Hook's Revenge Page 9

  Jack held the umbrella, but it did little to keep the spray off, for in his excitement he neglected to open it. He waved it about, yelling “Arrr!” every few minutes.

  Smee was a bit more practiced at his role. His pulls on the oars were strong and smooth. And the more Jocelyn abused him, the faster he rowed.

  They approached the cave. In the shadow of evening, it was as ominous as a great gaping maw, waiting to tear them into pieces and swallow the bits. However, it was not the mouth of the cave that would soon clamp over tender flesh, severing muscle and bone…but I am getting ahead of myself.

  As Smee steered the dinghy into the cavern’s yawning opening, Jocelyn looked back the way they came. The Hook’s Revenge made a black silhouette against the darkening sea. Fire-breathing dragonflies darted over the gray waves, taunting foolish fish beneath. An acrid smell of burned cod hung in the air. One lonely star blinked in the sky. For the briefest of moments, the girl considered a wish, but thought better of it. Jocelyn would take her chances and defeat the crocodile on her own.

  She turned to face the darkness.

  “Jack, put down that umbrella and light a lantern.”

  The lamp created a thin circle of light around their boat, barely holding back the gloom. Over the soft creak and splash of the oars, they heard it, faint but distinct: ticking.

  One-Armed Jack held the lantern out. Near the cave opening, reflected in the lamplight, ripples formed in the sea—first small, then larger. Jocelyn leaned over the edge of the boat for a closer look. Her jacket hem trailed in the water.

  The ticking grew louder.

  “Steady, boys, here it comes,” the girl whispered with forced courage. She rolled up her sleeves. Grasping her sword in one hand and her locket in the other, she waited. A few boat lengths away, the crocodile surfaced.

  “Captain,” Smee whispered, “it’s gotten bigger since I saw it last.”

  Its head alone must have been nearly half the length of the dinghy. Fear squeezed its way into the small boat, jostling the passengers and taking up far more than its fair share of room.

  One-Armed Jack shrank back, pulling the lantern toward him. Shadows closed in. He mumbled a prayer under his breath.

  The beast approached. The now loud ticktock of the creature’s internal clock filled the cave. Jocelyn braced herself, ready to strike. She intended to shout, but her voice came out barely louder than a whisper. “In the name of my father, Captain James Hook, prepare to meet your doom.”

  The crocodile whipped its head toward her. Red eyes darted to the hem of her father’s jacket, hanging over the side of the boat. It placed its enormous snout on the fabric and breathed deep. Slowly, it raised its head and locked eyes with Jocelyn, dark pupils growing wide.

  Terror struck Jocelyn like a physical force. She faltered, dropping her sword to the bottom of the boat. What was she thinking? A girl, not even fully grown, against a colossal crocodile? She didn’t stand a chance.

  “Captain?” Smee’s voice trembled, his eyes wide with fright. “Do you have orders for us?”

  Jocelyn sat frozen with terror and doubt, dumbly watching the beast. It did not take its eyes off her.

  Smee wrapped his arms about himself. He rocked back and forth. “No. Please,” he wept. “Not again! I can’t bear it.”

  At the other end of the boat, Jack began to panic. “Do something!” he screamed. “We’ve got to get away!” There was nowhere to hide. He stood, flailing his arms. Lantern light bounced off the walls. The boat rocked dangerously in the water.

  Jocelyn could not look away. The crocodile was going to eat her. She would die as her father had.

  With a speed that seemed impossible, the beast thrust itself out of the water, its dreadful jaws gaping wide. The dinghy tilted, nearly capsizing. Jack stumbled over his seat, sprawling in front of Jocelyn, his lantern hand flung over the side. With a sickening crunch, the lamp was gone—as was most of Jack’s arm.

  The gruesome scene was illuminated now only by a bit of moonlight, pale and thin as an invalid, creeping through the cave opening.

  Jocelyn screamed. Smee swore. Jack let out a mighty shriek of—

  You may expect that his wails would be filled with pain, horror, or despair, but as I have come to expect, you would be wrong. In my studies, I’ve learned quite a lot about the Neverland’s crocodile. It relished those sounds. The screams of its victims added layers of intense flavoring to its meals, not unlike the spices your mother uses in her cooking.

