strong of body and mind, cunning in tactics, ferocious in battle — and all gone to the depths at Anguilla over a cargo of sugar what never was there. It’s enough to boggle the mind, even now.”
Little Jane knew this much already. Anguilla was the only island in the Caribbean they never ventured to in their smuggling runs.
“Old Captain Thomas Bright,” continued Long John, “he had it on a reliable source a supply ship from St. Maarten be stopping at Anguilla before heading off to France to deliver valuable goods and munitions to the French army.
“We had them letters of marque from the king giving us permission to attack French vessels and take their goods. We was legal for a while. See, all the English cared about was stopping the loot from falling into the hands of Boney’s army. What us privateers wished to do with it, well, that were our own business so long as they got their cut o’ the take.
“Now out about ten miles by Anguilla was this little island. L’Isle de Feaundy, just a big old piece of rock with a few trees and a fancy name, not more’n a hundred feet square. But the currents round Anguilla would always take you by that place, long as ye sailed up from the south. So we hid the Pieces and the Newton behind the north side of the island. We hid and we waited.
“The captain sent the Golden Fleece out on reconnaissance flying no colours, disguising her as a fishing vessel. She were to sail round and then come warn us when the French ship was spotted to tell us what her bearing was. The Fleece were a small ship, but fast on the water. We thought even if the French figured out her little ruse, the Fleece could outrun them easy.”
“And did she?”
Long John smiled ruefully.
“He were fed a load of hogwash, poor Captain Bright were. The story of the supply ship from St. Maarten were planted all over the ports. It were a ruse ya see, a scheme by the French to lure us English privateers into a trap. And we fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.”
Little Jane began to regret she’d encouraged her father to discuss the subject. As he spoke, his ordinarily jolly countenance took on a gravity few ever saw. He looked suddenly … old. To Little Jane, her parents were like the weathered timbers of the Pieces of Eight itself: ageless and durable. Yet suddenly, here he was, every year telling upon his sunburnt face.
“The Fleece were destroyed and never made it back to warn the Pieces or the Newton. Sixty men gone down with her. The French sent one man o’ war up from the south all heavy with cannon. We turns to fight and, despite the surprise, the tide of battle seemed to be turning in our favour until another man o’ war snuck down from the north and attacks the Newton. We was so busy fightin’ the first ship what had come in from the south we didn’t notice the second till it were too late. She were a monster, she was, bristling with cannons and sharp-shooters and the like. And our poor men right near exhausted by then.
“Both French ships took the Newton, and we made like we was to flee, leaving them to concentrate on ’er. Then we tacked with a quick wind and turned about. They was surprised when we had at them then, all seventy guns spewing grapeshot, exploding shells, ball-and-chain and what have you, raking the deck of both French ships and the Newton all at once.” He looked down into his lap, unable to meet her eyes. “We was fighting for our lives, we was. French ship from the north we shot full of holes and she turned tail and run. French ship from the south we blasted and burnt to kingdom come.”
“So you won, then?”
“We beat them, aye. But we ain’t won to my mind. We all lost — far, far too much.” He gave a sorrowful shake of his thinning grey curls.
“So many good men gone down to the depths. The Pieces herself barely survived. It ain’t never settled right on me what was done to the Newton, though Ishiro Soo-Yun himself once told me it were the only way. But the Newton were crabmeat after that and most of the men gone. We only managed to pluck a handful from the bloodbath of that boat, and then most of them was wounded. And not killed by the French even, but gunned down by us, their own mates, in the crossfire!
“It were me and yer mum was at the helm, ya know, captains of the Pieces at the tail end of the battle. Aye, it’s true. Old Captain Bright, your grandpapa, he were gut shot when the Pieces came back for her second round with the French ships. And he weren’t the only one. Lots more injured and like to die if we didn’t nip into port right quick. No time to go back looking for the remains of the Fleece. We set a course for the nearest British isle, using what tore-up sails and lashed-together masts we could muster.”
“But what about Mama? I thought she were wounded in the attack?”
“No. It weren’t then.”
Little Jane raised an eyebrow. She’d never heard this part of the story.
“The two of us sailed through the attack of the French ships just capital. Afterward, I ain’t thought much when yer mum went off with the rescue party to pick up them remaining boys what was left on the Newton. She wanted to go find Ishiro, if she could. Who’d a guessed there was one surviving French soldier left what had boarded the ship before the worst of our attack? The blackguard was hiding behind a cannon and sees her stroll up on deck and jumps her with a saber. It were him what struck her down. They brought her back to me—” His voice wavered. “She were alive, but she weren’t waking. It were a whole two days afore she woke up.”
Long John’s speech was full-on trembling now, but he pressed on with the tale, seeming unable to stop. Overcome with emotion as he was, he still could not bear to let a story go unfinished.
“Ishiro and thirty others was all what made it out of the wreck of the Newton and twelve died of their wounds in the weeks after. From the Pieces, we had fifty wounded and twenty-five what died later on. The Fleece went down with all souls, including her captain. He was a good man as ever I served by.
“Ishiro came out of it the best a’ any of us, with no more’n a broke nose, but he ain’t never commanded another ship since that day.”
“Why? It weren’t his fault, surely?”
“I dunno. I think he just didn’t want the responsibility no more. I thought he were joking then, but he just turns to me and he says, ‘I won’t have a single man’s blood on me hands again. I ain’t havin’ it on me conscience — men dying on my command.’ Course he don’t seem to have much trouble with butchering up them fish for dinner, but he wouldn’t budge an inch on taking back his post as captain no matter how much I talked him up. And I prides meself on being something of a convincing man! Stubborn as a mule he is, and that’s a fact. Leastways, he’s me mate and he got his reasons. Not to mention, he’s a good cook. But it should’ve been him what is the Pieces’s captain, to tell it plain, not me and yer mum. We was only the second-stringers.”
Little Jane stared at her scratchy blue camlick blanket and thought about how some of the other sailors treated Ishiro, how they lorded it over him, loudly demanding their food on the double. She knew the crewmen would never dream of speaking to her mother or father that way. Then she thought about how much she didn’t know about Ishiro or about her own mother and father even. She wondered what more she had never bothered to ask and what everyone else always simply presumed she knew.
“Finally, yer mum and me drag our sorry carcasses home to the Spyglass—” continued Long John.
This part, Little Jane remembered. “Aye! Jonesy told me! He said the men fell to the left and right of her in admiration, so eager was they to prostrate themselves at her feet because she was a real true hero — a noble captain
