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Chapter Text

First Chapter

When the rooster crowed the first time, I sprung out of bed and was so unfortunate to step on uncle Coran’s cat, Keith. It let out a howl and leaped high into the air, and I bumped into the bed frame and got a bulge the size of a turkey egg. That was how the day began for us, the day that was my sixteenth birthday.

When I had stopped jumping around on one leg, I pulled my nightshirt off and put on trousers and a shirt. The water in the jug had frozen during the night, so I didn’t bother washing my face. Instead, I pulled out my dad’s old binoculars.

I leaned out the window and carefully studied every single whaling ship anchored in port. My father was the captain of Voltron. It was almost three years since he left Nantucket to haunt for whales in foreign seas. We expected he would be on his way home by now - maybe he would drop anchor early enough to be home by my birthday. But Voltron was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing headed our way from the sea, but the icy cold wind, that made the shudders rattle.

My gaze stopped at a battered looking ship, that I’d never seen before here in Nantucket port. It looked neither like a whaler nor a merchant vessel. It was as scratched up and damaged as any old war ship, but not very large. One of the masts was broken and the lines hung lose like old spiderwebs. The ship lay high in the waters and the hull was almost covered in seaweed and other water plants.

when the ship turned around its anchor cable, I saw the name that was painted across the sternpost. Sweet Honerva it said. The name only fit such a battered looking ship poorly. While I stood there watching, a boat was put in the water and the captain steered toward land. He was wearing a purple pea coat and a beaver skin hat. The wind rattled his white beard so violently it looked like his face was consumed in a blizzard.

I closed the window to keep the chill out. The day had only just begun I told myself, and there was plenty of time for Voltron to show up. 
I walked down the stairs and Uncle Coran had breakfast ready for me down in the kitchen. He smiled kindly. “So, Lance McClain,” he said while Keith weaved in and out and around his legs and glared at me indignantly. "How's it feel to be 16 years old?" 

"Pretty rotten," I said. "Especially on the left shin."

We could hear our lodgers beginning to stir upstairs, and soon they would come stamping down in the common dinning room to get breakfast. Coran owned the inn Manly Moustache. His cod soup was famous amongst whalers. 

"Uncle Coran," I said. "There's no sight of Voltron yet." 

"It won't be long now. I can feel it in my old knees."

"Today perhaps?"

He shrugged lightly. "We can't expect your farther to go whaling with a harpoon in one hand and a calendar in the other, you think friend? But mark my words. He is on his way to Nantucket this very instance. Have you washed up good?”

“The water is frozen solid.” I said.

“By the Gods,” He laughed. “if I left it up to you, you would only wash in summer.”

He lifted the kettle off the fire, and I grabbed the soap and a water basin. After breakfast he told me that Mr. Iverson, the old cooper had promised to take me on as an apprentice. I said I didn’t feel my calling was to make barrels for whale oil, and he said he didn’t like the thought of me far away hunting whales in heathen waters or boarding cannibal islands. I said there wasn’t much I’d rather do, and he said there wasn’t much he’d rather I didn’t. Then I said that my father could settle the matter when he returned, and he didn’t want me to be a cooper’s apprentice. Then Coran gave me a birthday present. It was a folding knife with four blades.

There were ships making ready to go to sea and others who arrived loaded with whale oil. The bowsprits protruded along the pier like lances. I strolled around looking at the many figureheads. Those painted eyes had seen many seas. I was envious of them. I had never been so far as five miles from my home, and I was sixteen now. That was a high age. A very high age. Maybe dad would take me with him on his next travels. But otherwise I’d disguise myself in some way and go to sea. I certainly would not let Uncle Coran have me apprenticed with a landlubber. No, sir, I wouldn’t have it!

I scouted for Voltron while I tried out my new folding knife on a broken barrel rod. I widdled and widdled till I had a toothpick and then I cleaned my teeth.

The entire afternoon lay ahead of me – there was plenty of time for my father to return. I sat at the end of the pier and waited. Most of my friends were out at sea and Pidge had already been to China and back again. I had a burning desire to go whaling and learn about other parts of the world.

The day light started ebbing. My friend, the harpooner Hunk Garret, let me climb up to the crow’s nest of The Golden Lion. I strained my eyes as much as I could to get a glimpse of the sails far out in the horizon. From up here one could see almost to Africa, or so I let myself believe. I would be the first to yell ship ahoy, when Voltron appeared.

Even after darkness fell, I kept look out up in the barrel. The wind was sharp. It went straight through my thin canvas trousers and made the empty barrels down below tumble about between each other. I was frozen through and had to put my fingers in my mouth to thaw them up before I could climb back down the rope. I thought about how my dad had told me about how he’d spent the winter in the warmer latitudes and it was so hot that if you didn’t hurry a bunch, a mug of water would start boiling before you got it to your lips. I suspected he was exaggerating some.

Home in the inn it was warm and cosy. I kept the fire going in the fireplace, but now I knew Voltron would not return on my birthday and I was deeply disappointed.

Uncle Coran’s cod soup was stewing over the fire, and the inn began to fill up with guests, most of them sailors. Old Mr. Iverson was there too, he was sat in a corner with his hands folded over his stomach.

Uncle Coran shared that is was my birthday and Hunk Garret did a little dance to celebrate. Everybody was laughing and talking over each other, except old Mr. Iverson who sat in his corner and followed me with his gaze where I stood and went.

Keith kept an eye on me too, not that the cat liked me very much, about as little as I liked it. It sat on a beam under the ceiling, quiet and motionless like any bird of prey, waiting to jump me. Its fur had once been white, but over time it had gained a yellow sheen, like old teeth. My dad had salvaged it of the wreck of a ship by the Pacific Islands and brought it home. It could have been a hundred years old if a cat could live that long – it certainly must be on it’s ninth life, I thought. I trusted it no more than a pirate. It always lurked on me. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that cat had grown up among a bunch of cannibals.

Uncle Coran was just about to serve his cod soup when the door flew open. For a moment I thought it was the wind and rain. The laughter in the inn stopped abruptly and Keith’s hackles stood sharply on end like spikes. We all stared toward the door.

A man stood in the open door. The water flowed down off him, as if he were a monster risen from the deepest seas. Above his head the hanging inn sign swung and squeaked in the wind. The man stared at us with eyes yellow as amber. His face was hidden in shadows while his eyes shone like glowing pieces of coal. Then he exposed his teeth in a devilish grin and stepped through the door without bothering to close it after himself.

“I’m captain Zarkon,” he said with a deep, rough voice.

Uncle Coran give him a quick evaluative glance, “Oh I thought you were at least the King of France,” He said. “Wipe off your feet, sir. And Lance close the door after the gentleman and fetch another plate for him.”

Captain Zarkon opened his pea coat and wrung the rainwater out of his white beard with a movement like he was wringing a hen’s neck. I stared at him. I had seen that man before – through the binoculars! He was the captain of Sweet Honerva.

“Lance,” Coran whispered and nudged me with his elbow. “Make haste.”

Captain Zarkon sat at a table by the wall, without even taking off his beaver skin hat, he began eating. He wolfed down two large chunks of meat first, and then emptied three bowls of cod soup. Throughout he kept muttering to himself without taking any notice of the others’ presence. A creepy smile crossed his face several times, and I heard Garrett, the harpooner, mumble: “is that captain Zarkon? Judging by his looks, comrades, I’d rather go out to sea with the reaper himself.”

Little by little, the inn began filling up with laughter again, though not as heartily as before. When he was done eating, captain Zarkon wiped his mouth with the ends of his beard and yelled for a newspaper. I grabbed the first and the best I could get my hands on. He lit a long chalk pibe and began reading. A moment later I discovered I’d made a mistake! I had given him a newspaper that a Chinese trader had left behind. It was printed in a very strange language, but captain Zarkon was sitting and reading in it like it was his mother tongue.

Blimey, I thought, he can’t tell the difference. He can’t read at all; he is just pretending he can. What kind of captain was he who couldn’t read? A common tar could be as dense as a chopping block, but a captain had to study the maps and write in the log.

I was wondering about that when Uncle Coran came in with a big dish of fruit pie – a birthday surprise. I loved fruit pie. He bid all the guests a slice and a sailmaker slapped his thigh and said he wished it was my birthday at least twice a week.

“To be honest,” Coran said smilingly, “Lance has two birthdays. He was born just as the clock struck twelve at night, so Tuesday night could be his birthday just as well as Wednesday morning, even though we decided to count Wednesday as the big day.”

At this remark captain Zarkon lifted his nose off the paper, like a bowsprit on a ship lifting up through the waves. He looked at me as if he’d only just in this moment noticed my existence. A light briefly went on behind his eyes and he showed his yellow teeth in an insidious smile. “Hallo, you boy!”

My heart jumped into my throat.

“Come here, boy!”

“Yes, sir.” I said.

“Are you born in the midnight hour?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just as the clock struck twelve?”

I said that that was what I’d been told.

