Now the Captain of the pirates stood in front of us again. He had taken on an almost god like air to most of us. He was the man who had taken on the unbeatable and won. He had freed us, if only for a moment, from tyranny.
“The life of a pirate frees you from men such as him. No man gets more food then another, no man gets special privileges, every man gets a say in what happens on the ship. No man can treat you like that. Who will join us?”
I watched as my crewmates mulled over this proposition. There were a few feet of deck between our crew and the pirate crew but it seemed to me to be the line between life and death. Slowly the cabin boy shuffled forward in total silence. I was a little surprised, he was only a boy after all, nearly fifteen, and he had never struck me as a vicious or bloody minded person. Emboldened by the boy’s action three more men walked forward, they were bolder acting then the boy. They sauntered over to stand with the pirates and one of them even spit in the direction of the captain but not a one of them looked our crew in the face. The captain of the pirates nodded his approval and strode into Captain Johansson’s cabin. A few minuets later the men who had agreed to join the pirates were ushered one by one into the cabin.
The man who I took to be the quarter master of the pirates continued to stand in front of us, watching us carefully. He had been the first to board our ship and he was by far the one most on guard in the pirates. While the pirates gloated over the wealth they had discovered and talked about which port they should sell the fabric in for the best price. The quarter master seemed to be the only man unaffected by the loot. Eventually one of the men who had just left our crew brought him the ships book and the quarter master opened it. He ran his finger down the list of names I knew to be at the front of the book. I had seen the captain enter my name on that very list when I had signed aboard.
His finger paused halfway down the list. “Jack Thatcher, you play the fiddle?”
I thought Jack was going to die right there and he nearly did. When he didn’t respond at first a man from the pirate crew drew his pistol and pointed it at him. It was obvious enough who was Jack, he was the one who had turned pale and was shaking.
“Answer the question,” demanded the pirate with the gun.
“I do,” Jack looked around at the rest of us, looking for a rescue but human nature is not so kind. We all stood, looking straight ahead and hoping against hope that we were not the next people to attract the man’s attention.
“Go into the cabin, the captain would like to ask you some questions.” Jack looked for a second at the pistol’s barrel and then walked into the captain’s quarters like a man walking to the scaffold. That was a bad thought; he might be doing just that. I would have prayed for his safety but at that moment I was to busy with concerns of my own safety. I watched with bated breath as the quartermaster’s finger ran down the list again, and then stop.
“Mark Stutter, the cooper, step forward.” I froze, I swear I couldn’t have moved from that spot had God himself commanded me to. “Mark Stutter will step forward or by the Devil I will start shooting you one by one until he does,” bellowed the quarter master and he looked as if he meant it. My neighbors, in an act of self preservation, pushed me forward.
To be continued...
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