Though Jocelyn had long despaired of it happening, morning eventually came, and with it a means of escape. As she had surmised, a bit of light forced its way into the cave through a narrow passage in a low area of the ceiling. Though it proved a bit difficult for the portly Mr. Smee, the three were able to wriggle through into the dazzling light of early day.

As she waited for her eyes to adjust, Jocelyn allowed her other senses to take stock of her surroundings. She smelled the earthy scent of dirt mingled with a sweetness of flowers. The morning sun wrapped her in a warm embrace, thawing the stiffness from her cold and tired muscles. Ocean waves crashed in the distance. A nearby bird called to another, “Mildred, dear, could you send over a cup of worms with my Jeffrey? I am fresh out and won’t be going to market until later today.”

Jocelyn never ceased to be surprised and delighted with the Neverland. If she hadn’t been feeling so wretched about her failure with the crocodile, she might have done something foolish, like prance about in the sunshine, gathering wildflowers.

Fortunately, her misery kept her grounded.

Still, the scents, sensations, and sounds made for a pleasant scene, which is why, I suppose, when Jocelyn’s eyes did adjust to the brilliance, she was unprepared to be looking down the barrel of a strange man’s musket.

I’m going to interrupt my narrative here to inform you that the man holding the musket was ugly, and dirty, and likely full of both vermin and lies. You would be wise not to trust him.

“If Krueger sent ye three misfits to finish me off,” the stranger said, “he might be a bit overconfident in your abilities.”

Smee pulled Johnny from his sheath and brandished it, his pirate brogue much thicker than usual: “Ye’ll pay fer insultin’ me cap’n, ye filthy, stinkin’ bilge rat! Johnny Corkscrew’ll tickle yer liver!”

The man turned to Smee and cried, “So it is true, then, eh? Ye sail under the black flag of Cap’n Krueger? You’ll die for your choice of loyalties! Tell me who this Johnny Corkscrew is, and once I finish with you two ladies and the Lilliput, I’ll split him from stem to stern! Where is he?”

Jocelyn drew her own weapon and stepped in front of her loyal bo’sun. “Lower your musket, you filthy dog, or wish that you had.”

One-Armed Jack also jumped into the fray. “How would you like some of this?” he shouted, wildly waving his poorly bandaged stump in the man’s face.

The stranger lowered his weapon and gave a hearty laugh. “I don’t know who captains ye blokes, but I know fer sure it ain’t Cap’n Krueger! With the exception of the little girl, he’d not let the likes of you clean the slime off his boots. Of course, that’s Minnie’s job, but even so…I do like your spunk. I’m Dirty Bob Bonny; what brings you to my island?”

“Humph.” Jocelyn sniffed and turned her back on the man. She commanded Jack to find a shady place near the shore and keep an eye out for the ship. Then, addressing Smee, she said, “We need to build a signal fire. Bart will smell the smoke and come round to pick us up.”

Dirty Bob clapped his hands together. “Are you telling me, girlie, that you’ve a ship nearby?”

Jocelyn started pulling dead limbs from a nearby tree. “No. I’m not telling you that. I’m telling my man, Smee.”

“Smee, eh? You wouldn’t happen to be the same Mr. Smee that sailed under my old mate Hook’s flag, would you?” As he asked, Dirty Bob began to help gather wood—certainly for his own selfish reasons.

Jocelyn put down the branch she was holding. “You knew Captain Hook?”

Smee cut off Dirty Bob’s reply. “We knew him too, didn’t we, Johnny? No one knew the captain better than us.”

Jocelyn gave him a comforting kick to the shins. “Of course not, Smee, but just now I want to hear what this man has to say.” She resumed gathering branches but told the stranger, “Go on.”

“Aye. Ol’ Jimmy and me sailed together a long time ago. Course, he wasn’t Captain then. Hook neither, for that matter. That name came a bit later, after he pummeled the cook half to death with his mighty right fist. Didn’t much care for raisins in his mush.”

“I knew about the raisins,” Smee muttered, but Jocelyn shushed him.

Dirty Bob added some dry brush to the woodpile, pulled out a flint and steel, and started the signal fire. “Jim began to be known for fightin’, or more to the point, for his powerful right hook. The nickname stuck. Strange, the way he ended up trading that fist for an actual hook…What might your interest in him be?”

