.II.
A red disc swells from sealine and paints the island an emerald in blue. An encampment of shanties squats on shore and among them the ritual of daybreak. Smokes from fires are swept seaward, scents telling tobacco and boar-meat. Men sit in a wooden lookout, one picking his teeth with a yellow bone and watching the treeline for activity. Patrols walk the woods and the squawking of gulls encircles the ship. The Captain is sprawled flat on deck, his good hand stretched out above his head, reaching for nothing in sleep. A ruby rings his finger and sunlight catches and bounces infinitely within the red prism.
The day is past prime before the Captain is woken. A dinghy is set out from shore, prow dipping and lifting with the surf and trained on the ship.
"Captain, ye must wake." Smee. "There's reason, Captain, up with ye now." He makes no sign of waking and the rowboat is half its way there. He draws a pistol, raises and fires, halts the rowing and opens the Captain's eyes, though he does not start.
"Captain," Smee says. "A boat its way here. Four in it, and two of 'em boys, looks like." Two men, one pirate, one injun, and boys, shackled and hooded, aboard the boat, stayed by gunfire.
The Captain rises, reads the time in the sky, stomps a foot from sleep and frowns. "Eyeglass, Smee. And water." He digs his hook into the starboard rail and watches the boat. Smee returns with a jug and the Captain drains it. He looks through the glass. "Who is the injun?"
"That'll be Vaya, sir. The one who betrayed the boys and led us to the bell. He's one of us since."
"The traitor delivers again," the Captain says. "Call to them. Abandon arms and approach."
Smee calls out to the boat, and the men there exchange glances.
"Perchance they misheard you. Set the cannon, a final warning." Smee puts flint to spark and a cannonball tears through the air and in a fury of white spray dips the dinghy into its watery crater. The men toss overboard rifle and bow, arrows and spear.
"Come forth," the Captain says. Smee calls out to them, and the boat is rowed forth. They pull their way alongside the ship and tie to its flank.
Smee throws down a rope-ladder. "The boys," he calls. The two boys reach blindly for rungs, hooded, shackles clang the climb through. Once aboard, the pirate lifts himself onto the ladder and the Captain fires a pistol down into the dinghy. It drops the man in surprise and a spring of seawater leaps up from the hull.
"Captain," the man cries.
"Roderick," the Captain calls back. "If you expect aboard this ship, you'll wait for instruction." He turns to Smee. "Show the boys to their room."
Smee drives the two down into dim corridors, rocking weakly to the charge of the waves and rhythmic too the shackles that clink in step. They come to a torch-lit cell, bare and filthy, and Smee lifts the first boy's chains over a hook protruding from the back wall, hanging him from it. He moves to the second, lifts, but the boy kicks into his gut drops head-first in a thud to the floor, curls.
"No use actin' like that," Smee says, and hoists him back up, hangs him to the wall next his companion.
On deck, the Captain has bound the Injun to mainsail. The white man waits in the boat, and the Captain returns to look down on him.
He is bailing the boat with his hat and pauses to look up. "Is this any reward for us, Captain? Us who's only done your biddin'?"
"Where did you find them?"
The man blinks. "They was sneakin' 'round in the brambles, just outside the camp. Spyin' in, the peepin' pricks."
"And it was only the two?"
"Honest, Captain. Just the pair of 'em."
The Captain looks to the shore, the camp, the tower jutting up in authority, lookout. "You've done well," he says, and pulls up the ladder.
"Captain," the man cries.
"You'll have your reward once I'm through with the boys. Return ashore until then."
"But, Captain."
"Start at your rowing, Roderick. That leak is no trifle, I think." He turns away and past the injun, into the ship and after the boys. A bird, a sparrow perched in the crow's nest watches the Captain disappear and then, as if on cue, shoots off shoreward, flapping and falling and bounding back.
The Captain enters the room and regards the prisoners. Their feet dangle just over the floor and one of them coughs. "Off with their blinds, Smee."
Smee does so, and they both meet Hook's gaze, are each raggedly clad in animal skins. One red, one grey, fox and rabbit pelts. The grey boy is bloodied from the scramble with Smee, and brown bangs fall to his forehead and mat there in the red smear of it.
The Captain takes a pipe from his jacket and sets it to teeth, this while staring a cold quiet onto the boys. "Well. A hare and a fox. Don't suppose either of you have a light?"
