The Pirate Captain - By Kerry Lynne Page 0,6

crabs and jellyfish.

For all its adventuresome sound, the bare truth: sailing was insufferably boring, a mind-numbing constancy of sky and water. Caught between the dread of what awaited at Port Royal and the staggering boredom of the sea, the desire for land was beginning to win. The ship’s time was marked by a watch bell, a baffling sequence of peals that she soon grew to ignore, measuring time instead by the sun or moon. As the watch bells counted off the hours—two rings not necessarily meaning two o’clock—she spent vast amounts of time contemplating the different aspects of waves: how one compared to another, compared to those from the day or week before. When her neck grew stiff with looking down, she looked up through the rigging and sails, and sought hidden shapes in the clouds. At night, she gazed through the port to see how much further the North Star had shifted since the night before. Too dark, too cold, too tired, or too wet were her motivations to retire to a cramped bunk, where she stared out the porthole at the stars, waiting for some shift in the universe to change them.

Idleness having never been her nature, she had tried to become more involved with the ship itself, but soon surrendered in the face of a language that defied comprehension: cat’s head, sheave holes, cheek blocks, cringles, fish pendants, and lizards, with a fore bowline not to be confused with the foretop bowline, which was entirely different from the foretop gallant bowline. She was only slightly confused at being told—with little patience—that there were no ropes on a ship; those things hanging everywhere were called sheets. Let one not overlook, however, that a sheet could be a tack, a simple change in the wind making it a leech.

And so, she watched the antics of a troop of sea hogs—dolphins, as called by some—cavorting in the curve of the bow wave. Their silvery backs arching through the indigo water, they almost seemed to smile up at her before streaking away, only to return to frolic alongside once more. She shielded her eyes from the sun to watch a small covey of birds, their black, tapered bodies sharp against the sky. Swooping, they touched their feet to the water, hovered, and then spiraled skyward.

Chambers came beside her and inclined his head toward the birds. “Mother Carey’s chickens; the wife of Davy Jones. They fly forever, never touching land, hatching their eggs under their wings. Harbingers of storms they are: the more you see, the worse the storm is to be. They say the sea hogs will lead a shipwrecked mariner to shore. If they leap entirely out of the water, ’tis a gale coming.”

“You say that as if you don’t believe it,” she said, intent on the fish.

Her experience with mariners’ superstitions had begun early. The day she purchased passage, she had been hustled aboard, Chambers anxious to weigh anchor that day, since the next was the thirteenth of the month, and no ship sailed on such a date. Sharks had been sighted at the stern, “smelling death.” The subsequent fever and death of Mrs. Littleton and her daughter came as no surprise, and was met with not a little relief. Their bodies were quickly commended to the sea, being bad luck to have them aboard. Women aboard was the worst of luck. The tension had failed to lessen with the passing of the Littletons. One would have thought fewer women would be good news, but it was quickly pointed out that two people had just died. What stronger proof of bad luck did one require?

Calypso, a woman, was goddess of the sea, her name often invoked for protection, as was St. Bride. The bowsprit was the bare-busted figure of a woman, mermaids—harbingers of good luck—were the hope of every sailor, and the ship was referred to as “she.” And yet, women were bad luck.

It defied all logic, but made perfect sense to the men. Not much more could be said.

Chambers’ shoulders moved faintly under his coat. “I’ve been at sea since I was a squeaker near Fitzgibbons’ age. I’ve seen enough to know anything is possible, and nothing is impossible. Whether by the hand of God, or some other power, who’s to know? This humble soul is in no position to question.”

He stood quietly watching the fish, falling into one of those pensive silences of his that always left her feeling a bit off kilter.

“We’ll be making Kingston in