The Voyage of the Sea Wolf (7 page)

William paused. “Sebastian,” he said. “I think o' my friend every minute. But it must be endured.”

“Are ye speakin' to me?” Sebastian asked. “Better get on wi' yer work.”

“Aye,” William said.

I watched him till he was out of sight.

“'Twill not be good to be smarter that Captain Moriarity,” Sebastian said. “She has no likin' for disobedience.”

“What disobedience do you speak of?” I asked and he fixed me with his green stare, shrugged and went back to his stitching.

I got to recognize some of the crew as they stopped to exchange words with Sebastian. Horn, who spoke with such difficulty that he mostly signed with his small, calloused hands. Catman who was friend to the ship's black cat, the wild creature that would not let anyone else touch her. Claw, so called for the metal apparatus he had in place of a hand. I kept a watch out for the man with the missing finger that the captain had cut off when he used it inappropriately in her presence but did not see him. Magruder, leering and squinting, made every excuse to stop and stare greedily at me.

“I might mention to the cap'n that you doesn't have enough work to do,” Sebastian told him once and Magruder said, “Aye, ye better do that, ye mealy little midget.”

“Go,” Sebastian said. “And next time ye come this way, do not stop.”

Then, one night when Sebastian's weather string had warned him of a savage storm fast approaching, William and I met by chance, alone on the rolling deck. The
Sea
Wolf
pitched and yawed. The sea around was fierce, frosted with white foam that spat at the ship. Wind tore at the reefed sails, trying to loose them. The crew was busy, battening hatches, tying down anything the storm might take. Rain drummed on the deck.

First he was only a shadow, coming toward me.

Then he was William.

We clung to each other. There was little time for words. Someone could come at any minute. There was just the warmth of our kisses that mixed with the rain beating on us. “Me love. My darlin' girl,” he whispered. On the island, when we came out of the sea, we'd been wet like this. Those kisses and those holdings had been the sweetest.

I ran my hand through his hair, felt under my fingers the thin line of scar on his face, stood tiptoe to kiss it.

“I don't think I can bear it.”

My words were muffled against his chest.

“Shh, shh. We have to keep on livin'. We have to do anything, say anything to hang on. The voyage will end.”

A sob rose in my throat. “What if she decides I am to be marooned again, alone? She will never let you go.”

“If she tried to keep me 'twould be in vain. I'd jump after ye. Beelzebub himself could not stop me.”

There was an urgent whisper behind us that was almost lost in the wind.

Skelly!

“Get yerselves away! Puce and Skull be's comin'. Hurry!”

There was no time for a goodbye word. We moved quickly in opposite directions.

Back along the deck, fighting the force of the gale I saw Sebastian.

He stood with his arms wide, his back to the wind. In one hand he held his knotted string. “Aye,” he said. “I told cap'n 'twould be a storm to remember. 'Tis true. But 'twill not be a hurricane. There is no eye. Me and my string can always tell.”

It was a savage storm, two days long.

When it was over the ship had a battered look to her and the crew started again, scrubbing and cleaning and polishing. The bilges were full of water and needed pumping. Sails were spread to dry.

Sebastian and I worked on wet canvas, so heavy that it numbed my legs. “Me own short legs be's an advantage,” he said. “They bend on themselves easier.”

Nights I read to the captain. I thought perhaps the night reading would make her softer to me but that did not happen. It was when she chose
Gulliver's Travels
that it became apparent to me that she did not know how to read. She had tired of
The Tain
and said, “Pick another book, Catherine, and continue.”

“Which one, Captain?” I asked. “The one there, with the green cover,” she said impatiently. The title,
Gulliver's Travels,
was writ plain across the front.

“Aye, that 'un,” she'd said. “What is it called?”

I told her and explained what it was about.

“ 'Twill do.” She said nothing more. Captain Moriarity was not one to expose a frailty. But I knew. I tucked the knowledge away in my mind. It might be useful.

