Chapter 37 – A Price To Be Paid
June 05, 1660

"Sail ho!" Melody called from the crow's nest several days after leaving Saint Eustatius behind and began to cruise the area northeast of San Juan. I pulled the spy glass and began looking in the proffered direction, finding sails were indeed on the horizon.

"Due north," I told Ariel who had began to turn the wheel. Out of sheer boredom I had tried once to change the course myself, but in all honesty it was like steering a semi without the power steering; it could be done but did you really want to? I found it best to let Ariel do it, her tiny body far stronger than it looked likely due to her mermaid heritage and gave the redhead a job and me something pretty to look at.

"Looks like a galleon, alright," Timon said as he eyed the ship through the glass as we got closer. "We have the weather gauge on them though, even if they try to send it downwind."

"They can try," I mused as we continued to run the ship down, but it continued to head northeast for Spain.

"I'd say treasure galleon," Timon said as we drew closer and he handed me the spyglass. "Lots of cannon."

"They aren't running," I said as I looked at the sails and orientation of the ship. "Are they trying to be easy pickings?"

"No treasure galleon is ever easy," Timon pointed out. "They're probably just wondering if we want to attack them or not."

"Merida, load the starboard cannon with round shot," I told my gunner. A cheer went up as the crew loaded and ran out the guns, Jasmine moving to stand on the ladder and relay commands to Shang and Mulan down below on the gun deck. The cannons were quickly loaded, the drills over the past few days having worked to instill the gunnery crews with the proper knowledge to do the job fast.

"They're surrendering!" Timon shouted to bring my attention to the fleeing galleon. They were indeed working the sails, but her cannon were run out. It wasn't until I eyed the ship through the spyglass that I understood I had been played.

"Fire on her mast!" I called out as my crew erupted prematurely in celebratory cheer. "They're going to turn and fire on us!"

"What!" Timon asked as he rushed to the rail but it was too late. The galleon, already swinging into the irons, presented her broadside and disappeared in huff of smoke and thunder.

"Down!" I called as I tackled the stupored man to the deck. Their cannon chewed into the side of the Empress with disasterous results, the cries and screams of the wounded filling the silence that followed.

"Fire!" I shouted and Merida began walking the line firing the cannons off one by one with her linstock while Shang and Mulan did the same below.

"Load port cannon!" I called after the final round had been fired and we sailed past the now stalled galleon as they continued their turn and began to drop sail as they rigged to chase us. "Get the wounded below!"

"Help!" I heard a weak voice call, looking down to find it was Ella and nearly gagged at the sight. I'd always heard it wasn't the cannon that killed sailors, it was the shrapnel chewed away by their rounds that did the most damage but I had never believed it. Looking now at the blonde beauty, I could see why.

Her right eye had been pierced by a large chunk of wood and seemed to penetrate deep into her skull and her left hand had a large piece of wood through it. Swallowing my breakfast, I shed my coat and jumped down the stairs without thinking to apply some first aid, knowing it was a bad idea to yank the wood free of its wound as it was currently keeping her from bleeding out. Instead, I ripped a sleeve off my shirt and ripped it into long pieces before taking a strip and tying it into a donut shape I placed over the splinter of wood and tied into place with another piece. The hand received similar treatment, and I had another crewman take her downstairs to Collette.

"Port cannon loaded!" Merida called.

"Ariel, turn us hard to port!" I called as I climbed back up the stairs. "Aladdin! Close haul the sheets!"

"Aye!" he called down as he and the riggers began to adjust the rigging. The ship began to lean over as Ariel turned us around.

Lined up board and board, we fired a second shot while their guns remained silent and my gunners proved their skill as they fell both the fore and main mast leaving nothing but the mizzen and a single sail to aid them on their way.

"They're surrendering!" someone yelled as the ship's ensign was pulled from the ship.

"Run her down, Ariel," I told the redhead who nodded and began to turn the wheel with ease. She brought us around and we quickly chased the now stalled ship and latched on and boarded, my crew and I quickly fleecing the surviving and dead crew for valuables .

