PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE AFRICAN STAR

By ErinRua

CHAPTER 23

Baracoa, Cuba held several honors, including that of being the first colony on the island, of being the first capital of Cuba, and also of being rather unhappily popular with raiding pirates for a number of years.  For that reason it had sensibly sprouted a number of forts to guard its precipitous shoreline, and for reason of the forts the only pirate ship currently in the region slid past under cover of night.

Thus it was that when the half-moon rose before a small bay north of Baracoa, upon the silvered waters sailed a great black ship.  Not a sound did she make; neither cry of voice nor whisper of wind in canvas.  Black as night.  Black as death.  She was ink poured before the gleaming face of the moon as straight towards the shore she came in slow, majestic grace.

Atop stone ramparts a watchman saw and his heart froze in his chest.  No light did he see on those grim decks, no movement of living men.  Just a black ghost ship gliding up the silver pathway of the moon, and he felt the weight of a lifetime's sins upon his soul.  His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth and only his shaking hand moved, tracing upon his breast the sign of the Cross.

Silent as night.  Silent as death.  Black sails stood broad and full and from them he was certain he felt unholy, invisible eyes.  Others still wakeful were drawn onto the walls and grounds of the hacienda and they, too, found that terror bound their feet and they could only stare as the great ship passed.  Passed in that perfect, terrible silence, until by some unseen power it turned and glided back out into the night.

Probably it was a good thing those watching could not hear the shrilly-whispered conversation taking place on the Pearl's dark decks.

"Are you sure this is the right place, Jack?"

"Will, what part of 'casa de Capitán Biltmore es una hora del norte' don't you understand?"

Silence.  Then:  "Your informant was also weeping and praying to the Virgin Mary and at least a half-dozen saints."

"Can I help it if Spaniards are spineless?"

"Jack, he was in a fishing boat.  We're in a gigantic black pirate ship."
"Precisely.  He would 'ave given up the key to his sainted grandmother's jewelry chest if it would mean he kept his wretched life.  And look.  One hour later, 'ere we are!"

"You better hope this is the right place.  What exactly are we doing?"

"Terrifyin' people.  It's a marvelous tactic.  Does away with a whole lot of unnecessary fuss and bother."  Nimble fingers sketched some indefinable shape in the air between them, as gold teeth glinted by moonlight.  "Trust me, mate, I know what I'm doin'."

Behind them, the moon rose over empty water that suddenly seemed, to souls on the darkened land, much colder than a Caribbean night had any right to be.

***

Wood grated dryly, the familiar sound of the outside panel moving which forewarned of visitors.  Eight sets of hollow eyes blinked dully at the rectangle of light that opened, at the dark shapes beyond.  The silent black man entered as always, woolly head bowed and eyes so blank as to seem almost blind.  In the passageway outside two burly sailors stood watchfully.  There would be no chances for escape attempts now.

The women moved only slightly as the slave stepped among them, drawing back feet and skirts in wary silence as he set down his burdens, a bucket of water, another of what could only loosely be termed food.  That done, he rose to a crouch to pick up their bucket of night soil.

"I give one chance."

Elizabeth started from her haze of misery to stare up at that low voice, at the bent dark figure now turning away.  She opened her mouth to cry questions - and swallowed the words unsaid.  It was with effort she averted her eyes from the man's departure, her hands clenched tightly in her lap.  Only when the door closed them into gloom and an odor of overcooked yams once more did she turn to the woman beside her.

"Bess," she whispered, "Did you hear?"

"Yes," was Bess' soft alto reply.  "I hear."

"What does it mean?"

Pallid light shone on dark features as Bess returned her gaze.  "I don' know.  But I t'ink we be ready, you an' me."

Jaw clenched in anxiety, Elizabeth hissed, "Yes, but what if it's a trick?"

"Den we be clever, eh?"  White teeth gleamed.

"How can we trust a darky?" came a sharp whisper from nearby.  "Who knows what he might do!"

"He is a slave," Elizabeth retorted.  "Just like we'll be, if we don't get ourselves out of this mess!"

"What about your pirate friends?" Sarah's small voice spoke.  "Aren't they still coming?"

She tightened her jaw to think that she truly could not rely on Jack Sparrow or Will Turner.  But nonetheless Elizabeth said firmly, "We don't know what they are doing or even what happened to them.  We must make our own luck."

"They'll shoot us trying to escape," another woman said.  "Or worse."

"And what happens if we stay?"  Elizabeth shot back.  "If chance comes, we must take it!"

"Promise me?" said Sarah thinly, and her round face was a pale orb in the shadows.  "If you get away … you'll find help for us?  Somehow?"

"You'll come with us, of course!"

"No …" The girl's fingers plucked at the fabric at her plump bosom like the fluttering of wounded birds.  "I can't swim … I'm not a good runner.  I'm terrified of snakes and the things in the jungle… I'd only get you caught."  She took a breath before adding, "And someone has to get out.  Someone has to tell about us.  Someone has to tell the world what this man is doing!"

Murmurs of assent rippled from the other women, and one said, eyes glinting in the shadows, "Aye.  If any of us escapes, if it can't be me, all I ask is that you bring down whatever it takes to blow this godless bastard to kingdom come!"

