MAROONED: Will YOU Endure Treachery and Survival on the High Seas? (Click Your Poison)

by James Schannep

  After coaxing the spark into a flame, you carefully reload the pistol and store it back into your waistband. Best not to use that trick too many times, or you’ll wear out the mechanism before you have a chance to use the weapon.

  Sitting back, you enjoy the warmth of the fire as the sun sets. This was a fine day. Though it very well could be the crackling of the firewood echoing off your rocky outcropping, you could swear you can hear something or someone wandering around out there, watching you. Keeping close to the fire, you try to shrug off the feeling.

  Maybe you should take your mind off things. Think back to the time on the ship and Captain Bullock’s true killer. If Rediker and his ilk were the likeliest of suspects, then Joe, Chips, and Robin were the trio with the most opportunity. After all, these three were the first to arrive on scene, so that means they were close to the captain’s cabin.

  What do you really know about these men?

  • Reminisce on your time spent with Chips, the crusty old carpenter.

  • Think back to your experiences with Joe, the young olive-skinned bosun.

  • Reflect on your knowledge of Robin, the tattooed hulk of a gunner.

  • Keep your mind off of the Cooper’s Pride, and simply enjoy the fire’s warmth.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  The Siren’s Call

  Though it was a costly victory, ’twas victory nonetheless. The HMS Hornblower completes her mission in the West Indies, and you depart Caribbean seas to head for English shores. The rest of the journey is relatively uneventful. There are a few storms to contend with, but nothing quite as exciting as Spanish enemies or battles with pirates. So it is that you return to London, collect your pay, and depart the Hornblower for the last time.

  Cousin James falls to the muddy banks of the Thames and scoops up the muck, kissing it like a long-separated love finally reunited.

  “God, ’tis good t’be home!” he exclaims. He stands, wipes his hands on his breeches, turns to you and adds, “Never again, aye, coz?”

  “Never again,” you agree.

  “Let’s get us a carriage back to Bucks.”

  You nod, somewhat reluctant be leaving this world of naval brass and brine. Despite all the trials and travails, the Hornblower came to feel like home. And, by the end, you’d earned your title of Jack Tar. No more a Landsman, but an able-bodied Seaman through and through.

  “Cabbies up ahead,” James says, bringing you back from your reveries. “Ready?”

  “Well… maybe just one drink first?”

  A broad grin stretches across James’s face. “Yeah, why not? What could one drink hurt?”

  * * *

  That’s it! You’ve survived and thrived in the world of an enlisted seaman. But there’s plenty more to explore. MAROONED has three unique storylines (look for anchors, skull and crossbones, and the palm tree symbols) and over fifty possible endings. Maybe things would have worked out differently against the pirates if you had been an officer aiding in the attack? Or, what if you were a pirate yourself?

  If you’re ready to find more to explore, click to RESET or go to THE END for the full chapter list.

  Or, if you’re finished, please consider leaving a review to help others find this book. It’s an incredibly helpful and easy way to support the author (who thanks you in advance, and in third-person, no less!).

  When you’re done, don’t forget to check out the other exciting titles in the Click Your Poison multiverse! You can also sign up for the new release mailing list, or check out James Schannep’s blog for updates.

  INFECTED—Will YOU Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

  MURDERED—Can YOU Solve the Mystery?

  SUPERPOWERED—Will YOU be a Hero or a Villain?

  PATHOGENS—Who Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?

  Sodden Mess

  You crawl beneath the driftwood, pulling in whatever broad pieces and leaves you can, in an effort to shield yourself from the rain and storm. It’s a miserable way to spend a night, and you can’t help but think your time might have been better spent erecting a dwelling before the storm hit. Still, it’s better than being out in the open, and the token amount of insulation offered by the detritus helps warm your body enough so that eventually you stop shivering.

  You could swear you can hear someone or something walking around out there, so you keep as silent as death. Maybe it’s just the sounds of the storm and your imagination conspiring against you?

