Little Jane and the Nameless Isle

by Adira Rotstein

  “I don’t suppose you can save someone from drowning with a green lichen tea infusion?” remarked Ishiro sarcastically.

  “No, but I can help them. I can … I can swim!” proclaimed Villienne. It was one of those passing fancies that seemed like an excellent idea at the time, but like the smudge-proof ink recipe he once concocted out of highly explosive potassium nitrate, was destined to blow up in his face.

  “Well, bully for you,” growled Ishiro. “You still ain’t leaving. We’re going into battle and I’ll need a capable surgeon on hand.”

  Villienne’s pale face blanched. “Uh, sir, blood’s not really my forte.”

  “What?” Ishiro demanded, incredulous.

  “I tend to swoon at the mere sight of it. Why do you think I never completed my medical training?”

  Ishiro shook his head and muttered something untranslatable in Korean.

  “And don’t forget, Captain, I’m the one with the letter of marque,” said Villienne, uncowed. “It’s signed by me and I can just as soon revoke it as give it into your power.”

  “But this — this is insubordination!”

  Villienne opened his mouth to argue, but Little Jane stopped him with a tug of his arm. “C’mon, the masthead — it’ll be behind us soon.”

  Jonesy and Little Jane had already loosed the jolly boat’s moorings from the deadlights. “Magistrate, come on,” insisted Little Jane as she hopped in behind Jonesy.

  “My regrets, Ishiro,” Villienne said with a sweep of his hat, “but you can court marshal us when we get back to the Bay.”

  The magistrate put one foot on the gunwale of the boat. It swayed precariously beneath him, but Jonesy grabbed him by the waist and plunked him down safely beside him. Jonesy grabbed a rope and hauled away. Little Jane grasped another, and with a creaking of pulleys they winched the jollyboat down.

  As he watched the small boat lurch down the hull of the ship, Ishiro felt his recently renewed strength ebb out through his fingertips. Of all the heart-wrenching decisions he’d been forced to make in his lifetime, he couldn’t say which was more difficult — choosing to maintain position on the Newton against the French fifteen years ago, knowing the sacrifices he and his men would be forced to make; or letting Little Jane, the closest thing he had to a daughter, go off without him by her side to face whatever unknown dangers might lurk on this mysterious island.

  He glanced around, taking in the sudden silence on the bridge of the Yorkman. The crew awaited his orders. If only one’s feelings were something a man could turn on and off at will, he thought, how much easier life might be.

  But Ishiro let the swell of command overtake him like a gust of wind, and he thrust his chest forward.

  The enemy, he thought grimly, had best beware.

  Chapter Eight

  The Reflection

  Long John awoke to the sensation of Bonnie Mary pecking tenderly at his neck. “Not now, love,” he whispered. He cracked open one eyelid and yelped. A beady black bird eye in a orange feathered face stared quizzically back at him.

  “Shoo!” yelled Long John, swatting the bird away.

  “Caw!” cried the bird, its long, narrow beak the colour of a ripe tangerine.

  “That’s right, you filthy fowl. That’s what you get when ye mess with Captain Long John Silver!” he growled, shaking his fist as it flapped away. He half expected someone to laugh at this, but the camp was silent except for various noises related to urgent, painful calls of nature. The previous night’s dinner of barbequed orange bird meat had done its dastardly work.

  With such unpleasant sounds surrounding him, Long John doubted he’d be able to fall asleep again. He grabbed his crutches, which Darsa had grudgingly returned to him the night before, and pushed himself up. He struggled over to a nearby rock, where he sat down to take stock of his condition. His entire body was covered in maddeningly itchy mosquito bites and his hands were cut up from the previous day’s climb. Experimentally, he prodded his broken knee. He gasped as it throbbed painfully against the restraints of the splint.

  Leaning heavily on the crutches, Long John rose and made for the moat, weaving his weary way through the pirate hunters’ camp. At the water’s edge, he gingerly lowered himself down onto the black sand and splashed some of the cool water onto his sunburned face.

