“Now if any of ye has but one more warrrd to say, let him or she say it now” the first mate growled, letting his decaying teeth glisten mere inches from Jewel’s face. She shied from his breath now like a child’s hand from boiling water, and a look of abject misery was evident in her features.
“Let the prisoners come forward!” cried the captain, with glee written on his face.
“String them up!” “Let them drown!” “Burn her anyways!” “Arrrrr!” the menacing crowd cheered, pounding their fists into the rail in a demonic cadence.
Amid the noise, I heard the angel saying her prayers. From my vantage point underneath the tarp, I could see silver tears shining on her immortal cheeks. I saw the cruelty of the crew, the despondence of the other desperate detainees, and the piety of this one poor prisoner. It took my breath away.
I also saw that we were less than a half-mile from land. I wondered how well I would be able to swim, dragging that heavy dress of hers along behind. Hopefully she wouldn’t mind shifting into her, um, shift for the swim in. I knew I wouldn’t.
Step one: save woman.
Step two: worry about other stuff. Whatever the other stuff might be.
“Let them swim for it!” the captain proclaimed, to the great disapproval of the mob aboard the Mistress’s Cliché. “…With their hands and feet chained,” he continued, as a roar of jubilee erupted. Her heart sank. I saw it.
They brought them all to my side of the boat. I thought of my childhood, spent swimming down to the rocks and underwater caves and sunken treasures that only a boy could truly find epic. I thought of the races, the games, the adventure I’d sought with the denizens of the deep and the great lengths I had gone to to be the best swimmer on the whole island. I hoped they were lengthy enough.
“Aye, let her walk the plank!”
“Arrrr!”
It was time to go swimming. “I hope their muskets don’t work,” I thought, as I dove from under the rowboat’s tarp and into the brine.
Chapter 2: In which Jewel has sunk to the bottom of the sea and the narrator must get her breathing again. Also, new dangers are on their way and everyone almost dies.
Some might say it isn’t a noble thing to do, hiding in a rowboat under a tarp while the rest of my comrades are in the hands of nasty pirates. Luckily, I’m no nobleman. And I’m alive, too. They were the chumps who surrendered when those vermin came aboard in a conflagration of teeth and blade and musket-shot. They were now going to die noble deaths—unless they could prove their worth in gold to their vile captors. Jewel spat and bit like a demon, God bless her, and thus her gold remained hidden. I just remained hidden completely. Until now, of course, because it’s hard to hide when you have to save Jewel.
It always takes a lot longer to fall than you would think. The water seemed to be getting further away the more I looked at it and I could hear the prisoners moaning and the pirates laughing and the ship creaking and the birds gathering and someone shouting that they could see me…
Splash! Silence. Or relative silence. I can hear the bubbles rushing past me. Underwater the sounds are all distant, but close, and very slow. Slow is smooth. Smooth, and I swim downwards, eyes open to the stinging water, vision blurred like an aging scrivener. Down, down; my ears begin to hurt, and it gets a little darker. I pinch my nose and blow. Down, down, and my ears again begin to hurt. Again I relieve the pressure. Down, darker. Very dark – I hit the bottom. I gulp, because I want air. Relax. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Where is Jewel? I stand above the cloud of silt and sand I had disturbed and see a billowing royal purple dress. It looks like a billowing royal purple haze, like seaweed from Paris. I swim to her, find her, and push off the rocky, sandy bottom. Gulp again. Swimming upward, swimming with one hand and booted feet, towing a thousand pounds of fashion, I swim away from the ship. But up, up, always up, and poor Jewel is not struggling at all. Almost there. Needing air…
Splash! And we were on the surface, waves spilling over my head and over Jewel’s head and I had to keep her face above water but she wasn’t breathing.
“Jewel!” I slapped her face, and she coughed and spat up some water, just as a cruel wave overwhelmed and engulfed us again. I sputtered, she coughed, and she breathed! I cannot tell you the relief that gave me just to see her lips parting and her chest heave with life as oxygen renewed her sodden body with its beloved attributes. Opening her eyes, she took in the situation as best as can be expected when floating on waves under screaming gulls forty feet from a ship full of pirates in alarm, with muskets aimed and the captain calling “Fire at will, ye mongrels!”
“Deep breath, Jewel,” I gasped, and dove again, dragging her with me into the deep once more.
