Chapter 46 – Never Enough
July 22, 1660

It was early the next morning when I found the result of the night's efforts, not even having to descend to the lower decks to get the report I could hear so fresh and clear along with every member of my crew. The man on watch, Hodges, was about to flip the watch glass and ring the bell when I shook my head as I took the bell's rope and rang it eight times. Every man on the deck bowed his head and removed their hat in respect for the life taken so soon after birth, a coffin built and weighted as the mother grieved.

Not a soul stirred to move the ship as the sun rose and Belle finally ascended the stairs with their child in her arms, placing the baby in the coffin. I carried out a full funeral and read from the bible before it was lowered gently into the water to disappear beneath the waves. Only then did the crew take to the rigging to get the ship underway as Adam escorted Belle back to their cabin, both silent in their grief.

"Didn't last the night as I…" the doctor began to say before a growl erupted from Adam.

"YOU NEVER EVEN TRIED!" Adam finally bellowed before he grabbed the doctor by the collar and dragged him to the bow of the ship where he threw the doctor against the rails hard enough to stun the man. Adam quickly tied a rope around the doctor's neck and the other end to the anchor before releasing the anchor to fall into the water, dragging the doctor with it as I and the crew looked on in horror. The chain spooled out before snapping taught, then ripping free of its fasteners as the falling weight of the anchor and chained fell on the wooden beam and its metal fasteners and failed, the anchor falling free to land somewhere on the sea bed below.

No one said anything as Adam marched sullenly back to Belle before they disappeared below, lost in their own grief. I didn't have a word to say about the doctor's untimely demise, but I sure as hell wasn't going to hold it against a grieving father. It cast a terrible pall over the ship for the rest of the day which went otherwise plainly as the day faded into night.

"Where would you like to be delivered to?" I asked Adam the next morning.

"Montserrat," he said as he looked out at the sunrise. "I was on my way to Nevis to witness an old friend's eldest daughter get married. However, I think my wife would rather return to our home at the present time."

"Alright," I said and we spent the next two days sailing the seas eastward until we came to Montserrat where I docked the ship under French colors.

"Thank you, captain," the governor said placed a rolled up set of paper before he stepped off with his wife on his arm. I watched him go before opening the papers to find it was a full pardon along with Letters of Marque for King Louis the Fourteenth, making me a French privateer as well as Dutch.

"Well?" Timon asked as I rolled the paper up and looked at the retreating figure of the governor and his wife.

"We sail tomorrow at eight bells," I told the crew as I rolled the papers back up. "As long as we don't take any more French ships, we're safe in French harbors."

The crew cheered and soon left the ship as they went in search of rum and women, Evelyn taking most of her girls out for some work as well. I stayed aboard, locked in my cabin to hide my depression, when I heard a woman crying faintly through the floorboards. Following the sound, I found it was Jasmine crying in the hold under the watchful eye of Ella, Ariel and Melody.

"Now isn't the best time," Ella told me as she kept guard at the stairs into the hold.

"She's bleeding...down there...isn't she?" I asked and she nodded. I blew out a sigh before turning and walking away knowing now wasn't the time to make Jasmine understand the difficulty in bearing a child and how the human body...sometimes...didn't mesh the way it was supposed to and was rejected in the womb. Maybe it's why the human race in the new millennium was so screwed up by protecting too many of the weak from the culling nature had intended.

Maybe it was our own fault. Ever since the industrialization that would start just after turn of the seventeenth century, man's knowledge to turn the world around him to his liking would become his downfall. Want better armed ships that couldn't be damaged? The Monitor and the Merrimack slugged it out all day during the Civil War and neither one could win the engagement because of their armor. Newer weapons were made to punch through the armor, those weapons adapted to ground combat and taking down walls and bunkers.

Even rockets became guided, hitting their intended target and causing great devastation. Even when man looked to the skies, early attempts to fly became armed with machine guns and aerial wars became a thing. Planes went from barely capable of flight to the fastest form of travel, carrying increasingly deadly weapons against ground and air targets.