  To his astonishment, as he looked down into the water, he saw the face of his father, Long John Silver the First, staring back at him. He recoiled from the spectre, heart knocking against his ribs.

  As his heart steadied itself, he leaned carefully out over the water, forcing himself to close his eyes first before looking down again. Ah, now he saw the trick of it. It was just his reflection; the cobwebs of sleep mucking with his mind. Of course it wasn’t him. He thought it funny that the vision had surprised him. As if he hadn’t made his fortune off the similarity all those years.

  Oddly enough though, Jim had never noticed any physical resemblance between himself and his father, but suddenly here it was. Now ancient, half-remembered conversations slithered up from the depths of his distracted brain, like hidden worms wriggling to the surface after a rainstorm.

  Long John Silver — the real Long John Silver — rose up before him as mockingly tall and fierce as he’d ever been in life. What would he think of his namesake if he were to see him now? Jim could imagine only too well.

  Jim studied his worn-out reflection. What a picture! So hard to believe he’d been thought of as quite handsome back in the tender days of his youth. His now balding head had once sprouted a thick bloom of yellow curls, and his eyes had been startlingly blue and bright. He’d had fine white teeth and an easy smile, not to mention a certain fondness for flash clothing, still not entirely dispelled by age. As a child, the women of the island loved to indulge him. He’d grown up a keen flirt, able to make any of them laugh with his clever stories.

  He had fond memories of strolling down the dirt road, scuffing up clouds of yellow dust as he went, listening to the island birds singing in the trees overhead, on his way to the market. He’d often stop for a spell to shoot the breeze with the sailors’ wives working in their gardens, everyone eager to stop their digging and say “good day,” sweet mangoes exchanged for the latest gossip from the tavern.

  Though his gait was never even, he didn’t limp. “Nah, not him,” they used to say, “that boy, he swagger.”

  And why not? Smuggler’s Bay was his then; the little prince of the island he was. The name Silver meant power on Smuggler’s Bay and everyone knew it. They let Jim get away with mischief children of their own would’ve been whipped for, and he never thought that anywhere else in the world could be any different. He assumed that life off-island would be just as simple — that he would always be able to charm his way through.

  The only person seemingly immune to young Jim’s charm was Long John Silver the First. Jim had always been somewhat frightened of the “original silver-tongued devil hisself,” as his mother styled him. He could never picture his father without his crutch beside him. He looked down at the crutches that lay at his side. Sticks or no sticks, you ain’t the same sort of man as him at all, he told himself.

  But was it true?

  In the hazy half-light of the morning, Jim sat on the black sand, seeing another beach in his mind’s eye, the one in Smuggler’s Bay as it’d been when he was young.

  He remembered working one day alongside his father’s crew, helping prepare the ship for another of its innumerable smuggling runs. By the time he returned to the docks he was exhausted, hands heavy as iron weights by his sides.

  But then he saw the sea, blue and sparkling beyond the beach. Instantly refreshed, he went down to examine the gifts left by the retreating tide.

  All fatigue forgotten, he darted around like a speedy minnow, peeking into tidal pools and poking at the jellies, remaining at nothing for more than a few minutes at a time.

  Old Captain Silver followed Jim down; happy to set his own slow, relaxed pace. He sat on a big sun-warmed
rock like a wrinkled old basking turtle, eyes closed, more power in his stillness than in all young Jim’s frenzied motion.

  Finally, the old captain cracked open an irritated eye. “Sit down,” he ordered Jim in his great booming voice, “You need your queue fixed.”

  The sun was sinking lower, throwing an orange glow across the water, and though Jim wanted to go looking for crabs while it was still light, one didn’t match words with the Captain. He plopped himself down on the sand at the base of the rock to let his father braid his hair.

  He watched the sun’s broken reflection skip across the water, praying his father hadn’t noticed the recent disappearance of his third-favourite pipe and snuff pouch.

  Captain Silver’s tough old hands unwound Jim’s hair and split the golden strands into three, weaving them into a flawlessly taut braid. Trying to ignore the sensation of each pulled hair straining to stay rooted to his scalp, Jim played with the sand.

