Jack suddenly woke up to a bucket of water dumped on him.
"What the hell?!" Jack sputtered, rubbing his eyes.
"We're washing everything that's dirty...which is everything," Jean said, standing above him with the dripping bucket in his hands.
Jack shuffled onto his feet and found Arabella in the middle of the deck washing and rinsing clothes. A bucket suddenly lowered down to Arabella by a rope and she tossed some wet clothes into it. The bucket was then lifted all the way up to Fitzwilliam who was hanging clothes off the yard above to dry.
"When did you decide to do all this?" Jack asked, gazing at the clothes hanging above.
"We're decontaminating everything we own so we don't catch the cough," Arabella said as she continued washing clothes.
Jack glanced at Jean, looking for further explanation.
"I don't know. That's all Arabella," Jean shrugged. "However, I'm trying out something new since we're going to be up here for a while." He grabbed Jack's arm and led him to the stern. He picked up a journal that Constance rested beside. "I've begun picking up a new loisirs. I'm drawing some of my favorite Creole dishes from New Orleans." He opened the book and presented a sketch, which looked barely recognizable. "This is my favorite—gumbo!"
Jack raised his eyebrows and nodded in interest. "Ah, real nice."
Jack's eyes scanned around the ship, watching all his friends doing their thing. He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head.
"All hands!" Jack called out to the crew, striding over to the middle of the deck.
Arabella and Jean stopped what they were doing and met with Jack as Fitzwilliam scurried down the rigging to do the same.
Arabella, Jean, Constance, and Fitzwilliam were aligned in front of Jack, the young captain eying each one of them as he paced back and forth. "As captain, I just want to bring to your attention that even though there is this 'outbreak' happening onshore and we've had to leave Tumen down below last night, it does not mean we should just stop everything and act like the world is ending. Aside from the circumstance and having to sleep up here on deck, you will all resume your duties with keeping everything in shipshape as this is nothing more than just a normal day aboard the Barnacle as we make way to New Orleans. Do I make that clear?"
"For once, I have to agree with Jack," said Fitzwilliam. "This 'cough' is just nothing more than a hard-hitting case of the flu. If anything, Tumen should be perfectly fine. I haven't even heard him cough a bit or show evidence to any kind of suffering since we locked him up. We should just stop worrying and get back to our lives."
Arabella took a deep breath. "Right. Everything should be all right. It will all be fine..."
"Oui, I've just been so caught up in this lockdown business," Jean admitted.
"We are not on lockdown, we are at sea...You are all dismissed," the Barnacle's captain finished, walking back to his spot on the deck he was sleeping on before.
A couple of days passed by and things grew more tense around the Barnacle. All though Jack had ordered his crew to continue working the ship and keep them on course, and he tried to keep their minds off things by playing games, telling stories, and doing little projects like hanging the extra sail over the deck with lines to keep them out of the heat and rain, his three friends kept getting worse and worse. It was clear that seeing the effects of the cough and knowing the cough was present aboard the Barnacle affected his crew in a negative way. Of course, Jack was concerned for his friends and tried to be the straight man in the situation.
"Arabella, what are you doing?"
"I'm trying to scrub every crevice of this ship to be sure we don't catch the cough!" the former barmaid was on her knees with a bucket of water, vigorously scrubbing the deck.
"Did I ask you to scrub the deck?" Jack inquired.
"No. I'm scrubbing the cough off of everything for the good of us," Arabella answered.
"For the good of us?" Fitzwilliam asked with scorn. He secured the wheel and walked over to Arabella from the helm. "Do you really think the cough is stuck onto everything and anything we touch, we'll catch it?"
Arabella stood up to full height, looking up at Fitzwilliam to face him since he was just about a foot taller than her. "Ye don't know how serious this is! The cough can be on anything! Who knows how long Tumen was carrying it before he started showing symptoms? Who knows what he touched and what he didn't? And that we could be touching the things he touched when he was carrying it?"
"You are absolutely making no sense and you are overreacting," Fitzwilliam said. "This cough is barely even a flu and you're acting like this is the end of the world and we're all going to die."
"Did ye not see those bodies being collected at our last port?!" Arabella argued. "No 'flu' kills people like that—"
"That was a minority of those people dying from it! They probably had other ailments!"
"No! It is fatal! If anything, we should be taking more precautions! We should actually be washing our hands more and keeping apart from one another!"
"Keeping apart? How are we going to keep apart if we're stuck on this bloody fishing boat together?!"
"Maybe you will figure it out if ye actually cared about people!"
Jack watched as two of his crew members continued to fight. Suddenly, Jean came over to him with Constance in his arms.
"Look, Jack! I just finished those booties I've been knitting for Constance!" Jean held Constance up toward Jack. Each one of her paws had a knitted bootie on them, and Constance stared at Jack with a look of annoyance before she gave him a hiss.
"Yeah, yeah. That's nice, Jean. Hold on," Jack brushed him off and stepped forward to his arguing friends. He cleared his throat for a moment and began to scream. "STOP IT! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!"
Arabella and Fitzwilliam immediately stopped arguing and turned to Jack.
Jack cleared his throat again and returned to his regular voice. "Now Fitzy, I would like to ask you to be at least a little more sensitive as we have a sick crew member below deck. Arabella, Fitzy's right, you are going way beyond out of control. Jean,...well, please keep up with the ship like the rest of us. Everyone, you know that I am the captain of this ship. I'd ask that none of you do anything unless I order you to. Bell, did I ask for you to scrub the deck? No. But you may scrub the desk when I order you to. Because I'm the captain. Savvy?"
