Ghost reached into his pocket and brought out the fistful of diamonds, letting them glitter in his open palm.
“Someone broke into the stores, went into our treasury below, and took these diamonds. They were scattered on the floor as if the thief had been surprised in the act. You heard Mr. London and Finn, here, arguing about it just now. Of the two, which is fool enough to try such a thing?”
Tree swore. Vukovich began muttering furiously. Maurilio had come out onto the deck at last—perhaps he’d been sleeping below—and sidled up beside the captain to look greedily upon the precious diamonds.
“Finn killed Johansen,” Kelly said. “He hates you, Captain. He’s at the bottom of the pack and knows he hasn’t got long to live. But I wouldn’t have thought even Finn fool enough to try to steal from you.”
“Not from me,” Ghost said, showing the diamonds around. “From all of us. And perhaps you’re right. Maybe Finn walked in on Mr. London in the midst of the crime, caught him red-handed.”
“Maybe,” Maurilio said.
“Not a chance,” Kelly sneered.
Jack kept his breathing steady, but his throat had tightened and his mouth gone dry. He looked back and forth from Ghost to Finn to Kelly, knowing he could not speak out of turn. It had to be played just right, and he had to choose his words carefully.
“Why not?” Ghost asked.
“You heard him,” Kelly said, nodding toward Jack. “Might be soft, but he’s smart. What good would it do him? He wanted to fix the lock down there so he could escape. If he took the diamonds then, I’d say sure, maybe it’s him. But where would he hide ’em now?”
“Damn you, Kelly!” Finn roared, trying to break free of his captors and failing. Huginn and Muninn held him tight. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you all!”
“Sounds like a guilty man to me,” Vukovich muttered.
Maurilio, Ogre, and Tree were nodding in agreement.
“You can’t let him live, Captain,” Kelly said, staring expectantly at Ghost. “First he killed Johansen, and now this. Whatever game you’re playing, we can’t afford to let it go on.”
Ghost ignored him, instead walking over to Jack and staring at him, eye to eye, searching for the truth. Jack felt only hate and loathing inside him and he let it radiate outward, hoping it would mask his fear of discovery. He had lowered the stiletto, letting the blade dangle at his side. Now Ghost took it from him, carefully, and held it up to the light.
“Where the hell did he get that?” Vukovich growled.
“In his cabin,” Ghost replied, glancing from the blade to Jack. “He found it among Johansen’s things and took it for himself, which is his right as the new first mate. Or it would be, except for one thing. This blade belongs to me.”
Jack stared at him, and for a moment the rest of the crew—the rest of the world—did not exist. “It’s yours?”
“You couldn’t have known,” Ghost said. He smiled grimly. “I never even noticed it missing. Johansen, the sneaky bastard.”
“Why would ’e do that?” Tree asked, obviously doubtful. “He’d know you’d kill ’im for it.”
Ghost’s smile was as haunting and unsettling as ever. “I think maybe he wanted to be captain.”
“So I did you a damn favor, killing him!” Finn snarled.
Ghost lashed out, clawing deep, bloody gashes across Finn’s cheek and jaw. Then he crouched in front of Finn as the sailor struggled against the hold the twins had on him.
“You tried to do yourself a favor, Finn. But it backfired, didn’t it? As all of your plans have, because you are a fool.”
Ghost held the silver stiletto out to Jack, careful not to touch the blade. The sea wolves stiffened, alert and anxious. They hadn’t realized the blade was silver when Jack had first brandished it, but now they stared at it and then at Ghost as though the captain had lost his mind.
“Take it, Jack,” Ghost said. “Finn has tried to kill you more than once. If you let him live, he will succeed. You have no choice but to kill him first.”
The pack went utterly silent. Jack glanced at Kelly and Vukovich, their faces blank with sheer disbelief, and he watched as their expressions turned to quiet, simmering fury. Ghost might be planning to turn Jack, as Louis had said, but he was not a werewolf yet. He might have been made first mate, but he was not a member of the pack, and the wolves bristled at the sight of their leader surrendering the life of one of their own into the hands of a human. They were already riled up by the fact that Ghost hadn’t killed Finn for the murder of Johansen, and Jack suspected they had been bitterly disappointed not to have the chance to eat Finn’s remains. They wanted him dead, but not at the hands of an ordinary man.