"Just promise me?"  Sarah looked up and her eyes were two luminous pools.  "Please?"

"Oh, Sarah …."  Elizabeth found herself without words as she reached to clasp the girl's hand.  Through a throat that threatened to squeeze itself shut, she whispered, "I promise."

They were running out of time.  They were running out of time, and soon the only chances left would be last chances.

***

"I WANT ANSWERS!" thundered Biltmore, bright sun casting his shadow before him as he strode like a battleship down the gangplank to the quay below.  "Is there no one who can speak a coherent sentence?"

Of the men gathered in various postures of alarm and uncertainty, only a muttered phrase was heard, "Patrón, era la nave del Diablo.…."

"Yes, yes, you saw the Devil's ship, but I am the devil you need fear!  Witherspoon, where ARE you!"

"Here, sir!"

A panting rush of feet on stone brought a lanky man in loose shirt and trousers pelting towards him, with a musket in his hand and his face flushed with exertion.  He staggered to a halt, gasping, and tried to draw himself to a shabby semblance of attention under Sir John's furious gaze.

"You will explain to me," Biltmore said very deliberately, "Just what these people are blathering about and WHY I arrived to find my men cowering behind the walls armed as if for invasion by the entire French Navy!  I have a cargo to unload and work to be done!"

The Adam's apple slid spastically up and down the man's throat.  "It was the ship, sir!  Black it was, not a light or sound to be seen and it sailed right in 'ere."

Biltmore loomed over the man in any case, and he shifted his bulk so that his gold-threaded lapels were mere inches from Witherspoon's flushed face.  "What … ship?"

"I don't know sir!  God's truth, I don't!  It was black -." Witherspoon glanced swiftly aside to see nodding agreement from the others.  "Even the sails were black.  We couldn't see no name, sir.  It was the middle of the night."
"And just what did this devil's ship … do?"

"Ah …" Witherspoon's brow furrowed in consternation.  "Nothin', sir!"

"Nothing."

Witherspoon swallowed again.  "It just sort of sat there.  Watchin', like."

Exhaling a deep breath that rumbled in his chest, Biltmore turned and swept his eyes over the men nearby.  Beside the quay the Royal Venture now stood at her moorings, tall against a backdrop of steep jungle-clad hillsides that surrounded the bay.  Overlooking the harbor rose the stout walls of his hacienda, sunshine painting red tile roofs brightly against the green hills.

Gathering the shreds of his courage, Witherspoon asked, "'ave you 'eard of such a ship, sir?"

Rage rose like greasy smoke within, but Biltmore dared not answer.  He dared not name the foe that had so violated his sanctuary, for he knew too well what greater terror the name of the Black Pearl would provoke.

"I do," he replied crisply.  "But you need not concern yourself with it.  We are more than a match for them."  His gaze lifted and a grim smile played over his features.  "We'll simply blow them to kindling should they come again."

Witherspoon looked as well and blinked in renewed confidence, for atop the walls protruded the black, deadly muzzles of cannon.  "Oh, aye, I s'pose we could."

"Minions," Biltmore grumbled as he shouldered past Witherspoon.  "You would think gold could purchase at least an ounce or two of common sense."  Turning his attention to the Royal Venture looming beside them, he shouted, "Mister Fry!  Our special cargo first."

"Aye, sir," drifted the reply from the ship's decks.

Nodding, Biltmore smote his hands together and let his attention wander over the Royal Venture and up towards the sails that sailors tightly furled high above.

"All is not lost," he murmured.  "I still have a market in Havana, and I can send a fast messenger to my clients in Port Paix.  And of course the auction …."  He turned away with a satisfied smile that curved his mouth, but never warmed his eyes.

Eight frightened faces blanched in the pallid light of the doorway.  They had felt the settling in the ship's motion when it left the open sea and entered harbor, and felt the slowing and final bump as it came to rest.  Every heart beat fast and wide eyes reflected the sky as four of Biltmore's men herded the women on deck.  Green hills Elizabeth saw, blinking her suddenly-stinging eyes before the onslaught of the sun.  Green hills, brilliant water, a busy dock of wood and stone, and walls upon the hillside above that seemed to crouch, waiting.

"We're here," Sarah breathed, and a sigh of fear seemed to whisper among the others.

Her chest suddenly feeling too tight to take in air, Elizabeth clenched her teeth as she fought rising panic.  Glancing aside she tried to take courage from dark Bess' expression of blank stoicism.  As a nudge from behind propelled her into motion she lifted her chin in the last tatters of defiance.

"LOOK OUT! - What's he doing? - Get him down from there!"

The tangle of shouts shocked every heart within hearing, and Elizabeth glimpsed Biltmore's heavy form spinning on the dock to stare up -.  She looked and gasped in horror as a wild scream soared out across the water.

"The darky's gone mad!  He's got fire! Get him down, get him down!" voices cried, but she had eyes only for the figure clinging like some queer monkey in the rigging overhead.