"Drop a boat and throw them in it," I told Timon who nodded solemnly. "Strip this ship of valuables, and its stock of gunpowder and shot, then rig a scuttlnig charge. We sink it."

"Aye captain," Timon said as he turned to carry my order. I moved aft and retrieved the logbook, taking that back to my wardroom before going down to the hold where Colette was already set up to accommodate the wounded.

Descending into the berthing deck, I already knew it was a bad idea when I saw all the wounded sitting around. Looking over the men, most weren't badly wounded, just needing a wound cleaned or a splinter removed that was deeper than the skin and would likely need stitches as well. Moving into the hold though, the wounds got progressively worse to the point several men had bones showing as Collette struggled to set a man's leg.

"Tiens-toi tranquille pour que je puisse mettre ta jambe!" Colette yelled at the man as Linguini tried to hold him down.

"Fallo prima che mi colpisca!" Linguini yelled at her and, with a yank that made the man howl, finally got the leg set.

"Allow me," I said as I pitched in to give a hand.

"Thank you," Linguini said as I grabbed the man's dominant arm and held it down as Collette tied a couple pieces of wood in place. "I guess you're being here means the battle is over."

"For now," I said as a few men came to carry the men off to his hammock at Colette's order. The three of us together began to work our way through the wounded, until it came time to deal with Ella's eye.

"C'est malheureux!" Collette said as the blonde was laid out on the table.

"Is it bad?" Ella asked and I nodded. "Will I lose the baby?"

"No," I told her with a smile as Collette heated a spoon. "You are going to lose an eye though."

"My hand?" she said as she flexed her thumb on the injured hand, probably trying to flex the whole hand but unable to make the main tendons work.

"We'll try," I told her as Linguini and I grabbed her arms as Colette got into position. With a nod, the following process went fast as the large splinter was removed from her eye and set aside before Colette then used the heated spoon to scoop out the ruined eye and seal the damaged arteries. Ella screamed throughout as she tried to thrash, but the three of us held her down as the grisly work continued.

I had to admit as I helped in the impromptu hospital that my ancestors were made of sterner stuff than my generation as they walked willingly to painful operations and not cuss out the doctor even though she did the most horrid things with no anesthetic. I wasn't sure I could so easily allow myself to be operated on under these conditions even though I had, once to be sure, sewed up a deep cut because I couldn't afford to see a doctor.

Still, as the last of the wounded were tended to and put in their hammocks to recuperate, I couldn't help but agree with Colette's opinion we needed a real doctor. More than a few weren't expected to make it by her standards, Ella among them, and I racked my brain for ways to help them survive but came away with nothing but frustration. How could the show Sliders make basic penicillin look so easy to procure when in reality it was knowing what type of bread fungus to culture into the necessary medicine?

Frustrated at my own lack of knowledge, though who could blame a dumb truck driver for not knowing how to make his own penicillin, I headed topside to check on Timon's progress. There were several chests already on the deck of the Empress, checking one to find it full of gold and silver coins. It was as I was closing the chest back up that Timon came over.

"How bad are the casualties?" he asked me.

"Handful of dead, few more that might not make it," I told him and he blanched. "Lots of light wounds."

"We just took this ship without a single casualty and now half the crew is down?" he exclaimed, his face falling in shock. "Yeesh."

"Last time we fought hand to hand, not cannon to cannon," I reminded him. "And we have lots of fighters who love hand to hand combat."

Timon got a good chuckle out of that, and the rest of the work went quickly and soon I had a volunteer going below to set off the scuttling charge that had been set. The boom of the charge preceded his getting out, but he was back aboard and the galleon free to sink before the list became noticeable, the lower cannon ports only beginning to hit water as we pulled away.

With nothing left that required my commanding presence as we sailed the waterway northeast of San Juan again waiting for more prey, I headed down to check on my crew, more specifically Ella. Most of the crew was sleeping fitfully, their bandaged wounds making them look rough but it was Ella and her bandaged face that I felt the worst for. Thankfully the little splinters hadn't made more than little pinpricks across her face that would likely heal without a scar, but her right eye was entirely gone. Her left hand was fully wrapped in a bandage and would, unless infection set in, heal as well. How much function would be lost was still an unknown, but I was hopeful it wouldn't be much. It was her mind moving forward I was concerned with now.

