his cutlass to meet mine. He was a man of thirty-five or so, and his pearly teeth gleamed in the night. But I knew that his apparent age was false; he had been sailing these seas for fourteen years, which made him a man of fifty, and I hoped that, even though his visage was young and handsome, his constitution was ancient and failing. If so, I would be more than his match.
Our swords rang together once, twice, and the sparks flew. On the third clang of steel on steel his strength overpowered me and my weapon flew from my hand. His saber swished through the air and cut me; I felt my chest dripping warm and wet from what I knew was my own blood. Weaponless, I lowered my head and ran at him now, hoping to butt him off balance and perhaps gain the upper hand. He stepped aside and grabbed hold of my shirt collar, like a toreador neatly handling an angry calf. He threw me to the deck and pressed the tip of his blade to my throat. “I’ve never killed a child before,” he said with a grin.
“I’m not a child!” I shouted back. “I’m James Cook, and my father was your captain! He trusted you!” Quite suddenly he froze.
The melee continued starboard and port, fore and aft, but it was as if he and I were on an island alone with nothing but quiet sands and calm water surrounding us. “Your father?” he asked. And for a moment he grew pale. “I loved your father, once,” he lied, as he raised his sword above his head in preparation for dealing the fatal blow. “But he betrayed us all,” he said, then brought the steel down hard, hard enough to split me in twain. I had not a moment even to pray, but before his weapon cracked open my skull another weapon stopped it. It was a scythe, with a blade that seemed to be made of solid iron. Both Teynte and I looked to the man wielding it. It was Arthur Raleigh.
Teynte turned to face him, and the duel now truly began. Both were exquisite swordsmen, and their weapons were sharp and deadly. A misstep on either side would have been a fatal one. Teynte thrust, Raleigh parried, metal gleamed, sparks flew, and I lay on the deck transfixed by the ballet danced above me. Raleigh wielded the scythe as if he were Death personified, but he was still weak from his ordeal and he was losing ground. It wasn’t long before it dawned on me: I had the advantage; with but a slight interference I could turn the battle in Raleigh’s favor. I waited for an opening and dove forward to wrap myself around Teynte’s velvet boot; I cared little if a swishing cutlass caught me in the back, I was so determined to avenge my father. Thrust off balance, Teynte toppled to his side, and Raleigh’s scythe pressed against his throat. Blood ran. “No!” I shouted up at my defender. “Don’t kill him!” Raleigh paused, and in that pause I finished my thought: “Let me do it.”
But by then the battle had turned; we were winning, and on seeing their commander fallen and about to lose his life, the raiders threw down their weapons and begged for mercy like the yellow cowards they were. A few of them died in that moment of surrender, struck down by my impatient shipmates, but Gentleman Starkey quickly established order and commanded his men to put up arms and treat the enemy as prisoners, not assassins. It was Bad Form to fell an unarmed fellow pirate, or so he believed, even though that fellow pirate may have been bent on decapitating you but moments before. So before I could see his blood staining our decks, Edward Teynte was bound in ropes together with his shipmates, and led below to the hold.
* * *
The rest of the night was spent in quiet mourning. Too many of our dear friends had died. Too many ragged wounds needed patching. Too many brave sailors perished of these wounds before dawn. And when the sun rose at last, both dead friends and enemy were cast into the sea together, and the sharks had a filling repast.
The deck was scrubbed; buckets of sea water mixed with oceans of blood. I worked side by side with Raleigh, who mopped and rinsed and polished as hard as anyone. I thanked him for saving my life. “My pleasure, James,” was all he said. “I owed it to your father.”
“Your weapon—” I continued, my curiosity near-killing me. “The—scythe?”
“Yes?”
“Was that what was in your burlap bag?”
He smiled. “You’re a clever lad. I feared if I pulled it out too readily, one of your mates would have my head.”
“It looked frightfully heavy. Is it iron?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Ah, that’s a long story.” He sighed, then decided to continue. “I took it off a man who subsequently died. We were having a race of sorts. He won.”
“You killed him?”
He hesitated. “I cut off his hand. He bled to death.”
“Why’d you cut off his hand?”
