At sundown, the wind died and the ship, its sails empty, bobbed aimlessly in the darkening fog. It was too late to change course now.
The rest of the evening Ariyl and I spent repeatedly searching the ship—in the rigging, on deck and below. One of us always kept within earshot of the captain’s cabin, just in case Ludlo showed. But it seemed that if Ludlo was on board, he was well disguised. Perhaps as a barrel of molasses or a sack of flour.
An hour after dark, we could no longer see the lantern on Bellamy’s captured ship the Mary Anne, much less the pirate’s two other prizes further astern.
John King sounded four bells. A few minutes later a powerful rainsquall struck, its gale-force wind coming now from the southeast; the sea began heaving the Whydah towards the cliffs of Eastham.
As the crew scrambled into the rigging to furl the sails and slow the ship’s inevitable shoreward course, I pulled Ariyl aside, speaking in low tones to prevent eavesdropping.
“We’re running out of time. We have to spring Thomas Davis from the brig. And then somehow get John Julian away from the helm.”
“But we already know they’re going to live.”
“Not necessarily. Surviving this storm will be a matter of luck—being in the right place at the right time. And our presence on this ship has changed things. Thanks to me, Davis is now in irons below decks. I bet that’s not in the history of his trial.”
Ariyl opened a pocket inside her long pirate’s coat, showing me two red-and-purple Pentol capsules in a plastic sheath.
“We can erase any memory of his we want. And I have another one, for the helmsman.” She chewed her lip. “But I don’t have one for John King.”
I pulled out my Pentol capsule.
“Here.”
“Where’d you get this?”
“Uh, funny story about that...”
“You didn’t give Kati Brumbach all the Pentol?” she said accusingly.
“Or maybe not so funny.”
“No wonder she was making eyes at you at the Belasco. She still has some memory of your day together!”
“Well, I didn’t want her to OD.”
“Ohh, David,” she growled, irate.
“Can we argue about this later? On top of killing Ludlo, we have to make sure Davis makes it to shore, and—”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’ll be on a different part of the ship than he was originally. If he’s under a mast when it falls, maybe he doesn’t even make it off the ship alive.”
“But, if we just take him off the ship with a Time Crystal...”
“As long as we leave him on the beach, no paradox. Assuming we also take John Julian.”
“Sure, him too,” she nodded.
“But do we also take the boy, John King?”
“Of course! We agreed!”
“Ariyl,” I said gently, “we’ve only got two Crystals.”
Her face fell.
“Oh. Damn it. You’re right. We can’t come back to the ship for a third person.” She looked at me, forlorn. “David, we’ve got to find a way.”
“Yeah,” I said unhappily. “I’ve been thinking about that. There is one way, but it could get all five of us killed. And it involves us going back out on the water.”
Ariyl looked at the raging seas around us.
“Are you shitting me?”
I shook my head.
Lightning flashed, revealing the next twenty-foot wave the ship was about to ride.
“I’d rather walk the plank,” she said.
At that moment, I saw young John King clamber up from below, carrying a tankard through the driving rain toward the helm.
“Uh-oh, speak of the devil,” I said. “He’s bringing Julian his ration of grog.”
“Is that alcohol?”
I nodded.
“That’s where they get the word groggy. If we’re gonna give him Pentol...”
“Thank you, lad,” Julian told young John King, ruffling his hair before he took the tankard. The boy scuttled back across the slippery deck to the ladder below.
“I’ll handle him,” Ariyl said. “Distract the other two.”
I walked up to the pair of captive seamen, huddling miserable in the rain. I introduced myself, and drew them aside. I’m not proud that I lied to them, telling Captain Ingols that Bellamy was going to return them to their vessel.
Ingols was somewhat relieved, but warned me that taking a boat back to his sloop, the Fisher, was out of the question in this weather.
Meanwhile, ten feet behind them, I saw Ariyl approach the helmsman. She had told SmartFab to put her back in her Anne Bonny outfit.
About to quaff his grog, John Julian froze, gaping at this costume party version of a lady pirate—I’m sure he’d never seen such a towering woman in his life, much less one dressed in this vavavoom fashion. He was mesmerized.
She took the untouched tankard from his hands, tossed it overboard, and pulled his amazed face into her voluptuous embrace. It took a few seconds for Julian to realize he wasn’t going to get free of this amorous bearhug.
