Chapter 43 – No Luck At All
July 11, 1660

"Sail ho!" Melody called out a few days after leaving Saint Martin. I didn't like the look of the ship, it was small, smaller than a sloop with one triangular sail that Timon laughed at as he saw it.

"A pinnace?" he said as laughed and handed off the spyglass to Jasmine who stood with me at the bow of the ship. "The hardest part is going to be chasing it down."

"Xebec's sail into the wind like a knife," Jasmine said as she eyed the ship. "It can sail where most can't, allowing them to flee. It's why father's navy had so many problems chasing Jafar's ships."

"Approach a ship and if you can't easily take it or if it turns into a warship, just sail into the wind where they can't follow," I mused as the ship started to make its run for it. It turned briefly to fire two shots at us, the shots landing far short but the threat was clear.

"Order sir?" Timon asked as I thought it over.

"Let it be," I said and everyone looked shocked as they stared at me with gaped mouths. "We can't chase it into the wind which is where we'll be if we do, so let it be. We'll get past it and then chase it before the wind."

"Now that idea I like," Timon said as he trimmed out the sails. The crew smiled devilishly as they caught on, and we passed by the ship without further shot as they seemed to count their fortunes we didn't think them a threat or try to chase them down. I kept a surreptitious eye on them for hours, slowly passing them on a completely different course, waiting until they were out of sight on the horizon before initiating a course change to cut them off.

"Sail!" Melody called, pointing out the pinnace that had seemed to turn around and head back the way it came. This time, the chase was on as Timon trimmed out the sails and bent the mast and stressed the ship, but the pinnace wasn't without teeth. It fired again, likely thinking we were another ship or hoping to scare us off but I knew my position superior.

We chased them for two hours, the little ship fast as we ran it down over the course of the day even after it made a turn to cut across the wind. I initially thought the turn was to elevate the cannons further as the ship heeled in the wind, but Melody pointed out the shoals they were trying to run us across.

"Damn it," I cursed as I eyed the white caps on the horizon.

"Allow me," Ariel said as she handed off the helm to another sailor. She dropped her pants and jumped over, disappearing for several long minutes before returning to the ship.

"There's a gap just big enough for us to get through," Ariel told me as she put her pants on.

"Steer us through," I said with a smile, but the smile was short lived. As Ariel put us through the gap, the captain grew desperate as he turned his ship to face us down once more as we were close enough now to clearly see the crew. They were hastily reloading their cannons, fumbling the process enough I was almost concerned.

Almost.

They did manage to get their shots off while we were about a hundred feet out and if I hadn't been standing at the rear of the deck looking forward, would have missed the water spraying up as their shots landed just short of the hull. The look on their faces though was priceless as we grappled on and boarded their ship, the fishermen already surrendering as my men surged over the rails. It was only as we were fleecing their ship, that the girls came up and let me know I had other problems.

"The ship is sinking," one of them told me. I jumped back and went down to the hold finding one of the boards was leaking water where the board had been hit by a cannonball and broken it free of its seam. The water was already a foot deep and rising and I knew soon I would lose another boat.

"Abandon ship," I called as I climbed back up to the main deck. "Swap over to the pinnace."

"But it smells," one of the girl's protested as she held her nose as the smell wafted over us.

"Bring the holystones," Evelyn called to them. "And the soap!"

"Get them in a rowboat and rowing for it," I told Jasmine. "We don't have time to deal with them."

"Aye," she said as she ordered the men to row for it as the sun set, soon plunging us into darkness as we tried to salvage what we could. Most of the fresh fish was thrown over and the decks were scrubbed mercilessly before anyone sank off to sleep that night, but the new ship, while not the rotten tub the Senora Borracha was, was definitely a step down.

The new ship, called the Lucky Reward, carried only four cannon on her main deck and had one mast with a triangular sail. Given her size and mast configuration, she really reminded me of a yacht but her smell was all trawler and her four cannons were a joke. I knew there was no way to take another ship with brute force, but I couldn't for the life of me think of another way. As I went to sleep, the only thing I could think of was to pull the trick from the end of Master and Commander but as a Dutch target rather than British.

The next three days, we patrolled the waters south of Nevis and Saint Kitts, but nothing cropped up, not even a man-of-war. I was hoping for a merchantman myself, but nothing. Moral cratered during this time as people took stock of the ship and our odds of taking anything else, and I caught more than one person doubting my capabilities.

"So, how many are asking questions about what comes next?" I asked my officers on the night of the third day.

"Everyone," Jasmine finally admitted as everyone else contemplated their food. "We have four cannons, thirty two men in fighting condition, thirteen women who can't fight, and you. I've heard some people say we should parlay with another privateer who's had better luck than us recently and sell some of the girls off."

