CHAPTER 4 - THE SEA DEVIL

 

FAR FROM THE WHARF, well across the bay and almost to the open sea, was a tangle of rocks so treacherous that no captain familiar with these waters would sail his ship there. Over the years, many ships had struck these rocks and sunk; they lay in pieces scattered everywhere, masts, bows, keels. It was the perfect place to hide a ship. Angels’ Graveyard, it was called, and it so frightened most sailors that they would not even look in that direction.

But there was a ship in there now, amid the huge rocks, long and low, black as coal, with three masts pointing toward the sky like skeleton fingers. On the foredeck stood two men, one squat and one tall.

“Can you see her?” said the squat man. He wore a striped shirt and blue wool pants that didn’t quite reach his ankles; his blistered bare feet were dark as tar.

“Not yet,” replied the tall man, squinting through a spyglass. He was a strikingly unpleasant figure, with a pockmarked face and a large red nose, like a prize turnip, glued to his face. His long black hair, greasy from years without washing, stained the shoulders of the red uniform coat he’d stolen from a Navy sailor on the high seas, just before escorting that wretched soul over the side of the ship. He had dark, deepset, piercingly black eyes, overshadowed by eyebrows so bushy that he had to brush them away to see through the glass. But his most prominent feature was the thick growth of hair on his upper lip, long and black, lovingly maintained, measuring nearly a foot between its waxed and pointed tips. It was this feature that gave him his name, the most feared name on the sea: Black Stache.

 

 

“There’s a hunk of worm food in the way, the Never Land,” he said. “What kind of fool name is that for a ship?”

“It’s a fool name, all right,” said the squat sailor.

“Shut up,” said Black Stache.

“Aye, Cap’n.”

Black Stache moved a few steps to his right, then squinted through the glass again.

“There she is!” he said. “The Wasp. Clear as day. Now, that there is a rival worthy of the Sea Devil. So she thinks she can sting us, does she? Outrun us?”

He laughed, and so did the squat man, and so did the dozen or so pirates within earshot, though they didn’t know what they were laughing at. The crew of the Sea Devil understood: if Black Stache laughed, you laughed. If he snarled, you snarled. If he breathed in your direction, you ran for cover. “Ratbreath,” his sailors called him behind his back. It was said that he liked to eat vermin raw, with a touch of sea salt.

When Black Stache had heard enough laughter, he raised his arm, and the crew quieted immediately. He turned to the squat man, who had been the Sea Devil’s first mate for a year now, the longest anyone had ever gone in that position without being heaved overboard by the captain.

“We’ve got the Ladies ready, don’t we?” asked Black Stache.

“Aye, Captain, we do at that.”

“Then we’ll just see who’s the faster ship, won’t we, Smee?”

“Aye, we will, sir,” said Smee, “if the Ladies hold.”

“The Ladies” were Black Stache’s secret weapon—a special set of sails he’d had the ship’s sailmakers make, using patterns that Black Stache had obtained from, of all places, a ladies’ corset maker. Though they had not yet been tested at sea, Black Stache was convinced that his invention would revolutionize the pirate industry. He was saving the Ladies for just the right moment, when he was heading downwind, closing on his prey for the kill.

“They’ll hold,” he said. He spat on the deck, then turned to the sailors gathered near.

“We’ll see who’s the fastest ship afloat, eh men?” he said. “And when we do, the Wasp won’t be floating anymore!”

The sun-bronzed pirates cheered, and not just because they had to. They knew there would be treasure on board soon, with a share for them. Black Stache saw the greed in their eyes.

“Treasure, lads!” he shouted. “The greatest treasure ever taken to sea!”

The pirates cheered again, louder this time.

“Or so some have said,” said Black Stache, and he turned to stare at a cage on the main deck. There was a man inside the cage, a uniformed sailor. He huddled in a corner, shaking at the sound of Black Stache’s voice.

“And if this scurvy dog is wrong,” said Black Stache, his black eyes boring in on the terrified prisoner, “then he’ll wish he’d never been born, that I vow.”

“The treasure’s on the Wasp. I promise,” cried the prisoner. “I heard it with me own ears.”

“It’d better be,” Black Stache said. “Or I’ll wear them ears on a necklace.”

Ignoring the man’s whimpers, Black Stache turned and raised the glass to his eye again.

“They’re hoisting sail,” he said. “Making to catch the tide. Tell the men to make ready to follow.”

Smee relayed the order, and the pirates swung smoothly into action. They didn’t look pretty, but they were an efficient crew, well trained by the whip.

Black Stache ignored them, his gaze still aimed through the glass.

“You’re mine, Wasp,” he mumbled on foul breath, a rare smile on his thin lips. “You, and everything you hold. Mine.”