"Captain," she said weakly as she opened her good eye to see me standing over her hammock.

"Rest easy," I told her as I caressed her unblemished cheek with my hand. That she closed her eye and leaned into the display of affection told me how much she wanted to be told she was wanted and desired after being disfigured. "I'll have you an eyepatch made when you're ready for it. Would you prefer a rose or a set of crossed cannons embroidered on it?"

"An eye patch?" she said, her eye flashing open in fear.

"It'll protect the socket," I told her and she whimpered. "Some people do like the look, though, and I've known more than a few sailors who wear one even when their eye works."

"Why would anyone wear one for fun?" she whined.

"Not fun so much as utility," I corrected myself and she looked at me with her good eye. "Keeping one eye in the dark allows them to be better adjusted when they go below decks to fight when boarding. Besides, if anyone asks if you have the nerve to stand before the mast and they question your resolve, just show 'em what's under the patch."

"A hideously scarred face," she said as she turned her head to hide her bandaged eye.

"Not scarred," I told her. "When you get ready to see what your face looks like, come up to my cabin. You'll see you're still beautiful."

"Really?" she said as she turned her face to me. Taking the initiative, I leaned down and kissed her, Ella returning the kiss with a wan smile.

"Really," I then told her with as warm a smile as I could muster. "But for now, I want you to rest and let your body heal. The part I'm worried about is that hand. If it starts to turn black, I want to know immediately."

"Am I going to lose it?" she asked tearfully.

"Probably not," I told her as I tried to keep my smile warm and not let it turn into a frown. "But if it starts to turn black I'll have to remove some of the dead skin. It just means that the skin that turned black was too damaged to go on."

"Alright," she finally said as she heaved a sigh as she lifted her damaged hand to regard it with her good eye.

"For now, get some rest," I told her as someone began to call for me. "It appears my presence is demanded elsewhere."

"Thank you," she said as she gave me a warm smile before I turned away to deal with the sailor running up to me.

"Captain!" the sailor said excitedly as he began to pull me towards the bow. "It's Mathers. He can't breathe."

"Damn," I said as I followed the sailor to where a sailor was gasping and coughing in his lower hammock. I knelt and looked at him, seeing his damaged leg that had been splinted, recognizing him as the sailor I helped Linguini with when I first entered the hold. He had no wounds to his chest or neck, but it struck me I'd seen this before in an episode of MASH and, if I remembered it correctly, meant he had a blood clot in his lungs blocking blood flow.

"Get Colette," I told him as I tried to think of what to do. Major Winchester would have cracked his chest open and removed it, but I didn't have that kind of skill. The only other thing I knew to do for clots was blood thinner, something my grandma took daily for hers. "Ask her if she has any willow bark. GO!"

The man went off like a shot, and all I could do was look on helplessly as the man struggled to breathe. If we didn't have any willow bark, an old Indian trick that was essentially aspirin and could be made into tea easily, maybe Colette had or knew of something similar. The man soon returned with Colette, but her grim face told me the man was likely as good as dead.

"He say you ask for willow bark?" Colette clarified as she knelt by the man. "I have none."

"Damn," I cursed as she placed the back of her hand to his forehead.

"He is burning up with fever," she stated and I nodded in defeat. "Fetch cool water and rag, rapidement!"

"Aye," the sailor said as he rushed off again, soon returning with a bucket and handkerchief. Colette mopped the guys forehead with the water, then folded it and instructed the guy on what to do. After we both stood and began walking away, it was Colette who spoke first.

"I give him until morning," she said softly. "There is nothing we can do but ease his passing."

"Unfortunately," I said in agreement. "Thank you for trying."

"I only wish I could do more," she said before silently leaving me to head back to her kitchen. I looked to where the man knelt by his friend, trying desperately to keep him cool and alive and for the briefest of moments, thought I heard a woman laughing.

Fucking bitch.