The Black Book
Page 49
* * *
Stephanie went aboard the Tempest without being noticed and looked around her in amazement. The rain had turned again into a drizzle and the battle was now over, but she couldn’t see Matthew or Nora anywhere on the ship’s deck.
The little girl had been hiding in a berth underneath a hammock as her adopted brother had directed her to do and had only emerged from this sleeping quarter when she heard the pirates chanting a victory song. These criminals were now throwing the dead of their enemies and fallen colleagues overboard and were so engrossed in this task that she was able to climb down a trapdoor undetected when she discovered it wide open. She further climbed down another open wooden door when she heard voices coming from within the hold, although she did this as quietly as she could.
“What are you going to do with it?” her foster brother asked a man whose back was turned towards her.
“I will make Hayfield suffer!” the man replied with a voice she quickly recognized to be Dr. Brooks’s. “I will do this and then I will rule the world with the book!”
“No, you won’t!” Stephanie yelled behind the old pirate as soon as he finished talking. He turned to see who she was and Stephen, a.k.a. Owen, lunged at him.
Two explosions followed in quick succession and both men fell, struggling beside her.
“Run, kids!” Stephen urged the children. “Leave while you can! There might be others in our company who found themselves stuck here! Take the book and run!”
“Get the book, Steph!” Matthew told his sister and she tried to retrieve it from Old Shifty’s pocket. He grabbed her arm, only to release it when the other man gave him a head butt. The book fell out from his large coat pocket and Stephanie picked it up.
“I can’t hold him much longer!” Stephen croaked when the old man grabbed his throat. “Leave right now! Leave before it’s too late!” Nora helped him by kicking his opponent while Stephanie quickly gave Matthew the book.
The trio ran to the steps and escaped up the hatch.
“Heavens! Children of the devil!” a startled Blackbeard exclaimed when they all shot past him on the Tempest’s foredeck. “We heard shots fired! Where is the good doctor? My wounded need him.”
“In the hold!” Matthew called back without looking back. “Save him if you need him!” And most of the pirates abandoned their separate chores to start for the trapdoors. “Good! We can leave now,” he said, shaking all over. He stopped near the quarterdeck with his foster sisters. The sun was coming out and he used it to look for Barbara’s name, which Stephen had written with white chalk alongside names of the unfortunate soldiers and sailors from the Tempest, all of whom he’d also banished mischievously. Matthew found himself wondering whether the ship’s captain’s name had also been chalked in by his deranged ‘son’ before the attack. What was his name again? Captain . . . Mason?
“There they are!” Blackbeard growled, jumping out through the wooden hatch behind two of his men. “Seize them! Make them suffer!”
“Step back!” a nervous Nora warned the men before they could advance further. She had them covered with her pistol and Matthew’s. Blackbeard, himself, couldn’t draw his own weapon.
“You caused the death of my doctor!” the pirate captain snarled, clenching his fists. “You connived with the enemy after all I’ve done for you miserable fools! To Davy Jones’s locker, I say!”
“I would really love to kill you,” Nora bravely warned him and observed a pirate creeping up behind them from the poop.
“Found it!” Matthew announced and Stephanie grabbed his right arm as well as Nora’s left.
The sun shone brighter and Nora’s flintlocks turned to unique swords.