Jim Morgan and the Pirates of the Black Skull (42 page)

Stars appeared again. The ocean stilled. A quiet, thick as fog, fell over the deck. All pirates, both Corsair and Buccaneer alike, stared blankly at each other or into the sky, as though they had all woken from the same dream at the same time.

Count Cromier’s enraged scream shattered the silence.

“Impossible!” The Red Count cried, picking himself up from the deck where Dread Steele had thrown him down in defeat. “This cannot be!”

Cromier stormed up the stairs and over the burnt remains of the quarterdeck to where the two halves of the shell now lay, lightless, dull, and bereft of all magic. “Lost! All lost!” Cromier screamed again. He collected one of the shell’s halves and turned it over in trembling hands. His purple scar quivered violently upon his face.

While Cromier stood stunned, Jim gathered his wits and leapt to his feet. He ran across the deck and seized the other half of the shell before Cromier could take it as well. The Count lifted his eyes, wide and crazed.

“Give that to me,
now
, you cursed son of Morgan!” Cromier spat. He clenched his teeth so tight Jim thought they would break into pieces in the Count’s mouth.

“It’s broken,” Jim said. His heart beat wildly as he looked into the Count’s mad eyes, but he refused to back away. “As you said, it’s lost. The way to the Treasure is lost. Perhaps it is better that way. It’s over.”

“Over?” said the Count, scoffing. A grotesque smile twisted his face. “No, no, no, my boy.” Cromier squeezed one gloved hand into a fist. “It will never be over, not as long as I draw breath! But for you… for you, young Morgan, it is over. I was a fool to keep my son from cutting out your heart on that island. Now I shall amend my lone mistake.”

“At last, father,” Bartholomew said, conscious again and appearing at his father’s side. A nasty cut bled on his head from where Dread Steele had struck him, but Bartholomew’s sword was in his hand. “I am by your side, father. Together we shall yet complete our quest, until we alone hold the power of the Treasure in our grasp. Then the world will tremble beneath our feet!”

“Yes, my son.” Cromier flicked his pitiless eyes only for a moment to the fallen form of Philus Philonius, who had not moved. Then he called out to the remaining pirates of the
Sea Spider.
“Men! What share was once meant for your captain, shall now be divided amongst you. Take no prisoners and show no mercy.”

The Corsairs shouted their fierce acceptance of this new deal, more loyal to gold, it seemed, than their defeated captain. The men
of the
Spectre
, however, bruised and battered and bleeding, from old MacGuffy to sleepy Mister Gilly, hardly raised a sword to their defense. The mighty Dread Steele lay as still as Philus Philonius on the deck. He did not rise to lead them or call out to give them hope. Jim’s heart pumped fear into his blood as the Corsairs closed in on the quarterdeck, pushing back the
Spectre’s
men. Jim clutched his half of the shell close to his chest, though he held little hope that his strength would be enough to keep it from the Count or his pirates.

Jim closed his eyes and waited for the cold sensation of steel to touch his skin, when a shrill cry pierced the air as Bartholomew shrieked in pain. Jim’s eyes flew open to find an arrow quivering in Bartholomew Cromier’s arm. The pale captain dropped his sword and it clattered to the deck. The bolt in his shoulder was a white arrow – fashioned from coral of the sea.

The Queen of the Sea, Melodia, and her people had returned. Fulkern and his warriors loosed arrow after arrow and spear after spear at the Cromiers and their men. The merpeople burst from the water and unleashed their attack on the Corsairs, who fled from even the sight of the sea-folk. They all but trampled one another beneath their own boots to escape to the deck of the
Sea Spider
. But flight would not come easily for the Count’s thugs.

A fountain of seawater exploded into the sky as Percival returned, the Ratts and Lacey upon his back. He rose up over the decks. The water dragon unleashed his roar with such fury that it sent Corsairs tumbling overboard and into the waves, where the merpeople dragged them into the depths.

Count Cromier turned about in a circle. He watched hopelessly as his hired army was chased by the sea-folk’s spears from the left, and swept into the sea by a water dragon of the deep to the right.

“Do not think this means you have won, Jim Morgan!” The Count vowed, stabbing a black-gloved finger in Jim’s face. “A pirate does not live so long as I have lived without learning how to survive a single defeat. No, this is not the end, boy. Do not sleep with both eyes closed. Do not rest with your windows open. Do not sit with your back to
a door. When you least expect it, I shall return. I shall take what is mine! When I finally possess the power of the Treasure of the Ocean, I shall bend all of its might toward your unending suffering!”

The Count seized Bartholomew by his wounded shoulder, drawing a pained yelp from his son. He then withdrew a small pouch from his pocket. Tipping the pouch over in his hand, the Count poured black powder in a ring on the deck. No sooner did the Cromiers step into the ring than the black powder began to swirl. Faster and faster it turned until it became a black cyclone of smoke that blew away on the ocean wind, leaving not even a trace of the Count or Bartholomew behind.

When the two villains had vanished in the night, Jim ran across the deck and threw himself down at Dread Steele’s side. Soot smudged the Captain’s face. His shirt and waistcoat were singed black from the lightning bolt that had cleaved the Hunter’s Shell in two. Jim gently shook the Captain’s shoulder.

“Captain,” Jim whispered. “Captain Steele?” The pirate crew of the
Spectre
, MacGuffy and Mufwalme at their head, now gathered around their fallen leader. Just when Jim had given up all hope that Steele would ever stir again, the pirate’s eyes quivered and his lids opened half way. His chapped, burnt lips parted just enough for a few hushed words to sneak through.

“Cromiers gone? Crew safe?”

