On this occasion I must put up a technical note up front, as the events described here may be tricky to understand without it. Shrouds are arguably the most visible part of the ship's rigging, those tall triangular-shaped, sort of square-mesh-spiderweb cables that connect the hull to the masts.

.

xxx

.

For ten weeks, it seemed as if Heaven had answered her prayer; for the success of Vane's ventures after the break-up with Rackham and most of the crew continued undiminished, on par with his daring depredations throughout the preceding year. So much so, in fact, that by early February he had a brigantine and three excellent sloops at his disposal, and a combined crew numbering more than twice the number of those who had stayed aboard the second Ranger with Jack and Anne.

Back in early December, having cruised back east from the Bay of Honduras to Jamaica's northwest coast, they captured a second sloop, whose crew decided to join them, and Vane appointed Robert Deal as its captain as a reward for his loyalty. Then, on the 16th, having gone back to the wide bay, they found only one vessel at anchor, a brigantine called the Pearl of Jamaica, that attempted to get under sail at the sight of them but was apprehended by Vane and Deal's sloops flying no colours, and the captain's feeble attempt at warning gunfire resulted in the two of them hoisting black flags and returning fire in a manner decisive enough to ensure a quick surrender. From there they took the Pearl (whose name Eleanor had persuaded him to keep, albeit dropping the Jamaica part, as opposed to reverting to Ranger a third time) to a small island called Barnacho for careening, in preparation for a larger campaign; and while en route there, in a further stroke of luck they met with a sloop from Jamaica going down to the bay, which they also captured.

And then, as the Pearl was being refitted as their flagship, and Vane and Deal took two sloops and sailed from Barnacho for a cruise at the beginning of February as a final step to amass a force large enough to take back Nassau, which he was still resolved to do no matter how Eleanor tried to dissuade him, their luck ran out.

xxx

"Come in here and stay inside." For the third time in recent months she is back inside the storeroom, its porthole now bolted tightly shut. With the stern windows in the captain's cabin blown out already, it is by far the safer place. "Don't bolt the door, make sure you can open it again. I'll come back for you." With that he sprints back on deck, taking the ladder steps two at a time, as the sloop lists and heaves on the raging waves, battered by the storm.

It came out of nowhere; it is almost unheard of to have storms, let alone hurricanes of such force, in February, almost three months after the end of the hurricane season. And yet for the past day and night they have been relentlessly battered by gale-force winds and sheets of rain, with no end in sight. They lost Deal's sloop overnight and are now being tossed about, presumably still somewhere in the Bay of Honduras, at the mercy of the tempest. Now, with the darkening skies signalling the approach of a second night, there is no telling if their sloop, or they for that matter, will live to see the morning.

She jumps and screams as the porthole hatch is ripped off its hinges and a stream of water, powerful enough to kick her off her feet, fills the storeroom. She sees what Vane meant: had she locked the door, she might not have had the steady footing, or the presence of mind in a cabin flooding with water, to unlock it now. She darts outside, the water following at her heels, and runs up the ladder.

She can hardly see the deck in the heavy rain; dimly, she sees silhouettes of men trying desperately to steer the sloop to keep it more or less upright; with all the sails rolled up, their capacity for manoeuvre would be minimal at best, but from what she can see, the masts are already missing almost all the crossbeams, meaning that the sails are gone.

"Charles!" she yells over the infernal howling when she catches sight of him near her.

"What is it?" He yells back, turning to face her.

"Cabin's flooded, I couldn't stay there. Should I go into the hold?"

"No! Hold's sprung a leak, it will flood too in a matter of hours." Meaning that they will sink.

"What do you want me to do?"

Before he can answer she sees his eyes go wide in terror; and before she can wonder what sort of sight could put terror in Charles Vane's heart, she turns around and sees it.

An enormous twisted column of water, black against the grey skies, narrow but impossibly tall, is looming in front of them, getting closer. She has heard of these things; water spouts if she recalls right, the innocent name belying the attendant horror. Now she is looking at one up close, wishing she had never had the chance.

"Don't look!" he yells to her belatedly. "Hold on to me." With that, he drags them to the far side of the deck from the hellish spectacle and grabs the rigging while trying to hold her in the crook of his arm, facing him so she would be shielded from the onslaught when it comes.

