Chapter 1: Under Fire

Michael's ship is captured.

The trading ship was tossed on the waves late in the night. It wasn’t a particularly fast ship, nor did its crew consist of anybody noteworthy within the British Empire. As far as Michael Gale knew, their only goal was to trade spices with the Indians across the sea. However, being a cabin boy, he wasn’t privileged to know much of what was on Captain Jeffries’ mind. He wasn’t even sure which Indians they were talking about.

Michael was around fourteen years old. He had dark brown hair which had been cut close to his head and deep blue eyes. He was the son of the sailor, Jacob Wells, and innkeeper, Hannah Gale. He had been aboard the ship for about three days, and had only just learned the ins and outs of how to keep the rest of the crew satisfied.

The voyage up until this time had been quite peaceful. There was not even a single hint of rain on the horizon for the duration, and the winds had been highly in their favor. On the night of his third day, however, the winds blew against the sails.

He had been sleeping in the quarters with the rest of the crew which were not assigned to the night watch for pirates. A single shot in the rang in the air which startled him and many of the other snoring shipmates out of their sleep. He ran to the deck after the others who left him behind to see what the gunshot could’ve meant, hoping only that it had been a drunken shipmate shooting at nothing.

He was wrong. The only light in the darkness of the night was the artificial light of the lanterns held by the crewman. Upon reaching the deck, Michael saw the corpse of one of his shipmates, mangled and bleeding as he had fallen from the Crow’s Nest, a single shot in his chest. He was glad that most of his form was obscured in the darkness created by the clouds and lack of moonlight. Pirates had begun boarding the ship from small boats which completely surrounded their ship in the water.

Michael looked around him, a little under an hour later. He was cramped inside of a cupboard in the kitchen, praying to God that he wouldn’t be discovered. It was dark and dusty, and the odd bits of pots and pans were jabbing him as he’d forced himself to fit inside the cramped space. Captain Jeffries had always been so kind and wise, why on Earth did he not surrender? Why did he choose to sacrifice his crew to the likes of these pitiful rogues?

Michael’s fingers found their way to the locket that was hanging on a chain around his neck. He squinted in the darkness to make out the details he had become so familiar with over the past week since his mother had given it to him. It was gold-colored, and a solid ‘G’ was emblemized on the cover. A clear red crystal sat on the line of the ‘G’. He couldn’t understand what it was, but whenever he held the locket, it always made him feel calm.

Even though the Captain had ordered every man to defend the ship, Michael felt no guilt in hiding himself within this cupboard. There was no reason for him to protect the ship he’d only just boarded, and he thought Captain Jeffries a fool for not surrendering when it would’ve been so easy. What kind of spices are we trading anyways? thought Michael. Certainly nothing I’ll risk my life for, Captain.

He heard a gunshot just outside of the kitchen where he was hiding and held the locket tightly in his hand. Even though he was in a terrible situation, he still felt confidence in his ability to survive the night. If only he could keep himself a secret.

The door to the kitchen creaked open, and Michael heard two different sets of feet walk into the room. He only hoped they were members of the crew who’d survived, but realized quickly that the gunshots had begun to grow less frequent and the clanging of metals outside was beginning to cease. They’d lost. Or won. He hadn’t a clue which, but was more in-tuned to believe the former.

The two men who’d entered the kitchen remained silent in mouth, but were clearly searching for something, given the clangs of the pans and pots that were being thrown around. The door creaked open once again and this time an unfamiliar voice accompanied it.

“Scour every corner of this kitchen ‘till you find it!” shouted their apparent leader. “Don’ even think about leaving this room without it.” The leader then walked out of the room as the other two pirates began to break every pot they saw, pulling every drawer out of its place and opening every cupboard.