  The pistol digs against your side as you try to sleep, but you keep it close lest the storm spoil the gunpowder. The idea of revenge, of justice, is the one thing keeping you going right now. But who could have killed Bullock? He was slain by his own knife, in his cabin, so the killer couldn’t have gotten far. Moreover, who might have had a motive to kill the captain? There was a page missing from the ship’s log–that cannot be a coincidence.

  Then it occurs to you: you kept your own log all this time. Since your journal faithfully recalls a month spent with these seamen, you might actually know them well enough to ascertain their motives. Perhaps if you think hard enough, the answer is already there, waiting in the recesses of your memory! At the very worst, it should help keep your mind off the storm and whatever’s “out there.”

  You start with the most obvious suspects. Three men in particular, thick as thieves, come to mind:

  • Barlow, the mustachioed man always at Rediker’s side.

  • Rediker, the ringleader of the crimped men.

  • Marlowe, the oldest sailor on the ship.

  • Actually, no. Best way to keep my mind off things will be just to get some rest.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  So Fresh and So Clean

  Most of the water casks are unceremoniously dumped into the sea and scoured of rot and algae in preparation for refilling them. Which means you can’t set sail until you find more fresh water. No pressure.

  You’re assigned to teams and rowboats and told that the first to find a goodly stream and to signal the others will be rewarded. More rum? Or choice beef, now that the larders should be resupplied as well?

  This coast is most likely French, should geography serve you correctly, and seeing as how they’re an ally of your Spanish enemies, the men have hopes of looting a farmhouse while you’re out and about. They will ultimately be disappointed, for this section of coastal forest seems devoid of Frogs.

  You too are disappointed when a single crack of gunfire signals another team finding water first. Still, that means less time spent searching.

  When you arrive at the stream, you find the men first filling their gullets with the fresh water, and second, stripping bare for a wash. The sailors’ faces and hands are tanned like leather, but their backsides practically blind you with their paleness.

  It’s to be a fleeting clean, as you afterwards sweat out the previous night’s booze with the backbreaking work of pumping the water into the casks and reloading them onto the ship. With fresh supplies exchanged with the larger ships of the fleet, however, you’re greeted with one of the better meals you’ve had in weeks once you’re back onboard.

  “We’re to set sail tomorrow,” Cousin James says when you’re in your hammock. “Cap’n oughta be giving orders for our new course, if you’re curious. Rumor has it we’re not returning to Spanish waters.”

  • “Where else might we go? Okay, you’ve got me wondering now. Let’s go see!”

  • “I sail at the pleasure of His Majesty. I’ll not leave this hammock to trouble myself with whereto.”

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Son of a Gun

  While Captain Bullock’s godlike authority inspired great terror, the man with the most frightening presence in the crew might have been the tattooed, shaved-bald, musclebound gunner, Robin. Though Robin was usually a man of few words, you got to know him as a soft-spoken, gentle giant while the weeks at sea flowed by.

  There was plenty of time at sea to explore the ship, whether officially on errands, or during your down time when you
might’ve either had trouble sleeping or felt too restless to sit and journal. On one such occasion, you were exploring the belly of the Cooper’s Pride, noting her eccentricities and peculiarities, when you stumbled across a bit of vandalism. The name “Martin Underhill” was scrawled upon an interior passage, carved right into the wood.

  But there was no Underhill in this crew, nor any man who might’ve known him. Many said there never was a Martin Underhill; that carving the name was some inside joke amongst sailors, so old as to be lost to time. Others said Mr. Underhill sailed every ship launched from London, inscribing his name upon each to add them to his collection.

  You were running your fingers over the inscribed name, pondering your own pet theories, when you heard voices coming up from the ship’s magazine. The magazine is the gunner’s home, where all the ship’s ammunition is held secured, but it was Captain Bullock’s voice that rose to your ears.