Every night we had the same routine. We slept in the clothes we had worn that day. She used the commode, I went to the cradle at the back, hanging out above the ocean as the ship bucked beneath me like a horse I had one time ridden. Sometimes she washed her face and hands with water. Sometimes she did not. I could use a bucket of water that Gummer placed outside the door to wash myself.

Every night she ran her hand over the painted cross on the door and muttered words that I could not hear. Every night she touched the lid of the box that I knew held William's hair and once I saw her take out the lock of his hair and press it to her lips. She shuttered the lamp. She did not wish me goodnight and I did not bid her a good night either. Soon I heard her snores, like high-pitched whistles, like the sound of a repetitive high note on my flute. She never mentioned my music nor invited me to play it. I could not anyway, not even for myself now. The
tips of my fingers were so raw and painful that they bled at the slightest touch.

Each morning I took my place with Sebastian on the deck. One day we met up with a small merchant vessel sailing in the opposite direction. I looked at it and wished with all my heart that William and I were on board it, heading for Port Teresa.

“Cap'n won't be stoppin' to plunder that 'un,” Sebastian said. “Even though it be's a young chicken waitin' to be plucked, Cap'n be's after bigger prizes.”

First the
Reprisal
, I knew. Then the
Isabella
.

Every morning the wild black cat slunk past us carrying a dead and bloody rat in its teeth. “It be's lookin' for Catman,” Sebastian said with a chuckle. “It likes to be givin' him presents. There be's plenty more where that one came from.”

Around us the men worked, repairing, splicing ropes, checking the cannons, polishing and sharpening their knives and their cutlasses for the battles to come.

“ 'Tis good they have plenty to do,” Sebastian said. “They gets bored if'n there's no fightin' and no booty and little to occupy them. They needs to have a bit o' fightin' to spur their spirits and a goodly plunder to keep 'em happy.”

It was the very next day that the lookout spotted a sailing ship and called it out.

The
Reprisal
!

I recognized it from a distance and I was overcome by a mixture of sorrow and vindictiveness at the sight of it. My father's ship that he had loved. My father's ship with Herc as captain.

Captain Moriarity strode along the deck and stopped where we sat.

“A word with ye, Sebastian,” she said.

Sebastian slid out from under the sail and stood, flexing his legs, stretching his arms. The two of them moved away but I heard the captain ask, “What are the portents, Sebastian? Have ye consulted them?”

“They are good, Cap'n,” Sebastian said. “We are in unison with the sun and stars. 'Tis Monday, a good day for a battle. I see a conundrum, and an unanswered question. But in the end 'twill go your way.”

“So be it,” she said. “I am accustomed to getting my way.”

She shouted an order and the false English flag was run down the masthead. Quickly, quickly, as if it had been waiting for the opportunity, the Skull and Crossbones swooped to the mast top and screamed its business to the wind.

I took a deep breath. Whatever was to happen next would happen.

The men of the
Sea Wolf
yelled and threw around curses, which was their way of rejoicing. They tossed anything that was at hand, including each other, into the air. I thought, as I had thought before, that they were like children, kept inside and then let loose. But they were dangerous children.

Captain Moriarity addressed them. “ 'Twill not be as good a booty as we'll get from the
Isabella
,” she said. “But we'll stop this belly-suckin' excuse for a ship now. She could not get there afore us. Our speed surpasses hers. But she could come after us, lookin' for a share. We're two days, maybe three, from our big prize and we wants no extra
trouble when we gets there. Think o' this as sport and a warmin' up for what's ahead. Are yez all wi' me?”

“Aye, Cap'n. Aye.”

“There'll be something on this belly-suckin' ship worth takin'.”

“We likes a challenge.”

There was a frenzy in their response.

“To yer places then,” the captain said.

The
Sea Wolf
came up behind the
Reprisal
.

“She's tryin' to run,” Captain Moriarity said, looking through her spyglass. “But we'll give her no quarter.”

The arms chest was unlocked and the men took weapons, muskets, flintlock pistols, and small pomegranate-shaped objects made of wood that I did not recognize.

I did not avail myself of those but chose a pistol.