  However, Jack’s screams were not the savory seasoning the beast may have expected, for Jack cried out in gratitude. No longer would the fledgling pirate have to pretend. Now, and forever after, One-Armed Jack could proudly live up to his name.

  When the maimed man cried out, “Thank you! Oh, thank you, my dear creature!” the crocodile lost its appetite and spit out Jack’s arm with a grunt. The lost appendage bobbed once or twice then sank beneath the dark water.

  The beast gave Jocelyn one last, chilling look before it too submerged. The ticking grew faint, then disappeared altogether.

  Smee fumbled about in the dim light and pulled out his handkerchief. After blowing his nose on it one last time, he bandaged the now truly One-Armed Jack’s wound.

  Jack kept repeating, “Did you see that? He bit off my arm! Wait till I tell the guys. Nubbins has nothing on me. One little thumb? Whoop-de-doo! I lost my arm, my whole arm, to the most fearsome beast the Neverland has ever seen—and I lived to tell the tale.”

  When Smee informed Jack that he might yet die from infection or worse, the new amputee nearly tipped the boat again by dancing a delighted jig.

  At the other end of the dinghy, Jocelyn sat in despair. She had frozen. Because of her inaction, one of her men was horribly injured. Granted, he was ecstatic about his wound, but nonetheless, he could have been killed! The realization made her sick to her stomach. What kind of a pirate captain was she? Her father would have been ashamed.

  The girl refused to live with that. She must kill the crocodile, or forever carry the taint of failure. Just outside the cave opening, weak moonlight reflected off a series of small bubbles rising to the water’s surface. They had to be from the beast.

  She reached for the oars, preparing to take command of the little boat. Without warning, there was an explosive boom. The blast knocked Jocelyn to the floor.

  Everything went black.

  Isuppose you are wondering what caused the explosion. From what I have been able to discover, it was clearly Jim McCraig’s fault, though he never would admit it. People are stubborn like that sometimes.

  When Blind Bart heard the crocodile’s ticking heading for open water, he called for someone to fire the cannon. Jim and Nubbins, each eager to man the gun, engaged in a bit of a kerfuffle. Nubbins was quicker with a match and lit the fuse, but in a rush of anger, Jim kicked out with his “wooden” leg and repositioned the cannon. The ball flew toward Salmagundi Island, slamming into the cliff face directly above the cave opening. As dirt and rocks rained down, blocking their captain’s exit, Jim McCraig turned to Nubbins and said something that, roughly translated, meant “Nicely done, you beef-witted clod.”

  True night falls fast in the Neverland. That might not have been much of a concern for Blind Bart, but the other men needed their eyes to be any use in a rescue effort. As much as they wanted to begin clearing the rubble away, they were unable to do so in the dark.

  The three crew members, like their captain and shipmates inside the cave, were forced to wait until morning.

  Some fool once said that it is always darkest before the dawn. I contend that it is far darker in the dead of night, particularly if you happen to be trapped in a cave. Even more so if you are unconscious. Now, that’s dark.

  When Jocelyn came to, she found herself and her men in a precarious situation. The explosion had caused a wall of rock and debris to rain down,
sealing the cave off tight as a tomb. When all that rubble hit the water, it created a swell that nearly swamped the little dinghy. Their lantern had been destroyed by the crocodile. They were trapped in the dark.

  As men of lesser rank must do in times of crisis, Smee and truly One-Armed Jack looked to their captain for answers. Like all great leaders in times of difficulty, Jocelyn had nothing to offer but platitudes and lies.

  “Don’t worry, men,” she said. “We are not alone in this. Bart, Jim, and Nubbins will surely find a way to free us. Even if they cannot, there is bound to be another way out. We only have to wait for the morning sun to shine down some tunnel or crack.” Lest her words be considered kind enough to earn Smee’s reproach, she threw in, “So quit your sniveling and stay the course, or I’ll have you clapped in irons.”

  Her men were considerably cheered by the girl’s leadership, enough so that Jack was able to drift off to sleep—with the assistance of a healthy dose from Smee’s emergency grog bottle (for medicinal purposes, of course). Smee had a few gulps himself, then sat in silence. Jocelyn took comfort from nothing, spending a cold, miserable night wrapped in the bitter embrace of failure.

