Jack Book Two in the Trilogy: Murder on the High Seas

Midnight Part 36

Late that night, most of the darkies were asleep on deck under the brilliant white stars of the middle Atlantic into which we were sailing. That's when Jack told me. "They'll be coming after us, the first mate saw us from shore through his spyglass. I watched him through mine. He saw the darkies on deck too no doubt. When he puts two and two together, he'll figure we're heading to Ivory Coast. We've got to get there before they do and we've got to get out before they find us. If they spot us on the open sea, we won't have a prayer. They'll be with the pirates, I reckon, and pirates are excellent seamen. Their ships also have lots of cannon. We have only two. What do the supplies look like?"

"That's not good news at all," I said, and we're going to need to find water in five days or so. What'll we do?" I asked worriedly.

"Well, we could turn around and head back to one of the islands and stock up. But that means we'll lose our lead and those pirates would be likely waiting for us along the African coast and they might have time to alert some other ships. The first island we'll come to along the course we're now set at is a Portuguese island, Cape Verde, and there's likely to be slavers all along the coast. It's 500 miles off the African coast. We'll have to ration the water and hope it rains. Cape Verde from what I remember looking at the map is two weeks away at least. I think we have to try. We can't afford to turn around."

"For once I agree with you," I said. "We'll have to stretch the water. I'll explain it to the crew. Maybe we should have waited until after the captain restocked supplies in Cuba," I said.

"No, we took the best opportunity we had. Odds are we would've been killed or captured if we even waited a couple of hours. No we did the right thing. We just have to play the hand we've got now. Oh, by the way, have the girls scrounge around the ship for anything that can hold water if it rains," said Jack.

"Right," I said. "Hey Jack. It's going to be okay. We made it this far and I must say you're done amazingly well just like always."

"This is the kind of thing I was born to do," he replied.

"Yeah, right, " I said. "Just call you Columbus, eh?"

"Yeah. Just call me Columbus."