The Pirate’s Gamble
By Eden Winters
Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords
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Copyright 2012 Eden Winters
ISBN 9781611522594
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Cover Photo Credit: Sarah Holmlund
Used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
Cover Design: J.M. Snyder
All Rights Reserved
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
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The Pirate’s Gamble
By Eden Winters
“No one dies today,” the captain instructed his crew, as always, when they boarded the captured galleon.
One of the new hands grumbled to Willie, the Quartermaster, as he held his sword on the crew of the conquered vessel, “We should’na be leaving ‘em alive to be waggin’ their tongues back in port.”
Willie, a seasoned veteran of those waters, squinted up at the ominously darkening sky while quickly jumping to his captain’s defense. “Mind your own tongue, laddie; the captain has yet to steer us wrong. ‘E has a sense about these things, ‘e does. Always be knowing where good bounty be. And if no blood be spilled…”
Another of the ragtag crew piped in, “I’d be keeping me voice down if I were ye. The captain knows things no man ‘as a right ta be knowing.” Voice dropping to a husky whisper, he confided, “’E appeared one night during a storm—from where, no one be knowin’. But listen to old Willie here. Cap’n be leading us right for nigh on three years. An ‘e disappears for days, where no one knows, but when ‘e returns, there be more gold for tha takin’.” A nearly-toothless grin appeared on the man’s weather-beaten face.
“Aye, he be making us rich, that’s all what matters,” Willie assured him.
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Watching from the ship’s bow, Captain Ian Lewis carefully selected the items that would be taken aboard the Naughty Maid, the single-masted sloop he’d sailed since his arrival in Kingston. The death of their previous captain had left the pirates in dire need of a capable leader and he’d stepped forward, promising riches beyond their imaginings—and he’d delivered. They would gladly follow him anywhere; anywhere there was gold that is, something the galleon, having recently concluded business in the colonies, had plenty of.
Standing head and shoulders above his crew, Captain Lewis was a striking contrast to his men, for despite his profession he appeared well-bred, well-educated, and when compared to others who sailed beneath the Jolly Roger, relatively hygienic. And he knew exactly where ships full of treasure would be and how to take them without a single loss of life.
However, though Willie and the others were blissfully unaware, he also knew that the galleon’s burned-out husk would soon be found washed up on a sandy beach some six hundred miles away, presumably struck by lightning and sinking with all hands lost. That knowledge of the future ate at his conscience. He knew these poor souls were doomed, but was powerless to intervene, for the consequences of interfering were dire. The past could not be changed; it was a rule he dared not break. For that reason, he and his crew only raided vessels that would never see port again, rescuing priceless artifacts before they were lost and preserving them for posterity. Getting rich in the process was just an added bonus.
“Lads, there’s a storm brewing,” he yelled into the rising wind. “Time to take our leave.” With a jaunty tip of his hat to the galleon’s captain, he followed his men back to the Maid, where they readied the sails to tack into the wind.
“Take us to Kingston, Mr. Martin,” he instructed Willie. “I’m going below to inspect our cargo.”
Boot heels clicking against the deck, Ian descended into the hold, locating a lantern in the darkness and lighting the wick with a device that would have his men screaming and running in fear if they saw its use. With the mere flick of a finger, an inch-long flame appeared, and a casual observer might think it sprang from the captain’s very hand. He carefully concealed the device in his waistcoat, hidden away from even the nimble fingers of the accomplished pick-pockets above deck.
Bags of gold coins and other valuables were piled together in the hold, waiting to be divided among the crew, but the ancient Egyptian pectoral and armbands of hammered gold, already hundreds of years old, would be his share, and to him, worth far more than the rest of their booty combined. His new prizes joined the old inside his waistcoat, and he blew out the lantern and returned above deck to watch the approaching storm, quietly saying a word of prayer for the doomed crew of the galleon.
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The sun had just sunk below the horizon two nights later when the crew of the Naughty Maid swept into Kingston like a swarm of ill-bred locusts amidst a bawdy chorus led by their captain, who was in a jovial mood. The regular rowdies of The Black Swan, their usual haunt while on the island, looked up and murmured excitedly among themselves as they entered. No one could gossip better than a pirate, and no one was more gossip-worthy than Ian Lewis, who in a very short time had established himself as the most successful pirate captain in those waters.
“Well, laddies,” he said, no sooner than they’d bellied up to the bar, “I’ll be taking my leave of you now. But remember, in two day’s time the Maid sails at dawn. If you’re not on her, she won’t be waiting.”