The musket balls sound like little demons as they whiz past. Deeper, must get deeper. The deeper you go, the longer you can hold your breath. Did you know that? Jewel doesn’t. She hovers above me, struggling with her chains and her dress. She struggles silently. Underwater the sounds are all close, but very distant. I reach for her hazy form; grab hold of her dress. She struggles, tries to pull away. I try to tell her: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. She cannot hear. I cannot speak. I gulp. I tear at her dress, ripping the beautiful fabric off her in large sections. She stops struggling. I drag her up, but ever away from the ship. Up. Gulp. A musket ball hits me in my ankle, and bounces off. Up. Pain now in my ankle. Up. Gulp. Gulp Gulp Gulp…
Splash! We were up once more in the air and the sunlight and the waves and the wind and the splash and cry of the bloodthirsty gulls and the angry pirates. I only called to Jewel this time and she retched, doubling over and putting her face into the brine again. I pulled her head back and to the side, so she would not choke, and looked up again at the ship now almost out of musket range. Not quite, though, and it hardly mattered right now because I saw some of the pirates readying the boat – the very boat I had spent the better part of the rest of my life in – for a little search and rescue. Jewel was still hacking, struggling to breathe, and fumbling with her chains.
“Relax!” I told her, in no calm manner. “I will keep us afloat, you just breathe. Breathe.”
“I… I…” she sputtered, choking on her words, “I can’t sw… I can’t sw…”
“Shhh,” I ordered, “Just breathe. I can swim. You just breathe and hold your breath when I tell you to, and I’ll get us to shore.”
She breathed. I looked up at the ship again, and saw the boat swinging out over the sides, manned by angry, berserk men with dirty hair and knives. I saw a man aiming his musket, and somehow I knew he would hit us.
“Deep breath!” I commanded as I dove again, deep down as the boat full of our captors, our eventual murderers, descends slowly to the surface of the water. I hear the demon whiz past just over me. I feel my ears begin to take the strain of the weight of the water. I hold onto the poor, waterlogged body of Jewel. I think of how to out-swim a rowboat, and how to live…
Chapter 3: In which the narrator discusses more intricacies of ocean swimming, feels sorry for himself, and then snaps out of it. Also, everyone will probably die.
So bearing down on us was this rowboat. I’m struggling to keep Jewel’s head above water, even now without her massive dress dragging her to the deep. Swimming with another person just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be (if it is indeed cracked up at all). But there was a rowboat drifting towards us with the purpose of a dozen angry pirates, and I couldn’t take my gaze from the crazy captain with a crazy dagger in his mouth. I have learned from my extensive ocean swimming that you always have to check to see which direction you are going, because otherwise you’ll just swim in circles. There was one time when my brother and I were racing from one end of a lagoon to the other, just because we were boys and sometimes boys like to compete a little bit, and I knew I was faster than him so I wanted to rub it in by beating him most soundly. So what I did was just sail through the water with my head down and my arms fairly flying and my strokes clean and smooth, with the grace of a mermaid and the strength of a really, really strong mermaid. And I ran into a rock. And there were no rocks between the start and end of the race, or at least nowhere near the approved straight path we would both be taking. I was halfway across, about twice the distance wide of the path, and very tired, as he just glided across the finish line, laughing at me. I could have punched him (and I think I did), but what I learned from that was that was to always look where you’re going in the water.
So I did. We were headed in a landward direction, and I saw that it was good. There was some kind of rocky beach that extended to a point, with shallow lagoons drifting inward on either side, and from above or on a map that section of the coastline probably looked like a heart or a butt, depending on your gender, and we were certainly not heading in that direction. As that was the closest land I could see in my brief survey of the island, I altered course and began to drag the poor Jewel along with me. We were out of musket-range for the time being, as the rowboat was still too far and the ship was even farther, but even with all the exertion and the “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” swimming we were still no more than halfway to the beach and relative freedom. I wondered for a second if the others were now walking the plank as Jewel had, or if they were killed on the spot, or if they were in revolt and adding to the pandemonium onboard the Mistress’ Cliché. It is hard to tell the state of a ship like that from far off.
My lungs were burning and my legs were getting deader and deader. The exertion was too much for me, with the breathless and panicky Jewel clinging to me and the pirates shooting at me and my ankle all bruised up. I felt a pang of self-pity, and looked up at the sun as if to implore some kind of divine assistance. All I saw were the albatross circling, circling like buzzards overhead.
Jewel coughed. I looked again at her, and realized that even while my legs hurt and my lungs were on fire, at least I had some measure of control over the situation. Her eyes were trained on me as if I was her savior, as if all her hope rested in me, and I scorned my selfish whining and my fear. I had to keep her head above water, and how would I do that if I was drowning myself in tears?
