instructions, when your task is complete and you have delivered the Pieces of Eight and her crew to the Panacea.”
“Blast your hide and your ship to boot! Why wait until the boat’s left harbour? Simple tar I may be, but not stupid! You says they’re pirates — why not nab them here where you’ve got a jail to hold ’em, and save yourselves a world of trouble? Here, on Hispaniola Isle you have the army on your side. Out there, all’s we got is the fish to help us.”
“The Spanish Army is on the island of Hispaniola, my friend, not the English,” Doc Lewiston reminded him.
“Then let ’em get pinched in Jamaica instead.”
Doc Lewiston fidgeted a little again, realizing the boatswain had a good point. He was ashamed that Ned Ronk had cottoned on to a hole in the Captain’s stratagem that had not been apparent to him, despite his own superior education.
The boatswain favoured the doctor with a sly look. “Unless there be something he’d rather keep from the law on the islands and the bosses back in England?”
“I honestly have no idea, one way or the other,” Doc Lewiston answered truthfully. “I’m no tactician. The captain only tells me as much as he reasons I must know.”
It occurred to Doc Lewiston then that if this Ned Ronk could so easily betray Bright and Silver, it took no great stretch of imagination to suppose the boatswain might turn against Lewiston’s own captain should the fancy strike him. A man of such changeable loyalties required a deft hand to manipulate. He wondered if the captain, in his current weakened condition, would be up to the task. “If you have any reservations about your mission,” Lewiston added uneasily, “I’ll have to conduct them to him myself.”
“No, that ain’t needed,” said the boatswain, and the surgeon relaxed. “No skin off my rosy nose if what your boss’s up to ain’t above-board. All I wants to make sure of is me own protection. Bright and Silver’ll be none too pleased when they catch on they been tricked. I’ll do what you ask, but you tell that captain of yours from me, those two oughta be dispatched right quick if he knows what’s good for him.”
“Uh, yes, of course,” muttered Doc Lewiston and raised his mug of ale to his mouth to hide his frown of dismay.
By God, just what was he getting himself into?
Chapter 8
The Knot That Was Not
“PLEBLLLLEFFFFFF!” Bonnie Mary spluttered, pulling her head out of the basin of cold water. Instantly, she knew it would be a Three Cups of Coffee Morning. What had she been thinking by making an early appointment for the morning after their party?
Long John helped his wife into her dress, lacing her up in seconds with his nimble sailor’s fingers. Bonnie Mary pulled a pair of clean white gloves over her calloused hands and tugged a few curls out of her mobcap, carefully positioning them over her bad eye. Last, she powdered her face to soften the effect of her sea-weathered features.
Long John straightened his white horse-hair wig and tied his finest silk cravat before the mirror. Bonnie Mary fluffed up the new orange feather in his hat, while he gave the gold-topped cane he carried for special occasions a final polish. At last they were ready to go.
Bonnie Mary glanced over at Little Jane, still huddled in her little hammock bed. She had hoped to bring her along, seeing as how it would be a lesson in the business side of smuggling and pirating, but the previous night’s revelry seemed to have exhausted the child.
“Let her rest,” said Long John, extending his hand to his wife. “It won’t do to keep the coffee trader waiting.”
Bonnie Mary took the proffered arm and the two sauntered down the gangplank to the pier, looking for all the world like any well-dressed, middle-aged couple out for a morning stroll.
A few hours later, Little Jane woke. She stretched out luxuriantly against the pillow of her bed, watching the sun stream in through the cabin window, sending dust specks glowing in the air. A magical morning. She stumbled into her clothes, taking note of her parents’ empty bed.
Where were they?
Patrolling the deck of the Pieces once more, even Ned Ronk felt in good spirits as schemes of sabotage wove their twisty way through his devious brain. He watched a few stray sailors mop the deck.
Someday he’d have a ship of his own, he mused. Perhaps this ship, even. All it would take was a little finesse. The important thing, Ned realized suddenly, was not, as Doc Lewiston had said, for the act of sabotage to be completely untraceable. No, what really mattered was only that it be completely untraceable to him.
All he’d have to do was find the appropriate dupe to pin the thing on, someone no one would ever suspect of having any connection to him …
As if on cue, Ned Ronk noticed Little Jane’s small, braided head poke up from the entrance to the midships. He clenched his fists with the desire the squeeze someone’s throat, but then a flash of inspiration struck him. With a grin of supreme friendliness and goodwill, he waved at Little Jane.
Little Jane ducked back down to the comforting darkness of the hold, barely able to breathe. Her heart banged in her chest as memories from the night before all came flooding back.
Ned! That sardonic wave of the hand … He knew! He knew she had followed him to Sharky’s! Of course he knew! He had to know! And that meant she was done for!
Whatever Ned had been planning with the man he’d met in the tavern, she knew it wouldn’t bode well for her. Something had to be done. It was time to tell someone. But then she remembered the empty bed in the captains’ cabin and knew by the angle of the sunlight shining down on her that it was afternoon already. Her parents would be at the coffee merchant’s by now.
She realized that Ned Ronk wouldn’t dare try anything in Habana, not with all the soldiers and townspeople about. Her parents could find a new boatswain to replace him — they were probably a dime a dozen around here — this was Habana, after all! She had to tell them and tell them NOW — now, before they went out to sea with Ned. Out at sea where there would be nowhere to run …
Suddenly, as if he’d read her very thoughts, there was Ned, standing right above her! From up on the deck, he peered down at Little Jane in the hold. She trembled under his squinty gaze, fixed like a butterfly on a collector’s table by the pin of her fear.
“Little Jane …” his voice rumbled.
She chewed on one of her braids, sniffing the vaguely salty scent of her hair for comfort, as the clasp-knife gleamed in her imagination. But the clasp-knife never made an appearance. Instead, Ned Ronk smiled, actually smiled at her. He even reached down and patted her on the head!
“Why don’t you get a mop and give Rufus a hand cleaning,” was all he said, his tone unusually mild. “There’s shrimp stew all over the bowsprit.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” cried Little Jane in surprise and she ran off looking for a bucket.
