Chapter 40 – Good Run of Bad Luck
June 20, 1660

"No gold, or silver," Jasmine admonished me as Timon readied the scuttling charge below on our second successive vessel in as many days. "No cargo, and ten men past the captain?"

"The log will fetch us a few hundred from the governor," I told her as I pinched the ridge of my nose. She was right, in more ways than one, and it rankled that it was so. "It's almost as if this vessel were just taken but it was leaving San Juan, not heading for it to be disposed of."

"It should be burned," Timon said as he ran up the stairs. "No powder at all below decks. No shot, and no cannon. This vessel isn't even trying to protect itself."

"Stripped," I said with a sigh.

"Sails!" Melody called from the crow's nest of the Empress. I went to the rear rail of the captured sloop and checked to see two ships on the horizon, heading our way.

"Timon," I said as I handed him the spyglass. "What do you make of it."

"Eh," he said with a very nervous chuckle as all color left him. "You know that line about discretion being the better part of valor?"

"All hands, to the Empress!" I called as I followed Timon back to the Empress, the redheaded man leaping the railings like a scared cat on the run. The Empress was quickly put back under sail as Timon, Pumbaa and Simba cut the lines to quickly debark from the captured sloop, but the looming ships were quickly closing.

"One's a fast galleon," Timon told me as he eyed the ship with the spyglass. "The other...it's a flag galleon."

"I saw a ship like her once," I told him as I recalled an old movie, almost as old as I was. Simply called Pirates, it came out in 1986 and starred Walter Matheu of The Odd Couple and Grumpy Old Men fame, featured a large Spanish galleon called Neptune that could field sixty cannons with ease over three decks. "I do not want to fight it today."

"It we might be able to outrun," Timon told me as the Empress got up to speed and the chase was on. "That fast galleon will beat us by five knots."

"Damn," I cursed as I eyed the sheets in frustration. I couldn't outrun that ship but I could do one thing better; outgun it.

"Drop sail and let her come alongside," I told Timon who looked panic stricken. "We'll slug it out. Load starboard cannon!"

The crew rushed to fullfill my orders with a frenzied pace as the fast galleon began to close enough I could count her cannon. That she fielded a mere twelve on this side on one deck boded well for me, as I fielded twice that back at her as I called for them to aim low and sink that bastard ship. Once the last cannon was run out, Ariel tacked us over and brought our cannons to bear as the other ship cut its own helm hard over and fired as well, their cannonballs thudding into the hull with loud thuds and shrieks of splintering wood.

"Again!" I yelled as the crews quickly sponged and swabbed the barrels, the race on to see who was better drilled as we came board and board. Our cannons rang out together as we each pounded on the other's hull until, with a chest reverberating pulse, the other ship erupted as something exploded deep inside her.

"We must've hit the powder magazine," Timon told in complete disbelief as he took in the sight of the galleon's masts falling onto the ruined sheep as she began to list heavily.

"The mast!" someone cried to bring our attention to the masts where the main mast strained against the ropes. It was with a surge in the breeze that spelled our own doom as, with the crack of a whip, the mast pitched violently forward.

"Melody!" Ariel shrieked as I saw the young girl thrown forward against the railing of the nest before she fell limply out the bottom and tumble down the shrouds. Ariel abandoned the wheel as she rushed for the limp shrouds that carried her daughter's limp form, but hesitated to climb as she turned ghostly white and shrieked her daughter's name again.

"Is that blood?" Jasmine asked as she cupped a hand over her eyes and stared up to where the sailors struggled to free the young girl, but the red smear of crimson was unmistakable as the white sheet billowed around the girl making it hard to remove her body from the wobbling mast.

"I'm sorry," I breathed as Ariel cried and shrieked as she realized what it meant, my head turning away from the awful sight to see the Spanish's answer to the ship-of-the-line bearing down hard on us.

"Help me with the wheel," I called to Timon as I tried to adjust our heading to bring us in line with the remaining galleon. Together, we turned the ship into the galleon's path but at the cost of our mast when, with a shrieking crash, the base of it ripped out the main deck as it fell into the water with Melody's corpse still attached. Ariel was overboard in a moment, rushing for her daughter's corpse like the dedicated mother she was, and bringing it back before tossing her pants up on the deck and retrieving the brave men who had tried to help.

Again, we began to slug it out with the other ship, cannon for cannon as we pounded on each other's hulls. Four rounds into it, Monica led Sil and several of the girl's out of my wardroom and up to the poop deck. I was about to yell for them to go below when I noticed the girl's wet clothing, which brought me up short.

"They're trapped!" Sil sobbed to me.

"Who?"

"Everyone!" she cried.

"A cannon fell on the stairs," Monica told me hurriedly as the cannons roared again. "There's several holes letting water in."

"Fuck," I shouted as I raced past them and jumped the stairs as I headed down. The stairs to the gun deck were a mess, and Shang and Mulan looked haggard as they shouted orders.

"Help!" someone shouted as a group of men tried to move the cannon. They were able to move it just far enough one girl shimmied past and I helped her up the stairs to join the others, but the wood they were prying off of crumbled and the cannon pinned someone given evidence when a woman's loud shriek filled the deck.

"Captain!" someone yelled to bring me back up the ladder. The Spanish galleon was getting closer, but their downward aiming cannon that disappeared behind white and gray smoke spoke of disaster. The Empress shuddered with their impact, and the mizzen began to teeter as well.

"Clear the deck!" someone yelled as I dashed under the stairs. The mizzenmast fell back along the ship's deck, it's wreckage blocking the stairs down.

"Captain!" someone again yelled as I struggled to get out of the wreckage myself. I found it was Timon yelling for me when he yelled again, almost standing on top of me as he tried to figure out where I was in the chaos.

"Down here!" I called and Timon began to help me past the shrouds to get out. Things were so chaotic that I don't think anyone noticed the Spanish ship that had moved close enough to grapple on and board us.

"Surrender, pirate," a Spanish man said as he put a sword to my chest. Some sporadic fighting broke out across the deck but it quickly ended as they rounded us up.

"Who do you name as captain?" a well dressed man said as he boarded my ship.

"Lord Admiral Owen Hunt," I said as I introduced myself. "The ship is sinking, we have people trapped below…"

"They can drown," the captain said cooly.

"There's women down there!" I yelled at him but he looked over my captured crew and turned away.

"Let the whores drown," he said before shouting, "Dejarlos!" as he walked away.

At sword point, I was forced onto the galleon and locked in the ship's brig under armed guard while my crew was left behind to drown and flounder. I was pissed, but there was nothing I could do as they took me to back to San Juan to imprison me. As a privateer, I couldn't be hanged for piracy no matter what they wanted to say but they could ransom me to the governor who likely would pay as I was an extremely good captain.

Now I just had to wait for them to either ransom me out, or escape. Good thing was, most soldiers didn't have guns to shoot me with so getting shot wasn't a worry, but leaving San Juan once I escaped was the big worry as I was broke, all my gold and silver aboard a sinking ship. I did give thought to killing the governor for the innocent deaths he caused but that would probably get me hung.

"Killing time," I began to sing in the darkness that was my room if for no other reason to kill time. I certainly had the time to kill as I sang the Clint Black song of the same name. There just wasn't shit to do.