Jack stared at the stiletto. I didn’t bargain for this. All his plans began to unravel as the urge to take the blade grew within him. There could be no doubt that Ghost was correct—in fact, the captain did not know how correct. Jack had successfully framed Finn as a thief, and the lowest member of the pack would not rest until he had Jack’s throat in his jaws. Even now the hatred blazed in Finn’s eyes. But if Jack took the stiletto, he would have to choose to use it on Finn or try to kill Ghost.
The temptation hit him so powerfully that he began to reach for the blade.
All his plans began to unravel as the urge to take the blade grew within him.
Ghost’s eyes narrowed, a trace of smug satisfaction touched his lips, and Jack froze. If it would please Ghost, then it had to be a terrible idea. And there was more. Yes, it would make the pack hate Ghost, fomenting mutinous thoughts. But their hatred would be toward Jack as well.
And it would be cold-blooded slaughter. Finn might be a monster, and killing him might be saving Jack’s own life, but if he couldn’t fight back, it would still feel like murder. And Jack London was no murderer.
Ghost saw the change in his eyes.
“I will not offer you this blade again,” the captain said.
Jack took a long breath, then shook his head. “I’d kill to save myself, or someone I love. But I won’t murder a defenseless man. And I’m sure not going to kill for your amusement.”
With a scowl, Ghost backhanded Jack, knocking him sprawling at Ogre’s feet. He rose to his knees, mouth bleeding, heart pounding. Ghost snatched him up like a rag doll, fumbled with his belt, and tore it off him, removing the small leather scabbard in which he’d discovered the stiletto. Then the captain hurled Jack to the deck again, discarding him. He sheathed the stiletto in its scabbard and turned to go, but paused to look back at Jack and then at Huginn and Muninn, still holding Finn.
In one fluid motion, impossibly swift, Ghost drew the stiletto and drove it into Finn’s heart. Huginn and Muninn let go of him, and the pirate dropped to the deck. His skull thunked on the wood, and his dead eyes stared up at the full sails, unseeing.
“You son of a bitch!” Kelly snarled, rushing toward Ghost.
It took both Vukovich and Maurilio to stop him, but they saved his life. Jack knew the look in Ghost’s eyes. He would have killed the entire crew in that moment if they’d dared to challenge him further.
Ghost loomed over him. “Stay on your knees, Mr. London. That’s where cowards belong.”
The captain strode aft and vanished below, and a moment later Huginn and Muninn took up positions on either side of the cabin steps, making certain no one dared follow.
Jack staggered to his feet. Maurilio sneered at him. Vukovich hawked up something from his throat and spit on Jack’s shirt, but otherwise they ignored him. They mumbled to one another about the captain, their hatred for him blazing like the inferno, overriding the loyalty that membership in the pack demanded. At first Jack did not understand, but then Ogre and Tree picked Finn up by his hands and feet, careful not to touch his spilled blood, and carried him to the railing. As they tossed the corpse overboard as unceremoniously as they might have the remains of their dinner, the truth dawned on him, and he realized the enormity of what the captain had done.
In the eyes of the pa
ck, Finn had deserved to die, killed by Ghost and then savaged by the rest. He ought to have been torn apart and eaten, but instead of killing Finn in combat, Ghost had tainted him with silver. Poisoned him. They wouldn’t dare eat the corpse.
Ghost had given them what they wanted, but in a way that only added insult to earlier injury. He must know how they hated him, and that he had only made things worse. But he did not care. He might as well have spit in their faces. It was just another example of his disregard for their loyalty. The rules of the pack seemed to apply less and less to its leader, and the wolves were growing angry.
As Jack watched the crew disperse, the dread fluttering in his chest merged with sick excitement. Ghost had lost respect for him, but as long as the captain still had plans for him, it didn’t matter. In two days or less, Death Nilsson would come for his brother, and all hell would break loose.