I spoke louder to Ingols and his mate to keep their gaze turned on me, but there really was no need. Julian was unable to utter a peep before he passed out.
At least it didn’t hurt like a karate chop.
Ariyl then slung the unconscious Julian over her shoulder and hurried him below decks before any of the frantically laboring crew caught sight of her.
“What the devil happened to our helmsman?” I then exclaimed. Ingols and his first mate whirled, and ran to grab the unattended ship’s wheel.
“Keep your course, I’ll notify the captain!” I told them. Then I followed Ariyl below.
I led her down to the place where Davis was kept prisoner. He watched as Ariyl entered carrying an insensate man like a sack of beans, put out Davis’s two guards, and snapped his manacles with her hands. She then asked him nicely to take the Pentol pill. Not surprisingly, he agreed.
Julian awoke, and rather than deal with Ariyl again, he was similarly good about taking his medicine.
And once they ingested the Pentol, both were perfectly obedient. We told them they would live through the shipwreck, but not remember our part in these events.
We left them sleeping peacefully.
At six bells, an hour before doomsday, I stood halfway up the ladder leading topside from the great cabin. I was keeping one eye on the guards, but I could not ignore the spectacle of Bellamy at the bow, directing his crew in dropping the anchors. It had taken an hour to get the huge ropes laid out on deck so they wouldn’t snag as the anchors dropped to the sea floor.
But one anchor, slung from the bow, had somehow become fouled on a stray loop of thick cable hanging off the deck. Bellamy cursed a blue streak. He couldn’t have them chop off the offending cable because there wasn’t time to haul up a new one.
Possibly this was a result of our presence: the cable was dangling right near where the crew had lashed our dory to the rail. An hour earlier I’d managed to position a block and tackle above the dory and tied it down. The men now standing around there with axes made me nervous: my plan required that block and tackle, and that boat in one piece.
Then Ariyl—back in her disguise as Newton the pirate—made her way forward to the fouled anchor.
“Arrrh, outta me way,” she growled.
Holding onto the rail, she lowered herself over the side, grabbed the huge piece of iron with her free hand, and as the wooden rail groaned with the strain, she lifted the anchor free of the cable loop and dropped it into the sea with a mighty splash.
“Ye gods, that anchor weighs half a ton!” exclaimed Bellamy as my pal nimbly clambered back on deck. “Newton, ’tis a modern-day Samson you are!”
“And that were me bad arrrm,” she winked. The crew gave a wide berth as she made her way back to me.
With the frigid rain and the hurricane winds blowing the ship towards shore, I knew the anchors were Bellamy’s desperate attempt to stave off destruction. As the last of the cables snaked over the bow and finally groaned taut, I found myself praying they would hold the Whydah. Even though I knew they could not and must not.
The next big hillock of seawater moved us, stern first, visibly closer to the explosions of foam and mist that marked the breakers. The ship was doomed.
John King rang the ship’s bell seven times.
That Royal Navy discipline! Even when Bellamy turned pirate, even when he was facing death in a ferocious tempest, he kept time for the watches. I wondered when John King went off duty. Was there another cabin boy who took over while he slept? Whoever it was, I didn’t want to know about him.
“Eleven-thirty,” said Ariyl, coming down the ladder. She’d really gotten the hang of those bells.
We’d been keeping watches of our own: for the last half-hour, I’d kept an eye on the captain’s cabin while she prowled the ship, looking for Ludlo but ready to come to my aid.
Now it was my turn to take up the search. But Ariyl tugged my sleeve.
“Don’t, David. Ludlo’s gotta be coming soon. We should both be here.”
Then John King came down the ladder, heading for the cabin. No doubt this is where he would have met Ludlo. But not in this draft of history.
“Wait outside,” I told him.
I entered the great cabin.
“Cap’n’s orders,” I told the guards, and unhooked the hanging sandglass. I inverted it, and took it out to John King.
“Take it forward to the crew’s quarters. Stay there, and don’t come back till eight bells.”
“Says who?” he spat back.
“Says me,” said Ariyl, picking him up by his breeches and carrying him halfway down the passageway.
“Captain Bellamy says you wait in the crew’s quarters!” I told him as Ariyl set him on his feet.
