If I didn’t know better, I’d say Pop was afraid.
“That’s not a treasure ship,” Pop says in a low voice. “She’s riding too high. Look at the waterline.”
I step to the rail and peer out. And pull in a sharp breath of my own. If the ship were loaded down with treasure, the deck would be only a fathom or so above the waves. Instead all the gunports are clear.
Two whole rows of them.
“She’s a warship, isn’t she?” I whisper.
Pop nods.
“And we’re trapped against the coastline, aren’t we?”
This time Pop doesn’t reply because questions I know the answers to I shouldn’t have to ask.
All she’s got to do is come broadside to us and fire. Two volleys and we’re sunk.
We’ve hauled down the Union Jack, since England and Spain are still at war the last anyone’s heard, but flying no flag at all will draw every captain’s eye.
His grapeshot as well.
The bosun’s whistle cuts the clamor, and we fall silent as the old man swings onto the quarterdeck and waves his arms for attention.
“She’s Spanish, all right,” the old man says, “but there’s not a single coin aboard her. We’ll never be able to outrun her, and we’re all dead men if we try to fight.”
A rumble moves through the crew. Unease and discontent and more than a little raw terror. The wind has led Half-Hanged Henry astray.
Pop steps closer so our shoulders are touching. Signing pirate articles means you’re always with a crew that’ll overwhelm an enemy, and any captain worth a damn never starts a fight he can’t easily win.
But that vessel is a forty-gun frigate, and there’s no way we’re sailing past without being sunk or boarded.
Pop and me and Johnny and others like us — we’re done for either way. Half-Hanged Henry and his lawless lot treat us like sailors so long as we act like it, and every seaman brown or white is the same to Davy Jones. But if we’re caught, we’re part of the plunder and hauled in chains to the auction block. We won’t get a show trial or even hang on the harborside gallows like the white pirates.
I can’t speak for Pop or Johnny or the others, but I’d rather be a guest at some underwater table with Davy and his missus. There’s no way I could crouch between rows of tobacco now that I’ve felt the foredeck swaying beneath my feet, tasted salt on my lips, and run before the wind in a little sloop under a sky blue enough to make me forget every storm I ever sailed through.
Mother Carey’s chickens usually warn of a storm she’s busy stirring. At least a storm would take both us and the Spanish warship down to the bottom, where Mother Carey herself would dice up our flesh onto dishes made of shells and use our bones to comb her long green hair.
“We cannot fight her.” The old man is pacing, toying with the spyglass. “If we cripple her, we might be able to run past.”
“Her mainsails are dropping!” shouts Black Tom from the rigging. “She’s coming about!”
The old man snaps the spyglass closed. “Can any man among you swim?”
Pop fidgets with his blade, and at his other elbow Johnny looks utterly greensick.
“C’mon, lads, speak up! There must be one of you who can sink that ship sneakylike, with auger and drill.”
No one says anything. Like as not because none of them can swim.
But I can.
There’s only so much a child can do in squalid ports with ten grogshops per man and not a church in sight. While Pop drank his ghosts to whispers, I whiled away long afternoons in quiet inlets, splashing and collecting shells — and paddling about the shallows and deeps till I could swim like a fish, even in a wind-whipped ocean current.
“There’ll be silver in it for you,” the old man says with an edge of terror I’ve never yet heard from any man who’s turned pirate. “My gold watch too.” He rakes a look over us, shouts, “My daughter’s hand in marriage! What the devil will it take?”
My father has saved my life nine times. He wanted no part of the Vanity, and I was the one who finally wore him down.
“I’ll do it.” I step before the old man. “I’ll sink that frigate if you’ll trade your shares for mine when we find and take the treasure galleon.”
Pop stiffens. That treasure ship is still out there, and a captain’s haul is always seven shares. Seven, when a single share from a prize like that would grant Pop’s hopes thrice over.
The old man shuts his mouth. Narrows his eyes. Looks to the warship. Then he says, “It’s yours, Joe. It’s yours if you sink that ship.”
Everything feels oddly quiet but for the creak of wood and the rattlesnap of damp canvas. I can hear every last one of my father’s indrawn breaths somewhere behind me.