The hold was the largest place in the ship, too large for a single man to occupy alone when there was an entire tribe that needed a place to stay. There was one solution that Archie could think of. He had to move Black Caesar from the hold and put him somewhere else, safely away from everyone. One place came to mind.
He crossed over to Lily. He met her brown eyes with his blue ones and smiled. He gestured to her and the people around them. “Stay here for now.” He motioned toward the deck. Her black hair swung around her shoulders as she nodded. Understanding showed in her face as she turned and said something to her people that Archie didn’t understand. As she spoke, all of the Indians banded together in one place. As if they were expecting to be there awhile, the children sat down on the deck and waited quietly.
“Thank you,” he told Lily, before he turned to go. “I will return soon.”
Archie went to the captain’s quarters and retrieved the common treasury, taking it back to the map room. He shoved it as far under his own cot as it would go, and looked about to make sure his deed had gone unnoticed. As it seemed it had, he left and made his way to the hold, finding Smee and Caesar as the only occupants. Neither of them looked up as he approached. Caesar sat on a stool, his head bent down. Smee stood behind him, placing strips of dry cloth on his back. The fabric immediately spotted red, causing Smee to scowl. The blood had only started to slow from the appearance of the pile of drenched rags at Smee’s feet.
“Beckett has a strong hand, that be sure,” Smee mumbled, sticking another cloth on before glancing over his spectacles at Archie. “He left no spot untouched.”
Caesar chose this moment to look up, too. No emotion showed on his face at all.
“You will be moving from here to another set of quarters. The Indians refuse to stay down here with you, and I cannot blame them a whit.” Archie frowned.
“Aye, where have ye a mind to take ’im?” Smee asked.
“Moreau’s quarters.”
Both sets of eyes widened at that, though they both nodded when the logic of it set in their minds. The captain’s quarters were small, out of the way, and currently not in use. It was the perfect place for a solitary prisoner.
Caesar slowly stood. The chains around his ankles and wrists clanked.
Archie walked up to him and stared into his black eyes. “You owe me your life. Cause me trouble in any way and I will slit your throat and throw you overboard while you sleep; make no mistake,” he threatened in a low, deadly voice. Something akin to respect passed under the surface of Caesar’s black eyes, and then left as suddenly as it had come.
“Aye.” It was simple, but it was acknowledgment and progress of a sort.
It’s a step forward so I’ll take it, Archie thought, following the two of them from the hold.
They attracted quite a bit of attention on their trek from across the ship as more than one pirate stopped what he was doing to turn and gawk at them as they walked by, though none was so brave to ask why Caesar was moving from the hold, leaving blood to spatter the lower deck with each step he took.
Once he was certain that Caesar had no way of escape, Archie left the two and made his way back up to the deck.
Lily was leaning against the railing. When she spotted him, she stood and walked toward him. Archie’s throat felt like it was ablaze. “Take them down. He is gone now,” he said hoarsely, pointing to the grate.
He watched as she walked over and looked down into the hold. Understanding what he wanted, she nodded to him and began pulling people over and pointing down into the empty space below. They started down slowly, but then began filing down faster once they realized the threat had been removed.
Content that order had been restored, Archie gave orders to stay their course and retired back to the map room, hoping that soon they would catch up with Blackbeard.
11
All Good Things
BLACKBEARD WATCHED THE approach of the white sails with a sense of impending doom. The British ship had caught him off guard, an uncommon occurrence insomuch as the captain was concerned. He was accustomed to being several steps ahead of any game the British Navy had up their sleeves. He thought he had left Madeira in plenty of time to elude Lieutenant Maynard. He’d even left his newly captured ship behind in an effort to get a head start, but now it seemed to be all for naught and he caught himself wishing that he had waited for the Roger and her crew.
The sloop was bearing down on them fast, pinning the Queen Anne’s Revenge between it and the rocky Carolina shore. The only route of escape would be to cross a shallow inlet nearby and head back out to the open sea. It would be a dangerous wager, no doubt. The better odds lay in turning to fight. One ship against another. Blackbeard was willing to fight, especially if it meant the end of the man who had made no qualms about his wish to place Blackbeard’s head on the end of his bowsprit and light his beard ablaze.
“We be outgunned.” Blackbeard snarled at the sight of two additional ships that came into view behind the first, British flags billowing between their sails. He didn’t know how they had caught up to him so quickly.
Maynard has the devil’s own wings to have beaten Moreau here, unless he’s sent me mate to the bottom of the sea, he thought, shouting another order, “Hard to port!”
The Anne would have to take her chances in the inlet. He knew his ship wouldn’t best three of the British Navy’s warships. Her best odds lay in the proper pirate manner—run away and live to fight another day.
He looked over the railing of the quarterdeck. Sharp-pointed rocks jutted up from the ocean bottom. They were in treacherous, shallow waters. ’Twould be a miracle indeed if they made it across the inlet and back into open water. Cannons boomed, sending their shots whistling overhead to land in the path ahead of them as if the sloop were trying to cut them off.