“By Poseidon!” He erupted. “I have sailed on no less than seven seas and only once have I met one like you. Old Yurak Sendak was born in the same dark hour! There is a wonderful power hidden in that, comrade, I tell you. It’s Sendak I’m looking for everywhere. Have you seen him, boy? Has he been around the Nantucket waters, you think?”

“No, sir,” I stuttered. “At least not here with us at the Mustache.”

“May the devil get him! He does what he can to get me off his tail. But he won’t succeed in hiding from his old comrade Daibazaal Zarkon.” He began fumbling with his pockets. “It’s your birthday, isn’t it, boy? Good, here is a Spanish gold coin to remember captain Zarkon by.”

The gold coin shone between his fingers like the flame of a candle. “I can’t accept that, sir.” I answered, but the truth was that I didn’t want to remember him.

“Take it boy!”

He pushed the coin into my palm and closed my fingers around it. A moment later he was gone – the door wide ajar, so the wind could really blow in.

The next afternoon I stayed down by the piers for the most part. Sweet Honerva was getting supplies of food and fresh water. When the high tide came in two whalers went out to sea. The wind calmed and the clouds hung low and heavy in the sky like milky white glass. Late in the afternoon my father’s ship still hadn’t returned.

“It doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Uncle Coran said, when I came back to The Manly Moustache. “He isn’t the sort of man who’d choose such a sad and overblown day for his arrival. No thank you. He wants to make something of it, that’s your dad, and when he comes sailing back, it’ll be under a bright, clear, blue sky – a day that really fits such a festive occasion. Tomorrow perhaps, who knows if he’ll get here tomorrow. Changes seems to be coming.”

Oh well, perhaps tomorrow, I thought, and hoped the next day would bring my father home.

Then he told me captain Zarkon had sent for him to make a large portion of his famous cod soup for his crew aboard his ship.

“It’s ready now,” he added and swung around with a large pot. “When you’ve gotten that aboard, Lance, you best go see Mr Iverson. He’s been asking about you again. He wants an apprentice straight away.”

“Uncle Coran – I’d just as well, or just as little be apprenticed by a cannibal across those heathen seas.”

“Oh, of you go, my friend.”

The next thing I remember, I was hurrying down the dock with the steaming hot pot of cod soup in my hands. Sweet Honerva was anchored along the dock and I wasn’t particularly eager to go aboard her. The crew was standing at the railing, staring at me like vultures. They were a ragged and fearsome bunch to look at, with faces brown as leather from the southern sun. There were fifteen or sixteen of them all together and there was hardly one who hadn’t lost a tooth, gotten an ear chopped off or broken a nose.

The first mate gestured to me to get aboard. He was lean and taller than most, with long braided hair, pulled back in a leather strap behind his broad shoulders. His eyes were amber yellow like the captains and his hair was the same bleached white as well.

“Welcome aboard the D- Sweet Honerva,” he said, and it sounded like He’d almost said a different name. “Welcome aboard our humble ship, kid. Careful not to spill, the captain is waiting for you.”

I got the unintentional impression that everyone was waiting for me. They were all standing around with sneaky grins on their faces. I particularly noticed a woman who seemed to be twice the size of two large men and another woman with dark skin, whose hair was tied up in one big braid at the top of her head with long pieces of colourful fabric tied into it, her teeth where filed sharp like a sharks and she looked like she had come straight from the Fiji islands. Then captain Zarkon appeared, rubbing his hands together gleefully, I assumed at the cod soup’s aroma.

“Go into the galley with that, laddie,” he said smilingly. “It’s this way, Lance, isn’t that your name? That’s a good solid name. You’re not scared of the dark, are you? I bet you’ve seen many mysterious things, right? This way comrade, out in the galley with it.”

My only thought was to get rid of the pot and get my legs back on the solid ground again. The corridor was as dark as a basement and the strangeness of the crew and all the talk of mysterious things made me feel eerie.

“Hurry up, lad.”

Captain Zarkon opened the door and I reached out the pot with both hands. The galley was dark and quiet, and it didn’t smell at all like any galley I’d had my nose near. Before I knew it, the door was slammed shut behind me and I heard captain Zarkon roar behind me: “Weigh anchor, comrades! The tide has turned, we go to sea, me hearties!”

Chapter Text

I was trapped in the dark, spooky room for two days. I spend the first day trying to kick down the door and the second on nursing my sore feet. All this robbed me of my fighting spirit, and I assumed that was what captain Zarkon had intended.

I dreamt of seeing him hanged in solid iron chains with his entire crew of grinning beasts next to him. What would they do with me? At this very moment, it was quite possible my father had made it to Nantucket. I had waited for him for three infinitely long years – and now I might not see him at all!

My fury rose and fell as if it was a fever raging in my core. If I had longed for a deck under my feet, I had certainly never thought of Sweet Honerva. A cursed ship! The only silver lining about the whole thing was that the old Cooper, Mr. Iversen, was likely quite baffled that I’d suddenly vanished from the surface of the earth.

Meanwhile, the ship slowly made its way through the waves, creaking and groaning. Judging by the stacks of moldy canvas that lay around me, this was the room that was used to store the sails and sailcloth. I slept on the sails and when I got hungry, I dipped a finger in the pot of cod soup and licked the cold, but nutritious soup down.

Naturally, my father would start a search for me straight away. He would get all of Nantucket’s fleet to sail out for me. Hunk Garrett could board us any moment with his harpoon and knock over captain Zarkon and do a little jolly dance on his stupid beard.

I had slept deep and well on a stack of canvas sails when I woke up by the first mate standing over me. He poked me with a long, slender finger.

“Blow me down!” He said with his deep, smooth voice, “if that isn’t the nice little fellow from Nantucket. ‘morning bucko. You forgot to disembark I see, huh?”

I sat up quick. If I knew anything about rabid dogs, it was to never let them see your fear, and the crew members aboard Sweet Honerva were nothing short of the worst mongrels I’d ever laid my eyes on. But they wouldn’t get the opportunity to get a laugh at my expense. I glared him stiffly in the eye. “If I forgot?” I said. “No, sir, absolutely not. I was locked in here – as you well know!”

“Locked in, you say?” He clicked his tongue in feigned surprise. “That door has an awful way of getting stuck. Who’d want to lock you in if I may ask?”

“Captain Zarkon,” I answered.

A golden canine tooth shone in the darkness. “A nice gentleman like him? Listen, I give you my word, there is no kinder soul on all of the seven seas than our good captain Zarkon. I promise you his heart is as honest and pure as a church bell and just as grand.”

“Nonsense!” I said, surprised at my own daring.

He squinted at me with one eye, looking me up and down slowly. “But the captain doesn’t like blind passengers on his ship, that much I know. I hope he won’t take out the cat-o’-nine tails, when he spots you, kid.”

“Blind passenger!” I scoffed indignantly.

“Yes.”

“I’m not in the least a blind passenger, sir!”

He shifted his weight onto his other leg and smirked at me. “Oh, but you bet Lotor Zarkon here will put in a good word for you. Listen, let's make you presentable, kid – you gotta look your best when you go to see the captain.” He brushed the dust and dirt off my shoulders and backside and tried to comb out my disarrayed hair with his fingers. “There you go, that helped some. You’ve got a good and honest face, lad, and that’s good for you. And a sailor’s eyes, I saw it a mile off. They’re blue. Blue like the Indian Ocean. Up the stairs with you.”

I was glad to see the daylight, even though a clammy and cold fog lay over the ocean. The sun glowed through the fog like an evil eye, and I saw we were sailing south.

“Captain!” Lotor Zarkon yelled as he grabbed me by the scruff and pulled me up the stairs like I weighed nothing more than Keith. He didn’t look like the captain in the least, besides his colours, but he had to be his son. “Look what I fished out of the hull.”

Captain Zarkon stood and observed the weather. When he saw me, his eyebrows raised. “Blimey!” he exclaimed and looked as innocent as any lamb, “if it isn’t young Lance McClain.”

He was wearing long-shafted sailor boots and across his shoulders were a bear pelt to protect against the cold. The mere sight of this man made me catch my breath. He towered above me like a great hairy beast and I felt like screaming. But I was determined not to let my weakness show. My dad would plant both legs solidly on the deck and send this villain a calm and superior glare, so I tried to do the same.

“So, you’ve run off to sea, huh, boy?”

“Certainly not, sir,” I said

“I found him hidden down in the sail space,” Mr. Zarkon chuckled.

“A blind passenger! Blow me down, that means the cat-o’-nine tails.”

“I hope you won’t be too harsh on him captain.” Mr. Zarkon said. “There’s barely more meat on his bones than a chicken. I’d rather take a thrashing meself than see the nine tails work over a kid his age.”

I stood up a little straighter, “you can’t scare me, sir.” I declared. It was so far from the truth it could be called a great big lie. My heart was hammering away in my chest from fear.

“There are mitigating circumstances,” the first mate continued, “for what if the door did get stuck on its own like the kid says.”

