Page 54 of High Seas

Hornigold moved his short spyglass from me to Edward and then lowered it. He turned and yelled something to his men. A moment later, a white flag was raised.

“He’s surrendering?” Titus asked Terah.

“Not on your life,” Edward butted in. “Hornigold doesn’t have it in him to surrender. The word isn’t even in his vocabulary. He wants to speak to Enoch without being sunk.”

Enoch appeared behind me. “Stand on the poop deck and continue to fade in and out, please.”

“Poop deck?” I asked, afraid of what his answer might be, and once again amused by the nautical terms used by sailors.

“The deck above my quarters. Hurry!”

I ran and stood in the most visible spot on the poop deck, attempting to look as ghost-like as possible, while Hornigold’s sloop approached and then pulled up to sail alongside us. I disappeared after I caught him looking at me, reappearing a few feet away.

The other captain’s face was obscured by his hat and thick, wooly ropes of reddish hair. He wasn’t old, but wasn’t as young as Edward, either. “I don’t want trouble,” Hornigold yelled to Enoch. “But I’ll have ya return my former lieutenant, if ye will.”

“And if I refuse?” Enoch challenged.

“Then trouble you’ll have,” threatened the pirate. “I’m charged with hunting down scum pirates like you, now. A huge bounty the pair of you’d bring.”

Hornigold eyeballed me as if afraid to look away. Maybe he thought if he lost eye contact with me, I’d appear beside him. Pirate hunter, meet vampire hunter.

“You speak of a war you couldn’t possibly win,” Enoch spat.

Hornigold watched me flicker in and out uneasily. “Maybe ye have the right of it. I see the sea favors you. Just return Thatch and we’ll sail on. Not a single cannon will warm.”

“You can have him,” Enoch conceded. “But if you try anything, my men will bury your ship at the bottom of these waters. They will fire, and they will not stop firing until each and every one of you are dead – yourself and Edward Thatch included.”

Negotiations concluded, the prisoner exchange was easy. Terah shoved Edward toward the small rowboat dangling precariously over the ship’s rail. He sat on a bench and held to one side with his shackled hands. When the wherry bobbed on top of the water, a man climbed down and cut the ropes on either side and quickly scurried back up a rope ladder onto the deck. “What about an oar?” Edward hollered. The single oar they gave him whacked him in the head when they dropped it.

“That was an impressive negotiation,” I told Enoch as we watched Edward struggle to close the short distance between the vessels.

“No more impressive than your performance,” Enoch said, wrapping an arm around my waist and holding me against him.

“You’re were right about something else.”

“What’s that?”

“Your crewmen aren’t nearly as hot as you.”

I drank in Enoch’s hearty laugh. “I am a great many things, Eve, but I am no liar.”

* * *

Titus

I watched as Hornigold’s men threw a ladder down for Edward, who struggled up each rung. His shackled hands slowed his progress, but he fought for every inch. He knew what would happen if he slipped or let go. The boat he’d used bobbed empty alongside them until they turned away from us and headed in the direction from which they’d come. I didn’t relax until they were nothing more than a black dot on the horizon. Enoch instructed his men to retrieve the wherry, steering the massive ship in the direction of the tiny one. I watched as they stalked it, as one of the men dove into the sea, swam across the waves like he was slicing through butter and climbed aboard the tiny boat. He deftly paddled back to the ship.

The men tossed down ropes and he secured them to iron loops at either end of the wherry. Then the sailors lifted him and the boat up, singing a rhythmic song as they heaved the weight. I wondered what it would be like to be one of them. Back home, the focus was on the individual. What could I bring to the table? How could I outdo everyone else? Here? These men were a team and the only one more important than the others was their Captain.

Under his order, we set sail again. Toward Nassau and Asa.

Eve waltzed across the deck, plopping down on the rail next to me with a proud smile on her lips. “You know, I make a pretty good ghost,” she gloated.

I had to give her that one. “You do. It was really creepy, especially when you disappeared and then reappeared in a different place.”

“I bet Enoch is glad to have Edward off the ship.”

“He is. Terah, however… I don’t think she was happy to see him go.”