  “You know I been talking to some of them old fisher fellows down by the cove,” rumbled his father as he brought out a scrap of black leather to bind the queue. “Says you been helping them out with the nets of late.”

  “Yes, sir.” He tried to keep his tone as neutral as possible, unsure of which way his father would tack in the conversation.

  “Ol’ Leland, he tells me we’ll make a fair sailor of ye yet.”

  “Really?” asked Jim eagerly, all caution forgotten. “He say that, true?”

  “Aye, he do.” A thoughtful look stole over Captain Silver’s craggy features as he finished tying off the queue. “Ain’t you going to ask what I tells him back?”

  “What’d you tell him?” asked Jim, turning to look at his father.

  The captain said nothing at first, only sucked on his pipe, but Jim knew to wait. Nervously, he brought the small pile of sand between his legs into a perfect right angle triangle. He felt a budding navigator’s delight in the precision of his creation.

  Old Captain Silver tapped his pipe out on the rock. “I tells him he were right …”

  For a moment Jim glowed with pride, but then his father continued.

  “You would make a capital sailor, on’y it weren’t for one thing.”

  Jim glanced down at the perfect ninety-degree angle of his triangle, which he’d been so pleased with a second ago, and knew it’d only come out so well because one of its sides was as straight as the measuring ruler in his navigation kit. And just as wooden. He blushed as he rubbed the triangle away. “I gets by a’right,” he mumbled.

  “Aw now, you fretting on that little bit of timber of yours there?” his father chuckled.

  Jim’s face grew hotter, but he didn’t look up.

  “I seen men do a lot more with a lot less.” The captain laughed and slapped his own truncated thigh. It was cut off too high for him to even wear a wooden leg. “T’ain’t that what’s holding you back.”

  “Don’t I know me maps, compass, sextant, angles, and backstaffs proper? If it ain’t that, then what be wrong?”

  “What be wrong,” repeated the old Captain, stroking his upper lip, “is that yer too damned soft, I says to him. Too damn soft by half.”

  “Soft?” Jim asked, confused. He looked down at his hands, calloused hard and tough as any grown seaman’s. The skin was so thick on his palms that he could pierce it with a needle and feel only the faintest pinprick.

  Old Silver laughed from deep in his belly. “It ain’t your hands what’s soft, Jim. It’s in here,” he added, poking the boy’s narrow chest with a thick finger. “Yer soft in here, me lad, and ain’t no amount o’ navigator’s know-how can do a thing about that.”

  “Is that a fact?” asked Jim tartly.

  “That’s a fact,” said his father as he brushed the pipe ash off his hands. “Yer a good boy, Jim, and a helpful lad to yer mum down the pub, but yer problem is you thinks all them others is good and helpful as you. That ain’t what the world’s about, me boy. Outside this island there ain’t no one to help you. You see me life? The life a seaman leads? It ain’t no life for soft-hearted chaps.”

  “I ain’t no soft-hearted —” Jim began indignantly.

  “The sea’s broken plenty o’ tougher nuts than you, lad,” Old Silver scoffed. “I been around a long time. Trust me, I knows.”

  “No you don’t!” Jim’s voice rose in unaccustomed anger. Nobody ever yelled at the Captain, but Jim could no longer hold back. He tried to rise, but his father’s powerful hands were at his shoulders, pushing him back down with no outward sign of effort.

  “Now you sits and listens, Jim. You ain’t a littl’un no more, and this here world ain’t all fairy stories like your mum done tol’ you. You want to go out and you want to survive, you want to be a leader of men, you gets wise, lad, you gets wise. You get wise to the evil ways of other men, or you die. Simple as that.”

  “And what if they’re not all evil?”

  “When the chips’re down and survival’s at stake, they are, Jim. Time you learned t’keep yer own council and trust no one but yerself …”

  Jim was staring so intently at his father’s face as he spoke, he didn’t notice what the old man was doing with the rest of his body. With the boy still unaware, old Captain Silver slyly hooked the tip of his boot under Jim’s bottom.