“He is—he was—my father.”

“Well, girlie, I might’ve guessed you belonged to Hook. You favor him.”

Jocelyn fairly glowed with pride. No one had ever told her that before, at least not in a flattering way. “So, if you knew my father when he was young, why didn’t you stay with him when he bought his first ship?”

Dirty Bob laughed. “Bought? Ah, girlie, Jim never bought a thing in his life. He cheated and murdered his way up the corporate rigging to become bo’sun to Blackbeard himself. Quite an accomplishment, really, but Hook would never be content with anything less than full command. At his first opportunity he betrayed the cap’n, took possession of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, renamed it the Jolly Roger, and there you have it: Hook was no longer subject to anyone. I’d’ve gone with him if I hadn’t a been doing a turn in the stocks.”

“That wouldn’t a stopped me!” Smee fairly growled at the miscreant.

Jocelyn threatened to send her bo’sun off to sit with One-Armed Jack if he couldn’t be quiet. She added more brush to the fire, creating large smoky clouds. “What happened after that, Dirty Bob?”

“Not much of anything. I lost touch with Jim, though I did follow news of his reign of terror some. Impressive. But after a while, he jus’ seemed to disappear. As for me, I fell on hard times, drifting around for a few years and bragging that I used to sail with the great Cap’n Hook. After a time, I met up with Cap’n Krueger. If there’s a fouler, greedier, or uglier man on earth, you’re not likely to meet him.”

The column of smoke drifted up into the sky. Blind Bart was certain to smell it. Jocelyn sat down to wait, and Dirty Bob joined her. Smee remained standing so as to better keep his eye on the man.

“Who is this Captain Krueger?” Jocelyn asked.

Smee spoke up again. “I know! Krueger’s a bad one, miss. They say he’s got a long white scar down his cheek from a knife fight with a witch woman. Krueger won, but they say that afore she died, the witch cursed him with the gold fever—didn’t she, Johnny?”

“My name’s not Johnny,” Dirty Bob said, “but what you say is true. The curse made Krueger go mad. His unholy need for gold even led him to pull out his own teeth for their gold fillings, replacing them with razor-sharp points from the mouth of a baby shark.”

The hair on the back of Jocelyn’s neck stood on end. She was struck with an insane desire to see this Krueger up close.

Dirty Bob went on. “I met him one day at a local establishment. I stopped in to get something to quench my thirst, and I guess I must’ve been a bit verbose about me days with ol’ Jim. I don’t rightly recall, but I may have stretched the truth a little. Somehow Cap’n Krueger got the idea that I might know something about Hook’s treasure.”

“Do you?” Jocelyn asked.

“Not rightly, no. But Krueger is obsessed with finding it. He thought I might be able to find Hook’s map, so he hired me on his crew. I kept up the charade as long as I could, for he gave a fairly good rum ration, but in the end he came to understand that I didn’t know anything. That’s when he marooned me on this godforsaken island. I’d been here about three weeks, give or take a year, when you showed up.”

Dirty Bob took a silver pocket watch from inside his jacket and began to wind it. Its ticktock grated on Jocelyn’s nerves. All the talk about her father’s history and his treasure had distracted her from thoughts of the crocodile, but the watch brought them all back. She had to get off the island soon, before the monster got too far away.

As if he could sense her impatience from down the beach, One-Armed Jack jumped up, waving his one arm around and pointing at white sails on the horizon. The Hook’s Revenge was on the way.

Dirty Bob also spotted the ship growing larger as it neared. “That’s me whole story. Now, if you’ll have me, I’d love to sign on to your crew. Even as a lad I knew more than most grown men about living the pirate life—and I’ve learned a good sight since. Maybe your boys could benefit from my experience.”

Jocelyn considered his offer. At times her crew acted more like overgrown children than bloodthirsty pirates. Though for the most part she enjoyed their company, it would be nice to have a more experienced man on board.

Smee tried to argue in favor of leaving Dirty Bob on the island until he rotted—in order to build character. “What kind of example would he be to the men, miss, if he was to give up on being marooned so easily? A quitter, that’s what he is.”

Jocelyn made up her own mind. She spit on her hand and held it out to Dirty Bob. “Welcome to my crew, Bob. How do you feel about crocodile hunting?”