Chapter 2 - Stowaways
I couldn't leave without her, I decided in the end. I knocked on the door of her room in the inn, my things packed in my satchel on my back and ready to go. She answered her door, golden hair falling out of her bonnet and pink lips smiling.
I leaned in as if to kiss her in the doorway but whispered in her ear instead. "Will you sail away with me, and stowaway on the ship?"
She nodded.
With her agreement I wrapped her up in a blanket and carried her out the door of the inn like that, down to the harbor, and onto the waiting ship. The precious bundle looked only like a pile of bedclothes, and the pirates luckily didn't bother to search through it, or I'd have been in trouble.
Once to my bunk below deck, I stowed her on my bunk bed and shushed her with a finger to my lips. The ship set sail. I had Sarah sleep through the day, hidden in my bunk, and then wake at night when all were asleep except the night watch above deck. She and I crept past the sleeping crew to the galley, where we ate our fill of food and drank our share of sparkling apple cider.
We lived like that for some time before the poor lass was discovered.
I was scrubbing the deck down on all fours when there was the high-pitched scream of a female voice. I looked up to see the captain, Blackbeard, who was rarely ever seen out of his cabin at all, holding poor Sarah by a fistful of her hair.
I was so shocked I only stared for a moment.
"And who let this stowaway onboard?" the captain demanded. "Answer, and it will be easier on the both of you."
"Let her go!" I shouted, rising to my feet.
"The young cabin boy was the least one I was expecting," the captain said, holding the lass. "Though they are the same age. They might be - what's the word? Companions."
"Cap'n?" one pirate, Scrum, repeated.
"Friends!" the captain clarified. "The two must be close friends, for him to help her stowaway."
"The maiden needed passage on a ship," I said, explaining myself. "It was only polite for me to help her."
The first mate, Blackbeard's daughter, Angelica, came down the stairs. "I always said the crew could use another woman or two," she said in the girl's defense. "Let her stay."
I was surprised at her standing up for her, and so was Blackbeard. "Very well," he said, releasing Sarah. "She stays! A cabin girl!"
"And what would you have done with her?" the missionary, Philip, demanded of the captain. "Thrown her overboard and let her live in nature as a sea-nymph?"
"Playing stowaway is a hard lesson to learn," said the voice of Jack Sparrow, looking up from swabbing the deck, same as me. He looked me directly in the eye. "But so was signing up."
"Crew, crew, that's enough!" the captain said. He tossed poor Sarah to one side. "The cabin girl stays onboard and can give our young cabin boy some companionship, from one his own age."