Michael peeked through the cracks in the door of the cupboard, seeing the silhouettes of the dastardly pirates. One of them was a very large, black man, and in the glow of his lantern, Michael could spot a golden tooth at the forefront of his mouth. He was completely bald, and he had on a loose white shirt and crummy trousers. His comrade was short and fat, with red hair sitting atop his red-bearded face. Michael began to realize that he might not survive this night, let alone the next hour.

He continued to clutch the locket, hoping by some miracle that the two pirates who were opening every cupboard and throwing every loose instrument would somehow miss the one he was tucked away in. The pirate with the golden tooth looked keenly into the cupboard as he opened it with his giant hands. “I found someting!” He grabbed Michael with one of his tarantula-like hands, pulling him roughly out of his hiding spot. He had a funny accent for someone so big.

“Aye, it looks like the lad’s gonna wet himself!” laughed the red-bearded pirate, in a nasally voice. He walked over and looked Michael in the eyes. The glow from their lanterns revealed that he had a very pocketed face. There was a putrid smell of rum on his breath. “Oy, he’s got somethin’ on him!” He grabbed Michael’s locket and tugged it from his neck, cutting into his skin as the thin chain broke.

“Be careful,” said the golden-toothed man in his strange accent. A closer look revealed a few red cracks in his golden tooth. “If dat’s what the Capten’s lookin’ for, you shoun’t open it.” Michael couldn’t bear to watch them as his mother’s locket was taken from him, and he foolishly tried to take it back from them, but met a fist instead. “We be takin’ you to da capten. Don’ try anyting stupid while we go.”

Why should they worry about opening it? thought Michael. I’ve opened it plenty of times, and nothing’s happened to me. He thought of a small ruse that might’ve helped him out of this if their fears of the locket held true. “D-don’t open it!” he tried to shout, but only breathed it as he was still recovering his breath from the blow to his gut. “M-my mother’s gold is inside!” He thought it was a simple trick, one people as greedy as pirates would fall for.

The red-haired pirate’s eyes widened, and he quickly snatched the locket from the golden-tooth pirate and attempted to pry it open. Golden Tooth beat him over the head with the butt of his pistol, knocking him out cold before he could get it open. “I should jus’ leave you here to die, you fool!” exclaimed Golden Tooth. “An’ I jus’ might if it wen’t for you bein’ impotant fo someting.”

Golden Tooth dragged Michael onto his feet and sneered in his face. “If you try anyting like dat with me, I beat you until yo eyes bleed.” He forced him from the room with immense strength, but Michael simply wasn’t ready to take in the scene just outside of the kitchen. He had noticed that the gunfire and the clangs of the swords had ceased.

The clouds had begun to part, allowing the light of the half-moon to slightly illuminate the scene. There were pirates, no more than twenty of them, standing above the bodies of his former companions. The bodies of four pirates could also be seen among them. How twenty-something pirates managed to take the entire ship was beyond Michael’s understanding, as they had at least forty able-bodied men among them who were at least somewhat experienced in combat. Just who were these pirates?

            Michael couldn’t take the sight of it any longer, and vomited what little food he had left in his stomach onto the deck while still being dragged by Golden Tooth to the edge of the ship. “Get use to da sight o’ dis,” said Golden Tooth in a somewhat sympathetic tone. Michael tried to move his legs fast enough to keep up with Golden Tooth as he bellowed out orders to the other pirates who’d survived. “Dat fool Bige is in the kitchen, if one o’ you blokes who respect him could go and get ‘im, I tank you!”

            Used to what? thought Michael. The sight of my shipmates being mutilated by pirates? He tried to wrench his arm away from Golden Tooth, without any conviction and strength left. “Are you gonna kill me?” asked Michael, trying to figure his situation out.

            “I don’ have a reason,” said Golden Tooth simply, in his funny accent.

            “Will you let me go?”

            “I don’ have a reason,” came the same reply.