“Jewel, you’re doing great,” I encouraged with a grin, as if this was a lot of fun. “Keep your chin up. So to speak…”
She smiled a little, which is as much as I could hope for with a silly little pun in the middle of a desperate fight for our lives, and proceeded to help me swim by kicking a little with both legs, like a dolphin (because, you remember, her legs were chained together).
“No, no,” I said, softly, “You just be still, I’ll swim.”
“How much farther?” She half gasped, half choked, half asked.
“Not much,” I lied, “Not much.
I looked back towards the ship to assess the rowboat situation. There was indeed a situation, as it had covered nearly a third of the distance to us already and one of the pirates (I think maybe it was the captain, for he had a knife clenched between his teeth) was standing, aiming his musket at us.
A white puff of smoke erupted from the gun as I grabbed Jewel and dove again.
Chapter 4: In which the narrator and his damsel are magnificently saved by divine coincidence, several pirates meet their doom in Davie Jones’ Locker, and the captain cuts his tongue while biting on a dagger. Also, the narrator is awesome.
She’s getting better at this, I think. The sound of the demon whizzing by is faint, and I hear sounds of other life under the surface: strange, otherworldly chirpings and groanings that you should only hear in hell. As we glide down and down, same as before, I see a curious white blur getting closer and closer. I silently place my hand before me, gently bewildered by the sight, and it is immediately sliced open by the sharp, shallow coral that has rushed up to meet us. Ow. From what I hear it’s good to bleed in the open ocean. But I’m having a thought here, even now as the blood is oozing slowly, smoothly from my hand, that what if we stood and fought, as this coral is fighting us? What if we took down that little rowboat and left the pirates to swim for it themselves, with only those daggers they held in their mouths now left as weapons? I glance around for Jewel, who has picked up a piece of this sharp coral and is trying to cut free her hands. Iron is stronger than coral, honey, we’ll figure out the shackles dilemma later.
I swim over to her, her white shift faintly swaying as she tries to stay on the bottom while struggling with the coral. I place my hand on hers, slowly, smoothly, and softly drag her to the surface again, trying to signal to her that we’ll only be taking one breath before re-submerging. I hope it works, and I hope one breath is enough because I’m sure that crazy dagger-gnawing captain is aiming right at us…
Splash! “One breath!” I yell as I gasp myself. I hear a shot, this time closer, and the water closes over both of us once again.
This time she tries to knock her feet loose while I pick up a shard of coral that looks like the point of a spear. Hefting it in my right hand, I try to pick out the rowboat approaching from the direction of the ship. The world is silent as I scan the cloudy blue, ignorant of direction or origin. I barely know up from down, how am I supposed to know where the pirates are? I wonder at my lack of breath until I remember the one breath stand we took on the surface just now. Jewel has already used most of her energy trying to get free, or at least that is what I can tell from her increasingly frantic movements. Slow is smooth, Jewel. I reach out and touch her hand. Hold on. She holds on. I point with the shard up but at an angle, to signal surfacing in a spot somewhat removed from where we dove. I count down on my fingers. Three, two, one, and we push off together for the surface, this time hoping for at least a few breaths.
Splash! And we were on the surface and we were breathing, one two three deep breaths and I looked around. The rowboat was almost on top of us and the gulls roared with delight as the waves crashed behind us with a decadent thunder. The pirates howled “Arrr” like furies of old and they all crowded to the one side of the rowboat, muskets at the ready and cutlasses drawn. For a moment we looked into the eyes of a dozen dirty, wild men, seeing the bloodthirsty stares and the insanity and the lust for violence inherent in men who have given themselves over to lives of pure hedonism. Eyes wild with rum and opium and greed, the captain gnawed his knife like an old hound his bone, and he lowered his pistol with a nasally snicker. There was no time to dive. There was no time to cry out to Jewel, who I’m sure saw just as clearly as I did our doom.
The crack of the gun. The puff of white smoke. The hiss of the demon as it screamed into Jewel’s soggy body. A strange metallic clank drowned out by the wrathful, malevolent howls of the rabid pirates, who now were so out of control that they piled higher and higher at the edge of the rowboat to see the two fugitives slaughtered, and perhaps have a hand in it themselves. The shock of Jewel’s body slipping violently away from my grasp and the feel of her hands flailing, pushing away.
