Читать книгу The Little Jane Silver 2-Book Bundle - Adira Rotstein - Страница 7

“How to Be

a Good Pirate”

Bonnie Mary sat in the captains’ cabin staring at the star chart on the table in frustration. She’d tried every subtle trick in the book to get rid of the new magistrate, short of actually chasing him off with a loaded musket, but with no success. Without her husband’s silver tongue on her side, it was hopeless. The problem as she saw it was that Villienne seemed genuinely oblivious to almost everything she did. Threats went unnoticed, no matter how thinly veiled, and hints of bribery fell on ears more preoccupied with listening to the whales mating in the bay than to the clink of gold coins.

Even her most recent scheme of posting handbills around the island luring all chemists in the area to gather in faraway Bermuda for a phony “International Conference on Sodium,” had failed. It was really quite exasperating. At long last they had been forced to sail, leaving the hapless magistrate still in possession of his position, much to her disappointment.

While Bonnie Mary surveyed the ship’s star charts at her desk, Little Jane worked on “How to Be a Good Pirate.” Though she had intended to use the time to write up more observations, all she could think about that day was Ned Ronk, the ship’s boatswain. Quite by accident, she had acquired her first real enemy and now he threatened to derail all her best-laid plans.

It was the boatswain’s job onboard to make sure the crew did what the captains asked of them. Thus positioned, Ned Ronk would have been the perfect person to teach Little Jane the elusive secret of superior piracy, but to her immense frustration, he would tell her nothing of the running of the ship, disregarding even her most basic inquiries. Then, when it became apparent that ignoring her would not stop her from asking him further questions, he barred her from the deck during all his shifts. Little Jane was furious.

Ned Ronk had been with the Pieces of Eight for about four years. Under his rule the crew worked together like a well-oiled machine. Though his style may have been rougher than that of the previous boatswain, it was unquestionable that Ned Ronk got results. Crew discipline was at an all-time high, targets were being met, and the captains couldn’t be more pleased with the crew’s performance.

For her part, however, Little Jane was not impressed. Even prior to her banishment from the deck, she had never liked the boatswain. The reasons for her contempt of him were difficult for her to articulate, but being small and unobtrusive, she saw things the captains did not. For instance, Ned Ronk would always smile and bow politely to the captains when they were present, but as soon as they were out of sight, he acted differently.

Though Ned didn’t rely too heavily on the whip, he had other means at his disposal, equally cruel and cutting, for controlling the men. He delighted in tormenting anyone he considered beneath him, picking up on and exaggerating for the benefit of other crewmembers any imagined defect he noticed among them, mocking and embarrassing them into submission.

Little Jane swore she couldn’t hear the lookout, Sharpova, cry “Land-ho” without hearing the echo of Ned mimicking the Russian’s accent, or watch Rufus, the cabin boy, swab the deck without recalling Ned laughing as he revealed to all how Rufus still slept with a photograph of his mother under his pillow.

It had got to the point where every man was afraid to call the least bit of attention to himself for fear of drawing Ned’s mirth and being made to look ridiculous before his shipmates. Only the rougher, more bullying men of the crew, like Lobster and Cabrillo, truly enjoyed Ned’s company. The rest merely followed his orders with the resignation common to all those who live in fear.

What could create such a canker of cynicism and negativity inside a person, and yet leave its host’s life unconsumed, Little Jane did not know. But what she did know, just as surely as she knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, was that Ned did not like children.

Actually, Ned Ronk detested children even more than Little Jane suspected. To his mind children were excitable, overly-enthusiastic little beasts, who wept if they scratched their knees and expected you to go into raptures if they picked a daisy. Children to him were like insect larva — necessary for the continuation of the species, but inherently weak, soft, and useless until they grew to a proper size. The affection otherwise reasonable adults had for things they deemed cute made no sense to him. The very words cute and childish set his teeth on edge. The best thing a child could do in his opinion was to keep quiet and stay out of an adult’s way. And yet, much to Ned’s exasperation, certain children (meaning Little Jane), failed to understand how a child ought to behave. These disgusting brats seemed to think their mere existence was a fact to be applauded. Any child who insisted on being not only seen, but heard as well, and heard often, annoyed him beyond all measure.