“I haven’t said that,” I protested. They ignored me and spoke over me. One would think I was the villain, not captain Zarkon.

Lotor Zarkon licked his lips, “You’re a kind-hearted man, captain, and you’re known from Tortuga to Zanzibar for the mild manner you treat people. I think you’ll let the kid get out of punishment if he’s otherwise well-behaved.”

“Well spoken, Mr. Zarkon,” the captain with the same name declared thoughtfully as if he was a posh gentleman. “Very well, I’ll drop the punishment, the boy apparently didn’t have any ill intentions.”

“God bless you, captain,” the first mate nodded and gestured to me to show my gratitude to captain Zarkon for his grandness.

“I want to thank you, sir,” I said, “if you, firstly, will tell me why you weighed the anchor with me aboard, and, secondly, if you’ll have me disembark on land as soon as possible!”

“He’s as explosive as black powder, isn’t he?” Mr. Zarkon laughed appreciatively.

“Yes, he’s as temperamental as Yurak Sendak himself!” The captain said and looked at me curiously. “He always said it straight, did ole Sendak. But now that I think about it, you could be useful to us on this voyage, Lance McClain. Quite useful.”

“Mark my words, sir,” I replied and wished dearly I could stop sounding so darn polite. “When my father hears what you’ve done, he’ll knock you on your side like a whale and boil the oil out of you!”

“Hear that, son!” Captain Zarkon roared. “He intends to make me into oil and burn me in his lamp.”

“Heaven save us,” the first mate said, but he sounded more amused than outraged.

“Listen here, lad, it hurts me to hear you say such unkindly things of me,” Captain Zarkon said. “I wouldn’t keep you aboard this ship against your will if I could get all the sugar on Jamaica for it. Blimey, if I would! If it’s land you seek, it’s land you’ll have. You can trust that old Daibazaal Zarkon will get land under your feet, and that’s as soon as possible. Yes, comrade, you’re as free as any bird!”

In that same moment, a shout came down from the crow’s nest at the top of the mast. “Ship Ahoy!”

The smile fell like a mask from captain Zarkon’s face. A whaler cut through the fog on the ship’s starboard side. My heart leaped into my throat. I thought it was my father’s ship that had come to save me. But when I saw the figurehead under the bow spirit, I recognised The Golden Lion. It was the fasted ship in all of the Nantucket fleet.

In the same moment, Mr. Zarkon held a hand over my mouth and dragged me down in hiding behind the railing – and captain Zarkon put a boot on my back. Oh yes, I was free as a bird, I thought.

“Hallo there!” someone called from The Golden Lion. “Do you have Lance McClain with you?”

“Who, do you say?” captain Zarkon replied innocently like he’d never heard my name before.

“Captain McClain’s son!”

“Has he run away from home, the boy?”

“That’s not very likely, sir. His father is expected back any day now.”

“We have no passengers aboard Sweet Honerva,” the captain yelled.

I began wriggling violently, but Lotor pressed his hand, if possible, even firmer in against my mouth and captain Zarkon pressed his boot heavier against my back. I glanced around me on the deck and for a moment I thought I was seeing things.

There was Keith!

The cat was lying rolled up on a roll of ropes, staring at me. It had followed me aboard, played at being my shadow like it usually did. As far as I remembered it was the first time, I was happy to see that cat. But though I was fighting for my freedom, it only stared at me, making no move to help.

The yells flew back and forth across the sea between the two ships. If my father hadn’t yet made it to port, it must have been Uncle Coran who’d had the whaler come looking for me, I thought. “People have seen Lance board Sweet Honerva, sir!” I recognised my friend, it was the harpooner, Hunk Garrett’s voice.

“We weren’t the only one who left with the tide,” captain Zarkon answered. “The lad must have hidden on one of your big oil boilers.” He let the bearskin slide off his shoulders and gave Mr. Zarkon a quick sign to get me below deck. “But you’re welcome aboard, gentlemen, if you please!”

“We’ll put a boat in the water!”

The first mate didn’t waste any time. He bound his scarf over my mouth and rolled me up in the tattered, worn-out bearskin, and carried me down the hatch below decks. But Hunk wouldn’t be fooled, I thought. He would know as soon as he saw Keith, Uncle Coran’s hundred-year-old cat.

We went farther down the hull of the ship. My heart was already in my throat, but when I saw Keith following us, I nearly choked. We went farther and farther down, and Keith kept a few paces behind us all along. I tried to yell at the cat through the scarf in my mouth, but it was no use and the cat kept following us.

Finally, we were at the very bottom of the ship, between the ballast boulders, and we stayed there – Lotor Zarkon, Keith, and I.

“No sound from you, kid,” the first mate said threateningly. “Otherwise I’d have to wring your neck like you were a little chicken.”

He kept the scarf tied around my mouth. We sat there, huddled together under the bearskin to protect us again the cold and moist from the boulders. I stared up into the darkness and thought of Hunk and the others, shuffling about up on deck. They were so close to me! But they would never find me in this black hole.

My mood changed incessantly between depression and blinding rage, and I tried to bite through the scarf. I wished my father was here. He would take one glance around and then begin clunking the crew members’ heads together. Blimey! I should do that too. The thought hit me suddenly. There wasn’t a second to waste. I had the best opportunities within reach, for Mr. Zarkon hadn’t bound my hands. I only needed to reach out and grab a rock and knock him out. I was careful not to arouse his suspicion. I let my hands slowly slide down my body, inch by inch. Mr. Zarkon was trying to keep me entertained and pass the time by telling me of his experiences. Before his fifteenth birthday, he’d run off to sea, survived two shipwrecks, been captured by the Spanish, and been abandoned on a deserted island. “I know a thing or two about being scared and alone in the world, like you kid.”

Now I had found a ballast boulder. I was sweating from anxiety and fear that Hunk and the others would return to their own ship before I made it up to the deck. I tensed every muscle, breathed deeply – but I couldn’t move the boulder as much as an inch. It was so enormously heavy; you’d think it was nailed to the ground.

My fingers quickly groped around for another smaller rock.

“Yes, kid, you’ve got a comrade in me. I won’t let anyone or anything do you any harm aboard this ship.”

I found a rock the size of a cannonball. I hesitated. To my wonderment, I felt that I would be sad to hit Mr. Zarkon in the head with it. But I would be more sad to have to stay on this cursed ship and have to do whatever her crew would force upon me.

I swung the rock with all my might against Mr. Zarkon’s head. He caught my wrist with ease and the rock thudded to the moist ground next to his thigh. He laughed, “How feisty you are!” With his free hand, he threw the rock aside and grabbed me around the torso pulling me close, against his chest. “If I really thought you stood a chance of filling my head with bird song, I would have hogtied you, kid.” He pulled my arms across my chest and held both my forearms steady with one big hand. “But kudos for the ingenuity, keep it up and you’ll make it to the admiralty one day. But stay calm for now and I’ll tell you how I escaped the Spanish. Before this voyage is over, I’ll teach you all the tricks and you’ll be grateful to me for it.”

I despaired and simply let him tell me his tales as I leaned against his warm chest and felt his breath tickle the hair, he’d had his fingers in not so long ago. After a while, we heard a yell down in our hideaway. The Nantucket men had returned to their own ship. Mr. Zarkon removed the scarf from my mouth, but it was too late to scream. I could see Keith’s eyes glowing in the dark. Damn cat! We were sailing out now, the two of us, aboard the horrible ship Sweet Honerva.

“Where are we sailing to, sir?” I asked resignedly.

“You just leave it to the captain to set the course, bucko.”

“But what’re his intentions for me?”

“You’re born at the stroke of midnight, right? Like Yurak Sendak? When the time is right the captain will answer your questions.”

I couldn’t get anything else out of him and we tumbled along between the wet ballast boulders. As I groped for a way ahead of me, I stumbled over a canon and some cannonballs. Mr. Zarkon caught me and steadied me, keeping a hand on me. “Yeah, we’ve got canons,” he smiled. “And there’s balls and cartons enough to settle any argument we might encounter.”

When we climbed out of the ballast room, I looked down the stairs and wondered about what a strange ship Sweet Honerva was.

Chapter Text

I slept in a slim wooden bunk in the bow of the ship in the crews’ quarters. The seawater leaked in through every nook and cranny and dripped down on the floor. Light and air scarcely made it down there and day and night the tobacco smoke hung heavily about the room like any fog from the sea.

And strange things were happening aboard this ship. For example, captain Zarkon always had a lamp burning in his cabin all night long. He was afraid to sleep in darkness. Actually, he lived in perpetual fear of ghosts and specters. He had a deathly fear that they would enter the ship at night and cut his throat. Mr. Zarkon told me. All night a sailor walked the deck, swinging a lantern to scare away potential spooks who might intent to board the ship. They were invisible like the wind, but the same ghosts left behind wet footprints and that gave away their presence. The man who had the nightshift kept a vigilant lookout for wet tracks.