"You remember who it was?" I asked her and she nodded.

"Jayce Spalding," Jasmine told me then looked down. "I was thinking of putting him off at the next port, regardless of whose it was."

"So be it," I said as I nodded my approval.

"That's going to tear the moral right out of this crew," Timon pointed out.

"Any ideas?" I asked them pointedly. "Any at all? I'll entertain anything at this point. My only thought is a 'Hail Mary' and get as close as possible and storm the ship. If it's a man-of-war of any caliber, we'll be slaughtered. Even a merchantman is likely to outnumber us."

"Your false gods aside," Jasmine started with as I realized she mistook the famous football play of desperation as an act of intervention by God, "What happens to us women?"

"The Spanish only wanted me," I said as I sank into the chair. "We try to raid a ship and fail, especially if they sink this one before finding my Letters, the survivors will be taken on to port and likely tried for piracy. Unless you could convince someone to write to Saint Martin or Saint Eustatius and get it confirmed by the governors, you'd be hung."

"They'd hang a woman?" Aladdin said as his head came up, fear in his eyes for Jasmine's fate.

"They would," I told him. "I once knew of a woman pirate who was caught and tried for piracy. Name of Mary Read. She was sentenced to hang but pleaded her belly because she was pregnant. She received a stay long enough to give birth, but died during childbirth because of lack of medical care."

"Oh," Jasmine said as she fell silent. Indeed the whole table fell silent and the food largely went untouched as the mood was so sour. Eventually, everyone began to realize they'd lost their appetites and slunk off to bed but I wasn't in the mood to sleep. I took a watch on the poop deck, watching the gentle waves rolling by in the moonlight.

"I wanted to ask you something," Jasmine said as she came up to where I was standing.

"Feel free," I said as I continued to gaze into the calming sea and tried to destress. Watching the waves always used to help me clear my head but tonight it didn't seem to be helping.

"It was about what happened in your cell in San Juan," she said and I sighed as I hung my head. Do I play coy or state my thoughts outright? In my silence, Jasmine pressed on.

"I know you have...great wisdom," she said, searching for the words she wanted to use. "When we had the governor's daughters aboard, you would speak at length about topic after topic as if you knew everything."

"I've seen more than most," I admitted to her but couldn't bring myself to look into her eyes and the question I knew waited there. How was I supposed to explain it? Or more importantly, how I knew what I knew because men, even in my time, didn't understand it.

"I've been married to Aladdin two years and he never felt so...powerful...inside me as you were," she finally stated. "Is there something wrong with him?"

"Maybe," I told her, finally looking into her pleading eyes. "Some men, for whatever reason known only to our Creator, just can't bear children."

"Can you?" she asked and I hung my head before nodding.

"Ariel bears my child, as does Megara," I admitted to her. "And Ella and likely most of the women I've slept with the past six months. I seem to have a real knack for timing."

"What about me?" she asked and my shoulders slumped. She would ask that question.

"When was the last time you...bled?" I asked her as I tried to remember the phases and times of a woman's cycle.

"A week before rescuing you from the Spanish," she stated, her eyes hopeful but a tear glistening on her cheek. I did the math, trying to remember everything I could on the difficult topic, but it wasn't looking good.

"If you bleed again, you'll know for sure," I started with then hung my head, unable to look her in the eyes and knowing that maybe I had gotten her pregnant behind Aladdin's back. "Maybe, I don't know. It's a bleeding numbers game that has no rules. Some say you need ten days after the bleeding has stopped, some say fourteen. If you are bearing my child, I won't interfere with you or Aladdin raising it."

"Thank you," she said as she turned and walked slowly away, her footsteps silent as she returned to her husband and their marriage bed. Knowing that she could be pregnant with my child behind Aladdin's back was heady and heart wrenching because if he found out he could leave her and the child. I had to remind myself that as long as I was alive she would be taken care of instead of being forced penniless into the streets. In point of fact, she was an officer over Aladdin and if not my immediate replacement which turned out to be Timon, then still a high ranking officer on the ship. She would never lose that, and I wouldn't let her. Having been raised in the woke culture of the new millenium, I knew women who were every bit as savage as men and could whoop my butt with ease.

"Women...fighting…" I muttered as a plan formed in my mind. It was crazy, hairbrained, and lunacy to the extreme, but if it worked would mean we could fire the first shot on our terms not theirs and could win, even if just by shock value alone, against a man-of-war.

"Thank you, Jasmine," I muttered even if only the wind could hear it. I had a plan, now I just needed a cigar.