The journey took more than a month. More than a month of sitting in the stinking brig of the Navy ship Endeavour, without women, without rum, without sunlight, without sea spray, without freedom. And with every day of it I hated Hector Barbossa a little more. But I kept myself busy, in a way. I had a knife, a small one, that I'd hidden away in my boot and no one had noticed. So every day, I'd scrape away at the hull of the boat from the inside. Just a bit. I didn't want it breaking straight through if a storm came up.
The knife went utterly dull of course, but over the course of forty days I managed to wear a good portion of the hull down until it was thin as parchment. Then, finally, the Endeavour arrived in Erith Reach, on the outskirts of London, and there dropped anchor. As soon as I had an idea of where we were, I took action.
I started in the back of my little cell, and rushed forward with all my might, putting my shoulder first. The thinned wood splintered and creaked, but didn't break. I thought I might, though--my shoulder smarted terribly. One more try, the other shoulder this time. It worked. The wood broke and I fell through, heading head-first for the water from quite a height.
I managed to turn my fall into a passable dive, and hit the water without killing myself. Though I half wished I had--it was cold! I wasn't in the Caribbean any more. It chilled me down to my bones, but I swam as best I could and, for lack of anything else to do, reached the shore.
The bank, actually, because I was well down the Thames, nearly within London proper. And this was no deserted sandy beach; there was a road along the bank, busy with traffic that slowed a bit when I crawled out of the river. People stopped and stared, but that was no problem of mine. I shook myself off and started walking down the side of the road. I knew where I was going. I might be thousands of miles from home without a penny to my name, but no man's poor as long as long as he has his family. It was time to pay a long-awaited visit to that older brother of mine.
Dr. Fredrick C. Sparrow, Surgeon, read the plate on the door. Terribly intimidating. Well, I was glad to see at least one of us had made Mother proud. It was where his old house had been, though it was just an office now; I reckoned his current house would be something disgustingly grand. I went up and knocked on the door.
A woman answered, looking a bit nervous at the sight of me. I suppose I just have that effect on women. "What's your business here, sir?" she asked, clearly hoping for an excuse to shut the door in my face.
"Could you kindly tell Doctor Sparrow that his brother's here to see him?"
She shut the door. There was quite a long wait, and then out burst my big brother Freddy. He was a grown man now, very neatly dressed, a wig on his head, a bit heavy but impeccably well scrubbed. "Johnny!" he exclaimed, the very image of joy and surprise, his arms thrown wide to embrace me. Then he got a good look at me, standing there soaking wet, in filthy rags, my hair long and tangled a thousand times over, gold rings in my ears and beads in my beard. His arms fell back to his sides. "John? Is that you? What the blazes has happened to you?"
"Long story, Freddy boy. Can I come in?"
He paused, looking me up and down as if to see if I bore any resemblance to the man I used to be. It was, admittedly, unlikely. "Of course, of course, I'm sorry, terribly rude of me, come on in, John."
The office was as unbearably stuffy within as the plate on the door had suggested. Everything was white and clean and in perfect order. You'd hardly suspect that he was digging out bladder stones and amputating limbs in the back room; the front, at least, looked more like a barrister's office than any doctor's that I'd seen. But it made perfect sense, if Freddy ran the place. Freddy had always been a nervous and fussy child, never wanting to get himself dirty, never interested in adventures or running wild. While I was committing acts of petty larceny, he was playing marbles; while I was learning to kiss girls, he was reading books. A wasted life if you ask me, but I wasn't there to judge. I was there to mooch.
Freddy embraced me then, a bit gingerly, and I hugged him back the way a man ought to hug the brother he hasn't seen in nearly six years, with great claps on the back that made him yelp ever so slightly.
"John," he said when I released him, "where have you been? We didn't know if you were alive or dead. I had to talk Mother out of holding a funeral for you. But you're..." he looked me up and down once again, then smiled. "You look almost like a pirate."
So very tempting to tell him the truth, but discretion first. "I imagine I might. It's been a rough couple of years. The truth is, I was on the ship Courageous, charting some of the minor isles near Jamaica, when we were attacked and defeated by pirates. I was taken prisoner." That part was true. But I didn't tell dear Freddy how I had escaped their clutches in Tortuga and become a pirate myself.
"I lost everything," I went on. "Without my instruments and books, cartography was hopeless, and there's little employment for an educated man in the Caribbean. It's a very different world there. So I became a merchant sailor, one of the unwashed and uncouth, out of desperation. I saved what little I could, yet it took me five years--five agonising years--of backbreaking work before I could afford passage home. But now I'm here, and everything can be well again. Say... how's Mother?" Father had passed away not long before I departed for the Caribbean.
"Well enough," Freddy said. "Though if she sees you in this state she won't be. We've got to clean you up and get you some fresh clothes." He turned to the woman who had let me in. "Isabella, I'm going home a bit early, close up for me, would you?"
Freddy's house was close by, every bit as clean as his office, and every bit as expensive as I had expected. Though I had not expected to be met at the door by his wife. She was a handsome lady, though hardly a beautiful one; if she hadn't been in a dress I might have taken her for a man. "Fredrick, who's this?" she asked, looking at me like I was a stray cat with three paws and a stubby tail.
Freddy gave her a smile so forced I worried his lips would tear from the tension. "This is my brother John. Er, John, Juliana. Juliana, John."
"Charmed," I said, but she didn't extend her hand to me. Perhaps she was afraid I'd bite it off.
Being subjected to a bath was tolerable, though a bit frightening; that sort of thing just isn't healthy. And though Freddy's clothes were a bit large on me, they were no hardship. Taking my earrings and beads out was disheartening, but I could live with it. But then came the part that would strike terror into the heart of the fiercest pirate. I had braved storms at sea, I had fought armed men with my bare hands, I had endured lashings and beatings and battles without flinching, but I cowered from this. Freddy wanted to take me to the barber.
"But Freddy!" I wailed. "It took me years to grow this hair. I'm terribly proud of it. You wouldn't let my life's work go to waste, would you?"
He just looked at me. "Your life's work has been... growing hair?"
"The beard. At least leave me the beard."
"Johnny dear, you look like a billygoat."
I was pleading now. "The moustache. You can even have it trimmed if you like. Please, don't take everything from me!"
"John," he said in a low voice, and suddenly I was eight years old and he had me by the scruff of the neck, and I was afraid that he would whack me across the bum if I protested any further.
So he dragged me to the barber, and I whimpered helplessly as I was shorn like a sheep. Afterwards, the barber gave me a glass to inspect his work in, and I recoiled in horror. I looked ridiculous.
But even after I'd survived that ordeal, two more trials remained. First, I had to recover my pistol. They'd likely be auctioning it off, and I needed to track it down if I was to have my revenge on the man whose treachery had led me to all these torments. Right now, I could do nothing, because I still had to face down the other trial. Mother.