The Little Jane Silver 2-Book Bundle. Adira Rotstein

      Prologue

      When Little Jane Silver was small a story was told in Smuggler’s Bay, the tiny island town she and her family called home. Like many a story spun in those parts, it was told over the surface of a scarred wooden table, in the taproom of the Spyglass, the town’s only inn. Though the inn was a ramshackle place, whose wooden walls warped in the winter and splintered in the summer, it was known to all sailors in the Caribbean, for there was no finer place for a drink and a tall tale.

      The drink would be supplied by Jonesy, her mother’s cousin, and the tall tales by Little Jane’s father, Captain Long John Silver the Second. Like many of his tales, the story told that night featured his favourite recurring character, namely himself.

      The audience for Long John’s story that night was the new British magistrate of Smuggler’s Bay. Along with an unasked-for rule of law, the magistrate had brought with him enough unwanted opinions left over from his days as a preacher in England to swiftly turn the free-living folks of Smuggler’s Bay against him. On even the windiest of afternoons, the magistrate could be seen standing outside the Spyglass Inn, lecturing everyone who tried to enter on what a “vacuous vestibule of villainy” it was.

      For weeks, Little Jane’s mother, Captain Bonnie Mary Bright, had stared darkly out the window at the magistrate, trying to think of a way they could rid themselves of him without risk of blame or bloodshed. Seeing her at the window, the magistrate would back up a few paces under the withering glare of her mismatched eyes, and pause in his lecturing, but stubbornly refuse to abandon his post.

      So the standoff continued, day after day, with the magistrate still unable to take the hint. The folks of Smuggler’s Bay were beginning to lose patience. Something had to be done, and Jonesy had a few suggestions about how he might settle the magistrate’s hash for him with his fists, but Bonnie Mary held up her hand for peace and thought harder. At last, just as tempers were starting to fray, she came up with a plan to drive the magistrate away without getting them into any trouble.

      Immediately, she called Long John in from their ship, the Pieces of Eight, to explain. The ship was docked in the harbour in anticipation of the rainy season. Long John was busy supervising the painting of the new figurehead for the hull. As Bonnie Mary explained her plan, Long John sucked his pipe, deep in thought, breathing life into the story he would need in his mind’s eye.

      When the new magistrate next appeared, Long John was there to greet him, leaning on the fence outside the Spyglass. He wore his best hat, topped with his jauntiest feather, and a midnight-blue captain’s coat trimmed with great quantities of gold braid for the occasion.

      “Hullo!” Long John cried out in a warm, cheerful voice and stuck out his powerful left hand toward the magistrate, the one with H-O-L-D tattooed across the knuckles. The letters F-A-S-T graced his right hand. Together they read HOLD FAST. These words together were thought to keep one’s hands steady on lines in a gale. They were common enough marks for a sailor, but the sight flustered the magistrate. He had been little used to seeing such things in his former life as a country preacher.

      “I-I-I’m a servant of the regent!” sputtered the magistrate. “Don’t you dare hurt me! I shall write to the King of England if you do! Stay back heathen!” he yelled and brandished his umbrella like a sword.

      The pirate’s blue-green eyes wrinkled up at the corners as if he might burst out laughing. “Go on! Why in the world would a bloke of me sort want to harm a grand man like you, anyway? I ain’t a bad fellow.”

      The magistrate stood his ground. “Yes, well, how exactly am I to know that?”

      “Look here, me good man, don’t be ridiculous,” explained Long John reasonably. “I ain’t no threat to you. All you’d have to do is run, see? I got no gun and it ain’t likely I’d catch up, what with me bad leg and all.”

      The magistrate, who for the first time bothered to look at something other than the man’s offending tattoos, noticed with some shock that most of the sea captain’s right leg was actually not a real leg at all, but a wooden column covered in fanciful carvings. He noted a proud rooster with raised talons, a ship at full sail, and a pair of mermaids, their tails intertwined, all carved into the wood with the greatest of care.

      “Now who be you to hang about these parts calling me a godless man?” grinned Long John. “I’ll have you know I was shown the power of the Lord nigh on fourteen years ago in the forests of a savage land. Come in, let me get you some vittles and brandy and I’ll tell you about it!”

      Stunned, the new magistrate followed the sea captain into the “vestibule of villainy,” somewhat soothed by the offer of food and drink.

      Inside, Little Jane sat by the hearth, legs crossed, one foot jiggling excitedly as her mother braided her hair. Little Jane had been listening to the entire conversation, of course. Due to her parents’ habit of forgetting to modulate their voices below the loud booming range required for giving orders aboard ship, eavesdropping took little effort.

      “Sit still,” admonished Bonnie Mary, and Little Jane bowed her head as her mother separated another bunch of her unruly curls. Little Jane sat still, intrigued by the prospect of a duel between her father and the magistrate for command of the island. Gleefully, she pictured the crew of the Pieces of Eight hanging on her every word as she gave them her first-hand account of their captain’s victory. That would surely get their respect and attention!

      The idea that her father might not emerge victorious from such a duel simply did not occur to her. At age eight, Little Jane still believed her parents were possessed of mysterious powers of invincibility, powers that also alerted them whenever she was in danger or up to something naughty. (This was partially her father’s fault, as when Little Jane was an impressionable three-year-old, he had drawn a small pair of eyes on the back of one of his hats in an effort to convince her that he did indeed have “eyes in the back of his head” and would know if she tried to eat the contents of his snuff box again).

      Long John, however, was painfully aware that he might not be as invincible as his daughter supposed. He recognized that even if he did emerge victorious from such a duel, it would be bound to attract the attention of a number of important people far away from Smuggler’s Bay, people whose attention their little island preferred not to attract. After all, Long John and Bonnie Mary had not survived this long as pirate captains by being incautious.

      So Captain Silver pulled up a chair instead of a pistol. He poured the magistrate a generous glass of his best brandy and soon the men were talking like old friends. Little Jane kept her ears wide open, listening to the shifting roll and pitch of her father’s voice, like the steady rise and fall of waves on the sea, as he began to tell his tale.