The Black Book

by George Shadow

  Chapter 17: An Unruly Son

  THE children were taken to the ship’s forecastle, on which a group of well-dressed officers stood savoring the scenic beauty around them with the ship’s captain.

  “The prisoners are here, sir,” the first lieutenant announced. “And I must warn you, the lady is certainly a poisonous snake.”

  “A Jezebel in our midst?” a black-coated, bespectacled gentleman exclaimed. “Why, she even had the temerity to stab you! A sad development, don’t you think, Captain Mason?”

  “The devil take her, Dr. Gordon,” the heavily built, blonde-haired captain of the Tempest replied. He looked at the first lieutenant with disapproval. “Perhaps she was right to perform the act, on second thought! The devil curse me for having lily-livered men as officers! If only the girl had reached a little closer to the heart.”

  “Pray tell us our fate, kind sir,” Nora persuaded the man and he glared at her. She glared back and Matthew tugged at her sailor’s shirt.

  “Your fate will be worse than hanging, my dear,” the captain said. “You will be dropped nowhere near land on a gig without paddles and may the devil, himself, rest your souls.”

  A young man came up the structure with a girl dressed in the European fashion of the day. Stephanie nudged Matthew when she saw this girl and he turned to realize that the girl was Barbara. Nora acknowledged his eye signal and also glanced at the young man with the girl as she shifted her eyes to see for herself.

  “I see you accept your fate, lady pirate,” Captain Mason continued when the female prisoner didn’t reply him. “Pity you had no lover who could dissuade you from your vile occupation.”

  “I must say the girl is beautiful to a fault,” Dr. Gordon agreed. “Had her life taken a different path as you have rightly observed, captain, she would have made a fine wife for a young bloke such as your dear Owen, my friend.”

  Matthew could see there was no way near Barbara in the situation they were in, but he just had to stall for time while thinking hard. “We need food in the boat, my lords,” he started. “We cannot die from hunger as well as from the sun.”

  “That will be a cruel fate indeed, Father,” the young man, who just came up to the forecastle’s upper deck, said in support. “Perhaps the damsel and her friends should be made to suffer their hunger no more until their death is near?”

  “You salacious young fool,” the father told the son. “God forbid the day you take your groveling lust to enemies of the throne! Over my dead body.”

  “Right you are, sir,” the doctor agreed. “We even honor them by sparing their lives for the deep! Food for pirates is purely out of the question.”

  The young man with Barbara was dressed as a noble would in those days. It looked like he wasn’t seeing things the way his father wanted him to, although Matthew saw no assistance coming from him for their emancipation.

  Nora thought otherwise. She shook herself free from the men behind her. “A little food, I beg you, captain,” she implored, “for my hungry brother and sister! We have had nothing since we were arrested and it will never serve the throne to suffer poor pirates before their time.”

  The captain’s son smiled at this. He liked the girl’s courage and her beauty. He knew he would have to annoy his father the more if he must gain her confidence. He equally observed her brother staring at his own sister, Sandra, and broadened his smile. “Perhaps your unfinished trout, which the cook had wanted to throw away, will help the situation, Father?” he suggested and felt elated by the annoying look his father gave him. “Or perhaps we should give them some fruits and biscuits from the store.”

  “Dung meal is what I say we give ‘em!” the captain exploded. “Fish excrement is a nice substitute for dung meal!” And he turned to his midshipman, who was just coming up the deck.

  “We are now far from land, sir,” the man reported.

  “Good, Edward! Bind these pirates and lower them on the gig from larboard,” the captain ordered. “That will serve them to plunder the king’s merchantmen.”

  “Your conscience speaks well of you, sir,” Matthew applauded. His tired brain had refused to device a practical approach to the problem and he saw his chance slipping away from him. “You refuse to hang us from your boom poles because of it, but fail to see that we are only children and need to eat before our sentence.”

  “Enough!” the naval officer shouted. “Take these scoundrels away from my ship.”

  The prisoners were hustled down the steps and the captain’s son turned to his father in alarm. “You cannot do this, Father,” he yelled. “They are only children.”

  “To God I will get you a wife, Owen,” the captain replied. “If only you will forget this prostitute of pirates long dead and see the evil in her shallow beauty.”

  “I will not allow this.” And the young sailor drew his flintlock and grabbed his sister to cover her with the pistol.

  The officers and soldiers with his father made to step forward but the captain raised a hand. Those tying up Matthew and his sisters stopped doing this and all eyes turned up towards the forecastle.

  “Owen, let me be,” Sandra exclaimed, struggling with her brother.

  It was her alright, Matthew thought. He’d know that voice anywhere!

  “Forgive me, little sister,” Owen told her as he forced her towards the steps. “Just roll with me, like the waves.”

  “What do you think you are doing, boy?” Captain Mason asked his son in a tight voice and with clenched fists. “How dare you?”

  “Quite unfortunate,” Dr. Gordon murmured, shaking his head and cleaning his glasses. “You strive after wind, my son.”

  “I fight for justice, good sir,” the young man retorted, but Matthew thought his present behavior still left much to be desired. “If children accused of a crime cannot still be seen to be children, then I must assume that all children are no longer innocents and pawns that could be manipulated for the selfish goals of pirates and criminals! This must include my beloved Sandra if I am to be fair.”

  Well, he had a point there!

  “This is mere nonsense, Owen,” the young man’s father persuaded. “Perhaps you are under the influence of the coca leaves you buy from those bloody Americans! You cannot take your own sister to be in the class of these – pirates.”

  “I can and I will kill her if you try to curtail me.” The pistol’s muzzle rested on Barbara’s head. “I know you will never want her dead as much as I, myself, would not.”

  “She is your sister, damn it.”

  “And your daughter, Father! Untie the pirates.”

  “Do as he says, damn you,” the captain shouted down the steps when his men hesitated, and they struggled to obey him.

  “Good,” Owen observed. “Now, load a cutter with fruits and biscuits from the store.”

  “You will never get far,” his father told him. “I will lock you up, myself.”

  “Do as I say!” the young man shouted and the sailors ran around like market women. Apples and bananas from the ship’s store were placed on the small boat and a can of English-made biscuits also shared space with them.

  Owen covered himself well with the frightened Sandra in front and came down the steps murmuring assurances into her right ear. The other shabbily dressed children joined him half-heartedly, curiously astonished by the turn of events.

  At least, they were being saved.

  “Lower the cutter, if you please, Mr. Cornwall, and get me two oars,” Owen called out to the naval officer when they were all safely in the small boat. “I must warn you,” he told the bystanders, “that I will not hesitate to spill my sister’s blood if I see the muzzle of a gun pointed our way.”

  “You will do no such thing,” his father threatened, but Matthew could see that the older man had lost the fight in him. He didn’t want to lose his two children in one day.

  The paddles were brought and the boat lowered onto the calm blue ocean. Owen still had his strange-looking pistol pointed at Barbara a
nd nodded as Matthew and Nora picked up the wooden sticks to start rowing.

  They knew they must get him on their side if they were to make him understand their plight and mission.