It wasn’t long before I found a way in which I might be able to send for help. It was the signatures carved into the mainmast that gave me the idea. All I needed was a pocketknife, and I already had one. I would carve a message into a wooden board from my bunk and throw it into the sea.

I had to wait for the crew to all be snoring and the oil lamp to be turned down to its lowest. Then I would push the mattress aside and begin carving in a board. I took my time and carved my message deeply into the wood. At the slightest sound, I seized my work and pretended to sleep. The cat had found a beam it liked and there it lay all night, staring down at me with its old, wise eyes. I was no longer angry with it, and in reality, I think it was more of a comfort and encouragement to me – though we didn’t talk much.

For two nights I worked on my message and finally, it was finished. It read as follows:

HELP. CAPTURED ABOARD SWEET HONERVA. SOUTHERN COURSE FROM NANTUCKET.
LANCE MCCLAIN. 16 YEARS OLD.

The next day I waited till no one else was in the quarters and then I began pulling the nails out to loosen the plank. I was in the middle of it when I saw Keith’s back hairs raising. Captain Zarkon was standing right behind me with a stern look in his eyes.

“What is it you’re doing, boy?”

Son of a biscuit! I was found out. My plan was spoiled. But then it hit me that the captain didn’t know the letters. He couldn’t read, he just pretended he could. He looked him straight in the eyes and decided to be cheeky.

“As you can see, sir,” I said, “I’ve carved my family motto – it’s supposed to bring good luck.”

“Good luck, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

He scratched his beard, looked at me, and then pushed me aside. He opened one eye wide and stared at my message.

“Damn it! I can’t read anything by this rotten light.”

“No, sir.”

“My eyes aren’t as good as when I was your age. Family motto you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah, yes, I’m beginning to make it out.”

“I’ve misspelled a word or two,” I said as my thoughts raced away, trying to come up with an appropriate motto.

He tried the other eye. “You’ve got nice handwriting, I see.”

“It’s of course difficult to read because I misspelled those couple of words,” I said a little more confident.

“Of course, it’s the wrong spelling that’s got me.”

“It’s supposed to say–“ I had a motto ready now. “I mean, it says: A true McClain never loses his courage.”

“Of course it does!” he nodded, and a small smile peered out behind his beard. “Now I see it clear as day. But I’ve never seen the word ‘courage’ spelled like that. You’ve spelled that wrong, comrade. But that’s a fine motto to sleep on.”

He turned and walked away.

But no ship passing by were likely to stop and fish an old piece of driftwood out of the sea, I told myself. The message could drift on the waves for months or even years.

Wait. Why hadn’t I thought of that sooner? What I fool I was! It was a miracle I could even see past my own nose. I had the perfect thing – the golden coin captain Zarkon had forced on me.

I dug the coin out of my pocket. It was smooth and shiny. I used a moment of solitude to nail it to the middle of the board. It would doubtlessly catch the eye of some lookout, the way it gleamed in the sun – given that the board would land gold side up in the water.

I would make sure of that.

I went into the sail room, where I had been held captured the first two days of my stay aboard Sweet Honerva and took a fathom of sturdy rope. Now I was ready to act, and a cold, pale moon was just appearing in the sky and would aide me with its light.

I waited till the nightshift had passed me and there were no other sounds than the water splashing gently against the hull. I kept in the darkest shadow on the deck and stood there with all my senses tensed. I could see Axca standing by the wheel up on the helm. She was wearing tall red leather boots and a dirty blue canvas shirt, tied close to her body with a wide, black silk sash. She was humming a jolly shanty for herself and the stars.

Quietly and carefully I lowered the plank down over the side of the ship with the thick twine. If the wrong side faced down, I would pull it back up and try again. But luck was on my side. I saw the gold coin shine in the moonlight, so I quickly threw the twine over the railing. My heart skipped a beat in my chest – now the message was under way. I kept following the plank with my eyes until it and the glimmering gold coin disappeared in the ship's wake. I would probably be saved now, and I silently thanked captain Zarkon for giving me the Spanish gold coin.

But suddenly it occurred to me that I could no longer hear Axca’s joyous humming. I looked up and saw her standing there and looking at me with a big grin on her face. I stiffened. She would probably turn the ship around and fish my message out of the sea, discovering what I’d done. We stood there staring at one another without exchanging a single word. Then I heard her chuckling quietly and dared hope again. “Can you steer a ship, boy?” She asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, not entirely in agreement with the truth.

“Are you sure about that?”

“I’m not entirely sure I can’t steer a ship,” I said.

She told me to join her on the helm and let me try to hold the course we were on. For a couple of minutes, the ship was tossing around like a leaf in the wind, but finally, I figured out how to do it.

Axca didn’t ask any questions about the plank and in the days that followed she kept it to herself if she was suspicious of me.

Chapter Text

Days turned to weeks, and I never caught as much as a glimpse of another ship. Captain Zarkon had laid our course far from regular routes, but I never despaired. My hair had grown longer, and Mr. Zarkon suggested I pulled it back and twisted it into a stiff pigtail with a dollop of tar, to keep it out of my eyes. I politely declined. One morning a lone bird fluttered down on the mainmast above the crow’s nest. When it had rested most of the day, it flew away again. I sincerely envied it, its wings.

With the exception of Mr. Zarkon, who made for comfortable company and kept me occupied with ropes and knot tying, and Axca who harassed me into learning the names of the different stars, I’d never seen the likes of such idle oafs. They did no more work than just what they had to, to keep the ship afloat, repairing cracks and leakages and then keeping watch. Not even once did I see anyone hoist up a bucket of water to wash their clothes or the deck. My father would have thrown the whole gang overboard, but Captain Zarkon seemed delighted with them.

The sea air became milder and the captain stopped wearing his bearskin as we approached the southern latitudes. The night sky was clear and starry now. Sweet Honerva seemed as comfortable in these waters as a bird returned home after migration and one night, I asked Mr. Zarkon where we were.

“Do you feel the air?” He asked and send me a big smile. He was on the helm, both arms resting on the wheel. His face was glowing in the low light from the little lamp in the compass. “There’s Spanish wind in these sails, my fine young friend, and if you don’t want your throat slit open, you best keep an eye out for pirates and bandits and that sort. We approach the Caribbean waters, comrade, and there’ll be blood for breakfast if we aren’t careful.”

He laughed deep and sinister and gave me a slap on the back. I thought he was only trying to entertain me by exaggerating a little. But more than once that night I awoke to the sound of rattling chains and heavy scraping noises coming from the corridor. In the early hours before dawn, I heard Mr. Zarkon’s deep cackling laugh from some undefinable place and Keith jumped into my bunk. For a second, we stared at each other, then he strolled down across my legs and rolled up at my feet. I let him stay there, calmed by his familiar presence.

In the morning we awoke and found ourselves aboard a ship that looked completely different and with a crew that seemed completely foreign, with great, big, dangling rings of gold in their ears and belts strutting with knives and pistols. The cannons had been dragged out of the cargo hold and put into position on the deck along the railing. We were armed to the teeth like any warship.

And in the middle of it all stood captain Zarkon and thundered orders and curses in a deafening volume that made the wind and sea sound small and pathetic. He was wearing a blood-red scarf around his head and his eyes sparkled with some kind of creepy, menacing joy. Three knives and three pistols were tucked into his wide, blood-red silk belt and a cutlass gleamed in his hand at each booming command.

“Damn it all, Narti!” He roared at a woman with a hooked nose who wore a dark scarf all the way around her head. “Up with you Axca, you bilge sucking rat! And you, Zethrid, you grog faced scurvy dog, to the stern with you! To the stern comrades! Ezor! Where’s the cannibal lass? Show our colours, you, daughter of the Fiji Islands! McClain! Lend a hand or I’ll cut you in two!”

It was only a moment before I saw his cutlass gleaming in my direction and I got a move on.

“Keep lookout, boy! And if you see as much as a handkerchief on the horizon, scream! If you don’t keep your eyes peeled, we’ll turn you into minced meat!”

The ship was worked over from stern to bow right in front of me. I found myself helping at the stern. Narti was hoisted down over the side of the ship in a rope, and soon after we pulled in a heavy sign that had been placed across the sternpost. The name Sweet Honerva was on it.

I leaned over the railing to see what the false name had hidden. Suddenly I remembered the day I had come on board and Mr. Zarkon had bid me welcome to ‘the D- De… No Sweet Honerva.’ I studied the letters from my vantage point – the ship’s true name.

‘The Devil’s Sin’ I read.

The name made me shudder. That wasn’t a good name for a ship or anything else for the matter. My hope of rescue immediately vanished. I wouldn’t be found. If a ship would fish my message out of the sea, I would be expected to be found on Sweet Honerva, but Sweet Honerva no longer existed. It was gone.

I turned around at the sound of a loud shout. The cannibal woman, with her long, colourful braid whipping around her in the wind, was hoisting another flag. When it unfolded in the wind, I felt terror surge through me. It was black with a horned skull and two smoking pistols crossed below it. They were pirates!