“Yes,” said Jim. A hot fire burned in his throat and stung his eyes. “The storm is gone. Queen Melodia came. She and Percival drove the corsairs away. The Count and Bartholomew escaped in a black cloud.”

“The shell?” Steele asked. Even his whisper began to fail.

“It’s shorn in two, Captain.” Jim’s words shook and his tears brimmed. “I have one half of it. Cromier has the other. But the magic in the shell is dead, I think. I don’t believe anyone will find the Treasure of the Ocean now, Captain. Maybe it’s better that way.”

Steele weakly shook his head. “There is always a way. The sea is a million roads...full of…storms…”

“I know,” Jim said. “I won’t let them get me lost again.” His chin quivered uncontrollably.

“I’m sorry, Jim. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what, sir?” Jim leaned closer to the Captain, for his words grew softer with each breath.

“I will not finish this adventure with you.” Steele lifted one hand and pointed to Jim’s chest. “Though there be ten thousand storms, sail on, Jim. I sail on.” Then Dread Steele, shadow of the sea, smiled. It was a quivering grin on his lips that remembered a younger man from brighter days long gone. Then he breathed his last.

Only gently crackling flames and a whispering wind in the slack sails of the great ship
Spectre
marked the passing of Dread Steele, Lord of the Pirates. Two great tears spilt from Jim’s eyes. They rolled down his face to drop onto the pirate’s cheeks above his smile, like tears of joy on a sea-worn face.

TWENTY–THREE

ome miles from the Devil’s Horns, across the sea, a lonely atoll rose from the waves. It was not much more than a hill of sand and a circle of palm trees at its crest. In the dim morning gray, Jim, the Ratts, Lacey, and all the crew of the
Spectre
stood on the beach, heads down and hats in their hands. Melodia, Queen of the Merpeople, and her folk treaded nearby in the shallow waters. Even Percival, last of the water dragons, looked on from the deeper sea beyond the anchored ship.

In the bottom of a small dinghy, resting on a bed of palms from the island’s trees, Dread Steele lay with his eyes closed and face toward the sky. Jim had laid Dread Steele’s cutlass and his pistol beside
the Captain when the pirates had put him in the boat, and Lacey had kissed his forehead. The Ratts placed one of the toy soldiers Jim had gifted them for Christmas into the boat, for it was all they had to give.

A cool, ocean wind blew across the waves, ruffling cloaks and stinging tear-stained faces. MacGuffy, who was holding the little boat against the tide, opened his mouth to speak some words, but they caught in the old man’s throat and refused to come. The aged pirate shook his scarred head and his old chin trembled. Finally, Queen Melodia swam from her people to the side of the boat. Her golden hair shone even before the dawn and her voice rang like a choir of bells.

“There are those in this world who live in the shadows. Sometimes, only when they are gone, do we see they did so to bring light to the darkness. Goodbye, Dread Steele, last Friend of the Sea. Your light will shine on the shores of the country to where you now sail. May it show the way for we who shall one day follow.”

Melodia bent down and kissed Dread Steele on the forehead. Then she whispered a few words in her own tongue. At her touch, the small dinghy began to glow. A magic flame spread across every board and nail until it shone the brightest gold. Without so much as a push or pull the little boat glided out on the waters, sailing toward the horizon.

“Sail on, me Cap’n!” MacGuffy cried, great rolling tears falling from his one good eye. “Nothin’ can stop the man of the sea from sailin’ home, not even death.”

“Sail on,” said the crew of the
Spectre
, and even Lacey and the Ratts.

“Sail on, Dread Steele,” Jim whispered. Quite unexpectedly, in spite of his own tears, a smile found its way on Jim’s face. He imagined that perhaps Dread Steele would not be alone when he came to the shores of the next world. Perhaps Lindsay Morgan would be waiting there for him. “Morgan and Steele, together again,” Jim said.

Before the boat disappeared from sight, the sun rose over the west and painted a golden path upon the waves. It seemed to Jim that the little boat traveled that shining road to some place beyond where the ocean met the sky.

That same morning, the ocean breeze blew warm and drove the clouds away. The
Spectre’s
crew readied to hoist anchor and set sail for home. Jim, Lacey, George, Peter, and Paul stood at the prow to say their goodbyes. Percival swam up alongside the
Spectre
. The spines along his head and his curved teeth flashed in the sun. Jim reached over the railing and petted Percival on his scaly nose.

“Goodbye, Percival,” Jim said. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

“You are most welcome, young Jim Morgan,” the sea serpent replied in the softest growl he could manage. “I am sorry for all that you have lost. For the shell yes, which was a powerful talisman left by your father. But more so for the loss of your friend.”

“Thank you, Percival,” Jim said. “But I did make a new one at least, didn’t I?”

“That you have, Jim Morgan. That you have indeed.”

“Where will you go now, Percival?” Lacey asked, coming up to stand beside Jim at the railing and pet the dragon a few times herself. “What will you do now that you don’t live in that cave under the mountain?”

“Ah, young lady, I will do that which my heart as longed to do for over a hundred years. I will swim into the deep depths, deeper and darker than even the merpeople dare dive. There will I search and search, for I still hold hope that somewhere there is one of my kind yet swimming free.”

“I hope you find them, Percival,” Lacey said. She leaned as far out as she could and kissed the dragon on the nose.

“We hope so too, Percival,” said George, swaggering up with his thumbs stuck through the holes in his jacket again. “Of course, if worse comes to worst, you could always join our gang, right? Don’t know what your other plans are after you go and find your mates and all that, but I still think you could have a real future in thievin’. Trust me, I’ve got an eye for talent.”