Jeff the Accountant Escapes the Wretched Burning Depths of Hades

Not So Smart After All

So the two pirate captains set a course for the same destination. Barbados. Cinna didn't know if Ed would still be there (if the captain and crew of The Prosperity hadn't lied to him), but he would send his men ashore to question some of the townsfolk, if The Revenge had moved on.

The irritation he was feeling over how bloody difficult it was to find Ed was growing. And he wasn't fighting it very well. "Were they going in circles around each other? Traipsing back and forth across the ocean?" he thought. "Has Ed just moved on? Back to the Blackbeard he was before they met? If he has, does that mean the townsfolk of Barbados were in harms' way?"

Well, he was going to find out. He reckoned there were two missions laid out before him. 1)Get to Barbados and make sure his family and the other townsfolk were safe, and 2)get The Revenge back. Technically, it was still his ship. He hadn't signed anything over to
Blackbeard. The brute just kind of took it, didn't he? Standing by while Izzy Hands gave orders left and right. "Swab the deck." "Repair that sail." "Hoist that flag." "Hoist a different flag." How had Blackbeard become the captain of his ship?

"We said the same thing..." Cinna was remembering Ed lounging with him after the trip to Ste. Augustine, sipping brandy. "Co-captains. They were, and would continue to be, co-captains, if Izzy Hands hadn't...wait a minute - that Calico Jack character had a lot to do with all this mess too. He led them - Ed let him lead them - into an ambush."

The almighty Blackbeard wasn't so smart, after all, was he?

"Yes, yes, he had an escape plan ready for the two of them, somehow securing a dinghy...at least he said he'd be able to get one. But look at what I was able to do! After Chauncey's (accidental) death, I managed to escape all by myself. Made it back to Barbados and came up with, and executed, a plan to convince the entire town that I died."

"So that I'd be free. To find...to find...that ungrateful pirate captain who could very well be terrorizing the people of my hometown right now. And for what??"

"Because that's what bloodthirsty pirate captains do."

And before the two of them met, Blackbeard was the bloodthirstiest, pirate captainest human being Cinna had ever heard of. Why did he think that Ed could turn away from that? He said it himself. Standing with a coconut in each hand, ready to chuck at someone's head "for fun". "This is me." "You're always gonna know who I am, mate."

"And use the snail fork..." The man had ordered his crew member to skin that poor Frenchman alive! Is there any turning away from that?

Somehow Cinna wasn't remembering that Ed came back for him when the English Navy had him cornered. Or that he signed away ten years of his life to save him.

Or that he wrapped his arms around him and kissed him. And made him feel, if just for a moment, that all was right with the world.