Puce grinned, weighing one of the pomegranates in his hand. “Grenado shells. They's full o' gunpowder. Light these wicks, lob a few o' them into the ship and it blasts them to Davy Jones right quick.”

I shuddered. What devil's devices were these? I had never seen them on the
Reprisal
.

The men swarmed to the starboard railings. Excitement, expectation, and greed spread like a flame as the ships drew closer. There was a babble of anticipation.

“ 'Twill be an easy catch,” someone shouted. “We gots 'em outnumbered and outgunned.”

“By Billy's bodkin there'll be hogsheads o' rum the night,” another called.

I looked for William and saw him. Our eyes met and unspoken words passed between us. He stepped away from the others and I moved beside him. The crew, intent on the prey, had their backs to us. Gabby did turn, saw us and turned back immediately to watch the
Reprisal
. He had other overwhelming interests.

William and I stood, face to face.

He ran a finger along my lips and I closed my eyes. It wasn't even a kiss. But it filled me. Would I ever get enough of his touch, of the way my bones seemed to dissolve when I was close to him?

His lips brushed my ear. “I remember,” he whispered, and then he was gone, joining the rest of the men by the railing.

The captain stood alongside the quartermaster and the boatswain.

She was yelling at the shadow crew on the
Reprisal.

“Ahoy!” she called. “Aboard the
Reprisal
. I am captain on the ship,
Sea Wolf
. We aim to take yer vessel. Do ye surrender or will we blow ye out o' the water?”

The answer was not long in coming.

There was a fusillade of small arms fire from the
Reprisal
and then a thunderous cannon blast. It was aimed too high and smashed harmlessly in the sea behind us.

I imagined the deck of the
Reprisal
, the pirates I had known scrambling about, loading the cannons, preparing to be boarded. Fish and fat Red... and Cook who had thrown us a small bundle of food when we were to be marooned. And there would be Herc and Hopper.

The cannons of the
Sea Wolf
were ready, the powder kegs beside them, awaiting the gun master's order to fire.

“Fire!”

Boom, boom, boom.

One blast hit the
Reprisal
's main mast. One of her topsail spars hung, cracked and crooked.

Another blast smashed into the hull tearing open a hole.

From the
Reprisal
came two cannon shots in retaliation. One hit our big, square foresail. I looked up and saw the way it hung in tatters and thought vaguely that it would need a lot of stitching to make it seaworthy again. The second shot sizzled harmlessly across the bow.

Now the two ships were close, so close that I could see a figure I knew to be Herc on the deck and beside him a one-legged man, balancing on a crutch. Herc and Hopper.

Small-arms fire from both sides spattered the hulls of the two ships.

Then I heard Captain Moriarity's voice. “Where's Ronan? Get him up here. Give him the grenades.”

Beside me Puce said to the pock-faced pirate next to him, “Oh aye, bring us Ronan. He can hit a bird in the eye wi' one o' them grenades.”

They made way for a tall, gangly pirate I'd seen many times before. I'd thought him feebleminded, the way his head bobbed and his legs and arms splayed out as if he didn't know what to do with them. But he knew what to do with the grenades.

One after the other he threw them unerringly onto the
Reprisal
's deck.

One after the other came the violent detonations, followed by screams and obscenities that shattered the space between us. Followed by the cheers and cavorting of the
Sea Wolf
's crew.

“Is it necessary to kill them all?” I asked Captain Moriarity, the words coming before I could stop them.

“Are ye a driveling nincompoop?” she asked, her cold stare fixing me like a fish on a hook.

“The more we kill, the more for us,” someone shouted cheerfully but another voice said, “Shut the wench up, Cap'n. We gots no need of stupid words afore we do battle.”

I bit my lip and said no more.

Now the
Reprisal
was wallowing drunkenly in the water, listing heavily to port.

“Ye can stop now, Ronan. Ye did well,” Captain Moriarity shouted. “Do ye surrender?” she called to the
Reprisal
.

“Never,” came the answer accompanied by a string of vile obscenities and a straggle of pistol shots. Herc's voice. I would know it anywhere. I thought I could smell him even through the reek of gunpowder.