  “You know, miss,” Smee said, breaking the stillness, “at one time that devil was a regular old crocodile, just like any other. It seemed to me the beast started to change after eating the dear old captain’s hand.” Smee spoke with a far greater lucidity than he had anytime since Jocelyn had met him. “The captain was more important to me than anything. I left behind family and friends to sail with him, and never regretted it. Why, I’d have flung even Johnny Corkscrew to the sea if he’d asked me to—but don’t tell Johnny that. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.…

  “The captain, I lived to serve him, though he did have his faults. He tended toward the melancholies, sometimes not leaving his cabin for weeks, but I was there to see him through. And to be sure, he could get into murderous rages, but he never murdered me. Not once. That’s saying something, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” Jocelyn muttered. She wasn’t much in a mood to learn about her father’s virtues, not with her failure so fresh.

  “There was never anyone more wicked than Captain Hook. Never. And that’s the way he liked it. But after the crocodile ate his hand, the beast started to get a mite wicked as well. It got bigger and meaner, and, much like the captain, it starting causing more fear than some might think altogether reasonable. Looked to me that no one felt the effects of that strange terror more keenly than the captain himself.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Jocelyn asked.

  “I’ve been trying to puzzle it out, and to my way of thinking, it goes to reason that some of the captain’s great malice might’ve seeped into the creature when it first had a taste of him. Now that it has had so much more…”

  He trailed off, but Jocelyn could grasp his meaning.

  Now the beast was truly a monster.

  Though Jocelyn had long despaired of it happening, morning eventually came, and with it a means of escape. As she had surmised, a bit of light forced its way into the cave through a narrow passage in a low area of the ceiling. Though it proved a bit difficult for the portly Mr. Smee, the three were able to wriggle through into the dazzling light of early day.

  As she waited for her eyes to adjust, Jocelyn allowed her other senses to take stock of her surroundings. She smelled the earthy scent of dirt mingled with a sweetness of flowers. The morning sun wrapped her in a warm embrace, thawing the stiffness from her cold and tired muscles. Ocean waves crashed in the distance. A nearby bird called to another, “Mildred, dear, could you send over a cup of worms with my Jeffrey? I am fresh out and won’t be going to market until later today.”

  Jocelyn never ceased to be surprised and delighted with the Neverland. If she hadn’t been feeling so wretched about her failure with the crocodile, she might have done something foolish, like prance about in the sunshine, gathering wildflowers.

  Fortunately, her misery kept her grounded.

  Still, the scents, sensations, and sounds made for a pleasant scene, which is why, I suppose, when Jocelyn’s eyes did adjust to the brilliance, she was unprepared to be looking down the barrel of a strange man’s musket.

  I’m going to interrupt my narrative here to inform you that the man holding the musket was ugly, and dirty, and likely full of both vermin and lies. You would be wise not to trust him.

  “If Krueger sent ye three misfits to finish me off,” the stranger said, “he might be a bit overconfident in your abilities.”

  Smee pulled Johnny from his sheath and brandished it, his pirate brogue much thicker than usual: “Ye’ll pay fer insultin’ me cap’n, ye filthy, stinkin’ bilge rat! Johnny Corkscrew’ll tickle yer liver!”

  The man turned to Smee and cried, “So it is true, then, eh? Ye sail under the black flag of Cap’n Krueger? You’ll die for your choice of loyalties! Tell me who this Johnny Corkscrew is, and once I finish with you two ladies and the Lilliput, I’ll split him from stem to stern! Where is he?”

  Jocelyn drew her own weapon and stepped in front of her loyal bo’sun. “Lower your musket, you filthy dog, or wish that you had.”

  One-Armed Jack also jumped into the fray. “How would you like some of this?” he shouted, wildly waving his poorly bandaged stump in the man’s face.

  The stranger lowered his weapon and gave a hearty laugh. “I don’t know who captains ye blokes, but I know fer sure it ain’t Cap’n Krueger! With the exception of the little girl, he’d not let the likes of you clean the slime off his boots. Of course, that’s Minnie’s job, but even so…I do like your spunk. I’m Dirty Bob Bonny; what brings you to my island?”

