Captain James Hook and the Curse of Peter Pan (11 page)

I was taught a humbling lesson the day we took the French cruiser.

Smee spotted it at a distance.
 
The toothless one knew the style of ship and its country of origin.
 
The black-bearded captain gave the order.
 
The savages scrambled to hoist French flags all over the ship.
 
We pulled our guns back and crept slowly to our prey.
 
The plan was ingenious in its deception.

William and I were hurried downstairs to ready the gunpowder.
 
Smee followed to make sure we did as we were told.
 
As an Englishman, I had no love for the French.
 
Still, I’d rather be with them than pirates.
 
At least I could have been ransomed or bargained for like a civilized human being.

Most of the pirates hid below deck.
 
From where I stood, I could see the fat one at the top of the ladder.
 
He waved at the oncoming ship like an old friend while wearing a stolen French uniform.
 
The fools approached without caution.
 
I watched them through a porthole as they stood on their deck, waving in return.

Blackbeard was below deck with us.
 
He sat in the dark corners of the cabin and tied candles into the thick tendrils of his obsidian beard.
 
When the first sounds of battle hit our ears, he lit them and became fully the man-beast of children’s nightmares. Acrid sulfur stung our noses as he passed us to climb on deck and join the fray.

The fight was quick and merciless.
 
Long guns split masts.
 
The shorter barreled cannons punched man-sized holes in the flank of the ship.
 
Grappling hooks were cast over and a boarding party swarmed their deck, cutting and spitting.
 
It was over within minutes.

Almost.

“Your turn, ladies,” Smee said as he yanked William and me to our feet and onto the deck.
 
Two French sailors lay face down, badly beaten.
 
Smee shoved a pistol in each of our hands.

William fired his immediately and dropped his pistol.
 
The sailor on the left cried out once and was silent.
 
William curled into a ball behind the barrel of grain, whimpering softly.

“Last but not least,” the fat one said into my ear.
 
Smee pointed a knife in my back.
 
Even if I were to shoot the fat one or the toothless pirate, I wouldn’t live another minute.
 
I had to keep my promise and get William home.

Blackbeard watched from the deck of the French ship. My shame grew as others stopped loading supplies to watch with amusement.

The Frenchman, now on his knees, begged for his life.
 
In any language, begging always sounded the same. I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the trigger.
 
Acrid smoke kicked up in my face and I coughed as the toothless pirate turned my head.
 
His fingers pulled my eyelids open so I could watch.

The Frenchman convulsed on the floorboards.
 
His uniform was spattered with red from his chest.
 
He coughed and more blood came.
 
I didn’t understand what he was saying, but he didn’t talk for long.

The man’s eyes dimmed and he was gone.
 

The beatings stopped entirely after that.
 
Toothless grins and pats on the back were all I got from that moment forward from my new family. Something inside me spoiled as I realized that there was no going home without bringing something unwanted home with me.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The weeks that William and I spent aboard the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
melted into months.
 
When we weren’t running messages between Blackbeard and his crew, we swabbed the deck, prepared food for the cook, and rigged the chain and bundle shots for the cannons before battle.
 
It was hard work, but we dared not complain.
 
William Howard was a stern Quartermaster and Smee, the ship’s Boatswain, was ever-watching for a reason to “toughen us up some.”

One morning, I was by the main mast hitching the sheets when I overheard Blackbeard squabbling with the other animals.
 
Smee held a crumpled map and stared off into the horizon.
 
Next to him was Stede Bonnet, a tall and soft-spoken and, as far as I could tell, well-educated scoundrel.
 
Not long before William and I were taken onto the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
, Bonnet’s crew became Blackbeard’s crew and he became little more than a guest on the ship.
 
As they got louder with each other, I split my effort between working the knots and listening in on the argument.

“You don’t know what yer saying,” Blackbeard bellowed as he ripped the charts from Smee’s hands. “You’d have us dead in two days.”
 
I didn’t know whether it was Blackbeard’s tone or the animated way he tore the charts from his crew mate’s grip, but I let out a slight chuckle.
 
It wasn’t much, but it was loud enough.
 
I tried to reach out and pull the sounds of my laughter back into me, but I failed and found myself the focus of their hardened stares. My blood froze as I looked into Blackbeard’s red, sunken eyes.

“You want to try, Little Englishman?” he asked.
 
Although it was worded like an offer, there was an edge of challenge to his tone.
 
I’d always been very good with charts, but I didn’t know what sort of answer he was expecting.
 
Would he be angrier if I said “yes” and thought I could do better than his crew mate or if I said “no” and shrank further into my skin?
 
My next move may decide whether I continued breathing and I must live.
 
Emily and my mother were waiting for our safe return and Heath Ashley and Jesse Labette were waiting for my bloody revenge.
 
These men stood between me and what was just and, frankly, I was tired of shrinking.

I rose to my feet and walked over to them. Blackbeard shoved the charts in my hands and the three of them stood over me like ogres.

“Well, boy,” Blackbeard grumbled, “we’re headed through these patches of islands here.” He pointed to where the ship was on the map and then again quickly at where we were headed. “How would you get us killed?”

Part of me hoped that I’d at least see Port Royal nearby, but we were far too many miles southeast.
 
Port Royal wasn’t even on this map.
 
The second thing I noticed was that our heading led out deep into the ocean and stopped at nothing.
 
No island. No port. Only open sea for miles outside of Rio.

“There’s nothing out there,” I started. Smee went to take the map from my hands but Blackbeard stopped him with an arm across the chest.

“Don’t you mind where we’re going,” he said.
 
“Just get us there in one piece.” The challenging tone rose in his voice again and I knew I had to try.

