Twelve

Jack

BOOM!

Jack opened his eyes. For a moment he forgot where he was—why was he swaying? where was Bonn? what was that most unpleasant smell?—but then it came to him. He was a pirate now. On the Ranger . Which meant that he was lying in a hammock in the crew's berth, a large room below the main deck where most of the ship's crew slept.

In the hammock above his, he caught Bonn's dainty snore.

She'd insisted that she be treated no differently from any other crew member, no special allowances made on account of her being a woman. Which meant they were stuck in the berth with about fifty other men. Every night for the foreseeable future. Ugh. It really did smell foul in here. But such was life as a pirate, or so he'd been told. Jack supposed he'd get used to it.

Boom!

What was that? Jack slid out of his hammock and glanced around. It was very dark in the room, the only light a sliver of moon cast down from the stairwell that led to the deck. He took a moment to listen, and through the creaking of the ship and the hushing of the waves, he thought he could hear voices. Faint shouting, even.

He turned and gently shook Bonn by the shoulder.

"Oh, leave off it, Jim," she murmured, pulling away. "I'm beat."

Jack frowned. Jim. Aka James. Her soon-to-be-ex-husband's name. She'd told Jack there'd never been love there, between her and Jim, but did she still think about him? Dream about him? She was probably having a nightmare.

Boom!

He shook her again. "Darling, I think there's something happening up on deck."

She pulled the woolen blanket over her head and grumbled something. Her voice was muffled and Irish, but he thought he understood what she was asking: "What is it?"

"I don't know. I—" He paused to listen again, this time picking up the sound of boots on the deck above them. Running boots. More muffled shouting. "I think we might be under—"

"Attack!" Mr. Diesel came stomping down the stairwell, banging a pot with a wooden spoon. "Wake up, lads! We be under attack!"

Jack was confused. He was under the impression that, as pirates, they should be the ones doing the attacking, not the other way around.

Bonn rolled out of the hammock. She gathered her mass of curls in one hand and tied it back with the other. Then she yanked on her boots and began to arrange her various daggers and pistols into position within her clothes.

"Oh no, do you think there's going to be actual violence?" Jack asked, dread pooling in his gut as, all around them, men swarmed like a colony of angry ants up and out onto the deck.

She grinned. "Aye. Find yourself something to fight with, won't you?"

He looked around helplessly. Now, we've already established that Jack was just plain bad when it came to fighting with a cutlass—that one time he'd tried, he'd almost taken his own foot off, and he was really precious about his feet, as they were brand-new to him—and he loathed the use of muskets. (They were so loud, they took ages to load, and they misfired about half the time.) "Oh, bother," he muttered. "I didn't think to bring a frying pan."

Bonn darted in between the rows of hammocks, searching someone out, and then she made a triumphant aha noise and held up a frying pan like she'd conjured it from thin air.

Jack gaped at her. "Where did you—"

She held a finger to her lips and then stepped aside, smiling slyly, to reveal Mr. Child, who remained fast asleep somehow. Apparently he'd been sleeping with his frying pan, and Bonn had just yoinked it off him.

"Come on," she said, tossing the pan to Jack. "Let's get up there! I don't want to miss the fighting! I sharpened my knives last night, just in case!"

She was cute when she was bloodthirsty.

Jack took a second to admire the prime condition of the frying pan. It was cast iron, sturdy, and obviously well cared for. Then, saying a silent apology to Mr. Child, he dashed after Bonn and up the stairs.

The main deck was in utter chaos. The air was filled with gunpowder smoke, and pirates were scrambling about in various states of undress, shouting at one another as the boom s kept coming and the ship rocked violently, sending sprays of water onto the deck. Jack jumped back to narrowly avoid being soaked.

Whew. This would not be a good time to make his public debut as a Mer.

Maybe being a pirate wasn't the best career path for him, he realized.

But Bonn was clearly having the time of her life. She jumped into the rigging like she'd been born to it, rising to get above the fray enough to see what was going on, and then she climbed quickly down again while Jack moved here and there to avoid getting splashed.

"It's the Pequod !" She took Jack's hand and dragged him toward the quarterdeck.

"The what now?"

"Captain Ahab's ship."

Ah. Jack thought he understood. They were being attacked by another contestant for the Pirate King contest. Which made sense. Violence was encouraged, after all.