The sharp crack of splintering wood echoed in his ears the second before the Queen Anne’s Revenge buckled, stopping so quickly that pirates went flying in every direction from the sudden loss of momentum.
Blackbeard cursed, getting back up to his feet. His men had been thrown this way and that, some were curled over cannons, their breath knocked out them and from the splashing sounds, some had landed overboard.
The Anne moaned and tilted a bit to her side as she began to take on water.
She’s lost. The Anne is lost, Blackbeard thought, glancing over to the shoreline that stretched beside them a short distance away. The only way of escape would lie on that white-sanded beach, for his ship was taking on water and would soon lie in the bottom of the shallows, never to sail by his hand again.
“Release the longboats and abandon ship!” He shouted through the din of cannon fire, “Be quick and save yer skins, lads!”
He looked over to find that the first sloop had released their own longboats and were beginning to row toward them. Time was all that was keeping them alive, for once in range, the muskets would join with the rally of cannons.
“Row!” He ordered from his place in the stern of the first longboat. One cannon ball landed a short distance away, dispersing torrents of water everywhere and sending currents that rocked the boat nearly to its side. “Row, ye lazy swine!”
Cannons exploded the water around them, sending buckets of water to drench them. One shot hit its mark in the longboat behind them, sinking it. Gurgling cries echoed in Blackbeard’s ears as thirty souls drowned, for only a handful of his crew could swim. He couldn’t go back to save them. To do so would mean the death of them all.
Poor devils, Blackbeard grimaced, as the last cries went quiet. He pitied them now, though he knew if he or any of his remaining men were to be captured, their fate would not be so kind.
By some miracle, they reached the beach, losing only the single longboat. At Blackbeard’s order, his men split into groups and scurried away. With hope and a bit of luck, a few might manage to escape.
Blackbeard and his own handful of men headed towards a knoll, high up on a ridge. As they neared the crest, h
e turned back to check on the progress of Maynard and his officers. A small patch of white, far out on the horizon, caught his eye. Taking his first mate’s spyglass, he found the Jolig Roger had arrived, though the captain on her quarterdeck took him by surprise. It wasn’t the man he had left in charge.
Befitted in a bright crimson overcoat, stood the navigator, staring out to sea. Blackbeard chuckled, watching as the ship started to turn.
A shout below him announced that Maynard’s men had made it to the beach. Blackbeard handed the spyglass back to his mate and pulled a few fuses from his pocket, then lit them and stuck the ends in his beard.
“Run, run if ye can, in the true pirate way.” He smiled, thinking of the lad who had somehow become a captain. “But should fate not be in yer favor, stand and show ’em a fight they’ll ne’er forget!” And with that final thought, he turned with a pistol in one hand, a cutlass in the other, and faced them.
ARCHIE WAS OVERJOYED when Smee spotted the Anne’s familiar flag, but the feeling of elation was fleeting and left the following second.
“She’s scuttled,” Smee announced in a queer tone of voice, before looking through his spyglass again as if to make certain he wasn’t imagining things. Without another word, he handed it to Archie so he could look for himself.
Dread knotted in his belly as Archie put the glass to his eye. The Queen Anne’s Revenge was lying on her side in the inlet, sinking, with no sign of her crew on board. Three naval sloops were sitting a short distance away, as if they were coming as close as they dared in case she were to miraculously fix her hull and sail away.
Archie trained the spyglass on the longboats. There were over a half dozen of them rowing toward shore, filled with the British Navy.
A sudden blast from the sloop nearly had Archie dropping the spyglass. He handed it back to Smee, and began assessing the situation. The sloop was making maneuvers to come after them. In a few moments, the other two would follow suit. Three fast ships against the Jolig Roger were not the best of odds, especially with a new captain who hadn’t been captain—or pirate—for long.
We’ll have to flee and hope to return and look for survivors later on, Archie thought.
As if reading his mind, Smee shook his head. “There be no helpin’ them, lad. The Queen Anne’s Revenge is lost. Best we save our own skins, else we’ll be joinin’ them at the bottom of the sea.”
Having his own thoughts spoken aloud shored up his resolve. Archie gave his orders. “Loose the sails!”
The wind was in their favor and caught the sails. As they made their turn to sail away, Archie caught sight of a solitary figure up on the knoll. He wondered if it was Blackbeard watching them go.
The sloop followed them, keeping parallel to the shoreline. Luckily, they were able to stay just out of reach of her cannons for a while, but then the sloop started to catch up.
“We’ll have to head back out to sea,” Archie murmured under his breath. “They’ll catch us if we stay where we are.”
He spotted a dark patch out on the ocean where a storm had kicked up. There would be the best place of losing them, he decided. He gave his orders to lead them into the gale.
12
Second Star to the Left
THE STORM HAD done as Archie hoped. The sloop disappeared from sight moments after they reached the rough sea, leaving the pirate ship to weather the storm alone. The waves rocked the ship and buckets of rain poured down until dusk. Then the gale moved off.
As the skies cleared and darkness fell around them, Archie prepared to plot their course. He unrolled his maps across the table, took a quick look at them, and then went up to the open deck to study the stars.
