Life and Love at Sea: A Pirate Love and Adventure Story

Chapter Eight

The wind blowing through my hair. The delicious smeel of a soft sea breeze filling my nose. This was the life I had been missing since I so reluntanly left it six years ago. 

I spent the next three weeks swinging through the air on ropes, scaling up and down the mast, furling and unfurling the sails so that they would catch the wind at the perfect angle, searching the horizon for trouble, and in rare,wonderful, shortperiods of time, being taught the finer points of steering by Davy. 

I climbing up the mast to the crows nest when I saw it. "Davy! There's something coming!" I yelled, half terrified, half unsure about the thing that was terrifying me. 

"What is it?" he yelled back up to me.  

"I'm− I'm not sure," I studdered. "But it looks bad." 

He quickly made his way up to me, a worried look on his face. His eyes widened when he saw what I was looking at. "Oh no, here it comes," he muttered, more to himself than to me. Then, in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the ship, he yelled, "Positions! To your positions! We've reached the whirlpools and there's a storm on the way!" 

What before had looked like an angry, horrifying gaint rising out of the sea, I now realized was the dark, swirling waters of the whirlpool meeting the gray, thundering storm clouds at the horizon. I quickly climbed down the mast and started to secure boxes and lines to the deck. Soon Davy found Joe and told him to steer the ship. Then he came and helped me to secure the last of the boxes. Right as we finished, the ship lunched dangerously. 

"Come on," he yelled to me, raising his voice so I could hear him over the sudden winds. "We have to make sure we draw in the sails a little so that these heavy winds don't flip the ship." 

I nodded and we pulled ourselves up the mast to the ropes that controlled the sail. We pulled them in and made sure they were tied tightly and wouldn't come loose. By the time we gt to the next set of ropes the rain had picked up. It was not only drenching us, but also making it very slippery and hard to see. When I was pulling tight the last rope I lost my footing. I tried to regain my balance, but failed. I started to shout for Davy, hoping that he could help me steady myself, but it was to late. I was falling. Falling into the ocean. Where if I wasn't eaten by a shark or other sea creature, I would drown to death. I knew that once I hit the water it was all over. In conditions like these a rescue would be impossible. My life was surely over. Ended in a watery death. 

Right as I was beginning to accept these awful facts I felt something grab my waist and I stopped falling. I was still flying through the air, but not falling. I looked and I saw Davy holding me and a rope. He had jumped off the mast, grabbed a rope, swung across the ship, and grabbed me in midair. That was probably the bravest thing anyone had ever done for me.  

We landed lightly on a flat part of the mast and he gently put me down. I tried to thank him for what he had done, but he told me I could do that later and to get back to work before the ship sank.  

We worked hard to make sure the sails were getting enough wind to get us out of there, but not so much that we would flip. Sometimes one of us would even have to go and help Joe turn the wheel, since the current was strong and it was hard to pull the boat away. It was difficult, but we did our best because we didn't have any other option. Soon we were almost out and it looked like we had a real good chance staying alive. 

All of the sudden, I gasped. "Look!" I shouted pointing to a rope tied to a piece of wood right above the crow's nest. "It's coming untied! If that gets loose the whole mast will fall and we'll be sucked right into that whirlpool." 

"I go get it," said Davy gallantly. "You stay here, it's way too dangerous." 

"No way! I'm coming," I stated determinedly.