It wasn’t necessary, since they’d all heard the gunfire. A half-dozen soldiers joined the guard out front, heard the report of an unarmed lone pirate running through the sand dunes, and rejoined the soldiers inside who were conducting the hangings. By then, Pim had shot the two on the sand dune, and George and Jack lured the remaining guard out of view and stabbed him quietly, then propped the body against the wall to make it appear he was passed out.
George stood guard out front while Jack entered the whorehouse. Moments later Jack returned and reported there were no soldiers inside. He waited for Pim’s whistle. When it came, Jack went to the back of the building and told Rose it was time. She climbed out from under Jack’s coat and stood below the second floor window, whose base was about sixteen feet off the ground. She lifted her arms over her head. At that moment, Jack would have given anything to see what she was going to do and how she planned to do it. But George needed help, so he reluctantly turned the corner and ran to the front of the building to provide it.
Then the sound started.
Chapter 20
Because it was dark, and the remaining two lamps inadequate to offer Pim or the women a clear view of what transpired next, and because for the rest of their lives no one believed the pirates’ version, since admittedly they were drunk or drugged at the time, and because there was only one sober person who knows exactly what happened, and since she was the one who did it—history never recorded what happened that night behind the Blue Lagoon.
But according to the captured pirates, she flew.
Rose flew.
Or at least, she lifted herself off the ground.
As she raised herself higher and higher into the warm night air behind the Blue Lagoon, she began speaking words that Jack had never heard in any of his travels. Indeed, she seemed to be speaking two or three different languages at the same time, and her voice was huge and shrill and powerful, and louder than any storm. As the sounds from her voice grew louder and louder still, the pirates covered their ears and fell to their knees and prayed for mercy. By then the sound had become a high-pitched wail, a shrieking, ear-splitting cyclone of a sound that shattered the second floor window.
Jack’s superstitious men took one look at the demon-possessed child hovering twenty feet off the ground and became horror struck. It seemed to be the coming of the dead. They cried and moaned and gnashed their teeth and crossed themselves and pushed their fingers deep into their ears. Such was the chaos that every soldier on the first floor scrambled up the stairs to see what was happening. At that precise moment, while the hallway and stairs were filled with soldiers, Jack charged through the front door with George and the two began shooting. Then, according to the drunken survivors, Rose opened her eyes and they glowed reptilian yellow, with a vertical black line in the center. She switched to English and spewed forth such vile oaths and imprecations that Jack’s thirty-five hardened pirates crashed through the door and charged into the soldiers with wild abandon, like deer running from a raging fire.
Finding themselves caught off guard, trampled by the fleeing pirates, the soldiers were unable to fire their weapons for lack of space to point them. With upwards of forty men on the staircase, screaming and pushing to escape, it finally crashed to the floor. By then, Pim had joined his friends and together they emptied their weapons into the enemy. When the pirates realized Jack and Pim were killing soldiers, they warmed to the task and killed their share.
A half hour later, the pirates were settled in the landing boats, waiting for their captain. To a man, they refused to look in Rose’s direction, though Jack himself had vouched for her. Had they looked at Rose, they’d have seen Rugby perched on her shoulder, looking very calm.
Jack shook Pim’s hand, clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Good luck to you, and your wife-to-be. I’ll miss you.”
Pim said, “And you as well. Godspeed!”
Jack hugged Johanna, thanked George, kept his distance from Rose, and waved to Hester. Then he and Abby Winter climbed into one of the boats and they all headed out to sea. After twenty minutes of rowing, Jack instructed them to sing pirate songs so the skeleton crew would know to come fetch them.
Within moments of boarding, Abby started in.
“What manner of conditions are these?” she said. “You men live like pigs! I’ve never smelled anything like it! Have you no pride?”
She approached Cook, who was busy working at his enormous pot. Scattered around him on the deck floor were dead pigeons, turtles, fish, palm hearts, pickled eggs, onions, cabbage, wine, and some ingredients she had never seen before, nor cared to see again.
“What is that dreadful stench?” she said.
“Salamagundi, miss,” said Cook.
“What’s that?”
“Dinner.”
“Why, it smells like the bowels of a goat. Like the very breath of death!”
“Well, the smell’s the best part.”
“God help us all.”
Cook looked at Jack. “Shall I toss her overboard for you?” he said.
“She’s new. I’ll get her belowdecks, get her settled in,” Jack said.
Abby attempted to follow Jack down the steps into the hold, but began retching. She grabbed her mouth and reversed course and puked on the deck, five feet from Cook’s pot.
“Is that your contribution to the pot, miss?” Cook said.
“Oh, you wretched, wretched beasts!” she cried.
Halfway down the steps, Jack sighed. This was why they normally didn’t allow women on board ship. He climbed back up the stairs and joined her. “You feel better now?”
“What’s going on here?” Abby said. “You can’t tell me you live like this!”
“I can and we do.”
“But you can’t! I mean, you don’t actually sleep at the bottom of those steps!”
“Aye, miss, we do. As you will, and gladly, when a big enough storm’s afoot.”
“What has happened down there to make such a vile odor?”
“Happened?”
“I mean, it’s an unnatural smell.”
“That’s what you said about the soup.”
“Nay, I was wrong. Whatever happened belowdecks is far worse than the soup. I’d rather be reamed by Philip Winter’s pink pizzle than step foot down there again.”
“Truly?”
“I mean, explain it to me, Jack. Surely there’s a better solution to be had.”
“Well, it’s hot and humid, and the ship is old, and made of wood. That smell you’re referring to is a mixture.”
“A mixture of what?”
“It’s no secret to any seafaring man. It’s bilge water that’s gone bad over the course of time, mixed with the smell of unbathed bodies, rotten fish and meat, and livestock excrement.”
“What do you mean, livestock?”
“Well, of course we keep pigs and chickens and goats and other animals alive down there.”
“Alive?”
“Sometimes we’re at sea for months. You can salt your meat, but it goes rotten after a few weeks, so we keep the livestock to be butchered when needed.”
“And you and your men sleep among the pigs, do you?”
“Oh, no miss. They’re on the orlop, the lowest level. We sleep just above them. But their waste goes through the boards and down into the bottom to mix with the bilge water, so it don’t often smell so sweet. As to the livestock, believe me, after a couple weeks at sea, when the biscuits are hard and full of black-headed weevil maggots, you’ll be thankful for fresh meat.”
“Where do you keep your water?”
“In them barrels over there.”
Abby crossed the deck and lifted one of the lids and smelled.