On the quay Biltmore bellowed with all his strength, "SIM, you nap-headed idiot, get down this instant!  Get DOWN, I say, or I'll flay the meat right off your bones!"

But the silent black slave who had seemed little more than a ghost for so long did not heed.  Clinging precariously he gave out another lunatic yowl, as he waved a smoking torch just below one of the newly-furled sails.  The howl then broke to words, a queer gibbering tongue that flashed white teeth and seemed filled with condemnation.

"Now!" hissed Bess and Elizabeth stared in shock.

"What?"

Bess' black eyes blazed inches from her own.  "Here our chance - now!"

"Shoot him down from there!  Shoot him!  SIM!  You infernal cursed ape!"

Biltmore was plunging up the gangplank and there was no time to think, no time to hesitate, no time to plan.  Elizabeth flung a desperate glance at Sarah, at the others and then she spun and ran.  Behind her she heard shrieks and shouts and the popping of musket fire.  Without thought she leaped - over the side to plummet into the brilliant green water below.

Impact thundered in her ears and in her bones as the waves closed over her head.  Sound went dead and knives of water drove into her sinuses.  Desperately she thrashed against the suddenly-sodden weight of her clothes.  Seeing flaring sunlight above she kicked towards it to burst gasping into air.  Above the choking splash of her own struggles she saw a sudden chaos of smoke and sputtering flame against blue sky, but there was no time to watch.  She struck out desperately, stroke and stroke again.  Yet as she turned she carried one last image - a dark form plunging with sickening suddenness from the rigging of the Royal Venture.

She swam towards green; that was all she knew.  Towards green while fighting with every stroke against the weight of saturated linen, even while some dim part of her mind realized she would be drowned already if she still wore the heavy, layered dress of her usual custom.  Green trees and white sand and suddenly she struck bottom, floundering as her feet dug into the sand and she rose from sucking waves that did not want to let her go.  She staggered heavily as sea and sand fought for which would win her, but she drove herself on with but a single thought: live.

A hard hand seized her arm and she spun gasping, but it was Bess, dark and dripping and keen as a hawk.  "Come."

There was no time, for voices shouted and the slave ship smoldered and men were running hard around the curve of the cove to reach them.  Elizabeth wheeled and ran - and fell sprawling.  Up she was in an instant, smothering a curse that would have shocked her father and amused Jack Sparrow to no end.  With desperate haste she seized her skirts and knotted them high in one hand - then in a flash of legs the two women were gone, swallowed into the jungle's green breast.

How far they ran she did not know, could not tell.  Only that her lungs burned and her feet, which had not gone bare since she was a very small girl, burned with gashing pain that shocked the threat of tears to her eyes with every desperate leap.  And somehow she had thrown her entire faith into a black woman - possibly even a slave - whom she barely knew.  Before her Bess' lean form leaped like a hound, bare feet flashing as if impervious to rock and stone ever higher into the green-dark hills.  The voices still rang out, closer now and closer.

"No -."

The word jerked through clenched teeth as Elizabeth hurled herself up a staircase of twisted tree roots.  Sim - that had been his name, after all this time - Sim had bought their freedom with his life.  They could not fail, could not let Biltmore turn loss and sacrifice to bitter naught.

Yet the voices through the trees below seemed to bark like hounds, for two underfed, barefoot, storm-battered women could not truly outrun strong men.  Roots became stones and stones became near-cliffs as upwards they clambered through slapping branches, each breath coming in rags of fire.

"- not long now."

"This way!"

"- for this much trouble -."

Fragments of men's voices battered like shards of despair, and Elizabeth caught herself on a jagged outcrop to glance down.  Green leaves and vines and broken hillside were all she saw, but heavy smashing sounded below.  She heaved herself another step and rock collapsed underfoot, dropping her sprawling and sliding until frantic fingers seized a sturdy branch.  Jerked to a halt, she gasped sharply at her near-fall, but pulled herself into motion once more.  Then she halted.

"Wait!" she hissed, and above her Bess stopped.  Elizabeth's brown eyes took fire as she whispered fiercely, "I know how to stop them - or at least slow them down!"

Upwards through tangled undergrowth four men scrambled and puffed and swore.  The man in front wielded a machete, whacking at clutching vines as the sweat ran in dirty rivulets down his face.  Then he heard a sudden thud and looked up.  The thud became cracking, the cracking became crashing and he just had time to shout before a deluge of bounding stones knocked him from sight.

Amongst the rocky outcroppings above, Elizabeth and Bess listened as the whacking progress of their rock fall died away.  They heard no further sounds.

"We have to keep moving," she said and move they did.

Yet a cold realization gripped Elizabeth's heart as the women pushed their way upwards into the jungle hills.  They were free, yes.  But they were alone and without friends on a great Spanish island where they did not even speak the language.

***

TBC …

AN: I see I have picked up some new reviewers since my last post - Thank you for your comments, mates!  Praise is welcome, honest critique is adored.  I am pleased and honored to hear from you.  :-)

This will be my last post before Christmas, so from my house to yours I wish you all the very best.  May your friends be many, your blessings plentiful, and may health and good fortune attend you and yours. Live well, laugh often!