"Let's find the captain!" Bonn cried.

It wasn't difficult to locate Mary. She was standing at the helm, steering the ship herself, barking orders to everyone around her. Tobias was in his regular spot right beside her, casually consulting a map like there wasn't madness and mayhem going on all around them.

"The problem is the Pequod and the Ranger are fairly evenly matched in size and cannons," Tobias was saying calmly, stepping aside as a parrot flew past him shrieking, "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" "So we need to find some way to get the advantage. Otherwise we're only going to sink each other."

"No one is sinking my ship," Mary growled. Her mouth pressed into a line when she saw Jack. "Go below! It's not safe up here!"

"I know!" he agreed.

A cannonball whizzed past their heads.

Jack held up his frying pan. "But I want to help."

She shook her head. "You can best help by staying out of the way, so I don't have to worry about you getting hurt."

Or getting wet.

This was reasonable, but Jack was still mildly offended.

It was almost like she didn't see him as a pirate.

"Hey now, see here, Mary—" he began.

She ignored him and turned to Bonn. "Bonny! So go find Diesel. He'll be on the gun deck by now. Tell him we're going to need him to get creative here. Jack, you go below."

"I'm going to stay with Bonn." He was not going to let her out of his sight, he decided. Getting wet wasn't the true danger here. If the ship was sunk, at least he'd be able to save his love from a watery grave. Would it be an awkward conversation later? Certainly. But her life was what mattered now.

"You're going to do what I tell you," Mary said sharply. "Because I'm the captain, and you're part of my crew, and that's how it works. Go below, cousin. That's an order."

"No." Jack folded his arms across his chest, trying not to flinch as another cannonball tore through one of the sails over their heads. "I'm with her." Then, silently, he added, "Unless you want to make me walk the plank."

"Don't push me," she shot back. "You're not going to get special treatment just because you're my—"

"Jack, it's all right. I'm fine. Just do what she—" Bonn started to say, but suddenly there came a tremendous BOOM! and the ship rocked so hard to one side Jack feared they would capsize.

Bonn cocked her head. "That boom sounded different."

"It wasn't a cannon." Mary ran to the side and lifted her spyglass to her eye. "That was something else."

Jack, Tobias, and Bonn joined her at the rail just in time to see an enormous white whale glide up beside the Pequod and smash the entire front of the ship with its massive tail.

Bonn's mouth fell open. "Now there's something you don't see every day."

Tobias looked, in a word, relieved. "It destroyed the bowsprit. Their ship is now effectively disabled. We're... saved."

This was, of course, excellent, excellent news. But Mary's expression remained tense. And Jack thought perhaps he knew why (and he hoped it wasn't because she was now going to make him walk the plank).

Jack and Mary both knew their fair share of whales—big ones, small ones, in-between ones—and not one of them, to Jack's knowledge, ever tried to harm humans or Mer. Whales were fairly chill, as a species (those orcas could be feisty, no doubt, but they tended to keep their aggression limited to fish and seals). Why would a whale attack a human ship? Was it trying to help Mary somehow? Which brought up a bigger question: had this whale been instructed to help Mary? And if so, by whom?

Jack could think of only one person with the power and will to do such a thing.

The Sea King.

And if Mary's father (aka Jack's uncle) knew that Mary was alive, and knew her predicament and current whereabouts, there was no telling what was about to happen next.

While he was pondering all of this, the Pequod was slowly sinking beneath the waves. Her remaining crew was doggy-paddling toward the Ranger , calling out for help.

"Send out the dinghies," Mary instructed Quint, who came running up breathlessly. "We need to save as many of their men as we can."

Quint turned and ran back the way he'd come.

"Isn't that Ahab in the rowboat?" Bonn squinted. "I think he's coming over here, too. The nerve of that guy!"

Indeed, that's what appeared to be happening. Captain Ahab had abandoned his ship, and, flying a white flag of surrender, was making his way as fast as he could row toward the Ranger .

"New plan." Mary touched Jack's shoulder. "I have a mission for you, cousin. Go talk to him," she ordered him silently.

"Who, Captain Ahab?" he asked.

"The whale. I don't know what its problem is, but I don't want it attacking us next."

Jack nodded. Talk to the whale. He could do that. His whale dialect was rusty, but he would do his best.