  “Humph.” Jocelyn sniffed and turned her back on the man. She commanded Jack to find a shady place near the shore and keep an eye out for the ship. Then, addressing Smee, she said, “We need to build a signal fire. Bart will smell the smoke and come round to pick us up.”

  Dirty Bob clapped his hands together. “Are you telling me, girlie, that you’ve a ship nearby?”

  Jocelyn started pulling dead limbs from a nearby tree. “No. I’m not telling you that. I’m telling my man, Smee.”

  “Smee, eh? You wouldn’t happen to be the same Mr. Smee that sailed under my old mate Hook’s flag, would you?” As he asked, Dirty Bob began to help gather wood—certainly for his own selfish reasons.

  Jocelyn put down the branch she was holding. “You knew Captain Hook?”

  Smee cut off Dirty Bob’s reply. “We knew him too, didn’t we, Johnny? No one knew the captain better than us.”

  Jocelyn gave him a comforting kick to the shins. “Of course not, Smee, but just now I want to hear what this man has to say.” She resumed gathering branches but told the stranger, “Go on.”

  “Aye. Ol’ Jimmy and me sailed together a long time ago. Course, he wasn’t Captain then. Hook neither, for that matter. That name came a bit later, after he pummeled the cook half to death with his mighty right fist. Didn’t much care for raisins in his mush.”

  “I knew about the raisins,” Smee muttered, but Jocelyn shushed him.

  Dirty Bob added some dry brush to the woodpile, pulled out a flint and steel, and started the signal fire. “Jim began to be known for fightin’, or more to the point, for his powerful right hook. The nickname stuck. Strange, the way he ended up trading that fist for an actual hook…What might your interest in him be?”

  “He is—he was—my father.”

  “Well, girlie, I might’ve guessed you belonged to Hook. You favor him.”

  Jocelyn fairly glowed with pride. No one had ever told her that before, at least not in a flattering way. “So, if you knew my father when he was young, why didn’t you stay with him when he bought his first ship?”

  Dirty Bob laughed. “Bought? Ah, girlie, Jim never bought a thing in his life. He cheated and murdered his way up the corporate rigging to b
ecome bo’sun to Blackbeard himself. Quite an accomplishment, really, but Hook would never be content with anything less than full command. At his first opportunity he betrayed the cap’n, took possession of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, renamed it the Jolly Roger, and there you have it: Hook was no longer subject to anyone. I’d’ve gone with him if I hadn’t a been doing a turn in the stocks.”

  “That wouldn’t a stopped me!” Smee fairly growled at the miscreant.

  Jocelyn threatened to send her bo’sun off to sit with One-Armed Jack if he couldn’t be quiet. She added more brush to the fire, creating large smoky clouds. “What happened after that, Dirty Bob?”

  “Not much of anything. I lost touch with Jim, though I did follow news of his reign of terror some. Impressive. But after a while, he jus’ seemed to disappear. As for me, I fell on hard times, drifting around for a few years and bragging that I used to sail with the great Cap’n Hook. After a time, I met up with Cap’n Krueger. If there’s a fouler, greedier, or uglier man on earth, you’re not likely to meet him.”

  The column of smoke drifted up into the sky. Blind Bart was certain to smell it. Jocelyn sat down to wait, and Dirty Bob joined her. Smee remained standing so as to better keep his eye on the man.

  “Who is this Captain Krueger?” Jocelyn asked.

  Smee spoke up again. “I know! Krueger’s a bad one, miss. They say he’s got a long white scar down his cheek from a knife fight with a witch woman. Krueger won, but they say that afore she died, the witch cursed him with the gold fever—didn’t she, Johnny?”

  “My name’s not Johnny,” Dirty Bob said, “but what you say is true. The curse made Krueger go mad. His unholy need for gold even led him to pull out his own teeth for their gold fillings, replacing them with razor-sharp points from the mouth of a baby shark.”

  The hair on the back of Jocelyn’s neck stood on end. She was struck with an insane desire to see this Krueger up close.

  Dirty Bob went on. “I met him one day at a local establishment. I stopped in to get something to quench my thirst, and I guess I must’ve been a bit verbose about me days with ol’ Jim. I don’t rightly recall, but I may have stretched the truth a little. Somehow Cap’n Krueger got the idea that I might know something about Hook’s treasure.”