“I would like to thank all of you, my esteemed guests, for joining me in this celebration of the opening of our little island’s new port.” The host stood at the end of a long table, covered with the produce of the small Caribbean plantation colony, and with the fresh kills from the morning hunt that Enzo and Frostbite had partaken in. “I would especially like to thank our esteemed guest Captain Enzo, who has negotiated a new trade rout to Hispaniola.”

Negotiate is not the proper word for it. The governor of the territory had been a foolish young man, and wound up in the hands of the Portuguese on one occasion. Captain Enzo was also young once, and occupied himself by raiding the trade waters. As luck would have it, the future governor of Hispaniola was aboard one of the ships he had raided, and his rescue would prove most beneficial in the future.

But men must separate themselves from their pasts, and move on to more timid ventures. Now he had a fleet of four ships and a host of contacts across the colonies, and the privateer life had grown quieter.

Enzo turned to his first mate Frostbite, who sat to his right at the dinner table. “You have never tasted your own kill, Mr. Frostbite, have you?” Frostbite confirmed this. A man of the sea, Frostbite had never been on land long enough to hunt. Enzo considered the life of his young ward, who had been with him since such a young age. Perhaps he should have left him with a colonial family, and he could have had something like a normal life. He could have enjoyed fine dinners and morning hunts and days spent on the porch watching the sugar cane harvest. But Frostbite did not miss these things because he had never experienced them. During the morning hunt he had appeared uncomfortable, much like Enzo must have appeared when he was hired on his first ship.

“A boy who doesn’t hunt? What a shame that is.” Said the man across the table from the two. He wore fine clothes and spoke with a true English accent, not the kind cultivated in the new world.

“He may be a poor huntsman, but he is the finest weelman north of the Antilles,” responded Enzo, making sure to drag his vowels in the way that is characteristic of the colonies.

“I am sorry to have been so coarse, but I meant no offense. My name is Henry Wellington, and what I should say is perhaps you and the boy would like to join me for a hunting excursion on the other side of the island tomorrow.”

“Well, sir, no offense was taken, but I will accept your offer nonetheless. It will be a good opportunity for the boy.”

The dinner went on, and the Captain and his first mate had a few glasses of wine, though not nearly as much as the locals, a habit born of a comfortable life on land. The merry guests filed out a few at a time, and the sailors were invited to stay in a guest room for the night by the host.

“Surely it will be nice to sleep on land for a night,” he suggested. They obliged and made their way up to the room.

“Is this what they do every day?” Frostbite looked out the window at the cane fields below.

“What do you mean?”

“Merrymaking and recreation.”

“I suppose when a man reaches a certain wealth, he can spend his days like this, yes.”

“Why did you leave it, sir?” Frostbite was speaking of Enzo’s childhood on the Tobacco plantation. Enzo could not think of the reason. Perhaps it was just too long ago, or maybe he had none at all.

“I’m heading back to the ship tonight, Sir.”

“Very well, Mr. Frostbite.”

The path to the port wound down the mountain in switchbacks, which reminded Frostbite of tacking into the wind. The sounds of music from the tavern below floated up the hill in quick snippets, then faded back into the sound of the night.

Frostbite, still slightly drunk from the wine, lost his footing on what felt like a stone, and tumbled off the path and into the woods. After being tossed for a few moments he came to rest on a soft piece of ground. But it was not ground at all. Even in the darkness Frostbite could identify it as a human corpse. A man. Shocked, he scurried up the hill, and fell flat on the path.

His arm brushed against the stone that tripped him, and in the dim light from the path’s lanterns, he examined the cursed thing. Blood. Black as the sea at night. It covered one side of the stone. The lantern.

He grabbed a switch and put it into the lantern, then took more and bound them together in his hands. He then made his way back down into the woods, toward the body, his makeshift torch in hand. In the new light, he could see that them man’s clothes had be ripped repeatedly. Frostbite wedged his hand under the body, and heaved to turn it over. Then, came the second shock. The man was clearly Mr. Wellington, although with a considerably different skull.

Did he perhaps trip as well, but without the benefit of another body to break his fall, he hit his head at the bottom of the hill? Maybe. But then why would there be blood on the stone above? His injury clearly happened up there.

“No,” said Frostbite aloud. He thought about the possibilities, but only one rang true to him. I must have been murder.

Part 1

The cold Atlantic morning crashed down on the weary mariners, their faces made hollow from the long battle with the sea the night before. The gale let up with first light, and the seamen took to their duties lethargically. Under normal circumstances, this lack of vigor would be punished by lashings, but even that seemed preferable to working after the beating the sea had given them last night.

“Keep us at half-sail, men,” Frostbite croaked. The young man had been taken aboard the Ontzagwekkend as a child, and the sea was all that he knew. He learned quickly, and was appointed as night wheel-man at the age of fourteen. His youth was often the subject of debate among the other crewmen.

“Nine years I pulled lines and peeled potatoes for the captain, and n’ere have I complained. Why’s he take a liking to some child over me, faithful ol’ McMillan?”