He really, really hoped this was not about the Sea King.

"Wait, where are you going?" Bonn called after him as he turned to walk away.

He turned back and handed her his frying pan. "Below. Like she said."

She looked like she would argue, but then Mary gave her an order—something Jack didn't hear—and reluctantly Bonn turned and headed in the other direction. Jack let her go. She was out of danger. For now. And he could be useful.

He found a spot near the rudder and glanced around to make sure that no one was watching him. No one was. Everyone was on the other side of the ship, pointing and staring at the Pequod and the frantically rowing Captain Ahab.

Jack stepped out of his pants and folded them neatly over the rail. Then he gasped at the feel of the cold night air against his bare legs and jumped off the side of the ship.

Into the deep, dark water.

Which welcomed him home like an old friend.

"Where in blazes have you been?" Bonn asked him later, stomping up to him. It was morning now, the sun peeking up against the blue horizon, and Jack was sitting on a crate on the main deck, sleepily picking through an armload of fabric in his lap. It had taken him hours to converse with the whale, climb up the side of the ship again—he would have to work on his upper-body strength if this was going to become a regular thing—wait for the opportune moment when no one was looking to heave himself over the rail, thoroughly dry himself, locate and re-don his pants, and report to Mary what he'd learned. He was exhausted. But here's what he'd discovered:

The Sea King had nothing to do with the vengeful whale.

It turned out that Captain Ahab was a vicious whale killer, and he and the great white leviathan had one heck of a history.

Mary had therefore put Ahab back in his rowboat and left him for the whale to deal with as he (the whale) saw fit. Then she'd recruited the rest of Ahab's men to her cause (there was a charming fellow on board called Ishmael who told the most amusing stories), and they all went on their merry way. (Ahab, by the way, was never seen again. But that's a retelling for another time.)

But Jack couldn't explain any of this to Bonn.

"Where have you been?" he countered. "I was looking for you earlier."

"I was with Gaines making repairs to the hull," she said, and for a moment he thought he'd managed to divert her question, but then she asked again. "So where were you, exactly?"

"Yes," came a voice from behind them, and they both turned to see Tobias standing there. "You were going a bit—how do I put this?—mutinous for a minute there earlier, and then you just walked away."

"Mary told me to," Jack said.

Tobias shook his head. "She didn't say anything."

"Yes, she did. She told me to go below. And so I went Below." (This was technically true.)

To change the subject, he held up a square of red cotton to show them. "Mary has asked me to design her a new flag for the ship. What do you think of red?"

"It has to be black, so she can say, ‘Raise the black,'" Bonn said.

"Oh, right! Of course. Black it is."

Tobias frowned. "Mary wants you to do some sewing for her?"

"We don't want to be using Captain Vane's old flag anymore, do we?"

"I suppose not."

"She's made me the ship's official sailmaker," Jack said, his chest puffing out. He might not be a good fighter, but he was an absolute menace with needle and thread. He'd picked up the skill in the first week he'd been Above, when he'd stumbled upon a tailor's shop in Port Royal looking for some decent human clothes.

He unfolded a long strip of black fabric on the crate and picked up a sketchbook he'd grabbed from the captain's cabin earlier.

"Hey, that's mine," Tobias said.

"Oh. Can I borrow it? I need something in which to sketch the design."

"All right. Above all, I think, the flag should inspire fear," Tobias said, and then he grabbed the notebook himself and made a quick drawing of a flag, then turned it around for Jack to see. "I always thought, if I made a pirate flag, it'd look like this. Scary, right?"

He'd drawn a mermaid with long hair waving down her chest. But this mermaid had jagged eyebrows and fangs. With one hand she was holding her own tail. With the other she held a trident, upon which was speared a heart.

Scary mermaid. That was a little on the nose.

"This is... uh, terrifying," Jack said. "Well done."

Tobias shrugged. "Thanks."

"But the captain said no hearts on her flag. That was her only stipulation, in fact. No hearts."

"Right," muttered Tobias. "No hearts."

"I think the flag should be simple." Bonn snatched the sketchbook from Tobias and drew her own flag upon it. "It should plainly convey what we want people to do when they see us." She showed them. Her flag was just one word—SURRENDER—in all caps.

"That's very nice, darling," Jack said.

