Cabin Boy

A Good Man

"What is plan again?" Amos asks in a hushed whisper. There isn't any need for it, but whispering seems appropriate in the predawn darkness that covers the entire deck. It has been nearly a month since the destruction of our home. We have spent the time repairing our ships and replenishing our crews in preparation for the coming vengeance. Through a network of friendly smugglers and shore watchers, we have been able to track the small pirate hunting fleet. We learn that Scorpion had sold herself dearly, dragging three brigs and a frigate down with her. At the moment, the hunting fleet consists of four brigs and two frigates, one of which is the Mars. In a fair fight we would savage the fleet, however there is no question who would lose. But we're pirates; we don't fight fair.
"We sneak in under the cover of darkness, while most of them are still sleeping, then before they know what's happening, we're in the middle of the group and send them all to the bottom," I explain to Amos for perhaps the third time that night. He looks back at me dubiously.
"And you sure they not see us?" He asks nervously, "they have many big guns."
At that point, I too look nervously past the bow of the Dauntless, where the fleet is just now materializing from the dark.
"They do have a lot of big guns," I admit, "but that won't save them when they're sitting on the oceans floor."
I walk among the cannon crews, whispering words of encouragement to the restless men, and I think about the subtle shift in power that had affected the ship the past month. Ann had noticed it first, after Rachel's funeral. When I made the choice to lock Ben in his cabin, I had temporarily taken over the ship, and then retained that command when the quarter master was killed and Ben refused to leave his quarters. Now Ben has resumed his post and we have a new quartermaster, but no one fully trusts Jonathan, and we are all painfully aware that Ben may not be fit to command the ship in the heat of battle. The Dauntless and her crew's loyalty will always belong to Ben, but it is I who now command her.
I reach the helm where Jonathan expertly guides the ship, and give him a nod.
"Take her in," I order, and Jonathan steers the ship directly towards the enemy fleet.
Honestly, I hadn't expected the plan to work as well as it did. We slip to within a hundred yards of the first brig without a sound. They must have thought our three ships were a supply convoy. But they inevitably notice that our ships do not match their own, and alarm bells begin to ring out across the water.
"Run out the guns!" I yell, "Hoist the colors! Let's send these Brits to the bottom!" My yell is met with the cheers of over a hundred pirates, and the concussion of three ships firing broadsides. The closets brig is decimated, almost incinerated, and the one behind left in dire condition. The Dauntless continues on, followed closely by the Seventh Star. The two ships tear through the brigs, and I begin to believe that we might actually win this. Then the two frigates appear, and charge directly at us. Even so, we could have taken them, but at that moment O'Connors changes his mind.
"So long ye dogs!" O'Connor yells across from his ship as it flees.
"You yellowed bellied swine!" I yell back, "We could win if you simply stayed! I'll see that the whole Caribbean knows that we could have obliterated them if you had held your ground!"
"Talk all ye want!" O'Connors grins, "dead men tell no tales lad!" And just like that, he leaves us to face a brig and pair of frigates on our own.
It is a glorious battle. Cannons boom, ships race, muskets from both ships pepper the decks with occasional fire. The brig is quickly sunk, and Seventh Star finishes the second frigate, but was only able to do so by ramming herself against the larger vessel, and begins to take in water at an increasing rate. In the end, it comes down to Dauntless to finish the fight, and we bore in on the last target, the frigate HMS Mars.
We blast away at each other, Dauntless taking critical damage but giving as good as she got. There is no question who's crew is superior, the Dauntless's shots are closely knit and almost always result in catastrophic blows, but Mars just has so many guns... Then the larger ship turns, and I know she is looking to ram, so I yank the wheel from Jonathan.
"Prepare to board!" I yell to the crew, even as I strain against the wheel in attempt to pull the Dauntless away from the ships ram. The two ships miss by mere feet, then I swing Dauntless around and the two ship sides come together with a heart wrenching crunch.
"Draw your cutlass lads! Take her!" I yell, and pirates swarm over the sides. I grab a rope and swing over myself, dropping down on a British soldier and bring my blade down on him savagely. Over my years with the pirates, I had over come my reluctance to kill, because I finally realized that if they had no qualms about stringing me up in a noose, then I can not hesitate to stop them. And more often then not, that meant killing them. It was a hard lesson, but one I had to learn in order to live as long as I have.
Next to me, Amos drops to the deck, and immediately is at my back. We fight like this for what seems like forever, completely surrounded in a sea of red, parrying, blocking, thrusting and slashing our way through, until finally meeting up with more of Dauntless's crew.
"Amos, Smitty, take some men to the powder hold, set a couple charges. If we can't sink her, we sure as hell can blow here to oblivion," I say. They nod, and take five men to battle their way below.
"Will!" A familiar voice calls out.
"Ann!" I exclaim, "Ann get back to the ship!"
"Enough about your stupid dream!" She says exasperated, "Ben is aboard!"
"Damn it," I mutter, "he's going after Cerberus. Ann, you're in charge. Coordinate the fight, I'm going to find Ben."
"Will wait!" She yells, then wraps her arms around me and pulls me into a passionate kiss.
"For good luck," she explains in a whisper, then pushes one of her pistols into my hand, "and for good measure." Then she kisses me again. I enjoy it only for a moment, and then am forced to pull myself away. I look at her one last time, push the pistol into my belt, then charge back into the fight.
