The Stolen Heart (30 page)

 

 

She struggled and choked, and rammed her bent knee into the back of
his leg, sending them both sprawling down the ladder and onto the
deck below.

 

 

“Damn it, Adrian, it’s me, Almira. I am called Al now. I’m the cabin
boy here on the
Trident
. You’re Adrian Hussey. We have two
sisters, Amy and Alice. I apprenticed them to Mrs. Jenkins, the
sempstress, with my share from this voyage. The captain helped me.
Jared Starbuck. He’s a good man. He thought I was a boy and gave me
a job. He’s a friend of Father’s. He said he would try to help us
find him. Find
you
. Please, Adrian, let me go!”

 

 

Adrian released his stranglehold on her, and stared. “My God,
Almira, it's you? It’s really you?” He looked as though he would
cry, and then let out another horrible cackling laugh.

 

 

“We’re too late. We’re both too late. The pirates took Father’s
ship, cast he and the crew who would not join adrift in a boat. They
were taken months ago. I’ve tried to discover any news I can about
them ever since we were captured a week or so ago.

 

 

"I hated the
Dolphin.
I was almost overjoyed to be taken
by pirates. That is, until the killing started. It was either join
them or get my throat cut. We’ve done terrible things, Sister.”

 

 

“Sush, I am Al now. Hit me. I can hear them coming. Hit me!”

 

 

He stared at her, so she hauled off and socked him in the jaw. “Hit
me, before they suspect something!” she urged.

 

 

He planted his fist squarely on her cheekbone, snapping her head
back. Her cheekbone immediately began to throb. She would have a
wonderful black eye for a while, but at least she would have her
life and remain undiscovered. She knew all too well what would
happen to her at the hands of the pirates if they found out she was
a woman. Their hands would be the least of her worries.

 

 

“Now, drag me up by the collar, and tell them you caught me trying
to steal some of the rations. We’ll talk later. You have to help us
try to re-take the ship.”

 

 

“You’re bloody mad,” he muttered, dragging her up the ladder by the
collar and shaking her like a terrier with a juicy rat in its mouth.

 

 

“Trouble here, lad?” Delgado asked, his eyes narrowing as he saw
Adrian coming up the hatch.

 

 

“Stealing food, sir.”

 

 

She dropped the cloth full of ship’s biscuit she had been holding to
lend credence to her story.

 

 

“You went to an awful lot of trouble to steal such miserable fare,”
he commented astutely.

 

 

Al shrugged. “When you been starved from Nantucket to Chile, you’ll
take anything you can get your hands on easy,” she said in her
gruffest tone.

 

 

“Hm. I would have thought you would help yourself to the captain’s
stores.”

 

 

“He was such a stingy bugger, he ate the same as us,” she replied,
glad for once to be able to tell the truth about something.

 

 

Well, not about the mean part, she amended inwardly. It was because
he had felt he had to suffer the depredations right along with his
men. His only weakness had been cake, she remembered fondly.

 

 

Then she told herself she was not going to do that again, think of
him in the past tense. Jared was alive and well, and she would be
seeing him again very soon.

 

 

“Well, since you are obviously not averse to stealing, I think we
will make you part of our pirate crew, eh? Try not to be too hard on
the boy, Adrian. He’s only young. Plenty of time to grow up and be
an even bigger villain than me, eh?”

 

 

Delgado laughed heartily, and turned away to the rest of the crew.

 

 

“Well, I must say, I expected a much greater fight. You almost
disappoint me with your docility. But make no mistake. Anyone who
decides to fight back from this point onward will be dealt with as a
mutineer.”

 

 

Everyone remained still, signaling they did not wish to fight.

 

 

“Those of you who wish to get into the boats and leave, to avoid any
trouble, may do so now. Otherwise, you’ll be transferred over to my
ship and put in chains, unless of course you wish to embrace the
pirate life. I always have need of good crew.”

 

 

Some of the men stepped forward and asked to be put ashore, while
the rest stood still. Delgado looked them all over, and finally
asked, ”So which of you is the Captain?”

 

 

“Dead, sir,” Perkins lied.

 

 

“Dead?”

 

 

“Boy here killed him. He was treating him terrible like, so he saw
his chance to mutiny and took it.”

 

 

“Him? A puny little thing like him?”

 

 

“Good with a knife though.”

 

 

Delgado flicked open her vest and removed the knife from her
waistband, and the pistol too. “And you, boy, are you willing to
join me?”

 

 

“So long as you don’t use me as your bum boy, aye.” She thanked the
horrible Mate for having expanded her education.

 

 

Delgado believed her motives for having killed her captain, and now
clapped her on the shoulder heartily.

 

 

“Not that kind of man! Heh heh. You will be safe from me, lad. Very
well, the mates, the harpooners, will come with me. Those who want
to leave, can get in the boats. And the carpenter and cooper and
others will remain here and help the prize crew with the ship.”

 

 

Perkins stood near Al, but she pushed him away. “Don’t you bloody
start on me!” she said, giving him a meaning look.

 

 

Perkins looked surprised, but then got the idea.

 

 

"You disciplined me at the captain's say so even when you knew it
were wrong, so that makes you an even bigger bugger than him."

 

 

Perkins stepped away then, much to her relief.

 

 

The last thing she wanted was them to think they were friends, not
after she had supposedly murdered the Captain. She'd also be able to
move about the pirate ship more freely if they thought she was a
turncoat.

 

 

The senior crew all stepped away from her as if they detested her,
so now that she was sure her story was in place, she went with
Adrian over the railing of the two ships as if eager to join the
pirate crew.

 

 

She tried not to look down into the water as the deck rolled. It
certainly seemed a long drop, and she was sure the baby had thrown
her off balance, and was making everything smell more mildewed and
briny.