She wraps both arms around his chest and holds on with all her might, eyes squeezed shut, hoping desperately that they are still alive in a few minutes' time – or if they should not be so fortunate, that they at least have the fortune of dying together.

It feels as if a wall of water hits her, flinging them both against the shroud. She has a flash of realisation amid the terror: he dragged them both there so the shroud should stop them from being swept overboard, standing between them and the sea below. But in the next few seconds all she can think of is telling herself not to draw breath, as they are seemingly submerged in the enormous wave. Just when it seems that her lungs can hold out no longer, the water recedes, and she is left clinging to her companion, coughing and spitting out water, but alive; and considering how fast he has his arm wrapped around her as the sloop is swept along in the gathering darkness, he is alive, too.

"It's gone past us," she hears him yell. "We-"

He is interrupted by a blood-curdling screeching sound as the sloop suddenly shudders to a halt, followed by the horrifying creak of the hull being rent apart.

"Eleanor, hold on!" he snaps, and letting go of the shroud, launches them both across the deck where he grabs the lowest rung of the opposite shroud.

She never has the chance to ask him the reason for this manoeuvre, as in the next moment she is startled by what sounds like a thunderclap right above their heads; but when she squints up through the torrential rain she sees the mainmast slowly breaking off four or five feet above the base, the top slowly descending towards larboard.

Vane grabs one of her wrists and pulls it up until her left hand wraps around a shroud cable.

"Hold on!" he repeats before doing the same with her right wrist. "Don't try to stand on the deck, just hold on."

She soon sees why; propelled by the falling mast and held in place by an invisible force, the entire sloop begins listing to larboard, slowly but unstoppably, until it comes to a halt at an angle that would make standing on deck impossible; had she tried to do so without having anything to hold on to, she would have slid into the sea below.

By then it is almost completely dark; and she feels a surge of panic when she realises that she can no longer tell where Vane is.

"Charles!" she yells; and is immediately relieved when he answers, but by the sound of it he seems a few feet away from her, somewhere above. "Where are you?"

"Hang on there a moment." Had the situation been less dire, she would have seen the irony in that she is literally hanging on. "I'll pull you up here."

The next moment she feels his hand grab her wrist, then his other hand on the other, and he hauls her up so that the next instant she is sprawled on his chest, apparently on top of the shroud… if top is an applicable term, for the fallen mast has taken the upper end of the shroud with it to the water's edge, and the entire tall, square-celled triangular net has turned into a sort of gigantic hammock, suspended above the sharply sloping deck, with its far end submerged thirty feet or so to the larboard side, about a dozen feet below. Presently, in the gathering inky darkness, she can no longer tell the outlines of the wrecked sloop from the choppy waves and the black shapes of ragged clouds against occasional glimmers of deep blue where the cloud cover is marginally thinner.

Yet from what she has seen, their position, while relatively secure, may not be safe for long. The lower rungs of the shrouds they are lying on are higher up above the deck, but they also have far bigger gaps between the cables; so that if they stay there, they will be at constant risk of falling down. Sure enough, Vane knows it too, and is presently explaining to her that they must move, crawling slowly up the rungs but down the shroud "hammock" to where the gaps are narrower, even if it brings them closer to the waves. When he sets her onto the cables beside him she freezes, unsure how she can keep her balance, let alone crawl forward; and sensing her panic, Vane gets hold of her hand and coaxes her on, putting her hand on the cable junctures and waiting for her as she inches her way ahead. At long last they reach a spot that seems to be an acceptable if dangerous balance between rung width and distance from the waves, even though hearing the raging water mere feet below is unsettling to say the least. Exhausted from the ordeal, she is tempted to close her eyes as she exhales and sags against the cables. The wind has slowed down a good deal, but the rain is still pelting down.

"Eleanor?"

"Yes?" she answers, half drowsily.

"You all right?" His voice is instantly alert and concerned.

"Yes. Just tired."

"Don't fall asleep."

"I'll try not to."

Another minute passes.

"Eleanor, are you here?"

"Yes, Charles. I- maybe I can sleep just a little bit…"

She can feel him pull up next to her.

"Don't do that. You fall asleep in this darkness, and I won't be able to see you if you slip off, or find you in the water. Stay awake, and we can make it till morning."