Though his attitude was plain to Little Jane, it was infuriatingly unapparent to most adults. And so Ned Ronk continued on in her parents’ employ unhindered.

However, some slights cannot be tolerated, even in the world of adults, even when disguised by polite manners and a proper outward appearance. And so it was that Ned Ronk’s reign of humiliation came to a rather sticky end fifteen days after the Pieces set sail.

At first it did nothing but please Little Jane that she should be the instrument through which all those unfairly denigrated by Ned Ronk should observe his comeuppance. Later, though, she would come to seriously regret her involvement in the matter.

It was a cloudy Tuesday when, lounging amid the coils of rope on the quarterdeck, Little Jane noticed two sailors playing dice. They were Lobster and Tonqui, who, along with Cabrillo the caulker, happened to be Ned’s closest mates onboard. Sometimes they would take to bullying crewmembers in Ned’s stead. This did not bother Ned. In fact, it seemed to amuse him, and he often turned a blind eye to their transgressions.

After a few minutes, Ned and Cabrillo arrived to join the game, cups of grog in hand. At first Ned only listened. Lobster talked, as he often did, of lobsters. With great patience he tried to explain to Cabrillo and Tonqui the difference between shedders and hard-shell lobsters, but seeing they had no interest in this stimulating topic, conversation gradually turned to other things. Lobster, Tonqui, and Cabrillo soon fell to talking less and less, leaving Ned to dominate the discussion, as usual.

“Whoever heard of a respectable ship with two captains!” scoffed Ned Ronk. “And while we’re at it, whoever heard tell of a female captain at all! I tells you, mates — I tells you ’cause I truly care about the dignity of this here crew — that we’re the laughingstock of every port from Tortugua to Tokyo, we are!”

Little Jane’s ears perked at these words, insolent as they were. She listened as they talked of Captains Silver and Bright — although that was not what Ned called them, dismissively referring to his superiors as “that feeble old cripple” and “his harpy cow.” Cabrillo had only just muttered a faint protest at this comment when Ned Ronk spotted Little Jane hiding in the rope pile. Ned started to say something to her, but she was too frightened of him to stay and listen. She leapt up like a shot and was in the hold quicker than Ned or his mates could get to her.

There was little question how word of Ned’s speech reached the ears of the captains that night.

Bonnie Mary and Long John were never great proponents of flogging compared to other pirate captains. Even the most experienced sailor made a mistake or ran a little lazy now and again they figured, with no ill feeling toward captain or disrespect for ship intended.

But Ned’s talk was malicious, pure and simple, and they had seen the bloody results of such idle chatter when left unchecked on other vessels. There were reasons sailors were superstitious about speaking the word mutiny out loud on a ship, even in jest. Although he might be the gentlest of God’s creatures by nature, a ship’s captain could ill afford to show weakness, a fact that went double for a captain who happened to be a woman or one suspected of any sort of fragility of person.

Usually it was the boatswain who did the flogging aboard ship, but in this case the dubious honour fell to Bonnie Mary and Long John themselves.

In a well-calculated display for the crew, Ned Ronk was tied up with his face to the mizzen-mast and the charge of “mutinous speech” read. If any crewman still dared to think of Captain Silver as a “feeble cripple,” or Bonnie Mary as a “harpy cow,” the ability to stand in sweltering heat engaged in the exhausting business of thoroughly whipping the tar out of a man, certainly put those theories to rest.

Little Jane had thought that it would please her to see Ned Ronk brought low and shamed before his mates. She had not truly believed such a despicable person could have feelings like other people. Certainly, she had not expected him to cry. But cry he did, and in such a piteous manner that Little Jane had to keep herself from yelling out “Stop!” as the whipping continued. She did not know how her parents could take it.

It seemed to take forever, but eventually the flogging was over. Lancashire and Sharpova took the boatswain down below to tend to his wounds. Tonqui, Cabrillo, and Lobster were forbidden to associate with him until they arrived in Habana.

Even with Ned out of sight, Little Jane still felt squeamish. There was even more for her to worry about now. How would she ever protect herself from the boatswain’s revenge?

The day after the flogging, Little Jane spent a fruitful morning following Long John around, taking notes for “How to Be a Good Pirate.” By this time Little Jane had already filled a quarter of the exercise book and was still going strong.