“Welcome aboard The Devil’s Sin!” Mr. Zarkon laughed next to me. “You’re one of us now, kid – you’re sailing with the most excellent gathering of pirates who’ve ever set foot on a ship!”

After its reveal, the ship sailed on, across the waves, like it had a knife between its teeth. Captain Zarkon had a barrel of rum tied to the mainmast and punctured it like a sift with the point of his cutlass. The crew swarmed like flies around the barrel, trying to catch the dark brown liquid with open mouths.

I had heard blood dripping tales back home in Nantucket about the Brethren of the Coast. I had heard of Blackbeard and Morgan, captain Kidd and Rackham. To join them meant to murder and plunder innocent seafarers.

When darkness settled, half the pirates were three sheets to the wind and singing and barking out incoherent shanties, while the other half lay strewn about the deck, passed out dead drunk.

Mr. Zarkon shoved an old chipped tin mug into my hands, sloshing over with rum, “have a swig, kid.” He dumped down on to the deck clumsily, pushing his sabre in his belt aside, to sit more comfortably, leaning back against the railing and chuckling at his own ungainliness before taking a swig from a bottle by his side.

I sniffed at the mug and the strong alcohol burned in my nose.

“So,” he slurred drunkenly. “You goin’ on account?”

“On account?” I asked and put the mug to my lips.

He smirked up at me, leaning his long muscular arm on a raised knee. “You gon’ be a proper pirate? Join us.”

I made a face of displeasure. Rum did not taste good.

Mr. Zarkon laughed. “Ass on deck,” he said, and grabbed the back off my shirt, and pulled me down.

I spilled half the rum all over myself as I stumbled down on my backside and shot him a glare as he laughed heartily at my expense.

“Why not?” he asked a little more seriously.

“I’m not going to murder and steal,” I said, thinking it was quite obvious.

He shrugged. “It ain’t ‘bout death. It’s the freedom that calls us.”

I raised a sceptical eyebrow, but he didn’t look at me.

“If you were free,” he said dreamily, looking up at the stars. “Truly free, I means. You could do anything in the world, what’d ya do?”

It was weird talking to a pirate about my dreams and aspirations for the future. I looked at him, contemplating his question. The starlight suited him well. “Go home, become a whaler like my dad.”

Now he was the one looking at me with a sceptical eye. “I thin’ ya oughta dream a little bigger, bucko.”

“What’d you do?” I asked and distractedly took a swig of the mug, and immediately sputtered and coughed at the burn in my throat.

Mr. Zarkon laughed again and slapped my back hard, nearly knocking me forward into his raised knee. He smelled like sweat and tobacco and rum. “You’ll get used to the taste, kid. You’ll grow to like it one day.” He smiled warmly in my direction.

“I think not,” I said and put the mug down.

“Think so,” he retorted stubbornly and grabbed the tin mug, downing the rest of its contents.

We sat in comfortable silence together for a moment. He was watching the crew, those that snored, randomly strewn around the wooden floors, and those that were screaming their songs into the night. I was watching him.

“I’d…” he trailed off.

“Hm?” I prompted absentmindedly.

Mr. Zarkon shrugged again. He seemed almost shy. “I’d do what most men’d do. I’d bend every wrench and lass over in a mile’ radius ‘til I found one to settle within a fort or mansion or some such thin’, with mo’ servants tha’ we could count. We’d live off stolen gold treasures, rum, and pirate tales and rear a few runts.” He shrugged. “But firs’ I’d sail all seven seas thin, squeeze in tha’ las’ bit o’ adventure before quittin’ the account.”

I nodded. “That sounds good, I mean except the- the wrenches thing.” That sounded distasteful.

He turned to look at me with a glint of teasing mirth in his eyes. “Don’ tell me, ya not a ladies’ man?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, “uhm?”

“You prefer the company o’ men? Don’ worry, I ain’ tellin’ a soul. Not like ya the only sinner on this ship.” He laughed benignly and elbowed me playfully in the arm.

I turned red in the face. “I’m not! I haven’t!” I insisted mortified at the suggestion.

Mr. Zarkon shrugged and poured some rum in the chipped tin mug before shoving it into my chest. “Aight, then tell me of ya firs’ wench,” he prompted. “Comely lad like yeself, ya must’a had a woman or two by now, if tha’s ya pref’rence.” He took a swig from his bottle.

“I- I…” I stammered. “I’m not married.”

Mr. Zarkon spat the rum from his mouth in a fit of laughter, roaring with amusement.

I crossed my arms indignantly. “What?” I demanded sternly, cheeks flaming red again.

He managed to control himself a little and sat up a bit straighter after having nearly fallen over in his fit. He shook his head fondly at me. “Kid,” his lips twisted into an involuntary smile. “You can fuck a whore and not marry them.”

I was finding it difficult to look him straight in the face when he talked about laying with someone and lowered my gaze. His dirty blue-ish shirt was unbuttoned halfway down, and the moon and stars were illuminating the light dusting of pale, coarse hair on his bulging chest muscles. I turned my head away, to his clothed, broad shoulder this time. “I’d rather- rather… you know,” I said awkwardly, “with someone I like.”

He nodded sincerely, “’s’pose tha’s fair an’ all.” He took another swig from his bottle, and I sipped at my mug. “So,” the teasing undertone was back in his voice. “We ne’er cleared up,” he smirked devilishly, his gold tooth glinting in the soft light, and leaned in, speaking in a hushed, gruff, half-whisper. I couldn’t help but lean in as well. It was only to hear him better over the howling crew. “You like cock, right?”

I startled back, cheeks burning fever hot. The rum made all of me feel warmer in the breezy night air. “Mr. Zarkon!” I scolded indignantly.

He laughed again, deep and bellowing, and I gave him a harsh shove with both hands, that didn’t move him as much as half an inch. He shoved me back, one-handed, and accidentally knocked me all the way over on my side. He laughed with renewed gusto at the heap he’d turned me into before leaning over and grabbing my bicep with a large hand to pull me back upright. “I’m only havin’ a laugh, kiddo.” He said only a little apologetic and then winked at me.

I couldn’t help smiling at his antics. His laugh was contagious, and I liked the attention he gave me. He wasn’t the worst of this lot of bandits.

Mr. Zarkon finished his bottle soon after, never halting the joking and prodding before he simply passed out, leaning against the railing. I sat silently beside him for a moment, finishing the mug of rum, listening to his loud snoring. He looked handsome in the pale moonlight, I thought, despite the rum stains on his shirt and chest, and the awkward way his head drooped onto his chest. One of his white braids had come loose from the leather band at his neck, dangling down across his closed eyes. I stopped myself from tugging it behind his ear. I wasn’t like him. I wasn’t one of them.

If captain Zarkon intended to make a pirate out of me, he had bet on the wrong horse.

Deciding firmly to let him know, I knocked on the door to his cabin.

“Come in!” he yelled. The door wasn’t closed, and the ship's gentle rolling made it slide open. Captain Zarkon was sitting with his peacoat unbuttoned and one boot-clad leg up on the map table. In his hand dangled an empty tin mug and by his elbow stood the cutlass, tip deeply embedded in the floor.

“Captain,” I said determinedly. “Sir-”

“Get inside, comrade,” he interrupted me. His face was flaming red from the rum. Above his head, an oil lamp swung slowly back and forth in its shining brass hanger and made the shadows move up and down the walls. “You’ve got timing, boy, I was just about to whistle for you. Sit down.”

“I think I can stand for what I mean to say, sir,” I replied.

“Shut your bilge-sucking mouth, ship-boy!” He roared. “Sit down! What I have to tell you will make your skinny knees rattle under you.”

He raised the cutlass, stabbed it into a chair, and pushed it toward me. The man was terrifying. The smile that came and went on his face, didn’t contribute to making him look kinder. I caught the chair, sat down, and stayed ready for a sudden escape.

“Do you have anything to complain about, comrade?”

“Yes, I do, sir,” I answered.

“Are there any of me piss-soaked, rat-faced crew as much as plucked a hair off your head? Say the name, boy, and I’ll make the bastard shark bait in a matter of seconds!”

I shook my head, “I have no complaints like that. I’m treated well enough.” I thought of Axca teaching me and Lotor laughing with me.

“Ha!” He laughed. “That’s by my order. They’re good friendly people – Sunday schoolers the bunch of ‘em. What is it that’s got ye so upset then?”

I tried to look him straight in the eye, which wasn’t entirely easy. “One thing is to be held captured on this ship, but another thing is to be counted among the crew. In short, I have no intentions of joining you and your pirate gang.”

He burst out laughing. “Pirate gang, you say! Hahaha, we’d make good prey for the executioners. But I give you my word that we don’t want to see you dangling in the ropes. Trust what Daibaazal Zarkon tells you.”

I had heard him give his word before and break the promise the very next second. His promises were worthless.

