Читать книгу To Slight the Jacket Blue - Bronwyn Sciance - Страница 10

The first mate died screaming with a cutlass through his heart. Ned furiously beat off a pirate, wounded him, and found himself back-to-back with his navigator. "How many left?" he yelled.

The navigator yelled back, "I count ten, sir. And there are easily ten times that facing us."

Ned swore. The truth was that he realised now there was no way to win this one. All he cared about was making sure the men he had left were treated fairly. He dropped his sword, knelt down, and held up his hands in surrender. Those men remaining under his command did the same.

A man in the tawdry finery of a pirate turned and yelled, "Cap'n! The scurvy dogs be surrenderin'!"

The crowd parted, revealing a tall man, every inch the pirate captain. The sun was behind him, and thus Ned could not quite make out his features, but he could see long hair and a full beard beneath a tricorn hat. In the ultimate mockery and contempt for the Royal Navy, he wore a tattered blue naval officer's coat. Ned wanted to tear it off of the man, but kept his attitude of surrender.

"Arr, so, what have we here?" the pirate captain snarled. "So ye be the brazen an' the bold who dared to attack me ship?"

Ned bowed his head further. "Captain Bluejacket," he said, taking care to speak distinctly and with the refinement he had learned in the Navy, "I have heard of you and of your reputation. I know to expect no mercy for myself, but I humbly request that you deal leniently with my crew. After all, they were only following my orders."

There was a brief pause, then Bluejacket laughed. "Haharr, you don't know so much about piracy, do you? Ye men of the Danae, I offer ye a simple choice. Ye may join me, or be cast overboard. Swim fer shore if ye so desire." Ned felt a light sword prick on his back. "All except for ye, ye fo'c'sle codfish. Hand over the jacket."

Before he could move, the jacket was forcibly pulled off of him. Ned wisely kept his head down. The captain spoke again. "Throw the men who so choose over the sides, but drag this man to my cabin! From commander to cabin boy seems a fitting punishment to me, eh, lads?"

The crew jeered with laughter. Ned was dragged cruelly upright and shoved into what he assumed was the captain's cabin. The door slammed shut behind him, and he could hear the cruel laughter through the thick wood.

Ned straightened himself and looked around. He had been a cabin boy before, then worked his way up through the Royal Navy, and as such he had been in any number of captains' cabins before. He knew that, while there was a certain similarity to each one, every captain or commander added his own personal touches, made it his own. He was startled, therefore, to realize that in style and appearance, this cabin very much resembled his own on the Danae. A particular object on a small table next to the bed drew his eye. He was starting towards it when the door banged open. Ned froze and dropped humbly to his knees.

"Well, now, cully," the voice of Captain Bluejacket hissed, "what d'ye have to say for yourself?"

Ned kept his gaze directed down at the floor. "I thank you for sparing my life, Captain."

"Well, of course I did, lad," the captain said in a somehow different voice. "Or should I say...Ned?"

Ned's head shot up. He leaped to his feet, whirling around to face the notorious pirate captain, his eyes wide, his face pale.

"Sam?!"