Silver Over Sargasso Tides

The captain had still, up to that point, been alive.

Vast ship masts pitched to and away as the cannon fire ripped through the air, smoke hemorrhaging from the portholes and shouts bleeding through the jungle-hot sea air.

I’d counted five men downed from my flintlock. Only one of ours, far as I knew, had caught lead from the Windsor. All that was left was for us to get near enough to board her, to lay our hooks and secure our bounty—a hold loaded with Spanish silver, captured off the coast of Cuba, welcomingly stored with the rum rations and tobacco.

I was close enough to catch its scent, the smell of freedom, the cost of land my tiller would cut far from any wave, a hearth to raise a family by and a storehouse with barrels of ale brewed when the barley’s ripe. That was my bounty. The others could keep their pleasure-houses, their mornings face-down in the sand, their eventual hangman’s noose. I saw it clear for their future, but not for mine.

The ship lurched as the port side made contact.

The hooks and the boards secured the two vessels, and we were up and over, steel sang upon steel and cleaved flesh. The air was hung heavy with shouts and yells and cries from the living and the dying.

I moved over the deck, my cutlass clearing the way through the frenetic flurry of red coats, towards the hatches leading below, drawn as I was by the reales. There I saw him, our captain, all in a clearing over the deck, as though all men cowered away from the great Captain Edward Jennings, scourge of the sea, man of thunder locked in combat over Tartarus with the great titan, the commodorus indecorus. Commodore Talbot, that hound who for seven years had run me ragged in his service, underpaid, beaten, and mistreated. Oh, the fire in my belly for the man. I saw it clear in that moment, a clearing of the heavens: fate had dragged me by dagger point back to the fiend. I’d run him through and take my fees long outstanding.

Captain Jennings shouted directives to the men as he fought, like the master of an orchestra, waving his baton in time, allowing himself a smile as the music of war crescendoed. Commodore Talbot strained under the weight of his crashing cutlass, sweat pouring back into his woolen coats, bracing himself with his weary legs. He’d be unaware as I came up behind and pricked his rib cage.

I stole up through the fray, hardly noticed by the battle-frenzied men, stalking my prey like some jaguar. I mirrored his sidesteps, his feints, his parries—God, let me take this man!

I saw my window, small as it was, and seized upon it. The commodore had graciously pulled back, and brought his spine to my blade, and I pushed, and the sword caught.

The commodore lurched forward at his injury, and folded shoulders unnaturally back, and the handle jerked from my hand and followed the commodore, who almost deftly swerved away from my captain’s lance, and stumbled in his odd posture in orbit about him.

Had he not then pulled my pistol from my waist as he twisted, the tale would have ended soon after, but in the last push of thought through his corporeal being, he lifted the flintlock, thought to point it at me, then sobered and killed Captain Jennings as he fell back over the railing.

Those next moments were as though the sun itself bled and Poseidon lifted himself to deliver summons to his watery depths. What loci of energy both men had commanded in their crews was felt vanish into the ether in that moment, the navigating star by which both had steered, fallen into the sea.

Few would bear it, having seen battle, to hear me preach that there is an order and a harmony in warfare when rallied around such men of charisma, but had they seen what ensued after such lights were extinguished, they might know firsthand a chaos likened to hellfire.

Gasping from what I had done, I fled down below decks, away from my error. I thought to myself that the wood might deafen the clamor, but it rose and rose. My captain, dead. Killed by a man I took as my mortal enemy, but who barely spared a dying thought for me.

A blast of gunpowder sounded above, and I was deafened.

I staggered through the hold, the rocking of the ship throwing me about. I’d find the silver or it’d all be for naught.

Our cannon fire had blasted a hole in the wall the size of a marlin, streaming rays of sun through the creeping powder-smoke. An empty hammock slapped at my shoulder, and I strained my eyes. I spied a cargo of barrels behind a cage. It might be there.

Creaking boards behind me sent my flintlock from its holster, and I pointed it back, and stopped myself before I sent a lead ball through our cabin boy, Thomas. He’d been marooned at sea; lost his family while they sailed for the New World, so we’d given him a place on the crew, never taking him raiding, but allowing him larger quarters than that sorry piece of driftwood.

The fighting had apparently gone over to our ship, and the king’s men had found Thomas’ hiding spot in the galley. He ran, and the unfortunate lad had run into hotter water, looking for the captain, no less.

I swore. Little Thomas didn’t deserve this like I did.

I told him to stay close, and we moved towards the barrels beyond the grating.

The door hung open without a lock, and as we moved closer, I found the reason for it. One of ours had pried it open, lifting it away as he was caught by a sentinel, and they’d killed each other in the ensuing moments. The door whined as it tapped at O’Malley’s leg, over and over.

I’d have shielded any other child’s eyes, but Thomas was now no stranger to this life. He only shivered as he looked at the bodies.

I beckoned him on, and we went into the cage.

I picked up O’Malley’s cutlass, and pried open a barrel. Such a haul of coin, loaded up to the brim, catching glimmers of the light and shining like morning. Two more I opened, one of them empty.

Then I heard it, the roar of flames. Our ship, as I saw out the hole in the ship, had caught fire from the gunpowder blast. Already it was lapping at the water line, and that was all there was for it; if the holocaust had not yet also caught this ship, it soon would.

I took one mournful look back over the reales, and swore again at what I knew must happen.

I had little Thomas help me push one of the barrels on its side, spilling out the coin. We rolled that and the already empty one to the hole in the ship’s side. Lifting one up, I slammed it against the boards that still hung in the way, making room to slide it through. With the barrel positioned in the hole, I had young Thomas climb inside. I told him to crouch, and that it would be best if he held his breath for a while, and if it floundered at all in the water, to keep his weight at the bottom until he was sure he was clear of the ships. I saw the tears in his little eyes, and I said as right I’d be close behind to help him, so never he’d have to fear, and to keep his wits up. He nodded, and wiped his eyes clear, the brave lad, and got into the barrel. I placed the lid at the top—not tight enough that he’d never push it free, just so that it would cast away water—and let it slide away into the sea.

Quick I grabbed the other, and balanced myself back into it as I saw the flames coming into the hold. I’d had half a mind to run and grab another pocketful of the silver, but wisdom kicked me back into the sea without another thought.

That was it. Once we’d cleared the conflagration and the smoke, I made sure the boy and I stayed together. I paddled my barrel next to his and tore strips from my shirt to keep a rope between us, that we might keep one end tied to my ankle, and the other to his. We’d caught the H.M.S Windsor a few miles off the coast of the island, and I felt sure the tides would aid us if we gave them time.

In the several days we were afloat, I spent more than a few miserable hours glaring at the fistful of coins that had clung to the bottom of my barrel. I cursed myself for every decision I’d made between England and there, the years I’d wasted only to throw myself to the ocean’s mercy.

My one consolation was Thomas. He’d chosen none of it, and somehow, my impetuous life had brought me to his aid when he’d had nowhere left to run. For that, I saw some providence, and it baffles me to Haiti and back.

Now I’ve heard you’ve found family to take young Thomas in, and give him an education that’s proper to such a strong and clever young lad. I’m thankful for that, Your Honour, and I hope the court sees to it that he wants for nothing in this life, nor the next, so far as may be aided to that end.

As for me, I’ve had no hope for recourse since Thomas and I found ourselves among His Majesty’s Navy on the island. I’ve yielded myself to justice, and walk freely to my sentence, knowing that I’ve earned such a rope for my desertion and villainy.

One thing I ask, and only this: that whoever may hear this tale I’ve recounted may pray for my soul, the scurvy unyielding soul of a pirate, deprived of all but a pocket of Spanish silver.