But Jack wondered if the crew would last two more days. If Ghost continued to treat them with such disrespect, it was only a matter of time before they would be driven to mutiny.
In the aftermath of Finn’s death, a strange new dynamic developed on board the Larsen. Ghost kept mostly to himself, living behind the closed door of his cabin and emerging only every few hours to inspect the ship and its crew. Once that first night and several times the next day, he went into the chart room that doubled as Sabine’s quarters and consulted with her. Each time he visited her, Sabine would wait until the captain had departed and then come up to walk the deck in ghostlike silence. No one troubled her, and she spoke to no one. Jack’s only contact with her came while he was preparing meals—a task that was his once again, now that Finn was dead.
As first mate, he could have ordered any member of the crew to take over as cook, but in truth he did not like the idea of inviting any of the crew into the galley. Except when the diminished crew gathered to eat in the mess, Ghost, his silent guards, Sabine, and Jack were now the only people on board allowed in the stern cabins. It was safer that way.
The Larsen had become a stew of hatred and homicidal intent. Of the crew, only Louis and Tree did not look at Jack with murder in their eyes. Yet despite the animosity, he could feel that he was merely an afterthought for the sea wolves. They understood the usefulness of Sabine’s gifts, but they could not comprehend Ghost placing an ordinary man in a position of authority over members of the pack. Even if Ghost intended to make Jack one of them, the pirates did not want him; in their eyes he was a symptom of whatever madness had come over their captain. Ghost had formed this pack, turning them into monsters and using fear, intimidation, and brutality to teach them the laws by which the pack would operate. Now he had thrown those laws in their faces. His pride had turned him into a tyrant who made decisions in order to remind them that he stood above and apart from them, not with them. The Larsen had become a powder keg of resentment and anger, ready to explode at the slightest further provocation.
More and more, as Jack heard the crew’s angry rumblings and saw the way they watched their captain, he thought of the Roman senate drawing their long knives and turning on Julius Caesar. In the case of Ghost, at least one of the knives would have to be silver, and Jack wondered how many other such blades there were hidden on board. Ghost had thrown Finn’s silver knife into the sea and kept his own, but would other members of the crew risk the captain’s ire by secreting such a dangerous weapon among their own things? He suspected not. Only Finn had been that stupid. But there was no way to know for sure.
Those two nights he slept only fitfully, thinking of the softness of Sabine’s lips and the depth of her eyes. But love was not the only thing that kept him from surrendering to sleep’s embrace. The silent hostility and the promise of death that suffused every waking moment aboard the Larsen kept him wondering, not only about the outcome of a mutiny, but also about what might become of him should it succeed. He had no intention of still being on board when the mutiny concluded, yet he could not help but wonder if Louis and Tree were fond enough of him to prevent the rest of the pack from killing him after Ghost was dead.
He tried to shake the thought. He and Sabine would be gone from the Larsen by then, or they would already be dead. He did not really care who came out victorious when the men finally mutinied—as he felt sure they would do before long—except that if Ghost survived, he would pursue Jack and Sabine, reluctant to let her strange powers escape. Those who would rise against Ghost were less likely to give chase.
The hate simmered, like a volcano fit to blow. But the surreal quality of each hour that passed sprang from love just as much as it did from hate. He would walk the deck and issue orders to trim the sails, or for one man to spell another at the wheel or in the crow’s nest. Then he would go below and begin to gather together the ingredients for a meal to feed those same men, and while he cooked, Sabine would slip into the galley to visit him. As Ghost could be relied upon to remain in his cabin for long hours, she even helped him choose spices and prepare certain dishes, and while they cooked, she would touch his hand or his shoulder or kiss his neck. Jack felt a wild bliss growing unrestrained within him, and that went some way to keeping him focused on their survival instead of the festering malignance of the crew.
Ghost had ordered that meals be delivered to his cabin. Sabine always obliged. In those moments, with the crew in the mess and Sabine distracting Ghost, Jack made preparations of another sort. He squirreled away food in various places throughout the galley so that they could be gathered quickly. There were old wine and whiskey jugs in a cabinet, and now some of them, hidden behind empties, had been filled from the store of fresh water below.