“Quit it with all that gallows talk.” He said and showed his yellow teeth in an ugly grin. His voice lowered to a whisper, “come here, Lance McClain, then I’ll tell you what the future has in store for you. I’ll predict your future better than any gypsy ever has. You’ll be wearing a feathered hat, a cape of velvet across your shoulders and your pockets will be heavy with gold. Your chest will be full of gems, me boy, diamonds, and rubies close like grapes on a vine.” A greedy gluttonous light shone in his eyes.

“Wealth, boy, treasures beyond your imagination, a royal booty to share. May the devil take me if I’m not speaking the truth! People will kowtow to you when you pass them in the streets. A gentleman is judged by the weight of his gold and we’ll have tons of gold! No, comrade, I won’t bring you to gallow’s point – Our course is a different one! We will drive through London in carriages that shine like gold in the sun and people will stare at us with envy!”

I was steadfast. “I want neither your feathered hat nor your gold chest,” I said, for I didn’t believe a word he was saying. “And about being apprenticed to piracy and assassinations, I have no inclination for that.”

“Assassins! Pirates! You have a sharp tongue for your age. You’re highly unfair to me and me honourable sailors. There’s not a single one of us who’ve cut a throat on someone – unless they deserved it. The cannibal might do find some joy in it, fore she is born and reared on the cannibal islands. But she has a preference for Spaniards, so you have nothing to fear from her.”

“Sir,” I said, “You’d do me a great favour to let me disembark on land.”

“Land! What are you saying? Where would that be if I may ask?”

“I wouldn’t be very demanding.”

“Perhaps on the mosquito coast? That would be a good place for you. In less than ten minutes the natives would have you so stuffed full of arrives, you’d look like a porcupine. Or maybe you’d prefer the Spanish territories so the Spaniards could put you in chains? What do you think of that, boy?”

I was silent.

“Do you think,” he raved on, “that I didn’t have the best intentions for you when I picked you up in the harbour in Nantucket? Will you leave us now, boy, now that I can promise you riches that would make any mogul’s teeth water?”

“If you’ll give me the choice,” I said, “then I’d prefer it to be let aboard a passing ship.”

“By the reaper himself, I’ve never heard the likes of such an ungrateful whelp!” He stood and an aroma of rum was released into the air. For a moment I thought he would go amok with his cutlass, but then – like the changing wind – he began laughing and sunk back down into his chair with the name Yurak Sendak in his mouth. It seemed I reminded him more and more of his old sailing comrade. “He was a wretched man, Yurak Sendak was, but he was quick as a shark and twice as deadly. And I would still be trying to find him, if it weren’t for me young friend Lance McClain. To hell with Yurak Sendak, now that I have you – you who were born at the same time as him – when the clock struck twelve at night.”

What the fact that I was born at midnight had to do with the pirate treasure, far surpassed my understanding.

Suddenly he swept a map down on the floor and held it open by stepping on it. He stared at the map like he could read what it said. When he looked up again, his voice was only a whisper: “A treasure, I said. A treasure large enough to fill a ship and you shall have your part of it, boy.” He bent forward toward me, so close I could see the veins in his nose, like a web of red threads.

“Listen, comrade, this ain’t a normal pirate’s tale like those told in the bars in Tortuga or the Spanish ports. I have seen this booty with me own eyes and buried it with me own hands. Yes, buried it in a place I don’t remember where is, you might say, but with your help, I’ll find it again.”

Inch by inch he bent further over until our noses nearly touched. I gulped. “Seven years it’s been, comrade! Seven years the treasure has laid hidden somewhere in the dark sand on Lady Haggar’s island! You don’t have to look at my map, boy, you won’t find anything there. But I know where the island is and before the week is through, you’ll be standing on it.”

“Lady Haggar, you say?”

“Yes, she was captain on this ship, me boy, and I was second in command. She filled the cargo with treasures we’d robbed of the Spanish coasts. She was an amazing captain, Haggar was – there was not one person among the crew who wouldn’t gladly sacrifice their right arm for her. She was a real lady, she could write her name with as many squiggles and flourishes as the governor of Jamaica. She could speak Latin with one side of her mouth and at the same time swear and curse so hotly the tar would melt off your pigtail.”

“Is she dead?”

“She’s been dead for seven years – murdered right in front of me by devilish betrayal. Six of us were on land to bury the booty – that’s how much we had. She let us to the place by so many detours our heads were spinning. And more than that, it was at night too – no more moonlight than from a small oil lamp. But she had eyes like a cat, Lady Haggar had, and she moved like it was high noon. She wrote it down on her sleeve. She dipped the tip of a feather in a fruit she’d plucked on the Spanish coast and the juice was black as ink.”

He halted his story for a moment to swear and curse quietly to himself.

“We were a merry bunch; we’d just had a bit of rum and finally she stopped, and we dug a large hole in the sandy ground and lowered the seaman’s chests down. Then we startled as we heard a shot and across the hole, we’d dug, I saw Lady Haggar bent over with a scream. She tumbled down the hole and was dead before she hit the chests. Next to me stood the first mate with a smoking pistol. “Alright folks,” he said, “now I’m the captain!”. And he was for all of ten seconds before I strangled him dead. That’s how great me loyalty was to Lady Haggar – pray her legs may rest in peace in her grave.”

Captain Zarkon slowly leaned back. “I was the one who cut her sleeve off with the directions and we covered her and the treasure with sand and earth. We left the first mate to be feasted upon by the vultures. The rest of us returned to Devil’s Sin. I was elected captain and we continued plundering the seas.”

Captain Zarkon fell silent, immersed in his own gloomy thoughts. Against my will, his story had excited my imagination and I asked: “do you still have the sleeve?”

He awoke from his daydreams and looked at me. “Do you want to see it?” he asked me and lifted a white rag from the map table with the end of his cutlass and let it dangle right in front of me as if to tempt me with it. To my surprise, he let it fall into my lap.

It was yellow with age and torn at the top, with bloodstains at the lace cuff at the wrist. I straightened it out to examine the marks, but to my disappointment ascertained that there was nothing to see. “There’re no markings on the sleeve!” I exclaimed

“No!” He thundered. “That’s exactly true! There’s nothing, no indication of anything. She’d smelt betrayal, Lady Haggar did, and she would make sure she was the last to laugh if any of us thought to rob the treasure from her. We hid the sleeve in an iron shrine, and there it stayed till Devil’s Sin returned to the isle. When we opened the shrine, the directions were gone. She knew the ink she was using, did Lady Haggar, and she knew her own crew too. Not one living one among us remembered the exact location of the booty. We’ve returned to the island more than once and dug and dug till it looked like thousands of anthills. But Lady Haggar’s grave and treasure were never rediscovered.”

Then the captain stood, a little staggering, and laughed confidently. “Next time we’ll get it, comrade. The last two times I stood on that Island, I felt sulphur in the air. Do you know what that means?”

“Sulphur, sir?”

“Yes, the smell of ghosts, boy. Enough Sulphur to choke you on it. Lady Haggar doesn’t rest in peace in her grave. She wanders the island restlessly, I tell you. It’s as known and true as the fact that the old queen’s ghost wanders around the Tower of London. She’s a foggy creature, with a smell of hell and sulphur.”

It wasn’t my place to question or mock ghosts and spirits, I truly didn’t know what to think of them. But by heavens, this old pirate was obsessed with them! “Have you seen her spirit?” I asked.

He sent me a murderous look. “Seen her? If I could point her out the treasure would have been on board this ship in half a heartbeat. With me own eyes, I would see her sink into the ground where her bones lay on top of gold. Seen her, you ask? Do you know nothing, boy? Don’t you know that the ability to see supernatural things only exists in people like you and Yurak Sendak? Babes born in the midnight hour have the supernatural gift no one else has! That’s why I’ve searched all seven seas for old Sendak – and that’s why I got you aboard. You must be my eyes, boy! Together the two of us will find Lady Haggar and you’ll show us where to put our shovels in the ground!”

Chapter Text

I was incredibly surprised to learn that I had the ability to see ghosts. Later when I was laying in my bunk with Keith rolled up by my feet, the captain’s story stayed on my mind.

If I really had such abilities, then why had I never before in all of my 16 years seen a ghost? I remembered how Uncle Coran once had been plagued by an evil spirit – a phantom he called it – which in the middle of winter had kept pulling the blanket off his feet so he got one cold after the other. Though he had never seen the phantom, he insisted it was there.

Then it suddenly occurred to me. I had yet to see a ghost or spirit because they were only active in the darkness. They could only be seen in the night hours where I would be sleeping. And I was a heavy sleeper, I had never as much as seen a glimpse of the nightly spirits.

While I in a sense was glad to hear of my supernatural abilities, I was also a bit sceptical about them. I became more and more taken with the idea of putting them to a test. To go hunting after ghosts was more to my liking than piracy and murder. It cast a whole new light over things. And I would get a chance soon enough when we cast anchor at Lady Haggar’s isle.

But other thoughts occupied my mind too. Certain parts of the captain’s tale disturbed me. From what I’d been told of those that had been murdered they could not rest in their graves before they had gotten justice and until then they wandered restlessly searching for their revenge.