The Captain laughs alone. Smee strikes a match and sets it to pipe. A flame trembles in the chamber and the boys look on. The Captain points his hook at the fox. "Hoist him down, Smee."
Smee sets him on his feet, the boy standing up to his breast.
The Captain smiles. "What is your name, boy?"
Silence again.
"Chairs, Smee. For the guest and for me." Smee sets down chair and stool, wooden and crude. The Captain sits down and the boy takes the stool. "Now. Your name, boy."
"It's Michael."
"That's a lad. Michael. Well, Michael, as this is my ship, and as you are my guest, you'll forgive me my frankness." Coils of pipesmoke unfurl upward and turn there in space between the two. "You'll find yourself, Michael, in a precarious position. A spy, ensnared."
The boy shakes his head. "We were only hunting."
"And yet the fox is mine." The Captain grins again. "Prisoner of war, I will strike you a deal. You answer me, honest as able, and you live this day through. And the next, and the next, forever and ever and happily after."
The boy glances back to his companion, slung yet from the wall.
"Don't bring him into this, boy. Not yet. You look at me." The boy turns back to the Captain, smile vanished, pipe put down. "Where is he?"
Nothing. The Captain sighs and rises, walks to a shelf and from it selecting a pair of pliers, their gleam cast leprous with rust. He speaks while examining the tool in the torchlight. "It seems, boy, you have forgotten yourself. You are my guest and will act accordingly. You'll speak when spoken to." He turns black eyes onto the boy. "Where is he hiding?"
Again, nothing.
"There are times," he is pressed, "to bite one's tongue." The Captain leans over the hostage, fits a hook into the boy's mouth and by its point brings his jaw down slowly. "This is not one." He thrusts pliers into the boy's mouth, scraping their way to an eyetooth, clamps down and draws. In a single motion, tooth and blood come spilling from the boy and he drops to the ground in wormlike writhing. The tooth falls with a tap next to the child's head. "Your dagger back."
The Captain waits. The boy spits. A black boot is put to his head, pinning it down, and the villain leans in, takes another. A cry is let out this second time and the boy sobs into a dark puddle of blood. Another tap.
"Find your tongue yet?"
Only a moaning.
"Shall I find it for you?" He says this while admiring his own curve of claw and the sobs come harder. The other child is shivering against the wall and tells only the dull jangle of chain against wood. Boys had been captured before and upon release told stories of hunger. The pirates would catch a boy and trade him back for one of their own. That was how it went, the worst he expected.
The one called Michael fights back the spasms and faces the Captain because he was once promised that courage counts for something. He wipes water from eye and blood from lip and the Captain grins.
"The cur will bare what teeth he is left. The dust, Smee."
Smee makes no move. The Captain regards him coldly and he leaves the room.
Michael rises and takes back his seat. The Captain relights his pipe and watches back. A single crash rings out from some adjacent chamber and a soft clap of light affects the room, in under the door. Perhaps the boy understands. "Show me your fangs, and I'll show you mine." Smee returns with a bowl spilling pale light from its brim.
The Captain says, "A gift from an old friend." While he speaks, he revisits the shelf. "No doubt you remember the bell? We've become quite close, really. She's wonderful company, I'm sure you know. Not all are stubborn as you, boy."
He selects a dark vial and pours it into the bowl, bubbling furiously, rejecting the powder before calming itself to a muttering simmer. A dark violet glow from the bowl, it illuminates the villain's face while the boys watch. "No, lad. I'm afraid the firefly's been more than accommodating. Hasn't she, Smee?"
Smee is silent.
"That will be enough of your sulking, Smee. You are released. Go entertain the injun."
Smee swallows something back and quits the room.
"Yes, boy, the bell has come around," the Captain continues, " and I think we'll find the same with you, soon enough."
He dips his hook into the venom and lifts it dripping over the child, seized by the neck and drops it hissing betwixt clavicle and throat. The boy gasps and eyes go wild. The Captain digs deeper and with a snarl releases him, to the floor, left there to slobber and wretch and sputter and shriek. Clutches his body, the Captain steps over it, toward the other, thrashing now against the wall and begun screaming. The two wailings twine and peel through the bowels of the ship, in its limits there trapped. In an empty room, the pixie is left to listen and weep.