I nodded, took a deep breath, and got to work. My time memorizing father’s charts helped guide me as I began by carving a path around areas I knew the English and Spanish ships would be.
 
Even though I would have loved to be taken in by a Royal Navy ship, I couldn’t bare the idea of the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
taking any English lives.
 
I drew my route quickly, taking into account tides, currents, and seasonal winds.
 
When finished, I looked up at them proudly.

“Seven days,” I told them.
 
“Four if we sail at full through the night.” I handed Blackbeard the charts and he began looking them over.
 
Smee’s face flushed red and he stormed below deck while Stede just blinked dimly.
 
I turned to Blackbeard and said, “But I wouldn’t suggest sailing at night since the islands are so close together…”

“We’d be dead on day five,” Blackbeard croaked. He lowered the chart down to his side and looked me dead in the eye. “Day three if we ‘sail at full.’”

“But that’s not possible,” I argued.
 
I had always prided myself on my skills in mathematics.
 
There was no way that I could have been wrong.

“Not possible, is it?” Blackbeard said through squinted eyes.
 
“And yer confident that you’ve thought of everything, are ya?”
 
I opened my mouth to defend my numbers, but he cut me off before I could utter a sound.

“Have you any idea how deep the bilge is on this ship, boy?” Blackbeard continued.
 
“How about how much she weighs with a full crew aboard?” I looked at the chart stupidly, knowing that I didn’t have an answer.

“She’ll be sunk here,” he pointed to a spot on the chart between two widely spaced islands, “where the coral reaches high enough to tear holes the size of men into the hull.”

After seeing that I understood, he leaned in and gave me this warning. “Above all else, know yer ship, Mr. Hook. Know her well.” I nodded as the reason behind this task finally became clear to me.
 
This wasn’t a threat or a punishment.
 
It was a lesson.
 
But why would he take the time to teach me anything? Weren’t these animals just going to kill us when we’ve outlasted our use?

William and I worked day and night, but since that morning, it seemed we hardly saw one another at all.
 
Blackbeard took more and more of my time, teaching me charts, strategy, and currency, while William spent nearly every day sweating above deck under Smee’s watchful glare.

We passed while working, to be sure, but gone were the days of long talks about returning home.
 
In the brief moments I saw William, I looked into his eyes and feared that all hope had left him.
 
Worse, I feared that he saw the same in me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

We traveled the route Blackbeard charted and, on the day we arrived, I saw the ghost of the
Britannia
. Her tall, piercing masts were unmistakable, even at a distance.
 
For long minutes, the world around me blurred and the only thing that existed was that one dark stain on an otherwise calm blue sea.

Thousands of thoughts ran through my mind at once.
 
Had my father’s death been a dream? Had I gone overboard and washed up on the island only to imagine burying him?
 
Had he come to rescue me from these monsters who now greeted me with smiles?
 
My toes gripped the coin in my shoe, telling me the truth of what had happened.

My father was dead.

There was no rescue.

Jesse Labette captained the
Britannia
.

As the ship drew nearer, I saw more evidence of this horrid truth.
 
The king’s colors were gone.
 
Even the name,
Britannia
, had been scraped off of her hull. Thick blood churned in my veins as my eyes fixed on the ship-killer known as Long Tom, the two-ton cannon that wiped my father from this Earth.
 
It grew larger as it approached, stalking me, searching for me, looking to finish the job it started years ago.
 
She was the
Jolly Roger
now.
 
But how?

“My god,” I breathed after long moments without air. Time started again and I began to see and feel the world around me. I was at one of the port holes in the Blackbeard’s cabin, close enough to the man-beast for him to have heard me.
 
Blackbeard rose from his chair and trudged over to the window to my right.

“He’s late,” he said. His breaths were slow and measured as he turned to me. “Join the men on deck.”

“For battle?” I asked, grabbing a knife.

“No, Mr. Hook,” Blackbeard said. I stopped just short of the door and turned back to meet his red, puffy eyes.
 
“For a trade.”

“Trade?” I repeated foolishly. What trade could there be with a fiend such as Jesse Labette? He was a killer of men and, along with Heath Ashley the betrayer, the reason I was not at home with my mother and Emily.
 
I stammered more sounds together before speaking again in a way that could be understood. “What for?”

“Her captain is partial to louis-d’ors,” Blackbeard grumbled.
 
He went on to explain that the French cruiser we took held a good amount of their native currency, a favorite of Jesse Labette.
 
That, combined with the chest that was recovered from the island, made for a weighty sum.
 
It seemed that the
Queen Anne’s Revenge
was in need of supplies that the new
Jolly Roger
had in surplus.

“Yer good with numbers, aren’t ya boy?” Blackbeard said. I nodded, still not sure what role I had to play in this and how my situation could get any worse. Then Blackbeard showed me that there was no limit to my misfortune.
 
“Good, you and Smee are with me.”

Blackbeard split his crew into three groups.
 
William Howard manned the helm with three armed men at his back and another fifteen hiding pistols under loose clothes while “working” the ship’s daily maintenance.
 
Stede Bonnet paced at the fore of the ship with a second armed grouping of men, some of which he kept loyal with his purse.
 
William stayed below deck with the third group who readied the cannons and themselves against any sounds of betrayal.
 
I was on the deck at the right hand of Blackbeard, with Smee on his left.

We stood in silence as the
Jolly Roger
crept up alongside us. She was shorter and narrower than this frigate, but she was a heavily armed brigantine and carried Long Tom.
 
If we were to go to battle at this range, neither ship would survive.
 
Fighting would have to be done crew to crew and we had more hands.
 
He’d have to be a fool to take us on.