It was then that the most amazing thing happened. The boat was a mere twenty feet or so from us and full of frenzied pirates, who were all piled on the edge as if the extra six inches would get them closer to the action. It was as if the laws of physics just then took effect, for the whole thing capsized, sending all twelve murderers into the brine along with myself and my lady. Oars, muskets, swords, knives, layers of men, and shoulder-parrots all came tumbling down in a wave of terror and surprise. I wasted no time at this new opportunity, dropped my spear, and was flopping into the boat by the time most of them had regained the surface. I grabbed the one oar that had not tumbled with the men and began flailing indiscriminately around at the roiling water below me, feeling satisfying thuds and cries as my blows found their mark.
I remembered Jewel. Scanning the chaos beneath my feet, I saw nothing but utter wrath and disorder: pirates fighting pirates to stay alive, and both being sucked under by their own selfishness. Where was she in all this mess? There! Just a few yards away, trying to stay not only afloat but out of the way of these frantic animals and their deadly struggles. I forced the oar to move the boat as I bumped my way toward her, desperate to reach her before anyone else recognized the white shift as her and not a jellyfish. One pull, two pulls, and the boat knocked panting heads and flailing arms and kicking feet. Progress was slow. Slow. Pull, pull again, and I grabbed her under her armpits and yanked her into the boat.
“Are you alright?” I asked. Begged. But she just lay there on her face, shivering. “Jewel?”
She moved a little, and I turned her onto her back. She breathed my name.
It was only then that I saw the bullet’s deadly work.
She had been shot. But the bullet had hit her chest, which was protected by her wrists, which were manacled together. The bullet had simply broken the irons and glanced off, leaving her completely unharmed and free. She sat up, and I laughed a booming, relieved laugh upon this discovery – mostly to let off some of the pent up pressure inside – but there was no time for mirth.
“We have to get clear of these pirates before they find their heads and retake this boat of ours,” I warned.
“Okay.” She steeled herself, shaking her waterlogged head as if to clear it. Then she asked me, like a battle-hardened veteran, “You ready?”
So I resumed my violent beatings as Jewel fished cautiously over the side for another oar. What she came up with was a cutlass from the limp hands of one of my recent victims, and for a second she began to try to row with it. We looked at each other and laughed again, again with that same tense, overloud laugh, as we traded tools. My work took a bloodier turn, and I think the sea predators who had first been awakened by my small cut and then alarmed by the disturbance of their waters began to take notice of all this easy, bleeding prey. I thought I saw an insidious dorsal fin slicing through the water from my left, followed by a few more, when a new menace captured my attention.
It was the captain, knife still wedged in mouth. I wondered for a brief second how he commanded without the use of his voice before he spit the dagger into the boat. I could see his bloody grin as he gazed at us with murder and spite in his eyes. Then he stretched out both his hands toward the boat, at which my Jewel quickly shoved him back, saying, “Be off with the other dogs!” He fell back into the brine, where he was instantly overcome by crazed crewmen screaming, “Get him! Get Captain Argenti!”
The sharks arrived, and it was the most awful thing I have ever seen. I will spare you the horrid details of men and parts of men boiling in the water, screams reaching to heaven, only to be met by the cries of the gleeful gulls, and the rage of the men for each other, throwing their comrades into the jaws of the sharks in order to get away, only to find themselves face to face with bigger ones. And Jewel wept. And so did I, as we paddled away from there in utter disbelief and terror.
Chapter 5: In which everyone lives, no one else cares, and the narrator’s lady is awesome. Also, references to God are made.
The beach was warm and inviting to our exhausted, terrified souls. We secured the boat and sank thankfully into the sand, holding each other in mute wonder at the unprecedented escape we had just survived. My body was as tired as I’ve ever felt it, even to this day, and never has the feel of dry land been so wonderful to my feet. We had been able to unshackle Jewel’s feet with the cutlass, so she had full range of movement now, which made her pretty happy. She did a little dance just because she could, and never even mentioned that purple Paris dress again. It turns out that for the rest of that day and all through the night, the prisoners onboard the Mistress’ Cliché had staged a revolt, eventually seizing complete control of the ship from the first mate at dawn. There were enough of us to sail it back home, where little of this incident made any public impact, and we mostly went about our normal lives again. Jewel and I opened a little shop near the most beautiful lagoon in the whole of the islands, where we led little diving trips for people to look at the fishes and the coral using some crazy goggle things that she invented.
But all that came later, and now, as we lay panting and dripping in the sand, we wondered at the fact that we were here, together, and alive.
And oh, the sun was warm and comforting to our smiling, grateful faces.