"Up your arse, Jack," Fitzwilliam said. "You are not a captain. We are nothing more than just kids stuck aboard a dinghy with sails."
Jack turned to Fitzwilliam. "And how many times do I have to tell you not to question my authority?"
Jack and Fitzwilliam were now beginning to fight. Jean stared at the rest of the crew in silence. He eventually put down Constance who staggered away in her booties. Through the arguing, Jean heard something that made him snap.
"HEY! Calme! Calme!" Jean called, clapping his hands to get his friends' attention. "Look at you! You three are fighting so much, you don't even notice a crew member of yours is crying below deck!"
The three of them looked at each other with wide eyes, realizing what Jean said. The teenagers rushed over to the hatch—even Constance after she kicked off her booties. They lowered down to their knees closer to the hatch and through the wooden doors, they heard soft sobs.
Jack signaled to his crew that he could handle this and knocked on the doors. "Tumen, mate. Are you all right?"
"No! I'm not all right!" Tumen cried. He sounded really close by, indicating he was probably sitting on the stairs below the hatch. "I don't want to be stuck down here anymore! I'm so lonely!"
"It's okay, Tumen. We are right here! Ye have about a week until ye can come out." Arabella consoled.
"I don't want to be by myself! I'm so lonely! I'm so lonely!" Tumen sobbed even harder.
The crew of the Barnacle exchanged looks. Jean started to look angry.
"Um...well," Jack didn't know what to say to comfort him.
"I'm scared! I'm so scared! I'm scared I'm going to die!" Tumen wailed.
Jack finally found his words. "You're not going to die. You've already been there and done that, so I know you'll make it out and feel right as rain again!"
Remembering when Tumen briefly died from an illness caused by the Sword of Cortés and knowing it could happen again with no resolution, Arabella sat down and hugged her knees with tears coming down her face.
"I don't want to die! I want to go home!" Tumen sobbed.
"This is ridiculous," Fitzwilliam said, combing his fingers through his neat blond hair and shaking his head in frustration. "Because of the fighting and overreacting, all of you are having him think he's on a death sentence."
"I, for one, am not overreacting," Jack said. "It is all of you who are overreacting. I'm trying to do what is right for all of my crew and I'm trying to be the middleman between all your arguing—"
"Now ye know how I feel when ye two fight," Arabella interrupted, briefly forgetting about her thoughts.
"I am definitely not overreacting," Fitzwilliam shot back to Jack. "I'm simply stating how this cough is being overblown."
Rage built up inside of Jean and he finally snapped. "That is it! No more monsieur nice Jean!"
Jack, Arabella, and Fitzwilliam faced Jean in shock. They had never seen him so angry.
"I thought we were the fearless, unshakable crew of the mighty Barnacle! A crew who never leaves one another behind when they are in trouble! I thought you already learned this, Jack!"
Jack's eyes shifted left to right, neither confirming nor denying his wrongdoings.
"We shouldn't be doing this! We should be working together during this difficult time! We shouldn't care if we got sick as long as we took care of our friend! If he gets it, we all get it! We shouldn't be locking him down there in the darkness, leaving him to suffer alone!"
"Jean, I know you're upset, but we got to keep ourselves healthy and strong to keep the Barnacle sailing so we can make it to New Orleans. Then we can see what we can do about Tumen. We just can't have all of us dropping and dying right here," Jack tried to reason with him.
Jean's face darkened, angry tears filling his green eyes. "If he dies, I die."
Without another word, he opened the hatch. He went to his spot on the deck to collect his belongings, his rations, and Constance.
"No! Ye can't do this, Jean! We need you!" Arabella pleaded.
"Come on, mate. You don't need to do this," Jack said.
The Creole stormed past his friends and down below deck, slamming the hatch shut afterwards.
The remainder of the crew stared at the hatch in silence, knowing they just lost both Jean and Tumen, along with Constance. Arabella looked at the two boys with more tears threatening to fall. She then stormed away herself to the other side of the deck.
The younger boys and the cat were now isolated away from the rest of the crew. Although Tumen wasn't alone anymore, the remainder of the crew were left without navigators. Fitzwilliam sat at the railing of the ship trying to determine their speed while Arabella was standing at the helm steering the ship, at the same time sadly scrubbing away at the wheel. She had taken off her bandana and tied it over her face, covering her nose and mouth. Jack remained sitting at his spot.
Jack sat on the deck wilted. The heat had gotten to him, while at the same time he felt chills from the cool sweat dripping down his neck and chest. Every part of his body ached and he felt too weak to lift an arm. He determined it was dehydration, but he knew he couldn't drink much as they didn't have very much drinking water left. In fact, he didn't know how many days they had left until they made port. What was strange was that the heat and dehydration didn't seem to affect his two other friends. Fitzwilliam hadn't even taken off his fine blue jacket.
"We are at seven knots, Jack," Fitzwilliam informed.
"Good," Jack mumbled. "And it's Captain Jack to you."
"Yes, you're a 'captain' but you don't help out any of your 'crew'" Fitzwilliam said sarcastically.
"I do help around here. I help you all adjus' the sails and I steer the ship when it's my turn at the helm," Jack said, not making the effort to speak clearly.
"But you're not doing anything else. All you do is sit there and do nothing."
"I'm too tired to argue wit' you, Fitzy," Jack said, waving him off.
"We're all trying to do what we can," Arabella said with a distant look in her eyes. "This has been difficult for all of us."
Jack gazed up at the sky and sighed, wanting this all to be over.