She does not ask him what relief morning might bring if they are still stuck on a wrecked husk in the middle of the sea; instead, she goes for a more immediate question.

"What happened to our sloop? Why are we stuck like this?"

"Struck a reef. At least it makes it less likely that we'll drown." Dying of thirst and hunger is, of course, another matter. "And reefs are often close to land. With any luck, we may be within reach of a habitable island." There, at least, is a glimmer of hope.

Time passes; the rain slacks off somewhat, and listening to the constant splash of the waves against the broken hull, she fights the drowsiness as the rhythmic sound threatens to lull her to sleep.

"Eleanor, are you awake?"

If she had not known better and been grateful to him for keeping her from a drowning death, she would be annoyed at him for not letting her rest.

"Yes, I am."

"I don't like the way you sound."

"I'm trying, Charles. What can I do, I keep listening to the waves and they make me sleepy-"

"Don't listen. Talk."

She is baffled by this. "What about?"

"Anything. Anything at all. It won't let you fall asleep, and I'll be able to tell if you get drowsy."

"What about you?"

"I'm used to this. I've had to stand watch at night hundreds of times."

"Very well…" she begins uncertainly. "Let me think-"

"Don't think; talk."

Easy for him to say, but she needs a subject – and with their past history being veritably full of death traps, not any old subject will do. Besides, it would make sense to talk about something he does not already know.

Thus her first impulse is to tell him about her involuntary trip to London and her sojourn in Newgate prison; but she dismisses it almost immediately seeing how that would soon bring her on the subject of Woodes Rogers. She is just about to plead defeat and ask him to suggest a subject for her when she finally gets an idea.

She starts talking about her childhood, her early life that he had not witnessed and she never told him about; their Boston family, countless generations of merchants who eventually produced a bunch of miserable fuck-ups; her mother, who had the reckless lack of foresight to have married one of them; their early years in Nassau, before the massacre unleashed by the Spanish raid that cost her mother her life. There is plenty of pain there too, but at least it is not pain that she has inflicted on him.

"What about you?" she asks when she seems to have finally exhausted the topic.

He does not answer at once, and while she knows he is there, she begins wondering if he has disobeyed his own instructions, as it were, and fallen asleep when he finally speaks.

"There isn't much to tell. My first memory was sitting on a chain like a dog in the slave camp and eating leftovers. I must have been about three."

It feels like a stab through the heart, and her throat suddenly hurts so much that she finds it hard to form the words.

"How long were you there?"

"Twenty years. I have no memory of my parents. The closest I've ever had to family was when I joined Blackbeard's crew and then when I got my own and Jack Rackham came aboard… so in a way you were right, saying how I never experienced a mother's love."

For an instant she is tempted to let go of the shrouds and just jump into the water below; the searing shame is so intense as to be unbearable… until it occurs to her that by doing so she would probably be causing him even greater heartbreak.

"Forgive me."

"It's true." He sounds matter-of-fact. "I did not care much for the way you said it, but it doesn't make it a lie."

She does not want to remind him of the disgusting insults she hurled at him on that same occasion.

"When did you escape? Which year?"

"1703, about mid-March. Almost exactly sixteen years ago."

Which means that he still has at least six years to go before he can say that the greater part of his life has been lived free. "So if I reckon right, you must be thirty-nine?"

"Thirty-eight or thirty-nine, I suppose, though I'll never know for sure."

"Ten years older than me."

"Or ten and a half. Or maybe eleven."

"So you came straight to Nassau when you escaped." Not quite, she corrects herself; if he escaped at about twenty three, and she was almost fourteen when he first saw her.

"I sailed with Henry Jennings for a couple of years. I was pretty strong from doing all the labour, and he took me on as soon as he saw me. I was still with his crew when we first came to Nassau, as you may recall. It was almost a year later when I met Blackbeard and he offered to make me an officer straight away that Jennings and I parted ways. He tried to bribe me to stay, you know," he adds, and she can hear the wry amusement in his voice. "But I knew him for the wily bastard that he was..."

"He's still alive, isn't he? Jennings, I mean?"

"He is, but he took the pardon. Was pretty much the first to do so, even before this circus that your- that Governor Rogers started." She thinks that had this exchange occurred in broad daylight, or at least in less perilous conditions, she would have found some manner of minor torment to inflict on him for that unfinished quip. Well, the physical means may be out of the question, but that still does not rule out the verbal variety.