Most hands had gone below, content to indulge in yet another night of rum and fiddle music. The few left up top were silent as they looked out at the dark sea, watching should the sloop appear again.
Archie stared up at the sky and his breath caught. The sky was bright with strange silvery stars. They were beautiful, set like glistening diamonds in a velvet black sky. The only problem was that none of them was familiar to him. Archie strode every inch of the deck, back and forth, this way and that, staring up, searching for some small constellation that he might recognize.
“Regulus. Where is it?” he asked himself in awe, walking in circles, as he searched for the most familiar, brightest star he could think of. “Nothing is as it should be.”
He ran back down the steps to the map room, adrenaline coursing through his veins. His hands shook as he traced the familiar patterns on the maps, the constellations he had known from boyhood. The stars above them now and the ones charted beneath his fingers were not the same.
He flipped the maps sideways and upside down. No matter how he changed them, the stars on the paper wouldn’t align with the ones in the sky.
He sat down on the stool by the table and stared at the charts. The stars never change, his brain told him, they always stay the same. That’s why they are used by sailors to plot their journey from one destination to the next.
But the stars aren’t the same, he thought, those are different constellations. Unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And if these stars aren’t the same, then we aren’t in the same waters.
Archie wracked his brain, trying to think of any stories of other oceans where the stars hadn’t been known to the sailors. He couldn’t think of any. In every instance that he knew, the stars stayed constant.
A bright light at the doorway caught the corner of his eye and he looked up. Leaving a trail of golden dust in her wake, Miss Bell flew to the table and landed before him.
She smiled at him and dipped into a curtsy.
Archie managed a weak smile. “I do apologize, for I am not at my best.”
A worried look furrowed across the pretty pixie’s brow. Two small tinkling sounds seemed to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“I am afraid we’re lost. As I don’t know these stars, I cannot chart us a heading.” The pixie looked confused for a moment, so he added, “I do not know the way back.”
Understanding blossomed across her face and she smiled, jumping up from the table to hover above it, tiny wings whirring so quickly that he couldn’t see anything of them. She began gesturing with her hands as if she wanted him to get up from the stool.
Come on. Follow me, she seemed to say. I know the way back.
When Archie stood, the pixie flew up the steps. The young captain had to run to keep her in sight. Once upon the deck again, he found her hovering over the quarterdeck. When he reached her, she began pointing with her tiny arm up into the sky.
Archie turned to look up at the stars. There seemed to be two stars in the vicinity that Miss Bell was pointing.
“I am sorry, I don’t understand. Am I to follow these stars?”
The pixie flew in front of his face, shaking her head. No. She lifted a tiny finger in front of his nose.
“I’m to follow only one of them?”
She gave him a definite nod and a pleased smile in answer.
“Which star?” Archie asked, staring back up at the two of them. They were brighter than all of the others. The first reminded him of the North Star, and hadn’t the pixie been there to instruct him, that one would have been the one he would have chosen, more for the sake of familiarity than anything else. The other star shone as bright as the first, and seemed to pulsate, as if it were full of energy.
Miss Bell moved to fly beside his face, pointing to the second star.
“Aye, I see it now. We are to follow that star, you say?” He smiled as she nodded. “Very well, I shall chart our course.”
She appears to have been in this strange place before, which is more than I can say. It might be wise to trust her judgment, Archie thought.
A streak of golden dust lined the quarterdeck as the pixie disappeared from sight, apparently finished with her good deed and off to find her own mischief.
Beckett approached the quarterdeck. He didn’t act as if he had seen the pixie or noticed anything
amiss in the sky, though he looked up to the sails. “A good wind is stirring. What be our heading, Cap’n?”
Archie took out his compass and watched the needle jump from one point to the next as if there were no true direction. His mind made up, he glanced back up at the sky one more time. The pulsing silver light seemed to be welcoming them, inviting him to follow it.
“The second star to the left and straight on ’til morning.”
HE SPENT THE better part of the night on the deck, charting the new constellations. It was painstaking work, but he kept at it. After all, once they made it back to the Carolinas, he would have an intricate map of strange, new stars that no one had ever seen before.
Part of a map, Archie decided a few hours later, putting his quill down in the inkpot. He frowned at the sky. As the night wore on, the stars had shifted as he tried to capture their location. Some hovered over the horizon and some had disappeared. The ocean had turned black with odd patches of grey, as if the clouds had fallen down into the water. Archie leaned over the railing to take a better look. Bits of silver were down there, as if the stars had moved below them, too. By the looks of the ocean, it seemed as if the Jolig Roger were sailing through the sky itself.
Archie had put Beckett at the ship’s wheel to steer toward the star they were following, and then he ordered Harper up into the crow’s nest to keep watch, should something go awry.
Giving up on his chart, he approached Beckett. “How goes it?”
“The star’s moved, though it seems we be getting closer.” Beckett shrugged, and then his hand came up to the back of his head, though his eyes never left the star as if he feared it wouldn’t be there when he looked back up, “Me neck has a terrible crick in it.”
The Untold Stories of Neverland: The Complete Box Set Page 14