I wade through the sea of turmoil, the clashing of swords and boom of muskets ringing in my ears, before I finally see him. Until now, I had a picture of what Ben looked like that day Smitty described, but only now do I see how understated the picture in my head was. Ben is literally carving through the veteran soldiers, tearing a path of death across the deck. Somewhere along the way he had picked up a second sword, and he uses the duel blades with deadly precision. For the life of me, I can't tell where his arm ends and steel began, the swords had become just an extension of himself. He dances across the deck, arms a whirlwind around him, a deadly cyclone of metal. But his age is catching up with him. Swords would occasionally work their way in, a cut on the knee, a jab to the arm, a slice on his back. The wounds however only seem to further enrage him, and any who manage to wound Mad Ben Crowley that day never live to tell the tale. I continue to fight towards my captain, even as I see him start to falter. My heart leaps into my throat when a lucky swipe catches his wrist, and the fancy sabre falls from his grasp, but he continues on regardless, nearly cutting the mans head off with one savage swipe.
By the time I fight my way to the quarter deck, only a single man remains. He's a puffed up fellow, wearing the fanciest uniform I had ever seen, and it's immediately clear who he is.
"It's been a long time Ben," Cerberus says through a heavy accent and a cruel smile, "tell me, how's Susan doing?"
"How dare you say her name you bracket faced bastard," Ben growls through gritted teeth, "You aren't worthy of speaking of such a woman."
"Oh yes, she was quite a women," Cerberus tells him, obviously enjoying the torture he is bringing on Ben, "and now that I think about it, I suppose I really should thank you Ben, for reveling what a pitiful whore Susan really was."
"YOU WILL NOT TALK OF HER!" Ben roars, launching himself at the man. The sound of steel on steel rings out across the deck as the two men attack each other with a brutality I'd never seen.
"Captain Ben!" I yell, scoping up his fallen sabre and rushing to his aid.
"No Will!" Ben orders, his flaming eyes never leaving the man in front of him, "the son of a bitch belongs to me."
"Oh no, please," Cerberus says with a smile, "by all means, let him join. I'd like nothing more than to kill another one of your whelps." And just like that, the two are back at each other's throats. They are both skilled, and perhaps Cerberus even more so, but he can't match Ben's shear ferocity. His strokes come down with a force that would shatter most men's bones, and they come in such close proximity of each other that I wonder how on earth Cerberus could hold his ground for so long. As it was, the British commodore is slowly but surely being pressed back under the onslaught. Finally, with a quick slip of the blade, Ben manages to cut off three of the mans fingers, and the sword falls to the deck. Then Ben slaps him so hard that he tumbles four feet before coming to rest. Ben walks over to him.
"You murdered them," he snarls, delivering a savage kick into the mans side.
"Three feet from my face," he continues, delivering another kick.
"That was fifty years ago, but I didn't forget. How could I forget? The way you smiled as they were brought up, how you laughed when I begged you to kill me instead," he kicks him in the face, dark red blood gushing from the mans broken nose, "and I remember what you told me. Do you? Do you recall the words you said right before you cut their throats? You said to me, she's just a bitch Ben, you'll find another one."
"Well guess what James," Ben says, pressing the tip of his sword painfully against the mans throat, "Now, you're going to pay for those words. You're going to pay for what you stole from me."
He raises the cutlass high in the air, his eyes glinting in greedy anticipation as horror stretches across Cerberus's face.
"You should have killed me when you had the chance," Ben says with a savage finality.
"Ben wait!" I yell frantically, "don't do it!"
"What!?" Ben roars, looking like he was close to turning his blade on me in his maddened state.
"It's not right," I say, "it's murder Ben."
"Tell that to Daniel!" Ben screams, "tell that to Susan! He took everything from me!"
"And not doing the same is what separates you from him," I say quietly, "that's what you told me when I spared Salt. You said that, when everything else becomes a sea of clouded grey, this principle separates the good men from the bad. So who are you Ben? Are you Old Cap'n Ben, the kind sailor who cares about others and lovingly taught me the blade, who sails his beautiful ship with the skill of a master? or are you Mad Ben Crowley, the crazed blood thirsty pirate?"
Ben stares at me for a long while, then looks back down at the murderer of his wife and child.
"I hope Satan is keeping a seat warm for you," Ben mutters, lowering his sword. In a sudden burst of anger, he savagely punches him one last time, before dropping the blade.
"You're right Will, I would become like him," he whispers, turning towards me, "and if I became him, I would be spitting on their graves."
"You 'ot one thing wight," Cerberus spits out from the ground, his speech horribly wrong because of the broken nose and jaw, "I should ave 'illed you when I ad the 'ance. I 'on't 'ake that 'istake 'wice."
Then he pulls out a flintlock from his boot, and pulls back the hammer. Time seems to slow. I scream but don't here a sound, watch helplessly as the pistol is raised, and pointed at Ben. I fumble with the pistol on my belt, but know I'll never draw it fast enough. A loud shot breaks the silence, and a rapidly enlarging stain appears on Ben's chest. Ben looks down at his fatal wound, gives me a sad glance, then looks back up at the sky where the first light of dawn was peaking. There are tears in his eyes, but he looks at peace.
"Susan...." he whispers, then topples backwards, over the rail and into the water below.
"Ben!" I yell, running to the rail, but I'm too late. The great Mad Ben Crowley, my friend and mentor, is gone