“Yer complainin’ now, aren’t ya? Anyway, the captain sees somethin in him, and it ain’t for us to say if it is or ain’t there. The captain always steers right.

The captain emerged from his stateroom shortly after the sun, a black shadow framed by the red dawn. “Frostbite,” he commanded.

“Yes Captain Enzo.” The young man had a precognitive way of standing, moving with the ship no matter how it was tossed. This was something that the captain, who had grown up a tobacco farmer, was always somewhat jealous of, although he would never admit it.

“How is she?”

“Alls well, at the moment.” This reassurance was undermined by a cry from the crow’s nest.

“In the fog, Starboard and stern!” The crews attention was quickly turned to the shadow emerging from the mist.

“A brigantine?” Frostbite leaned over the ocean, as if the extra foot would afford him a better view.

“She’s gaining, sir,” cried the Crow’s nest.

Indeed she was. The fog parted to reveal a French flagged Brigantine. The crew quickly took down their Dutch flag and raised a French one. The mariners knew that they could not outrun the mystery ship, not with the Ontzagwekkend loaded with loot, and the sails that were damaged in the storm. Their only hope was that the vessel would ignore them.

Time passes slowly when all you have to go by is the exhausted breaths of otherwise silent crewmen, and the gentle lapping of the sea against the hull.

Stay tuned, for next week’s.

Part 2

The French Flagged Brigantine was riding high, implying that it had just unloaded its cargo, and was heading home. It also meant that the ship had a considerable speed advantage over the Ontzagwekkend, which had been loaded with a month’s worth of loot. As the ship emerged more out of the fog, more details became apparent to Frostbite’s Sharp Eye.

“Look at her sails, captain.” The vessel had seen quite a gale, evidently, as her sails were torn to shreds. The ship was tossed about on her course in such a way that implied she had no wheelman.

“My glass, Mr. Frostbite.” Frostbite handed the captain his scope, and he examined the ship closely. There was no movement on deck that he could see, but Atlantic fog had been known to play worse tricks than to make a ship appear unmanned. “Lower the sails. We will let her catch up.”

Within twenty minutes, the enigmatic brigantine was alongside the Ontzagwekkend, and her crew’s disappearance was confirmed. Captain Enzo ordered that grappling hooks be deployed, and the crew acquiesced. The boarding party reported back that no soul was found on the top deck, and so Captain Enzo and his trusty wheelman Frostbite boarded themselves to attempt to unravel the mystery.

“Do you think that she was attacked, sir?” Frostbite asked as they walked across the deck, to the door that lead down to the crew’s quarters, and perhaps an answer.

“This is a fully armed French military vessel, Mr. Frostbite. A formidable foe indeed. I would not wager even my own capable ship in an open sea battle.” Frostbite pondered this, and decided to save his questions for the lower decks.

They descended the steps into the second deck down, and were accosted by a stench unique to rotting human flesh. Perhaps it was an attack, thought Enzo, but he soon dismissed this. Why would an attacker leave a still afloat vessel to the whims of the sea, when it could be impressed into the attacker’s own fleet? No, he thought. Something more sinister must have happened. Horror would be a more adequate term.

As they approached the galley, the captain used his hat as a filter against the fetor. Frostbite’s face crinkled, but he pressed on without the aid of a mask. The door swung open, and save for the band of light that had followed the sailors from the upper deck, revealing nothing but darkness and an immeasurable weight or rotting matter wafting from inside.

“Shine that lantern Mr. Frostbite.” One at a time, the long tables were revealed. They were piled high with generous helpings of strange meat. The floors were littered with fresher, unprepared corpses, some clutching cutlery, and some hanging onto shreds of their meals with ungloved hands.

“Captain,” croaked Frostbite from above the lantern’s unwanted glow, “What happened?” The captain turned to the door, and the mid morning light that would guide their way back to sanity.

“Before we leave this cursed place, I must see the captain’s quarters, to know how this atrocity came to pass.” He knew that more dangers lurked on the waves than just the French Fleet, British privateers, and the gales that doomed so many. Every ship at sea was a week of missed meals away from madness, and if he could learn from the poor soul who’s charge was this man of war.

The Captain’s quarters had been blockaded, presumably against a hungry and angry crew, but it gave way under the well-fed thrusts of Frostbite and Captain Enzo. The smell from these quarters was a welcome change, as it came not from human flesh, but from rotting fruits and grains, and all manner of standard sustenance. Frostbite went to the roll top, and fetched the Captain’s log. It revealed a horrifying tale. The ships compass had been sabotaged by a crewman crazed from eating human flesh, something he had begun to do even before the ships supply of food had run out. The man had been under the impression that the rest of the world was on the hunt for his ship, and that docking at any port would surely be the death of him and his crewmates. More details were hard to discern, as Enzo only knew enough French to demand surrender, and Frostbite only knew a bizarre African dialect.

The men decided they had learned all they could, and retrieved the log and the compass in question to bring back to the Ontzagwekkend, but they were stopped short of the door by a knock coming from an unexamined armoire.

Stay tuned for next week’s!

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