Pirate's Life For Me....

Heading North

  "It's bullshit. Utter bullshit." I grumbled, assisting in unloading the boat filled with crates and barrels, setting everything down on the beach.

  "We'll deal with it later, Deana. Right now, we have other things to focus on."

  "You sound like Jack." I dropped a crate on top of another one and went back to the boat.

  "And you still have blood on your hands." Charles popped off, walking past me with a barrel in his arms. Glancing down at my hands, I sighed through my nose and went to the water to rinse them off.

  "Captain! Sails!"

  "Change of plans! Spanish invasion. Back to the ship." Jack called out shortly after, and I turned to see that he had been talking to Max. "Are you coming?" He turned back to the woman, and I stood up while drying my hands off on my pants.

  "What Spanish invasion?" Charles questioned, and Jack waved his finger.

  "Woodes has made his move, it seems. There's an entire fleet of Spanish ships in the harbor. You can stay here if you like, but I advise leaving. Not even Deana has enough blades to take on an army." Jack stated and Charles paused to think, then waved his hand to the pirates to load the cargo back onto the boat.

~

  "....tell them we'll be here to get them off the island. But there's a credible argument to be made that we ought to leave right away. While we still can."

  "No. We wait." Charles crossed his arms while shifting on his feet. "We wait as long as we can for them."

  "If anyone survives the day, that is." Jack popped off.

  "If you had some men to spare, I could use them on the Walrus."

  "If there's nothing else to be said, I would like to see her." Max stated, and Jack glanced at me. I nodded, and Max turned to me, following as I walked away from the group and into the belly of the ship. It became quiet, save for the creaking wood, and much darker as we went below deck.

  "I don't know what all has happened between you and Anne, but if she attacks you, I won't stop her." I said lowly over my shoulder to the woman behind me. She didn't reply, but I doubted she needed to with that guilty look in her eyes.

  "....You've come a long way, Deana."

  "Excuse me?"

  "From being the new cook stolen from the Petrel." She explained. "I remember hearing of your arrival and thinking of how you wouldn't last long out there. I couldn't really figure if it was a blessing or curse that you ended up with Captain Vane's crew."

  "Because they were the only ones around here with a woman on deck?"

  "Exactly. But when I actually saw you, when you walked through town with Vane, I knew...."

  "Knew what?" I questioned while walking past a lantern.

  "That you'd somehow make it on this island. You had such confident and hard posture, but such wonder in your eyes as you took in the town. You weren't scared even though you should have been, especially with Vane. I also thought you were a bit stupid to look at that man with such awe."

  "How could I not?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "When I first met Charles, I thought the lowest of him. But when I got to Nassau, time and time again, he proved my opinion to be wrong. He gives respect where respect is due, he is both feared and loved by his crew, and the fact that Anne was there....well, that speaks for itself. It may have been naive thinking, but back then, I thought of him as a sort of king."

  "A king?" Max chuckled.

  "His mannerisms, his posture, all of that. I mean, it wasn't of the royal caliber, but it was adjacent to it."

  "And now?"

  "And now you better prepare yourself." I stated while reaching for a door. Opening it, I saw Anne on the other side, sitting in a chair while polishing one of her blades. "I'll give you two some privacy." Anne looked up, her gaze drifting from me to Max, and her face hardened. Leaving, I went back the way I had come from.

~

  "Your friend Silver is still alive."

  "Oh, that's actually good to hear. He was the only tolerable one of Flint's bunch."

  "Seems he's done quite a bit for himself as well."

  "I'm not surprised. He's a smart man." I looked up from the book in my hands and turned to Charles. "So why exactly are we heading North?"