Pyrate's Boy, page 16
‘He’s not dead,’ says Oscar.
‘Of course I’m not dead,’ I reply. ‘Where did you come from?’
‘We swam out. It wasn’t far.’
I sit up. Somehow I have ended up on the Tenacity again. We are anchored in a beautiful bay. I look up and see a large house on a hill. On the beach, more children are playing. One of them, I can see from here, is James.
‘Where are we?’ I ask.
‘James’s house,’ Oscar replies.
I wonder, for a moment, if I am still dreaming. The sea is as clear as glass and the large garden that stretches all the way to the beach is full of flowers.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ a girl’s voice says.
Catherine is standing on the railings. She jumps down and smiles.
‘Have you steered many ships?’ she asks.
‘Not many,’ I reply.
‘That was quite something…’
‘I’d like never to repeat.’
She laughs.
‘Where is the schooner?’ I ask.
‘It sank,’ she says simply as if it were the only thing it could possibly do. ‘But you’d got it through the reefs, which meant we could get close to you. James threw down the anchor and we got you all aboard the Tenacity.’
Jonathan cocks his head to one side. He’s heard something: the hoot of a signal calling them back. Catherine’s heard it as well.
‘We need to go,’ he says.
‘You, too?’ I ask.
She nods her head then stares out at the ocean.
‘But one day we’ll probably join you on the high seas,’ she says. ‘So watch your back.’
For another week, we pyrates lie low at the plantation. Dunlop and Isabella, parted for years, make plans. With a family to look after and a plantation to run, Dunlop decides to sell his shipbuilding business in Glasgow and move to Jamaica.
‘But a life at sea still beckons me,’ he tells Black Johnnie when Isabella is out of the room. ‘And I have heard of prizes that will make your hair stand on end.’
The reward Dunlop gives to each of us for reuniting him with Isabella and James is secret. Nobody knows what anyone else received. He gave me a bag of twenty gold coins, all for myself, easily enough to establish myself, should I wish to leave the pyrating life.
Once the Tenacity has been re-stocked with supplies, the hull painted with pitch and the sails and rigging repaired, she prepares to sail. The captain has a full crew made up of any pyrate who wanted to join us and will swear loyalty. Some come from the Curby Dodger and others from the old Tenacity crew, who had made their way to Jamaica from the Windward Isles.
I lie down in my berth. It’s been a long time but nothing much has changed. I see a loose board and lift it. There is nothing there. A noise makes me look to the doorway. Toombi is there, watching me, smiling. He holds up the key to the lead box.
‘But where is my old stash now?’ asks Black Johnnie when I rush up on deck to tell him.
Toombi fetches parchment and ink and the captain’s quill pen, and sketches us a map of the island where we found him after the volcano explosion in Martinique. He draws the stream then carefully indicates the trees and the stones. On one of the stones he marks a large X.
‘You stole my stash from McGregor?’ the captain asks. ‘Using the key that Silas hid?’
Toombi’s smile is wider than the sun. He nods. And then he signs that it still belongs to Black Johnnie.
‘Good man,’ the captain says. ‘Well, it seems that that I now have a new proposition. We find the island and I will share out my old rough diamonds.’
The pyrates’ eyes grow glassy. They can almost feel the weight of the rocks in their hands.
‘You – you – mislaid a fortune in diamonds?’ Bill asks, half-amused.
‘Someone swapped them for a few handfuls of glass,’ says the captain. ‘But what of this new proposal, what do you say?’
As one they all say, ‘Aye!’
For a moment, I hesitate. My sister has a life in Scotland now; she is established. And I have enough money to set myself up in Jamaica as I once wished: to buy a small plantation perhaps, near Dunlop, Isabella and James. But what of my life on the ocean? What of adventure and danger and treasure?
‘I like a shiny shoe and a clean shirt,’ the captain says softly.
‘You need a boy?’ I ask
‘Only if his name is Silas,’ he replies. ‘What do you say?’
‘Yes!’ I say. ‘Ten, twenty, thirty times: yes.’
‘Bring to,’ Billy the Fiddle shouts from the bridge. ‘Keep her full before the wind! Aloft!’
I look back at the island of Jamaica, at the Blue Mountains and the dark green jungle, as streaks of ruby and silver and gold fill the darkening sky like the promise of things to come.
THE END
Copyright
Kelpies is an imprint of Floris Books
First published in 2013 by Floris Books
© 2013 Beatrice Colin
Beatrice Colin has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988 to be identified as the Author of this work
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the prior permission of Floris Books, 15 Harrison Gardens, Edinburgh www.florisbooks.co.uk
Published in partnership with Strident Publishing
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards the publication of this volume
British Library CIP data available
E. B. Colin, Pyrate's Boy