            Michael tried to look around again, trying to see any sign of which pirates his captors were. That’s when he saw the Jolly Roger flying against the night sky. It was a black flag, with a white skull typical to pirates taking the majority of the landscape. There was a blue fire embroidered around the skull and two swords crossing beneath it. The blue fire is what proved it to be the mark of Glass-Eye, captain of the ship Rogue Fire. That would do well to explain to brutality and effectiveness of these pirates.

            Glass-Eye was a man feared across the entire ocean. Michael heard many stories about this Pirate and his sheer brutality when taking over a ship. They’d say that if a person was ever unfortunate enough to see the flag of that dastard, death was near and certain. One of the scariest parts about it is that nobody even knew his real name, nor where he came from. Ten years ago, the name Glass-Eye began to spread across the world like a wildfire. By now, his name was almost as feared as Blackbeard’s himself.

            When Michael reached the edge of the boat with Golden Tooth, he saw the small boats which the pirates had used for boarding still tethered by ropes to the ship. The Rogue Fire sat still in the water just over twenty meters away, with the Jolly Roger waving in the wind in the half-moonlight. “You’re taking me with you?”

            “Aye, dat we are,” said Golden Tooth. “Capten needs you for someting.”

            Michael climbed down the rope to the boat, using the rest of his nearly evaporated strength to do so. “Me?” questioned Michael, confused as to why he would be useful to a deadly Captain like Glass-Eye.

Torko refused once again to answer his question. “Can I at least have my locket back?” asked Michael innocently, just wanting the calmness that came from it to sweep over him again. “Just for a moment?”

            “Don’ tink dat you an’ me are friends, small boy,” said the man in his deep voice, sitting just across from him with the oars already paddling to reach his ship. “We be needin’ you alive, dat is true, but don’ eva get da wrong idea ‘bout me.” Michael sat in silence while he considered whether or not he should just jump into the sea and try to swim to safety to avoid whatever torture the pirates had in store for him. But he wasn’t one who was willing to give up on life just yet.

            They reached the Rogue Fire quickly enough, and the boat was lifted back to deck. There were dozens of pirates awaiting them, giving Michael the impression that there were at least forty or fifty crew members total. They were all just as rough on him as Golden Tooth and Bige had been, tossing him around from one another as they brought him along the deck to the captain’s quarters. Golden Tooth stayed close to him all the way there.

            Michael began to feel his head swirl with weariness, considering what few options he had left. Or rather, the reality that he had no options left had finally sunk in. “Okay, small boys, you had yo fun!” shouted Golden Tooth over the rugged crowd with his booming voice. “Da boy’s impotant to the Capten, anyone else try anyting and you be answerin’ to ‘im!”

            Michael held his breath before the door to the captain’s quarters was opened to him. The room was sizable. There was a large desk in the midst of the room, and all sorts of charts and different chests were littering the walls around the room. The captain sat in an ornate chair in front of the desk.

            Immediately Michael knew why this man was called Glass-Eye. His left eye was nothing more than a pale scar of what used to be an eye, and there was a scar that ran clean over it on his face. His other eye was an emerald green, and the rest of his face was actually quite clean. He had a short brown beard, a pointed nose, and a surprisingly calm smile despite the eye. His hair was covered by his hat, which symbolized his right as the captain of the ship. Other than that, he had a long coat that clearly housed any number of weapons.

            “Here you are, Capten,” said Golden Tooth, tossing the locket into the captain’s hands. He caught it and eyed it specially with his good eye, and a wider smile spread across his face.

            “Very good, Torko,” said Glass-Eye gesturing for him to leave the room. His voice was calm and smooth, matching his relaxed demeanor. “And leave the boy, would you? I’d like to have a chat with him.”

            “Scoundrel!”

            Michael jumped at the voice of Captain Jeffries, who was tied up in the corner of the room. His hair was disheveled, and he was dirty with sweat across his once handsome face. His eye was swollen shut, and to Michael’s horror his leg was missing, blood covering the floor around him.

Author's Note

Looking for reviews. Torko's dialogue is based on a Ghanaian accent, which is why his words are weird.