“What for? And why would he tell you?”
“You have your orderrrs! Move! We’ll come fer ye when it’s time!” growled Ariyl.
The little brat gave us the middle finger. It seemed oddly modern, though I knew its use went back to Aristophanes.
The deck began to incline forward.
“Newton” made for John, rolling up her sleeves. Apparently having seen her muscle the anchor around, John gulped, then scrambled and slid down the sloping deck.
Ariyl returned to me, shaking her head, amused.
“Cute kid.” She sat down on the ladder near me.
“Sit with me?”
“Sure,” I said.
We waited in the passage outside the cabin. The two pirate guards were still inside with the treasure, but every now and then one would stick his head out to reconnoiter. Both had eye patches; neither was missing any fingers.
I was starting to regret sending away the half-hourglass. You’d be surprised how long thirty minutes takes to tick by, when you’re on a pitching, doomed ship wondering whether the ocean or a thrill-killer like Ludlo would get you first.
“I can’t understand it. Where is he hiding?” I finally muttered.
“Doesn’t matter. We know he’s coming. Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure. What?”
There was another long silence as we felt the ship tilt forward then aft, gradually backing its way toward the rocks.
“You know, this reminds me of a joke,” I said.
She gave me a dubious look. I forged ahead, regardless.
“The captain of a cruise ship books a magician, who does the same act every night. The captain has a parrot that likes to sit in the theater. Pretty soon, the parrot figures out all the magician’s tricks, and he starts talking during the show, spoiling them.” I did the nasal parrot falsetto. “‘It’s up his sleeve!...Awk! She’s behind a mirror!...Awk! Trap door!’”
Ariyl arched an eyebrow. Parrot jokes no doubt marked me as the worst kind of twenty-first century cornball.
“The magician comes to hate this parrot. But one night, the cruise ship hits a reef and sinks. The magician winds up in a lifeboat. It’s just him and the parrot, adrift on an endless sea. The parrot looks around, and says: ‘Awk! I give up. Where’d you put the ship?’”
Ariyl snickered, resentful. She hated that it was funny, but it was.
“You were saving that joke for when we were in an actual shipwreck?”
“It’s what we mortals call gallows humor.”
“We’re not going to die, David.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said wryly.
“What do you mean, you hope I’m right? This is your plan!”
“And it’ll work! Okay?”
“Okay!”
“Okay! So, obviously humor does not take our mind off our troubles!”
“Ohhh, I’m sorry. I’m being such a bitch,” said Ariyl. “Hey, Dylila told me a joke. Wanna hear it?”
“Go.”
“A woman is down at the docks, and she meets an old man who looks like your classic pirate: eye patch, hook for a hand, peg leg. They get to talking and she asks the old guy what happened. ‘Well, I lost my leg to a shark. And I got this hook when a pirate chopped off me hand with a machete.’ The woman says, ‘And what about your eye?’ ‘A bird pooped in it.’ ‘And that’s how you lost your eye?’ ‘Well, y’see, it was me first day with the hook.’”
“God!” I laughed with a wince. “Dylila has a dark sense of humor.”
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
The hook?!
I leapt to my feet as lighting ignited the sky and thunder exploded.
“The lookout!” I cried.
Ariyl stared at me, bewildered.
“The old guy in the crow’s nest!”
“I didn’t get a good look at him. But he has a hook.”
“But anything could be inside his sleeve!”
“Could be a hand,” agreed Ariyl. “Or at least three-fifths of one.”
I stuck my head up the ladder. Another stroke of lighting silhouetted the crow’s nest—which was now empty.
“Get ready, he’s coming!” I told Ariyl.
Then we saw John King, slipping and sliding across the wave-washed deck, heading for us. He must have figured we were watching the passageway.
Now is when he runs into Ludlo, I realized.
“David, keep him away!” urged Ariyl.
I ran down the sloping deck, intercepted the boy and dragged him back to the forward ladder.
“It’s eight bells!” he screamed at me.
“Touch that bell, and you’re dead!”
He believed me—he went saucer-eyed, then disappeared down the ladder.
A wave crashed on the deck, missing him but drenching me. I pulled out my stolen flintlock—it was soaked. Useless.
Then I heard the gunshots.