CHAPTER FIVE
TORTUGA
Samantha waved goodbye to Miller, the captain of the Blood Rose and started on her way to find the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow. The town was worse than she'd imagined it to be, and her father had been right about the drunks and scallywags. Men lay in the streets, covered in mud, some with pigs for pillows. She carefully stepped over them and tried to keep her head low. She had nearly made it to a dirty little tavern when she felt someone watching her. A scary old man covered in mud was following her. She hastened her steps and lost him as she scurried around a corner and right into somebody coming around the same corner. They both fell in the muck.
"Oh I'm so sorry! Are you okay?" said the other person. Samantha sat up to find the person she'd ran into was a young boy, not much older than she. He had dark brown eyes and black hair and light brown skin, and his clothes were dirty from his fall in the mud. He had a cutlass secured around his waist. He extended his hand to help her up from her fall and she took it. Once she was off the ground, she brushed herself off to find that her dress was too dirty to just brush the dirt off.
"Thank you." she said, wiping her hands on her already ruined dress.
"No problem. May I interest you in a place to freshen up? I'm sure you'd like to, after that fall."
"If it's not too much trouble."
"Of course not. You don't look familiar, are you from around here?"
"No, I'm not. Are you?"
"Kind of. I was born here, and I come back every so often, but I don't live here. I live on the sea."
The boy gave her a smile that made her knees go weak.
"I'm Nicholas, by the way. Or Nick if you'd rather."
"Samantha, Samantha Turner..."
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Nicholas escorted Samantha into a dark, dank inn and tavern called the Faithful Bride, and up a set of creaky stairs to a long, narrow corridor with doors that led to different rooms, then into a room at the end of the hall. He opened the door and showed her to a basin and a cloth she could use.
"I'll wait out here for you." he said, closing the door. Samantha quickly changed into a different dress after scrubbing the mud from her arms and face. She then bundled up the dirty one and stuffed it back into her sack. She brushed the mud from her hair and used another hair pin to pin it to the side. After she'd finished, she met Nicholas back in the hallway.
"Thank you." she said gratefully.
"Oh, it was no problem at all. When did you get to Tortuga?"
"About an hour ago." Samantha said.
"Have you eaten anything?"
"No, I haven't." she said, cursing herself for forgetting to pack food.
"You must be starving. Follow me."
"You've already done too much."
"Nonsense. I insist. My father and his crew are already downstairs eating breakfast. Actually, I don't think they've gone to bed yet. It's free for us anyway, my father knows the owner. Is it okay if my friend eats with us this morning?" Nicholas called.
"Aye Nicholas." called a man from the other side of the room. He turned around to face them. Samantha stared into the face of a legendary man her father had told her all about. Nicholas' father was Captain Jack Sparrow.