LITMIR.BIZ

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muster.”

      “But what about Mama? I thought she were wounded in the attack?”

      “No. It weren’t then.”

      Little Jane raised an eyebrow. She’d never heard this part of the story.

      “The two of us sailed through the attack of the French ships just capital. Afterward, I ain’t thought much when yer mum went off with the rescue party to pick up them remaining boys what was left on the Newton. She wanted to go find Ishiro, if she could. Who’d a guessed there was one surviving French soldier left what had boarded the ship before the worst of our attack? The blackguard was hiding behind a cannon and sees her stroll up on deck and jumps her with a saber. It were him what struck her down. They brought her back to me—” His voice wavered. “She were alive, but she weren’t waking. It were a whole two days afore she woke up.”

      Long John’s speech was full-on trembling now, but he pressed on with the tale, seeming unable to stop. Overcome with emotion as he was, he still could not bear to let a story go unfinished.

      “Ishiro and thirty others was all what made it out of the wreck of the Newton and twelve died of their wounds in the weeks after. From the Pieces, we had fifty wounded and twenty-five what died later on. The Fleece went down with all souls, including her captain. He was a good man as ever I served by.

      “Ishiro came out of it the best a’ any of us, with no more’n a broke nose, but he ain’t never commanded another ship since that day.”

      “Why? It weren’t his fault, surely?”

      “I dunno. I think he just didn’t want the responsibility no more. I thought he were joking then, but he just turns to me and he says, ‘I won’t have a single man’s blood on me hands again. I ain’t havin’ it on me conscience — men dying on my command.’ Course he don’t seem to have much trouble with butchering up them fish for dinner, but he wouldn’t budge an inch on taking back his post as captain no matter how much I talked him up. And I prides meself on being something of a convincing man! Stubborn as a mule he is, and that’s a fact. Leastways, he’s me mate and he got his reasons. Not to mention, he’s a good cook. But it should’ve been him what is the Pieces’s captain, to tell it plain, not me and yer mum. We was only the second-stringers.”

      Little Jane stared at her scratchy blue camlick blanket and thought about how some of the other sailors treated Ishiro, how they lorded it over him, loudly demanding their food on the double. She knew the crewmen would never dream of speaking to her mother or father that way. Then she thought about how much she didn’t know about Ishiro or about her own mother and father even. She wondered what more she had never bothered to ask and what everyone else always simply presumed she knew.

      “Finally, yer mum and me drag our sorry carcasses home to the Spyglass—” continued Long John.

      This part, Little Jane remembered. “Aye! Jonesy told me! He said the men fell to the left and right of her in admiration, so eager was they to prostrate themselves at her feet because she was a real true hero — a noble captain ready to sacrifice herself for the lives of her crew!”

      “That’s what Jonesy says, is it?” asked Long John wryly.

      “Well, uh, more or less,” answered Little Jane, unsure of what he was driving at.

      “Little Jane, the only man in history what ever fell before yer mama she didn’t cut down herself with a sword or pistol were me, and that’s only account of I got me peg leg stuck between a pair of paving stones. Don’t let him make us out to be better than we was, love, for Jonesy’s younger and he don’t remember the way I does. We was never heroes and them folks at Smuggler’s Bay didn’t exactly bow down to us either — in fact, they near killed us for what a mess we’d made of things — their dear ones brought back wounded or dead, with nothing for wages. Can’t say as I blame them. Smuggler’s Bay don’t have a big population to begin with. In case you ever wondered why there be so few children your own age back on the island — well, that there’s your answer.”

      Little Jane nodded. She had never even thought about it.

      “Not enough men and plenty of families set on leaving. They was bad times, those days. How I ever kept this misbegotten hide o’ mine out of the fire, I ain’t too sure.”

      “What was Mum like?” she asked. “Back in those days, I mean.”

      “Much the same as she be now,” he said with a smile, happy to be turning to an infinitely more pleasant topic. “Magnificent. Your mum, she’s got an adventurer’s heart with an explorer’s soul and a mind as bright as her name to match. And beautiful, Lord! She got herself a light on in there, Little Jane, and, you know, it glows.”

      Little Jane blinked. “What? Like a lamppost?”

      “Maybe,” said Long John. “I ain’t much of a poet, but I do love ’er. I have since I were young as you.”

      Little Jane thought about this, tried to visualize her parents as children, tried to imagine herself falling in love with someone, but could not picture it. Maybe it was just the strange heat of her bandaged hands distracting her. She unfolded them, placing them down flat on the surface of her thighs, trying to ease the hot ache in her palms.

      Her father sighed and patted her on the arm. “You do something what’s never been tried before, Little Jane, it ain’t right not to expect a few cock-ups. It just shows you’ve lived.” He kissed her on the forehead above the welt where the rope had struck her. “Wear it with pride, love, wear it with pride.”

      After her father left, Little Jane lay in bed, letting the hammock rock her back and forth to the motion of the waves. It didn’t bother her that her injuries would leave scars. A real pirate always bore plenty of marks from battle, brawling, and shipboard accidents. She just wished she could’ve got hers as a result of some brave action, rather than a stupid mistake. Instead of recalling a glorious battle or duel of honour whenever she looked at her scarred hands or forehead thereafter, she’d be reminded of the time she had humiliated herself and drawn the ire of nearly everyone onboard. She wished she could just hide under Ishiro’s drawing books at the Spyglass until all the other sailors forgot she had even been born.

      Thinking of the towering stacks of books back at the inn reminded her of the picture her father had been so drawn to. The sketchbook on her lap was still open to the drawing of the three boys in the galley. Idly, she wondered what had happened to them at Anguilla. Had they died with the others on the Newton or the Fleece? Had they survived to take pride in their battle scars attained through circumstances more honourable than hers? Or had they simply not gone to Anguilla at all?

      She’d ask him about that another day.

      At last, she drifted away into pleasant dreams where Ned Ronk and his clasp-knife held no sway, and the Newton and Golden Fleece sailed once more.

      Long John mulled things over as he stood on the gently rolling deck surveying the crew at work on the rigging. It was late for such adjustments, but all the excitement of the day had taken up valuable time. The glowing blue of twilight was slowly seeping down to the orange stroke of sky that surrounded the setting sun.

      Long John watched from the shadows now, paying close attention to which men Ned Ronk talked to, which seemed the friendliest to him.

      Somewhere in the back of his mind, Long John heard his father’s warning: “Be careful who ye wrong in life. Choose your enemies with care.” His father, Long John Silver the First, was one to know it, too. He had wronged some bad enemies in his day and lost much by it.

      The situation with Ned puzzled Long John. He thought himself a patient captain, a good captain, a just captain. He and Bonnie Mary had been fully within their rights as captains to whip the boatswain. There were plenty of captains at sea who would have hung a man for less cause than Ned Ronk had given him. The man certainly deserved it. Long John knew if one of his old captains had chastised him so, he would’ve accepted

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