Ahoy!
Welcome back to the Admiral after almost a year away! If you are coming straight to the first chapter, I do recommend reading the prologue if it's been a while. It's been lightly updated, and it will help set the scene and tone for you!
This story will be in EPOV and will post as a fun daily drabble for summer.
If you aren't there already, be sure to check out my FB group for teasers, musical clips, and all sorts of other goodies.
Huge thank you to Mel, Jill, and Gemma!
Without further ado... Avast, me hearties!
1723
ONE
"Oi! Be sure that deck is scrubbed good an' proper, or the Captain'll have ya!"
I look up, making eye contact with Jasper who appears just as frustrated and annoyed as I feel. When his blue eyes meet mine, I see him take a deep breath, summoning any sort of calm he can manage. I follow his lead, and it helps, but only for a moment.
I turn back to the brush in my palms, attacking the deck with more vigor. I'll let the mate think it's due to his threats when in reality, it is my growing hatred of the man that sets the pace of my brush.
He is a terrible mate. He is unfair, unjust, and though I cannot prove it, I believe he is pinching from the ship's coffers. He is neither a man of honor nor integrity and for that, he owns none of my respect.
"One last day," Jasper mutters to me. "Then we will have two nights at port and we can seek news."
It is a helpful reminder, one that I mutter to myself over and over again. "Two nights at port. Two nights at port."
Most men on the HMS Endeavor seek two nights at port for the drink and the company that they might purchase. They talk of gambling, of filling their bellies to excess and draping themselves over a woman for the night.
It is none of these things that I seek at port. News is the only commodity that matters to me anymore.
Three years ago, Admiral Isabella, the piratess, stowed away on my ship dressed as a young lad. So convincing was her disguise that none of my crew, nor in fact I myself, had any notion of who she was until she revealed herself. She and her fleet of pirates took everything, down to our last copper, leaving only the clothes on our backs and the ropes we were bound in.
By the time any of us had managed to come free, the fleet was long since gone, and I was left with no goods or wares to deliver into port.
It ruined me. The cost of the loss was so steep I had to sell my ship just to pay off my crew. It was only my first mate, Jasper Whitlock, who stood with me once I was no longer captain of my own vessel. I held no ill will toward my crew—they needed work and I could no longer offer any. It was a wise decision to move on, to find something new.
Despite this, Jasper stayed with me, pledging to take a lesser job—the job of a deckhand—until we could hunt down Isabella and exact our revenge.
It has been a grueling three years, and reason tells me it could be another three before we are able to act. Isabella is a slippery demoness. She is wanted in every port in the Caribbean, and it is truly a testament to her skill that she has not been hunted down yet.
I loathe to think of her in any favorable way, but I cannot deny it; Isabella is good at what she does.
This only means one thing to me—I have to be better.
"Two nights at port," Jasper mutters beside me, and I look up at him. Someone has just spit on his hand, and laughter is building behind us. We are the low men in this crew, and though I never would have allowed anyone to be subjected to this on my ship, the captain of the Endeavor can hardly stop drinking long enough to notice.
It is a foul ship with a foul temper about it.
The only things that keep us aboard are the steady coin it provides and the passage to ports that allow us to continue our hunt.
"She'll pay for that," I tell Jasper, reaching out to rub the spit from his hand with a cloth from my belt. "She'll pay for all of this."
Jasper offers me a small nod before returning to his task.
This time, when I set the brush upon the deck, it is the thought of Isabella that sets my furious pace.