Even medicine made vast improvements with man's knowledge. Infertility couldn't always be cured, but we did understand the reasons why and were on the threshold of using transplanting to move a woman's mitochondrial DNA into a healthy egg and fertilize it and implant it back into her womb. It was the closest we could to overriding nature's design, even as we understood how stars burned for billions of years and could, to a point, count the sands of the beach and the stars in the sky.

Our knowledge grew so vast that education in the major countries was something mandated for all. Children as young as four years started to learn to read, write and do basic math. Within a few short years, history and science would be added as well to give the understanding to come in future years meaning. Kids, boys and girls, would learn even through their games other essential skills and relive our rich and vast history, even watching it as quick two hour movies or even shorter TV shows. All that knowledge, and I still couldn't prevent the inevitable. Death comes for us all, and sometimes, we just can't pass on the secret of life.

It is what is, no matter how much you hate the term.

Taking the Articles from my wardroom, I proceeded to the tavern where I recruited a good seventy men, most of them merchant mariners from several ships recently taken by a new Dutch privateer in a heavily armed sloop-of-war. She was said to be good, her gunners excellent marksmen and fast, and few wanted to cross her wake again. That I was also a Dutch privateer wasn't unnoticed, meaning she couldn't attack me and that I could outgun her in my frigate with ease. I wouldn't mind meeting the new threat to the Caribbean, but that was all in good time.

Returning to the wardroom, I found Jasmine laying on the chaise lounge, and for a moment while I put the Articles away I thought she might have been asleep waiting on me as she read one of the books of poems a previous captain had acquired. I would have left her to read at her leisure, but the sound of the book thumping closed as I turned to go to bed brought me up short as I turned back to where she was sitting up, a towel spread under her.

"I'm sorry," I said as I took in her sad face and she hung her head.

"Is there any way to tell if its me or Aladdin?" she asked me, the undertones of the question clear.

"One," I said as I sighed and sagged against the wall.

"Badil," she said as she looked up at me. "A new husband to fill my belly and make me quick with child."

"Yes," I said as she again hung her head. "It would likely be best to sleep with them starting from the end of your period, every chance you could for at least a month. If you don't get pregnant then, it likely means you never can."

"Will you do it?" she asked me, the question catching me off guard. "I thought of asking Timon, I always wanted a child with red hair, but…I don't think…"

"I understand," I said, trying to bluff my way out of this one. Wandering down the path that was a woman's mind was a terrifying ordeal that made me envy another encounter with that Spanish flag galleon, but I had an idea it was either she was tired of trying or afraid of the answer. "My only condition is Aladdin has to be alright with it. I know I can seem rather flippant about it at times, surrounded as I am with...soiled girls...but I won't touch the wife of another man or deal with such a man."

"Thank you," she said, hanging her head once again as she shifted from the stairs to stand. She ghosted past me without a word and leaving me wondering about her answer to my condition. I knew Aladdin loved her deeply, leaving his world behind to protect her and that she loved him just as much as she left her world behind to be with him, even going so far as to lock herself away in crate where being found risked everything. I hated leaving the question completely resolved, but the temperamental topic was also one best left alone and not poked at with a stick; you could get the stick back in a very uncomfortable place.

But, did I want to pursue it and have a child by her? I had to admit that Jasmine was in a very fragile place at the moment and likely would do whatever it took to have a child as soon as possible. As I got ready for bed, my own cock stood up to remind me that I had very much enjoyed my time with the Arabic beauty, and could picture every curve of her hourglass figure and size D really reminded me of Kim Kardashian, if my memory was right, with a slightly lighter skin tone, longer hair and much more pleasant demeanor.

Sliding under the covers, I decided I could do it, not only for Jasmine but for myself and went to sleep to dream of what she would be like here under my sheets and wonder how far I could push that sexual line.