  Curiosity getting the better of you, you had crept down for a closer listen.

  “How did it happen?” Robin said.

  “A weak heart,” Bullock had replied. “Painless, in her sleep. I understand that’s where your wages had been sent. I can see to a stop order, if you wish.”

  “Aye, Cap’n. Many thanks.”

  “It… well, the letter mentioned something else, Robin. She doesn’t simply leave a grieving son on my crew, but also… a widower. Her will contained a special request, you see. That her son, Robin, might finally reveal the truth to his father… William Greaves. Is this true? Is Billy really your father?”

  “Aye. God’s honest truth, Cap’n. But Billy himself don’t know, and I don’t want him to, neither.”

  Robin is Billy’s son? You could hardly believe your ears.

  “Come now, Robin. A man’s got a right to know who his son is, surely. ’Twas your mum’s dying wishes. I’m afraid I’m honorbound to tell the man, if you won’t.”

  “Got me own rights as a man, don’t I? Billy don’t know ’cause I’m a true son-o’-a gun, such as the sayin’ goes. Like to think he respects me as a man, Cap’n. Might be he’d look at me different, would that he knew I were his bastard.”

  “I see. Hard to earn your father’s respect, I know that as well as most. Very well. Swear you’ll tell him one day, when you’ve finished sailing together, and I’ll consider my own duty fulfilled.”

  “I… I swear it, Cap’n. One day.”

  But that day hasn’t come, has it? So far as you know, you’re the only other person to know Robin’s secret. And with Bullock dead, the gunner very well may believe that the secret died with the captain. Could that have been what was written in Bullock’s journal? The page found torn and taken from the captain’s cabin? Would Robin have killed to protect his anonymity?

  It seems unlikely, especially as how Captain Bullock agreed to keep the secret safe, but it’s certainly a motive to bear in mind. Who else might have a motive of their own?

  • What about Joe? Was there any secret the bosun might kill to protect?

  • What about Chips? Did the carpenter hold any ill will towards the captain?

  • That’s enough for tonight. Best to take your mind off things and enjoy the warmth of the fire.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Spinning Yarn

  Marlowe was—is—the oldest sailor in the crew, and those on the Cooper’s Pride respected his expertise. In the storms that ravaged the ship (likely the same storm that has now caught up to your island), it was Marlowe the men would turn to and ask “How bad?,” for his was the encyclopedia of experiences with which to compare the present.

  What possible motive could he have against Captain Bullock? One particular incident comes to mind. Only a few days ago, you were picking oakum with Marlowe and Butch, the surgeon. These old ropes were meticulously untwined and spread apart so that they might be braided anew and made useful once more.

  It’s a tedious task for the hands, one that certainly built up the callouses on your fingertips and the muscles in your forearms. But it wasn’t a particularly demanding task in the mental sense, which led to telling stories and shooting the breeze.

  Butch told of how he came into the service of the Pride, putting this succinctly, “Always was destined to be a butcher. My father had the shop ’fore me, and his father passed it t’him, who got it from his father’s father and so on ad infinitum, all the way back t’when God invented the cow, pig, and sheep. Only taxes kept goin’ up while the cost-o’-mutton stayed constant. I lost me shop, and on the very same night, lost me wife. Died-o’-a broken heart, she did.”

  “Consider yourself lucky,” Marlowe said with a wry grin.

  “And how, pray tell, might a man do that?”

  “A sailor’s wife be the worst kind! There’s only one reason t’marry a sailor, and that’d be to take what’s his when he’s at sea. Mind ye, they either know this when they sign up in the first place, if they’d be the cunning sort, or they figure it out soon after. A wife never spent a man’s wages like one whose devoted husband is an ocean away! Mark me words, Saltboots. Never trust that what wears a petticoat.”

  This last bit he directed towards you, but Butch had a good laugh all the same.

  “I guess when ye’d put it that way!” the surgeon had said, chuckling.

