Jill couldn’t quite bring herself to go belowdecks.
The crew gathered, preparing to attack, and it wasn’t what Jill was expecting. They didn’t look like warriors ready for battle—trained, lined up, weapons prepared. Instead, they stood on the side of the ship, or clung to parts of the rigging, baring their teeth and shouting curses. Some of them fired their guns, making noise and putting black puffs of smoke in the air, which began to smell like burned sulfur. A pair of the cannons had been rolled forward, and doors in the side of the ship opened so the mouths protruded, visible to the other ship. A couple of men held lit torches, waving them over their heads, which seemed like a terrible thing to do on a wooden boat. Others shook their swords, held daggers in their teeth, jumped from mast to deck and back again, and screamed with laughter. A few had smeared lines of soot on their cheeks; a few others had taken off their hats and shaken out their hair to make it wild and tangled.
They looked like madmen.
As they drew close to the other ship, Jill could see the other crew running in a panic. Men on the masts began loosening lines, letting sails hang heavy and useless, leaving their ship effectively helpless, dead in the water. A flag that had been flying on the central mast—it had a red and white pattern, but Jill couldn’t identify it—disappeared.
A man in a fancy, decorated coat stood by the side closest to the Diana and waved a white handkerchief over his head.
The other ship was surrendering without a fight.
The crew of the Diana cheered and fired another round from their pistols. Captain Cooper, who’d been watching the other ship through her spyglass, Abe at her side, lowered the instrument and gave a nod of satisfaction.
“Jenks, prepare for boarding. Let’s put on a good show for them,” she said. The first mate shouted orders. Ropes and hooks appeared, the helm turned, and the sails went slack as the ship slowed and came up alongside the other.
It was all a show. Side by side, the Diana was clearly smaller than the other ship, which was wide, large, and presumably packed with cargo. But it didn’t seem to have any cannons or as many crew members—only a dozen stood on the deck. Maybe it could have outrun them, but it hadn’t even tried. The Diana’s crew had won by intimidation. Somehow, it made them even more frightening than if they had won by force.
The crew who were involved with throwing ropes and hooks over to the other ship continued hanging on the side, brandishing weapons, shouting war cries and insults to the other crew, who watched, backing away from the side, wide-eyed and cowering.
The Diana’s crew put woven mats over the side to buffer and protect the hulls and used the ropes to pull the other ship close and secure it. A group of the pirates—still armed, still wild and cackling—escorted their captain over the side and to the other ship. Abe, Jenks, and Henry were among them. Jill moved closer to the side to watch.
The other crew stumbled and scurried away from the approaching pirates. The other captain, the man in the fancy coat—bright green material, with gold braid and buttons—approached, though warily. When Captain Cooper emerged to greet him, the other captain quailed.
“Oh God, it’s you!”
“That’s right, sir, you have been captured by that bloody pirate queen, harridan of the waves and witch of the sea. And you are very, very wise to offer yourselves so freely. Though I rather wish you’d put up a fight—I’m disappointed I won’t be murdering you and sinking your boat. Now—one word of argument from any of you and I will.” She made a stunning picture standing before him, hands on hips, her coat buttoned, her high boots polished, her hat firm on her long, curling hair, and her face like that of an avenging goddess. Her mob of demons was arrayed around her.
The other captain was on his knees now. “Please, have mercy, I have a wife at home, small children—a daughter! Be merciful, they’ll be lost without me!”
“On the contrary I rather suspect they’d be better off, given what you are.”
“What—” the captain stammered, then went silent.
Jill straightened, curious, as if the movie in front of her had just gotten to the good part.
“Abe. Bring ’em up,” Marjory said, never looking away from her captured counterpart.
The quartermaster called to several of the crewmates, who followed him down the dark hatch into the ship’s hold.
Just as they’d captured them, the Diana’s crew held back their victims by intimidation and possibly reputation. Their seeming madness inspired fear. The other crew cowered, shoving at each other to get farther away from the pirates, and never made a move to resist.
Jill expected Abe and the others to carry up crates, boxes, barrels. Maybe even sacks of gold. The treasure from a million pirate stories. But that’s not what emerged from below.
Abe guided a person, holding the man’s arm, helping him step carefully. He was thin, weak, barely able to stand. He moved slowly, shuffling—iron bands and chains weighed down his ankles. His skin was black, his dark hair short and matted. Abe led the man onto the deck and to the side. Behind him came another man with chains banded to his ankles. Behind him, another. And another, and another. Abe and the others led twenty men and women in chains onto the deck.
This was a slave ship.
“Valuable cargo, isn’t it then?” Marjory said to the slaver captain.
“I just transport ’em. That’s all, where’s the fault?”
Captain Cooper planted her foot on his shoulder and shoved. He sprawled and begged again for mercy.
When the slaves were all on deck, Abe began leading them over the side to the Diana. It took a long time. With the iron chains, they moved so slowly. Many looked sick besides, thin and weak. They all had red sores where the bands cut into their skin. As they came aboard, they passed by Jill where she leaned on the side. They never looked up; their heads were bowed, their eyes downcast. She wanted to reach out to them, offer some kind of comfort, but she didn’t know what to say. So she just watched.
Now that some of the gun smoke had cleared, a new smell tinged the air, drifting from the other ship. The smell of illness, of people living packed together without washing, without clean water, without anything. This had stopped being anything like a movie. Or a dream. This couldn’t be a dream. Jill didn’t have the imagination to produce a dream—nightmare—like this. This wasn’t a dream, and she wasn’t going to wake up.
Back on the slave ship, Captain Cooper was looming over her prisoner.
“I think I will also be taking that pretty coat from you.”
When he didn’t move quickly enough, she grabbed the collar and pulled as he tried to scuttle away. With little apparent effort, Cooper twisted and yanked, and the coat was off and in her hands. She tossed it to Henry, turned away from her prisoner, and never looked back.
To her own crew she said, “Move on, scurvy dogs, scour this wreck for what we can use. Quick now, so’s not to spend more time among scum than we need to.”
This was obviously a process they’d been through before. Several of the crew kept watch over the prisoners on the deck of the captured ship, keeping muskets trained on them and threatening death. The rest went all over the ship, looking in crates, trunks, and casks. The sounds of smashing and breaking carried from belowdecks; the slaver captain winced at every jolt.
Soon, a procession started from the other ship to the Diana, crew members carrying not just wooden boxes and crates, but also coils of rope, bundles of sailcloth, and other tools and equipment of obvious use on a sailing ship. None of it was the kind of treasure Tom had gone on about. But Jill considered—what good would chests of gold do out here? These supplies would keep the Diana sailing for months.