 

 

She swallowed hard, and forced herself to climb down into the
whaleboat.

 

 

Six men went into a second boat to be cast ashore, the four ill men,
and two of the terrified greenhands, Josh and John. They were
stripped of any valuables and allowed only to go with what they
stood up in, with a sink of water and some ship's biscuit each, but
at least they were still alive.

 

 

She did the math as she waited for the whaleboat to fill with the
Trident
crew as instructed. Fourteen of them accounted for all told still
left half the crew aboard, and all of them she counted as friends.
The six of them going over to the pirate ship still gave the pirates
a huge advantage, but they had brains and surprise on their side.

 

 

What was even more remarkable as that the
Trident
crew
weren't shackled in any way. Delgado evidently must have believed
their story and that they were not going to put up a fight.
Captainless, a long way from home, outnumbered and outgunned, it
would have been suicide, and most crews knew it.

 

 

The fact that they had claimed Jared was no better than Killer Smith
had made the Spanish captain confident he had the upper hand, and
she was more than ready to exploit his cockiness when the time came.

 

 

She offered up a prayer of thanks to the Almighty that thus far, no
one had been injured, and sat carefully observing all of the crews'
movements above that she could see as the boatsteerers now began to
clamber down for the transfer, along with many of the wild-looking,
armed boarders. She tried not to shrink away in fear, and for the
most part they paid little attention to her apart from a couple
gripping a lock of blond hair and commenting to each other in their
native tongues.

 

 

As the boats filled and cast off to the pirate ship, she guessed
that about fifteen pirates had remained on board, and Cook and
Steward, Coop and Chip were now in charge, with the rest of the
greenhands left behind, all except George, who had declared his
intention of becoming a pirate so he could keep an eye on Al.

 

 

She was confident the men left aboard the
Trident
would be
able to execute her plan, and take back the ship. The problem was
going to be Delgado’s own vessel, the
Callao
. There were
not that many of her allies, and they would be watched closely.

 

 

But at least Adrian was there to tip the scales. He knew the ship by
now. She would assess her new battlefield as best she could, so long
as they were not cast in irons as soon as they were brought aboard.

 

 

And as they rowed over to the brig, a revised plan began to form in
her mind. How many of his
Dolphin
crewmates were aboard with
him? And how many of them could they convince to switch loyalties?

 

 

Once they were aboard, she sidled over to her brother.

 

 

“I need the head,” she said in a low tone. “Come with me so we can
try to talk.”

 

 

A few moments later her joined her in the other side of the wooden
outhouse aft of the ship. He left his door partially open to keep an
eye out for eavesdroppers, and then asked, “All right, Almira, what
is it?”

 

 

“These men are pirates. We can’t let them take our ship, and we
can’t let them continue their murderous career. Are there any men
with you from your old ship who would be willing to lend a hand
against them?”

 

 

“There might be, except for one thing. Very few if any of the men
can navigate. Even if we took the ship, how would we get to
civilization, the authorities?”

 

 

“We have Perkins and Wright the mates, and we also have me. I
learned coming down. We can manage, but we need you to sound out the
other men carefully. Will you do it? I want to get us home in one
piece to Amy and Alice. And we need to find Father. He's still
alive, I know it. If he were dead, we would have felt it.”

 

 

“Almira, really, it's not like you to be so superstitious. You sound
like the Papists down here," he said impatiently.

 

 

“I know what I feel. I had the same dream about pirates and a man on
a desolate island the whole way down here. As soon as I saw this
ship, I knew it was the one from my dream.

 

 

"I don’t care if you believe me about the dream, but you do know
that if the authorities catch you, they’ll hang you for piracy.”

 

 

“Or mutiny. Some of the men killed Captain Smith, you know. The
pirates were coming, the men saw their chance and took it. We tried
to avoid them, but they captured us anyway. Some of us fought. Some
of us died. They fed the corpses to the sharks. The battle wasn’t
pretty. These men are killers, Almira. I don't want you to end up--”

 

 

“It's Al now. Don’t forget it. And I have no intention of ending up
as fish food. We’re a long way from home. If you all stick to the
same story, you’ll come out of this in one piece. Just because you
made a mistake with the mutiny, does not mean that you have to turn
pirate. We can just say he was killed by the pirates and no one will
be any the wiser. It's not like it doesn't happen in these waters."

 

 

"Still, what they did was murder and I stood by and—"

 

 

"Yes, Adrian, you stood by," she said impatiently, "but you didn’t
kill him. So there will be plenty of time to come to your own peace
with God about that after we've saved the decent men aboard both
ships from these pirates. This is your chance at redemption,
Brother. Will you help me?"

 

 

"But the danger to you—"

 

 

"If they find out I'm a girl then death is going to seem a pretty
attractive fate compared to what they'll have in store for me, so
please, Adrian, you're either in or out, but I neeed to know now."

 

 

"All right. Father will kill me for—"

 

 

"Father isn't here. Don't let me be more of a man than you are. Grow
up and make up your own mind and steer a steady course, even if you
think you'll end up on the rocks. It's all any of us can do in this
perilous life."

 

 

"All right, tell me, then we need to go before we're missed."

 

 

"We're ready for tomorrow night at ten. The crew on the
Trident
will create a diversion, and we need to be ready to move.”

 

 

“But there are so many of them!”

 

 

“All we need are a few minutes, and the head of the snake. Once it's
cut off, the body might thrash about, but it will still be
finished.”

 

 

"Delgado is vicious, and smart too. How are you going to—"

 

 

"By watching and waiting. Think of everything you know about him, no
matter how slight, anything that can give us an advantage over him.
Like I said, we grab him, the crew will be taken by surprise. Maybe
not long, but long enough for us to take command." She stepped out
of the latrine and skirted around the mast and started to head
toward the main part of the deck.