The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [56]
A month later, the ship docked at a port south of Tortuga and Emer snuck off the boat. Still dressed in a successful sailor’s clothes, she was propositioned by several ships at the dock as she made her way into the small village of Jamestown, an English settlement on the island of Barbados.
A week later, she sailed on a supply fluyte toward Martinique, acting as a general sailor and (happy for the meager pay) trying to stay as unnoticed as possible. But it only took three days on board for the other recruits to realize that Emer was no man. And only one day after that to realize that she was no ordinary woman, either.
As the day the Emerald changed hands began, a few men on board approached her and jokingly asked her to bare her chest. They opened their blouses and revealed their hairy chests, each boasting that theirs was the manliest, egging Emer to join in. She ignored them and ascended to the crow’s nest, which seemed to her the safest place to be now that she’d been discovered. Then the fluyte’s captain, a man of great height and kind nature named Richard Foley, was fetched from his quarters to eye a fast-approaching brig to the east.
“I know that ship,” he said, squinting through the small telescope and saying its name in a whisper. “Ready the cannons, men. Come about!”
In the best male voice she could mimic, Emer shouted from the crow’s nest, “Pirates, sir!”
“Descend and make yourself useful, sailor!” Foley ordered, turning to his first mate, who was tugging on his shirtsleeve.
“That’s no sailor, sir. That’s a woman.”
“A woman?”
“Yes, sir.”
Foley watched Emer descend the ropes. “Looks like a sailor to me,” he said.
“She works, sir. Works hard, but she is a woman.”
“You men! Go on! Load the muskets!” he shouted, then turned back to his mate. “Bring her to my quarters.”
“Aye, sir.”
Emer took her new orders with great sadness. As she made her way to Foley’s quarters, the approaching ship grew near enough to be seen unassisted. The wind was strong and the crew was bringing the boat about, to face the pirates. Any minute, the fighting would begin.
“You wanted to see me, sir?”
He stood, ten muskets before him, packing each with powder and loading them with naked musket balls. “We have little time now. I hear you’re a woman. Is that true?”
“I cannot deny that, sir. I am a woman.”
“You’ll stay here in my quarters until you hear that the fighting has stopped.”
“Please, sir. I can—”
“Those are my orders.”
“Sir, I—”
He piled the loaded muskets into his arms, barrels-up, and locked the door from the outside.
When the first cannon fired, Emer jumped a little. There were six cannons in total on the small fluyte, and each was manned by three gunners. Foley’s crew was out of practice. The gunners only got one shot off before the ship was boarded.
She heard men running on deck; she heard men screaming, men dying, and men fighting. All of this while they still sailed with the strong easterly wind, while they were still tangled with the brig’s ropes. No one screamed anything intelligible, as if fighting had its own language that all on board could understand. Emer heard more men board, more men die, and feared that the fluyte would be taken—and she would be taken—by pirates.
She looked around Foley’s quarters and grabbed any weapon that looked back at her. Two small daggers fit perfectly into her boots, a sharp cutlass onto her belt. Before she left the cabin, she snatched a sturdy iron club and an unloaded pistol and put them in her pockets. She eyed the lock on the door and kicked it hard with the sole of her boot. It buckled. Two more kicks and it collapsed.
When she first poked her head above deck, she got sick. One of the men who’d bared his chest to her only that morning now lay dead, one arm missing, his eyes gouged out. Blood covered the deck, washing back and forth over other dead men and discarded weapons. She saw Foley standing atop two crates, fighting