"If he was the wily bastard you make him out to be, you two should have been best friends."

It seems Vane himself is well enough aware of his slip of the tongue to have connected her remark with it; and as a consequence, rather than take offence, he takes it in stride.

"We got along just fine, but Teach and I – Blackbeard and I – instantly got along a lot better. Jennings was wily, but Teach is just, I don't know, imposing in a way that made me instantly respect him. And he saw me as someone he could bring up in his image, and taught me to keep my anger in check, which Jennings had never bothered to do. I think Jennings just saw it as an advantage to himself, no matter what manner of crazy arsehole it made me, that because of my past I was prepared to kill at a moment's notice rather than reflect and show mercy where killing served no purpose, except for traitors."

She suspects – is almost certain, in fact – that he said this without thinking of her; but it does not mean that she does not count herself among that number.

"Why did you go after me at the Wrecks and get me out? I am a traitor too, after all I'd said and done I did not deserve to-"

"I had no choice," he interrupts her, softly but insistently. "I wouldn't have been able to live with it."

"But I betrayed you. I wanted you dead, I almost killed you, surely even if you did not want that gang to kill me, by all accounts you should have killed me yourself?" She knows the question to be irrelevant by now, but it has sat at the back of her mind too long not to be asked, considering how they are stuck there with plenty of time on their hands.

"A lot of people wanted me dead and tried to kill me who I've since made peace with," he says in that same soft, almost conciliatory tone. "And most of them weren't nearly as good-looking as you," he adds with a touch of amusement. "Besides," he adds a moment later, "you may have wanted me dead but at the last instant you still yelled for them to stop."

"You heard me," she exhales in shock.

"I did… you know, I was ready to die just fine, but then hearing you made me curious, made me think what might have been, had you changed your mind a little sooner. So when the boys ran up and got me out I wasn't really complaining. Not that I could possibly imagine all that would then happen in reality."

Right now, it feels as if the one rescued from impending death was not Vane but herself.

"You shouldn't have been."

"What?"

"Ready to die. You are not yet forty, in good health, you still have a life to live-"

"Well, I've lived plenty by now," he counters, "not that I am in a great hurry to die right now."

That leads her, cautiously, to ask him about his seafaring adventures; and he tells her stories of daring exploits and cunning stratagems, and goes on to describe how he and his crew went on board the Fancy to get rid of Low and his crew, how he changed his mind about fighting Flint and went to Charlestown to save him instead – and what a hell of a rescue it was – and how he planned the spectacular escape from Nassau from under her and Rogers' noses by setting the fire ship on a collision course against them. He does most of the talking, but there is no way she can feel sleepy now; if anything, the danger would be her jumping and fidgeting with excitement on their precarious perch as her attention is riveted to his tales.

She asks him then how he came about the fearsome crew that he brought back to win the fort from Hornigold, and he tells her the story of his travel to Albinus's camp… but when he tells her, by way of an entertaining aside, of how he was buried alive there and had to claw his way back from a literal grave, her heartbreak is back full force.

"Eleanor, are you all right?" he asks, noticing how she suddenly fell completely silent.

No, she is not all right; she is thinking how close he came to being dead because of her, not once but twice so far as it turns out, not counting all the other offences, and how she will never be able to fully atone for it. But her voice fails her so she cannot say anything at all; instead she gropes around in the dark until her fingers land on the leather cuff on his forearm, and feeling her touch, he immediately puts his other hand on top of hers.

"Charles… I know you didn't want me to beg for your forgiveness," she starts, "but seeing how we may not live until the morning…"

"I would not necessarily say that," he objects, but she continues, refusing to be sidetracked into levity.

"…just in case, I do beg that you forgive me for all the monstrous things I put you through."

He strokes her fingers as a quick answer. "Whatever happened before," he says presently, "the past three months have made it all worthwhile. And talking about monstrous things, just in case, I'd beg you for the same for killing that old bastard."

She need not ask who he means; yet by now the matter has been rendered irrelevant.

"Never mind, Charles," she answers darkly. "Had I known then what I know now, I would have killed him myself." And not, she thinks, quickly like Vane did; she would have made his existence a living hell.

