“Yes. And I don’t intend to take prisoners afterward quartermaster. See to it the crew is understanding. If the new members have a change of heart when the time comes, I want them dealt with swiftly as well.”
“Aye Captain. No Quarter.” Chibs replied with a satisfied grin.
H.M.S Valor
27 Sept 1808
19 Degrees 22 minutes N, 74 Degrees 13’ W
Cobb’s body swayed with the pitch of the ship, still dangling from the noose against the backdrop of red and purple evening glory in the Caribbean sky. His face remained twisted in a grotesque expression of pain and panic while his body remained rigid. The soft creaking of the thick line suspending his corpse sounded with every pitch and sway of the ship, death’s mocking serenade. The promise of gold payment for timely capture of the pirate ship ahead fomented the crew to action after the grizzly end of their mutinous leader, they had drawn together for renewed purpose before the dripping blood from his neck had ceased.
Tim largely ignored any sideways looks he’d had to endure before Cobb swung, afterward it seemed as if the crew around him had galvanized at the promise of opulent payments. How quickly they forget, he thought, of their brethren I fed to the creatures of the deep, how beautiful a thing greed can be. Sails snapped and popped in the wind as the crew made adjustments to regain on their prey who in the waning hours of daylight, had made a remarkable increase in speed. Tim cared little for sailing and knew even less; his only concern remained the recovery of what remained of the money owed to the Order and silencing every voice who could give accurate details to anyone of consequence.
Evening burned its way beneath the waves of the western horizon and the skies were soon littered with a million brilliant jewels of light, glittering and shimmering off the rippling seas. With the sunlight gone the night brought a chill which Tim cursed along with the never-ending sawing sway of the deck. His stare remained locked onto the sails on the horizon, even when they had gained back the distance lost earlier and drew even nearer, he could not bring himself to remove his eyes. His trapped focus was more than a tunnel vision of blind hatred. He was afraid. He feared losing the ship to the night or being left at too far a range to regain their position. He dreaded the possibility that she was manned by a seasoned crew of pirates that would ambush them from some position along the coast. But more than that, with the ever present creaking of Cobb dangling above on his noose, Tim feared losing the promise of payment for the crew and the inevitable retribution that would occur when some of their uttered oaths were no longer lost to the glitter of promised gold.
A slender moon did little to illuminate the night, but what light she did cast play along the pirate’s sails marking their position long into the darkness. Tim’s vigil on the bow outlasted the darkness of night as he stubbornly refused to allow the fleeing pirates a moment unwatched. Fiery columns of morning stretched their way into the sky, invading the heavens and slowly drowning the light of their brilliance. His eyes and legs ached, and his back felt as sour as his mood when he finally relented to sitting down at a bench near the helm. Tim had spent his life around soldiers and considered himself one still. Sailors were a different breed entirely, hard men for certain, but peculiar in Tim’s eyes. Some soldiers he had worked with were superstitious, which Tim considered a sign of lower intelligence, but it seemed almost every man aboard the Valor was concerned at some point or another about the bad luck of this or that. Just hearing it exhausted him as his mind reeled through constant reasonings to disprove their archaic beliefs.
Morning wore on and the sun edged it’s way free of the embrace of the horizon, basking the seas in it’s warm glorious light. Tim remained seated on his bench, closely observing the helmsman while regularly peering out over the bow to make sure the sails they pursued hadn’t somehow eluded them without his constant watch. A grizzled petty officer approached him, unshaven and barefoot with horridly crooked and stained teeth, the man pulled a pipe from the clutches of his bite and pointed it toward the weather hatch leading below deck. His rambling brogue came across to Tim as utter gibberish, incoherent and undecipherable. Tim furrowed his brow at the rattle of the petty officer, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “What?” The response came even faster and less understandable. A younger seaman heard the exchange and approached behind the petty officer.
“He’s saying, we need to shove off some of the ballast below decks to make better speed, Yankee. Except he’s a damned Scot, so he talks like his arse is on fire and his tongue is swollen. Do you want us to?” the sailor spat.
“Do we need the ballast? Is this something we will all be regretting later?” Tim inquired with a thoughtful glare.
“No, she’ll handle differently, sure, but we can make do. Even if the weather kicks up, we’d be doing well to have a touch more freeboard, Sir,” the reply came back in the sailor’s gravelly rasp of voice. Tim thought for a second how wretched these sailors all seemed and yet were so competent at their craft.
“Yes. Let’s be rid of what we can. Make all haste to catch that ship. I’d like to be walking over the corpses of her crew by nightfall.” Tim drawled out.
“We’ll have it done then. Sir.”
The wrecked cannon hulks that had been secured in the hold as ballast crashed into the water as they were dropped overboard. One by one they were sent hurtling towards the bottom with a loud clap against the