  Before he knew what was happening, the startled boy was tumbling head over heels down the beach, where he landed with a splash in the water.

  Sitting on his rear end in the shallows, he shook himself out like a stunned dog and spat out the salty water. Somehow he found his footing and struggled his soggy way out of the sea, before any big waves came to pull him under.

  On the sand he stopped to pull off a piece of kelp tangled around his peg leg. Water sloshed around inside. He’d be waterlogged for days now, he thought angrily.

  “Atta boy!” cried the captain, clapping his hands together. “You gets tough and watch out for the other fella!” He laughed. “You watch yer back, Jim, ’cause if you don’t learn to use the other man first, you best be sure he’s gonna learn to use you.”

  Jim clenched his fists as he squelched up the beach, forgetting he was still carrying the piece of kelp. As he stomped up to his father’s rock, he thought of all the choice things he would say to him. The captain was still laughing, eyes closed and mouth wide open. Then Jim realized he really had nothing more to say. All he could do was fling the soggy piece of kelp straight at his father’s big laughing mouth.

  “Hope ye choke on it!” he shouted as he darted out of the old man’s reach. His father’s wrath was a terrifying thing to be sure. He knew he’d catch it badly for this, but at that moment he didn’t care.

  Captain Silver spat the sandy piece of kelp out with a grunt. He looked back at Jim with a twinkle in his eye, a wide, knowing grin on his lips. “Atta boy! Looks like you’re a mite harder’n Thesely thinks.”

  “What?” asked Jim. Confusion, hurt, and fury all clambered for attention in his spinning head. He felt another emotion as well — pride. Pride that he’d managed to pull it off. He, Jim Silver, had put one over on the greatest liar the island had ever known. For even then, young as he was, Jim knew his father’s first guess had been correct. He was soft. This show of toughness was just that, a show.

  As the years passed, Jim grew. He learned to haul cannon shot until his biceps were as wide around as the cannon barrel itself, and he lifted crates of cargo until his veins stood out under his skin like rope. He bore the tattoo needle, always sober never drunk, all to prove … what exactly? He was dismayed to find himself still no different for any of it. Through it all he remained the same foolishly soft-hearted Jim, no matter how much he altered his exterior.

  He’d always known there were certain things — physical things — that he couldn’t change, work and pray as he might. But things as insubstantial as thoughts and feelings — how could it be that he couldn’t change them?

  Yet somehow he knew it’d be far easier for him to learn to dance a proper sailor’s hornpipe than
to change that secret part of his nature. Try as he might, he just couldn’t stand to hack away that softness inside himself as his father’d told him to. It confounded him why it should be so, but there it was. False as parts of him might always be, and resigned as he was to it, he wouldn’t resign himself to life with a wooden soul, a dumb placeholder without warmth or feeling where his humanity ought to be.

  It was this stubbornly soft part of him that, with time, came to hate certain aspects of his father’s business. Even as a child, he noticed people were afraid of Captain Silver in a way they weren’t afraid of anyone else. Men claiming to be old acquaintances would turn up at the inn; rough characters, possessed of empty, flat gazes, with nothing moving behind their eyes. There were dark deeds muttered about by drunks when they thought he wasn’t around. From them he heard his father had killed on more than one occasion. Not just in the heat of battle, either.

  But as Jim grew older he discovered there were other ways to command a ship. After all, Old Silver was only one of many successful pirates and smugglers around. Jim watched Captain Thomas Bright and learned how lightly one could wield power. What to his father’s mind would have been seen as weakness, to Captain Bright was financial prudence. Bright was an expert in the art of “the show.” Usually his prey surrendered with barely a single volley of ammunition, they appeared so obviously outmatched by his huge ship with its massive cannons. From afar, Bright’s enemies had no way of knowing that half his cannons were broken, rusty, out of shot, or filled with soggy powder. All they saw was his overpowering show of arms. Even his trading partners could never guess how skint he often was from his carefully maintained façade of expensive clothes and lavish dinner parties.