During the day, the ship was a flurry of activity, stocked full of frightening looking men and loud, angry voices. At night, though, it looked like exactly the kind of place Ariel wanted to go exploring. Several hours after the sun sunk below the horizon, the drunken pirates aboard the Jolly Roger slunk to their beds, leaving usually only one man on deck. As far as Ariel could tell, he was too busy spinning that strange wheel to notice her. She would swim around the ship, trying to memorize every detail of its hull, and trying to peek as far as she could onto its deck. Later in the night, however, another man would come into her view. Even more than she was curious about the wooden wonder in front of her, she yearned to know about him.
Every night for two weeks, she had followed the ship, and watched him, tucked away safely in the waves. He was handsome, she thought, in a dark and exciting way. His eyes seemed so far away as he scanned the sea, looking for something she was almost sure he wasn't going to find. He looked so…sad, and Ariel wanted nothing more than to know why. Maybe he wanted to see the ocean, much like she wanted to see the land. Maybe she could show him what waited under the waves, and maybe he could show her what was beyond the shore.
After two weeks of looking on from afar, Ariel dared to venture a little closer. She was examining the sides of the ship from below the surface when he came out on deck. At first, she delved deeper underwater to avoid detection. However, the sadness in his eyes was calling to her, so much so that she hadn't noticed she was swimming up towards him until she saw the look of surprise in his eyes. Rather than surfacing, she began swimming near to the top, close enough so he could see her, but not close enough for him to see what she was. As much as she wanted to push through the barrier that kept her from him, as much as she dreamed of meeting him, she still felt it was too dangerous.
As soon as she felt the net crush against her skin and her fin, she knew she had been right. The ropes caught her fin, and as much as she struggled to try to escape, she only ended up more tangled in the net. She was a mermaid caught, and when she broke the surface, all she could do was sob. When she heard his voice for the first time, it was nothing like how she had pictured. He sounded cruel, detached, and she knew that she was in real trouble this time.
The mysterious man stayed by the edge of the ship, holding the ropes that were attached to the net, but the man in the red hat momentarily disappeared. When he came back, he approached with a loud, scraping noise. Then, a bucket splashed into the sea next to her. Once the bucket was filled with the saltwater, it was lifted back onto the ship. The process repeated over and over again, until Ariel finally realized what they were doing. They were going to bring her aboard the ship. From the turn in her stomach, she wasn't sure if that terrified or excited her more. Once the two men began hoisting her from the water, she had her answer.
"Please, please let me go," she begged, squirming in the ropes, which only caused them to tighten and constrict her more. "I'll do whatever you want, but please don't do this."
The men only laughed at her protestations as they dropped her onto the deck. Unraveling her from the net with surprising care, the man that moments ago has looked so sad and beautiful lifted her and then transferred her into a wooden contraption that looked like a small boat.
"Welcome aboard the Jolly Roger, love. I'm your captain – Captain Hook," he said with a grin, the light of the moon glinting off of the sharp silver object that took the place where his hand should have been. As a creature of the sea that had grown up fearing hooks (and nets, for that matter) more than anything in the world, the sight of it made Ariel start crying harder.
"Please just let me go," she whispered in between sobs.
"Now why would I do that?" he said crouching down to the small vessel so his face was only inches from hers. "I'm a pirate, and I just caught my treasure."