As she walked, she listened to commands like “Raise the mizzen-mast! Tighten the topsail! Schooner off the port bow!” and “Look lively!” delivered by Long John in a booming voice like the crack of thunder.

She noted “cuss and shout a lot” as a tip to her future self.

Dutifully she practised yelling out various nautical phrases in the privacy of her parents’ cabin, pleased to hear how naturally they tripped off her tongue with the booming pitch necessary for an aspiring young captain. Brimming with confidence, she now awaited the perfect moment to demonstrate her newfound ability.

One morning, while Bonnie Mary was off studying the star charts, Little Jane noticed her father slip away to the ship’s head. The coast was clear.

Throwing caution to the wind, Little Jane shouted at the pilot: “North to starboard! Starboard to the wedgeward side! Hoist the te’gallant scuppers! Loosen up the rear admiral sheets! Dolphin catcher spars at ready! Look lively now!”

Much to her surprise, though, outside the four walls of the captains’ cabin, out on the wide deck, with the sounds of the open sea, her voice was far from booming. Instead, it sounded thin and piping, and whatever little sense there was in what she said was whipped away by the strength of the wind.

Half the crew couldn’t even hear her and the half who did just stared at her confounded, the ropes slack in their hands.

Ned Ronk, of course, was the first to intervene.

He had been standing by the cutter, smoking his pipe, the heavy shadow of the tarp hiding him from Little Jane’s view.

Now he favoured her with a sly grin. “What?” He gloated as he noticed Little Jane’s shocked expression. “Don’t suppose you’re the only one ever played hide and go seek, did ya? Now I think it’s time you got off me deck!” He closed the gap between them in a two massive strides.

Before Little Jane could flinch, he grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and dragged her away. With the other sailors all still tangled up in the rigging or too scared to challenge the mighty boatswain’s authority, and the captains out of sight for the moment, it was Ned’s turn to get even.

With Little Jane in hand and the fresh whip scars on his back tingling with anticipation, Ned slipped into the gap between the cutter boat and the railing, taking care not to let Little Jane wriggle free.

“Oh, this is mighty rich,” he sneered. “Wait till old Mummy and Poppy hear tell of this t’do! Getting all them blokes tangled up in the rigging — they won’t take kindly to that, I dare say! Not that they’d ever fault their perfect little Princess Janey for it, oh no.”

As his fingers tightened around her arms Little Jane shivered.

“You really are so little lass, so very light. Why, you know, I think all it would take is one little gust of wind to blow you clear overboard!”

What did he think he was doing? Looking into Ned’s hard, depthless eyes on that deceptively sunny morning, she could see her future as an infamous privateer truncated by a sudden act of base murder …

Such was her terror that she little registered the boatswain’s rough hands as he hoisted her up by the armpits and held her over the railing.

She hung from his powerful arms, staring at the ocean below her with detached fascination, as if viewing one of Ishiro’s charcoal drawings come to life. There was the huge grey sea framed by her feet, and nothing but constantly shifting waves below, rolling along in mesmerizing motion. Though they were high up on the deck, still the sea spat its spray up at her, stinging her eyes and chilling her bare toes. She trembled with cold and fear. And was it her imagination, or did the hands at her armpits began to loosen? Fingers letting go … Oh! She was too afraid to turn around …

And then, above the roar of the sea, the comforting sound of wood treading on wood — step-scrape, step-scrape, step-scrape, followed by a shower of oaths in that cracked tenor voice she knew so well.

“Blast it!” swore her father. “I told them to swab this bleedin’ deck! Ned!”

The boatswain was so startled that he nearly dropped Little Jane into the drink then and there. Instead, he deliberately steeled himself to calmness before setting Little Jane back down on the sturdy timbers of the Pieces in the narrow space between the cutter and the rail.

“Pa—” Little Jane began to cry, but Ned Ronk clapped a huge hand over her mouth.

“Mention any o’ this,” he whispered menacingly, “and you make the acquaintance of me good friend here in your sleep.” He whipped out his clasp-knife, its point glinting deadly silver in the sunlight.

Silently, she nodded, and the knife vanished back into its sheath.

Little Jane’s legs melted away beneath her like two soft sticks of butter as Ned let go of her. When she looked up again, the boatswain was gone. She was alone.

Little Jane stood up, still shaking, and went to find her father.