But then why could Lady Haggar not rest in peace in her grave? She had been avenged on the spot. Captain Zarkon had evened the score himself by strangling her murderer and leaving his body to the vultures.

That’s how far I had come in my speculations when I fell asleep. Some hours later I awoke to a mighty bang that rolled above our heads like thunder while the ship jerked so violently that three men were thrown from their bunks. In the sleepy confusion that followed, where no one knew what really had happened, the shouts echoed in the creepy corridor and the boatswain’s whistle sounded.

The still half-drunk pirates stumbled up on deck and I with them. Captain Zarkon was already up there and hollering orders and cursing the weather. “Up with you! Get up there you idle beasts. Move your lazy legs up the netting!”

A howling, wailing storm had suddenly hit us like a lightning bolt from a clear sky. The mainsail split open like a rotting melon with a thunderous bang that woke every one of us up. The ends of it slammed and whipped around in the wind and now the cannibal and a couple of men were on their way up the ropes.

“Get that sail down you useless rats!” roared the captain. “Storms come suddenly at these latitudes, folks. Mr. Zarkon! Acxa! Get a new sail!”

I thought I could do a sailor’s job well enough too and was on my way to the rigging when captain Zarkon grabbed me around the collar. His fingers dug into my flesh like fishhooks. “Where the hell are you doing, ship-boy!” He shouted hoarsely.

“Up top.”

“You’re staying here, boy, or I’ll flay you alive!” He pulled me off the rope ladder and pushed me aside. It was clear enough what he was thinking. If anything happened to me, this whole journey would be a waste. My work would be done on land.

I sat on one of the bronze cannons to observe the others and Keith snuck out of the dark and sharpened his claws on the freshwater barrel. The spare mainsail was brought out of the sail room and fastened to the ship’s boom before it was hauled up the mast. The wind filled the sail but died down again just as suddenly as the storm had enveloped us. It was not yet dawn.

In the darkness, I could see the outlines of the men and Ezor up in the rigging. They worked slowly toward the sail on the mainmast and it looked like they were gliding through the air.

Then, abruptly, the ship rolled violently on the waves and the rigging tore with a loud smack that sounded like the crack of a whip.

The men whirled around in the air. Their screams followed them like a comet’s tail when they fell into the dark sea below and the sound of it made my blood curdle. In the moment I was too petrified with shock to scream.

Morbid silence followed. No sound but the waves’ gentle splashing against the ship’s hull and the ropes tossing against the sail was heard. I whipped toward the railing as soon as I regained control of my body and strained my eyes to the utmost to see if any of the men were visible in the water.

“By all the gods of the sea!” captain Zarkon exclaimed. “I can guarantee, not one of them can swim. Rowers!”

When he ordered the ship around, I looked up and saw a singular figure appearing from the shadows of the rigging. It was the cannibal woman, who had made it to the mast before the ropes burst.

“How many fell?” asked Acxa.

“Three.” Answered the woman from the Fiji isles.

A boat was quickly manned and put in the water. I was hanging over the railing and staring down into the infinite darkness. I saw Mr. Zarkon go to the bow of the ship and grab a long pole and held a lantern up with it casting its light over the waves when he got in the boat with the rowers. While I didn’t have any particularly warm feeling for the pirates that fell in the sea or anyone else aboard the ship for that matter, I was filled with the sailor’s dread of falling in the sea and drowning.

The rowboat was a bit off from us and I could see its lantern bobbing on the waves like a ball. When the Devil’s Sin turned around against the wind everyone aboard listened out into the night to catch any shouts of help.

Soon the first rays of sunlight began spilling out over the horizon across the waves. It was like a grand fire had been lit at the edge of my vision when the glowing red orb began ascending, burning my tired eyes.

The boat returned to the ship. “No sign of the three poor souls,” said Mr. Zarkon

The captain nodded. “Yes, it seems they sunk like boulders.”

“It would be proper with some words, captain.”

“They’ll get a few words,” captain Zarkon replied. “Hats off, comrades.”

The crew gathered around with bowed heads and their hats in the hands, but with the black flag flowing in the wind with the horned-skull and crossed smoking pistols, the captain’s speech seemed less pious than it could have.

“Lord,” he said, his great white beard billowing in the wind, “I give over our three brave comrades to your care. They were soft of heart and highly honourable. We will miss their friendly faces, Lord. Never did an evil thought cross their minds and they put all their efforts into fighting for what they cared most about. They will serve you true in your heaven, Lord. But if you lead their path in the opposite direction, then I think they’ll see some old friends they can sit around the fire with. Don’t be too unwilling to shelter them. Amen. Rowers! Set the course!”

The pirates didn’t seem inconsolable about the loses of their mates. It meant that Lady Haggar’s treasure could be shared in greater parts between. And that was the end of that.

At least that’s what I thought.

Those of the crew that had hats put them back on and began going back below decks while the captain returned to his cabin.

“Are you okay, son?” It was Acxa who asked, a gentle hand on my shoulder.

I nodded. What could I say?

She didn’t seem to fully believe me, but she left it at that and followed the rest of the crew. Mr. Zarkon caught me before I could go below too.

“Hey, kid,” he said gently like he was trying to calm a spooked animal. “How are you doing?”

This time I shrugged. Everything that had happened was so strange and it had all passed so fast. “I don’t know.” My voice came out smaller than I had intended.

Mr. Zarkon looked at me compassionately before he put an arm around my shoulder. We were alone on the deck now. “I’m sorry you had to experience that.”

“Have you seen something like that happen before?” I asked and leaned into him.

“People do die at sea. It happens.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. We rested against each other in comfortable silence for a brief moment. “You did what you could though,” I said quietly.

I felt him nodding against the top of my head. “There was nothing anyone could’ve done.”

My eyes were feeling a little wet. It could have been me. If the captain hadn’t stopped me from climbing the rigging and helping the crew, I might be dead. I sniffled. Mr. Zarkon pulled me closer and hugged me tightly. “You’re okay.” He said softly. I sighed into his shoulder and he patted me on the back as we drew apart. “You’re okay.” He repeated.

I nodded and averted my gaze, embarrassed at my emotions.

“Hey,” I looked up at him. “If it had been you, I would’ve found you.” He winked and I chuckled, releasing some of the tension within me. Talking about it was such a relief. “Get to bed kid, I’ll keep lookout.”

“Okay.” I was really tired.

Early the following day, the boatswain whistled all men on deck. Even the lookout in the crow’s nest at the top of the mainmast was called down. The sun was high in the sky and the wood was burning hotly under our feet. I was standing by the railing with Keith snaking in and out between my legs. When the captain appeared with a dark look on his face, I thought the night's worries were not yet over.

He walked past us, Mr. Zarkon following close behind him counting us all. They stopped suddenly and whispered together in aggravated tones. They seemed to be in disagreement. The captain looked us all over with an ominous glint in his yellow eyes and began pacing, lost in thought. “Damn it,” he mumbled.

“Yes, damn it all,” repeated Mr. Zarkon.

“Shipmates,” the captain said, pulling at his unruly beard. “A sad situation rules aboard the Devil’s Sin.”

Mr. Zarkon seemed to grit his teeth behind his captain.

“We live off what the fates randomly bid us, right fellows? What the fates randomly bid us and a chest full of luck. The sweet smile of destiny! Is there any of you, who stand before me, who can honestly say you wouldn’t be dancing below the gallows if it had not been for the good will of the fates?”

“Bloody luck…” Mr. Zarkon spat out the words.

“I must say, luck has failed us this morning, dear friends. After the loss of three of our crew – may their souls rest in peace – we are now…” he was nearly choking on the word. “Thirteen! It’s the devil’s number, is thirteen!”

It was like a cloud had covered the sunshine. The pirates looked darkly between themselves. I, myself, wasn’t particularly disturbed by this news. Even though I wasn’t all that fond of the number, on the other hand, I wasn’t fearful of it either.

“We’re thirteen altogether, counting the numbers of noses.” The captain grumbled. “It casts a dark shadow over our purpose, I have to say. It jeopardises our fate! Are there anyone of you who will continue our journey under this black premonition? Step forth.

No one moved.

“Yes, dark clouds have hidden the light that would lead our way, comrades. For more than an hour, Mr. Zarkon and I have discussed how to ratify our situation.”

Mr. Zarkon shook his head angrily but kept his tongue.

“Do you think we should give up our plans? Should we let the golden treasure rot up in the sand? No, you say? Good! Listen here! There’s only one option for us. We must cut the number down to twelve.”

This message was followed by an eerie silence. “We must give up the journey, or give up a man, I say. What do you say: yes or no?” The captain spoke firmly.

I could barely believe my own ears. Did the captain really suggest we throw a person overboard?

“Yes,” said, Zethrid, the giant woman. “We give up a man – that’s what I vote for. We’ll arrive on the island soon enough, why bring bad luck with us on land?”

“Yes,” said the cannibal with a shrug.