It could be a trick of her hearing, but she is pretty certain that she hears him chuckling.

"If we survive this," he remarks, all innocence, "do remind me, Eleanor, never to cross you again."

Forget chuckling; she is laughing out loud now.

xxx

They could, it seems, keep talking forever; but eventually exhaustion starts getting the better of her. Sensing this, he finally suggests that she sidle up to him so that he could keep watch over her; the arrangement she insists on is that they take turns, with him guarding her until dawn when she would take over and let him sleep. She is therefore instantly alarmed when she wakes up and can tell, even with her eyes closed, that dawn is long past; when she opens her eyes and sees the dull grey skies above and nothing else, she is terrified at the thought that Vane is gone.

She sits up sharply – and then sees him perched on the shrouds below where she has been lying, almost at the water's edge, having surrendered all the space for her to sleep on, while he clearly never slept a wink watching her.

"I thought you were-" she starts, seeing his surprise at her sudden awakening.

He shakes his head with a smirk. "Still here." So damn smug, and yet looking completely exhausted.

"Oh for fuck's sake come back up," she scolds him, "we agreed to take turns sleeping, didn't we?"

But when he scrambles back to where she is sitting and puts an arm round her shoulders, he is clearly not inclined to sleep.

"I've something really nice to show you," he says instead, pointing off to the distance with his free hand.

And there, between the low clouds and the dull grey sea, is a long, narrow black strip of land, no more than a quarter mile away.

She exhales in relief. "We made it, Charles."

"I told you we would."

Instead of upbraiding him for smugness that, by now, she knows to be just a bit of innocent posturing, she just smiles at him – and when he smiles back at her, it feels as if the leaden post-hurricane skies have parted to fill her world with brilliant sunshine.

.

xxx

.

The hurricane may have given me an interesting opportunity to go all Titanic the movie on our sweethearts, but the story is true, and here is the next bit from Captain Johnson's book to prove it (it picks up immediately after the rift with Rackham).

"The sloop sailed for the bay of Honduras, and Vane and his crew put her in as good a condition as they could by the way, that they might follow their old trade. They cruised two or three days off the north-west part of Jamaica, and took a sloop and two perriaguas, all the men of which entered with them: the sloop they kept, and Robert Deal was appointed captain.

On the 16the of December, the two sloops came into the bay, where the found only one vessel at anchor. She was called the Pearl of Jamaica, and got under sail at the sight of them; but the pirate sloops coming near Rowland, and showing no colours, he gave them a gun or two, whereupon they hoisted the black flag, and fired three guns each at the Pearl. She struck, and the pirates took possession, and carried her away to a small island called Barnacho (Bonacca), where they cleaned. By the way they met with a sloop from Jamaica, as she was going down to the bay, which they also took.

In February, Vane sailed from Barnacho, for a cruise; but, some days after he was out, a violent tornado overtook him, which separated him from his consort, and, after two days' distress, threw his sloop upon a small uninhabited island , near the bay of Honduras, where she staved to pieces, and most of her men were drowned: Vane himself was saved, but reduced to great straits for want of necessaries, having no opportunity to get anything from the wreck,. He lived there some weeks, and was supported chiefly by fishermen, who frequented the island with small crafts from the main, to catch turtles and other fish."

And, as promised, here is the note on Charles' and Eleanor's ages, using as a starting point the real Captain Vane's alleged birth date of 1680 (incidentally, Zach McGowan would be four years younger than Vane, as Wikipedia says he was born in 1981; but I have not seen Hannah New's birthday or age mentioned anywhere).

Vane born ca early 1680 Eleanor born ca mid/late 1690

Vane in slavery until 23 (escapes in 1703) El. is 13-14 in ca late 1704 when Vane sees her

Vane sleeps with Eleanor ca 1707 (aged 26 or 27) El. is 16 in 1707

Vane is 38 or 39 in early 1719 El. is 28 in early 1719

.

I am adding this here as I forgot to post it when I put up the chapter. Henry Jennings was Vane's real mentor, so the show's Blackbeard took on some of his mantle (Vane and Teach aka Blackbeard knew and respected each other but as far as I can tell they never sailed together). And he is one of a small number of pirates who lived to a happy old age after renouncing piracy in 1717.