  Then Marlowe let out a sharp cry, like a man in pain. He dropped the rope, cradling one hand in the other. His fingers curled into a claw and he sucked in air through his teeth from the pressure. Arthritis, most likely, though the ship’s surgeon sitting next to him lacked the education to diagnose the ailment.

  That’s when Captain Bullock had descended upon your group. The man must have been watching, perhaps even listening to the idle chat, but at Marlowe’s injury, the master of the ship rushed down from his perch on the quarterdeck.

  “It’s nothing, Cap’n,” Marlowe had tried to pre-emptively defend.

  “It’s your bloody age, man. I knew you were getting too old for work as a deckhand, and now look at you—a disgrace to your profession.”

  “Every man gets cramps now and again,” Marlowe said.

  “Don’t lie to me! You lied when you said this work wasn’t too much for a man of your age, that much is clear! Lucky I don’t flog you for it. Would too, if I didn’t know the beating might kill a man of your age. I swear to God I will have my satisfaction yet! The Admiralty Courts in Boston will see to it that I garnish your wages for this deception. Why, if I get my way, you’ll get no wages at all and I’ll leave you to beg on the streets, like I should have done in London!”

  To this tirade, Marlowe offered no response.

  “I suggest you prove your worth before that happens,” Bullock said at length. “I am not an unreasonable man. If I see you outwork the younger men, well, I might leave you with your wages intact. But know that this is the last time we sail together, Methuselah!”

  And then the captain had stormed off. To make a note in his journal perhaps? A note that Marlowe was to receive no wages and not to be hired on by another captain? Something like that—the prospect of losing one’s livelihood—might make a man desperate, perhaps desperate enough to kill for. Certainly, at the time there was a darkness that came flooding into Marlowe’s eyes, a detail that wasn’t lost on you. Only then, you didn’t have the foresight to see a murder on the horizon.

  Where was Marlowe at the time of the killing? Hadn’t he been on watch, with you? That’s right! The old man of the sea was one of the three figures you’d seen conspiring in the moonlight, of that you’re certain. He had left his post and went down into the hold with the other two.

  Yet… if he went below decks, his couldn’t have been the hand that put the knife to Bullock’s throat. Indeed, if he lacked a steady hand, he might have conspired with someone else to do the dastardly deed. But who?

  • It could certainly have been Barlow. What motive might the mustachioed sailor have held?

  • Rediker himself, obviously. Think back to what you know… could his have been the hand on t
he knife?

  • That’s enough for one night. Time to get some sleep. You’ll need your energy for tomorrow.

  MAKE YOUR CHOICE

  Spooked

  Barlow unfurls the flag; a sea of black upon which rests the iconic skull and crossbones—but with one change: There is a beard of blood sewn onto the death’s head, formed by a dozen or more crimson droplets, which, when combined, give the appearance of a beard. A Bloodbeard.

  A glint on the deck betrays their use of a spyglass, and the way they make full sail to run betrays that they’ve seen your flag. Might’ve shown your true colors a bit too early.

  “Make all sail! We’ve got to catch her. Gunner, ready a warning shot!” you cry.

  “Aye, Cap’n,” come the replies from the crew.

  You’re gaining quickly on the Dos Santos, which is a good sign. Most likely, it means that while your ship is nearly empty and glides easily across the sea, she’s laden with treasures, dragging heavy with a belly full of loot to be plundered.

  Robin lets them have a warning shot, but your former merchant vessel has no more guns than they do, and they’re not cowed into submission. Rather, they give as good as they get until you’re right alongside them.

  It’s odd, being so close to another ship that you can hear each other in conversation. Sizing one another up, it’s the Portuguese captain who speaks first. He does so in English, clearly wishing you to understand when he says, “Fear not, men! Look at these ragged sailors in their torn breeches. These are desperate desperados, not the pirates you fear them to be!”

  Glowering, you raise a hand to signal the attack. “Show them who you are!”