When Jack visited the food stores, the pirates’ treasure was beneath the boards underfoot, and yet Ghost never sent anyone to oversee his work there. Either he truly believed Jack would not be stupid enough to steal from him, or he wanted to leave such concerns and suspicions to the crew. But the crew left him alone, perhaps reckoning that Ghost would decide his fate in time, or maybe they were more interested in their own plans for the captain.
Jack concentrated on his preparations, determined that he and Sabine would be ready when tensions finally erupted on the Larsen. There would be mutiny, or there would be an attack from Death Nilsson. Either way, that would be the moment of their escape.
“We’ll want the long pork for lunch today, Mr. London,” Ghost rasped, standing in the shadows beyond the galley entrance.
Jack could not hide the look of revulsion that swept across his face. “Long pork.”
“You know the term, I take it?” Ghost asked.
“I know it. It’s what the cannibals of the East Indies called human flesh.”
Ghost did not smile. It was clear he no longer took pleasure from his rapport with Jack. Instead, he sneered.
“We are not cannibals, Mr. London. Cannibals eat their own kind for sustenance, and as you’d be the first to observe, we aren’t human.”
Jack felt sick. It had been challenge enough for him to cure and salt the remains of the prisoners taken from the Umatilla, but now to cook that meat and serve it to Ghost and his crew … it stained his soul to even contemplate such a horror.
“Surely you don’t need it cooked for you,” Jack said, glaring at him in the shadows as the ship creaked around them. “I remember well enough the screams and the blood, Captain. You prefer your long pork raw.”
Now Ghost did smile, but it was a warning. “When it’s fresh, Jack. Only when it’s fresh. Otherwise, I’m as much a gourmand as the fattest, wealthiest man in San Francisco. Spice it well. Make a nice sauce to accompany it. And serve it yourself, this time.”
Jack held his tongue, knowing that he had pushed Ghost too far.
“What you and Sabine have for your own lunch is up to you,” Ghost added.
A shadow approached from the mess. It was Maurilio, Huginn looming behind the rangy man, ready as ever to protect the captain.
“Kelly’s in the crow’s nest, Captain,” Maurilio reported. “Says there’s a thick fog forming
due west. We’re headed right for it, a few hours out.”
“Keep on course. Our sea witch will let us know if we’ve anything to fear in the fog.”
Maurilio darted off to relay orders to Vukovich, who was presently at the wheel. Ghost turned and looked at Jack.
“Go on, then. Your galley awaits.”
Jack nodded. “Yes, sir.”
The captain retreated into his cabin and closed the door. He hadn’t even bothered to go on deck to survey the crew’s efforts or check on their heading himself. Jack knew it wasn’t fear of mutiny that kept Ghost in his quarters, because he feared nothing. The captain had been consulting with Sabine about the location of several merchant ships, but also of the nearest land, and Jack suspected that Ghost might be considering what to do about the venomous atmosphere on board. How much trouble would it be to kill most of his pack and begin again?
Jack would have to go into the hold to retrieve the long pork—he could not think of that meat by any other name, for his own sake—for the wolves’ lunch, but first he wanted to see what else he might need. Standing in the galley, the ship swaying beneath him, he thought of what he was about to do and was nearly sick. Nothing frightened him. Jack London had confronted the wildness of human nature and the human heart, and had found himself undaunted. But this…
“Jack.”
Her voice eased his spirit effortlessly, and he turned to Sabine, standing just inside the galley behind him. Silhouetted in the sunlight that filtered down into the cabin, she seemed for a moment like an angel come to save him from the hell of the Larsen.
Then he saw the fear in her eyes.
“He’s coming, Jack,” Sabine said. “Death is here. They’ll see the smoke from his ship any moment now.”
Jack took her in his arms. He kissed her gently, then fiercely.
“For luck,” he said.
They heard shouts and running footsteps, and then Maurilio was calling for the captain.
Jack pulled away, clasped her hand in his a moment longer, and then nodded.
The Secret Journeys of Jack London, Book Two: The Sea Wolves Page 16