Narti nodded, silently.

“No!” said Acxa indignantly. “No, you cursed fools – sorry captain. I say no. thirteen is as good a number as any other, you great big idiots! I sail just as happily with thirteen as twelve, that’s sure and known.”

Her words elicited a choir of accusations of cowardice. But I thought she’d spoken both wisely and bravely. Acxa was the most sensible of them all. And still, one after the other they voted yes, and then it was my turn. The sun was in my eyes so I could barely see anything and squinted at them all. These pirates would without a second thought sacrifice a mate. It was the worst dishonourable deed I had ever heard of. But the pirates thought almost only that the fewer they were to share the booty the more each of them would receive.

“No,” I said, which provoked a roar of laughter.

“He’s too young to vote,” laughed Zethrid.

“But not too young, yalewa, to get the chance to walk the plank,” said Ezor and looked at me with a grim, pointy-toothed grin.

“Yes, he’ll take the same risk as everyone else,” captain Zarkon replied and winked secretively at me. “We’ll draw lots, and it’ll be done fairly and honestly. No special treatment, if the lot falls on the ship-boy, he’ll have to walk, and we’ll be glad the be rid of him.”

I gulped. I had no trust in his secret sign to me. I figured he was only pretending to give me a better shot. If I drew the plank, it would be the plank. And he was surely preoccupied enough with himself. If he was unlucky, he could be the one to end his days as shark feed.

Now that a decision had been made, the pirates regained their high spirits – in reality, I suspected them for longing for the excitement to challenge destiny and gamble with their lives.

Captain Zarkon pulled two leather pouches out of his pocket and held one in each hand. “There are six gold coins in one pouch and seven in the other – I didn’t want to put all thirteen in the same one,” he said. Everybody seemed to think that was a clever precaution to take. “I have marked one of the coins with an X, comrades. The one who draws the coin with the cross will walk the plank. Twelve will win and only one lose. Choose a pouch and choose a coin. If I get the coin with the cross, you’ll do well to elect Acxa in my place as captain.”

With those words, he walked along the lined up crew, and one by one they dug their hands down the pouches and pulled up closed fists. Narti made all sorts of mystical signs before diving in, Zethrid looked from one pouch to the other before trying her luck and fishing up a coin. All of them closed their hands around their coins, waiting for the last gold to be chosen.

When the captain came closer to me, my heart began beating faster and faster and when it was my turn to reach into a pouch and grab my fate, I thought my heart was pounding so hard they must be able to hear it.

“Hurry up, boy,” barked captain Zarkon

There could only be three coins left, since only myself, captain Zarkon and Acxa had yet to pick. I gathered all the courage I could muster and stuck a hand down a pouch. I grabbed the first coin I touched and reached out my closed fist like the others.

With a cheerful look in his eye, the captain stood before Acxa. “Acxa,” he said, “since you might be captain aboard this ship before the hour is through, I’ll give you the captain’s right to be last. Hold the pouches captain Acxa, and I’ll make my choice. The last gold coin shall be yours.”

It seemed to be a beautiful gesture, and Acxa looked flattered to be addressed as captain. She held out the two leather pouches one in each calloused hand. After barely a second the captain withdrew his closed fist. The last coin was Acxa’s and the empty pouches were unceremoniously dropped on the deck.

“Alright, comrades,” said captain Zarkon. “We have drawn lots, fair and square. Who will walk the plank for his mates, folks?”

Hands, now shaking with nerves, were opened. I despised the feeling of the heavy gold in between my fingers. The hairs stood up on my arms from fear and I was convinced I had taken the coin with the X. My hand was wound tightly closed.

Then a collection of yells went off to my left.

“There’s the X!”

“Look, he’s got it!”

“Lotor Zarkon!”

Holy heavens! Lotor Zarkon! Of this whole gang, he would be the thirteenth man! He who was the best and kindest among them.

“Yes, comrades,” said the unlucky sailor with a cool and collected voice. “It’s me. It’s both sure and known.”

I was so terribly sad I couldn’t look at him at all. And in this moment, I saw with horror, that the captain hadn’t played an honest game. Now when the whole crew was surrounding Mr. Zarkon, I saw the captain pulling a gold coin out of his pocket. Until now, he hadn’t had anything in his hand!

There had only been twelve coins in the pouches.

I was gaping at him. He had only pretended to draw a coin out of the pouch and left the last one for Acxa. It wasn’t so strange that he’d had a cheerful glint in his eye. He had risked nothing like the rest of us.

But now, that he saw my eyes fixed on him, he sent me such a murderous look that I knew it would cost me my life if I opened my mouth.

“Get the plank, folks!” he commanded.

A raw plank was quickly put over the railing. Lotor Zarkon looked up at the blue sky and white clouds one last time. I had never before seen a man come face to face with death with a braver look in his eyes. He wouldn’t beg for these villains to spare his life. He would die with a smile on his lips. But I was aware that behind his calm exterior, his brain was working a mile a minute to find a way out of this.

A red scarf was tied around his eyes before he was placed on the plank. I had to spend all my effort to stay calm. If anybody deserved to walk the plank it was captain Zarkon, who didn’t take his eyes off me. He fingered his cutlass as if to show me that he was unafraid to use it if I were to open my mouth.

“Let’s make a quick end to this!” He yelled, seemingly entirely unaffected that it was his son's end he was hurrying along.

Mr. Zarkon reached his arms out for balance and the plank bend slightly under his weight. He slowly turned around to come face to face with us all. “Comrades,” he said, and the sun shone right in his covered face, “I’ll leave your company with a light heart. To associate with fools is to die a fool. In advance of the plank, I can say that I will be spared the same destiny as you: dangling under the executioner’s rope. But, comrades, you shan’t rub your hands in glee at my part of the treasure too early – I’m not dead yet. You’ve forgotten the gold pouch I carry with me.” He blindly pulled it out of his pocket. “It’s heavy, and I won’t have any use of it where I’m going. It belongs to the man who has the courage to take it off me.”

The pirates were greedy enough, but they wouldn’t be fooled. Even though he was standing blindfolded at the end of the plank, Lotor Zarkon was a dangerous foe, and none of his comrades desired his gold that badly. They were actually so glad to not be in his place that they began pushing him with spears and rifles.

I had seen enough now and turned away. I couldn’t bear to watch him fall. In that moment I discovered a small little spot on the horizon. It appeared so suddenly, for a moment I was dumbstruck. But then I yelled at the top of my lungs: “Land ahoy! Land ahoy!”

My shout made the pirates seize their poking and prodding of Mr. Zarkon, and it was at the last moment. He was sitting across the raw wood, holding on with everything he’d got, like a tick to a naked leg.

“Yes, there's land in sight!” Captain Zarkon affirmed with his spyglass.

“Is it Lady Haggar’s Island?”

“Not in these waters. What you see there is not much more than a shallow riffle, but we can use that too.” I gestured toward his son. “Get him back, lads. There is no reason to waste his gold. We’ll leave him on the island instead.”

Mr. Zarkon seemed enormously stressed while we sailed toward the tiny smidge of sand. I tried to stay near him, but I didn’t know what to do or say. He’d comforted me from avoiding death only a few hours prior. Now he was dying and there was nothing I could do about it. Someone always kept an eye on him, but the closer we got to the riffle, the less I cared. I had to speak with him.

“Mr. Zarkon…” My voice came out small and nervous and desperate.

I saw the effort he made to appear calm to me. “Call me Lotor,” he said with a put-upon smile.

“I’m so sorry,” it came out more like a whisper than anything else. He put a hand on my shoulder, and I looked up at him.

“There’s nothing anyone could do,” he echoed his own words from our last conversation.

But there was something I could do. The words were burning on my tongue, and I leaned closer. Lotor slid his arm from my shoulder around my body and we were hugging. I lifted my head and whispered against his neck: “the captain cheated. He had a gold coin in his pocket all along.” I felt his body tense for a moment.

“Forget you ever saw it,” he whispered back. I pulled back and looked at him disbelievingly. “He’ll kill us both.” He whispered it so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. But I knew he was right. He drew me back into another brief hug. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. And that was that.

Before an hour had passed, we were near enough to the tiny island to row the rest of the way. It was only a sand riffle that was raised a few inches above the sea. The boat was lowered into the water and Mr. Zarkon was rowed to the island with a water jug. His life was spared, but instead, a slow death awaited him. There was not as much as a tree to give him shade.

In the last moment, his courage failed him, and I saw how Zethrid, Acxa, and Narti carried his lifeless body to land. And there he sat, at the edge of the white sand – a lonely figure, leaning against the jug. We were far from the usual seafaring routes and he knew he would die from starvation. He didn’t even look at us when we sailed away.

My eyes stayed dry and I was thankful for that, but I felt like my heart had dropped out of me and like I’d swallowed a handful of pebbles and they had stuck in my throat, grinding against me every time I tried to swallow. I didn’t want to believe any of this was really happening. I kept staring after him until the small island disappeared into the horizon and he was gone.