“To save him. He asked me to. If I hadn’t cut it off, he would have died anyway, only more slowly and in a great deal more pain.”
“I don’t understand. You mean the two of you were racing—”
“—and if I had won I would have died instead. The prize was a box, you see, and inside the box, though neither of us knew it, was Certain Death. So he won, and opened the box, and died, and I got his weapon. It looks very old, so I suspect it is. Possibly snatched from the clutches of Death Itself.” He was joking, I was sure. “Do you think it holds a curse? Most old things do.”
“I’m terribly confused, sir. What did you think was in the box?”
He waved a hand in front of his face, as if the memory was a fly on his nose and he wished to chase it away. “I can’t explain it now, James. Someday, perhaps, I will. Now would you be so kind as to refill this bucket?”
While we mopped, the enemy ship, still coupled to us, was boarded and explored. The remainder of its crew, some wounded and all hiding below the decks of the Alice, were found and forced to join the rest of our captives. Their storehouse was raided, and anything of value was brought on board the Roger. The Alice itself, being in poor condition after fourteen years at sea, was no better than a leaky tub and would do no one any good for very much longer, so it was decided that she would burn, a pyre warning any other ships (if there were any) that we were not to be tampered with. The day ended with Starkey announcing that the morrow would commence with a series of trials—of the criminals who attacked us, yes, but also of the traitor on board our own ship who through his negligence had allowed the Roger’s near capture.
Since Sniffles was dead, I assumed he meant me.
Starkey nodded in my direction, and Cecco seized hold of me to lead me below. Confused, frightened, I did not struggle. I was clapped into irons in the hold, and forced to spend the long night near my fiercest enemy.
* * *
The hold was overcrowded, and I shared leg irons with a man I later came to know as Charles Turley. “Why did you attack us?” I asked him in all innocence. “We meant you no harm.”
He curled his lip at my naïve question, spitting a reply at me as if I should know better. “You’re pirates,” he said.
“As are you,” I answered, and his eyes widened in
surprise.
“How dare you?” he gasped. “We are the Queen’s men, loyal and true.” And then he turned his back on me, and said not a word further. No one else would speak either—they would have strangled me that very night, if they weren’t certain that my own captain would perform that worthy service on the morrow.
* * *
The following morning I was hauled onto deck, hands bound behind me, to stand before Captain Starkey, who, being a Gentleman, always loved a good trial. (And because he was a Gentleman, he always knew the trial’s outcome ahead of time; Gentlemen are quite sure of themselves when it comes to matters of Guilt and Innocence.) I was surrounded by my crewmates, who eyed me with a mixture of pity and scorn. I was a boy soon to die, and thus the pity. I had allowed the enemy their surprise attack, and therefore the scorn.
Raleigh was nowhere in sight.
“You left your post, Cook,” Starkey stated in a voice loud enough for all to hear. “As a result, many of our crew were killed or wounded. What have you to say for yourself?”
“I—I fell asleep, sir,” I lied. Perhaps, if he believed me, he would be lenient.
“Then what were you doing belowdecks?” came his sharp reply. Someone had seen me there, and tattled.
I did not know what to say.
“Guilty, then,” he announced with proper hauteur. “Twenty lashes, and then the rope.”
I felt sick. The twenty lashes alone would kill me. Cecco tore open my shirt and pulled it to my hips, baring my back. Then he turned to fetch the nine-clawed cat.
There was a stir among the crew. Some had grown fond of me, and regretted the merciless verdict. It was Smee who spoke up.
“Cap’n,” he squeaked, “would not the rope be sufficient? There’s no point in hanging a dead man.”
I know he meant to spare me unnecessary pain, but his plea for mercy did not go as far as I had hoped it would.
“True, true,” mused Starkey, ever fair. “Very well. String him up and be done with it.”
A rope, its noose knotted in anticipation of the inevitable, was thrown over the mainmast’s lowest arm. My blood ran cold, and though I wished to beg for my life, my tongue dried against the roof of my mouth and my words were blocked. I was led by Cecco toward the dangling strangler, his arm gently slung around my shoulders. He said a few words to me, but whether they were words of kindness or cruelty I could not tell, his accent was so d—mnably thick.
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