"But not everyone here can read," Tobias pointed out.

"Oh, that's right," Jack said. "Where I come from, everyone is well educated. I keep forgetting it's not like that here."

He was tired, and this kind of slipped out, and it took him a moment to realize that both Bonn and Tobias were now staring at him.

"I've been meaning to ask you," Tobias said slowly. "But where do you come from, exactly?"

Uh-oh.

"Why, Nassau, of course," Jack answered.

"No, before that."

"Before that, I was in Port Royal."

Tobias wiped his hand down the front of his face. "No, I mean before that. Where were you born? Where did you grow up?"

"Hasn't... hasn't Mary told you?" Jack stammered.

"She doesn't talk about her past."

"Well. Nor do I," Jack decided.

Bonn turned to Tobias. "Don't be offended, Teach. He won't even tell me where he's from."

"A fellow has to maintain some mystery," Jack said, trying to sound, well, mysterious.

"Does he, though?" Tobias questioned.

"Surely there are some things you haven't told Mary about your own past," Jack said, "even though you're apparently such good mates."

Tobias shook his head. "No. I've told her everything."

Well, that was annoying. "You should try holding something back," Jack advised. "It could do wonders for your relationship."

"I don't see the point of mystery," said Bonn. "You wouldn't want to withhold such key information about yourself from the woman you intend to marry, would you, Jack?"

Oh, bother. She was finally going to push this issue.

"Well, uh, darling," he began. "You wouldn't have heard of where I'm from." And this much was true.

"I've heard of most places," Bonn countered. "I've had a fine education, don't you know. So try me."

"Uh... It's far away from here." This was not true. Underwhere was actually quite close, as the swordfish swims.

"Like how far?" Tobias pressed. "I've always thought Mary's accent strange, like she's Dutch, perhaps?"

"That's exactly right," Jack said. "She's Dutch. I mean, we both are."

"Interesting," said Bonn, her bright green eyes watching his face closely. "So you grew up where, then? Paris?"

Jack's cheeks felt hot. This was terrible. He hated lying nearly as much as he hated fighting. "Yes," he coughed. "Paris. That's where we grew up."

Now both Bonn and Tobias were staring at him so intently that Jack knew he'd been trapped somehow. He squirmed. "Anyway, we lived in Paris for only a small time. We moved around a lot. Here and there, in Dutch-uh-land. With the wild... animals, of some kind. And the mountains."

Tobias gave a snort. Then he jumped up because Mary had come out of the captain's cabin.

"What are you all doing sitting about?" she asked, frowning at the way they were congregated around Jack.

"I'm working on the new flag, as you told me to, Captain," Jack said, holding up the sketchbook. "Because I'm a good and faithful member of your crew."

"Help, help, they're asking questions I can't answer," he pleaded silently.

"Toby, I need you," Mary said simply. Then to Bonn she ordered: "Up above with you, Bonny. You may relieve Mr. Keyes as lookout for today. I want your sharp eyes looking for another ship for us. We need more ships if we're going to bring back so much treasure."

"Aye, Captain," Bonn said, and in moments she was in the rigging, climbing to the crow's nest, and Mary and Tobias went back to the captain's cabin, and Jack was alone again.

Whew.

He spent the rest of the day working in an inspired fervor on the flag. He thought hard about all the pirate flags he'd seen thus far. Most of them had a skeleton stabbing something. But normally you were too far away to see what the flag depicted. Jack's design would need to be bolder, bigger, with more contrast. Something that inspired fear and communicated "SURRENDER" without the use of words.

It was almost dusk when he went to present his work to Mary.

"Look, I can't talk right now," she barked when he entered the captain's cabin. "Oh, it's you."

"Here's the new flag." He held it up.

It was a plain black flag with a large, grinning skull in the center and two crossed bones underneath that made a letter X .

That was it. Skull and crossbones.

"I call it the Jolly Roger," Jack said. "Jolly, because the skull is kind of smiling, see? Which I think is more frightening than if it were scowling, like what is it up to? And Roger, because the men tell me that's another name for the devil—some mystical figure that they're scared of. Hence the skull. Plus I just like how it sounds."

She was silent for a long moment, staring at it.

"I can do it again, if you don't like it," Jack said stiffly.

"I like it," she replied. "It's perfect. Now you need to make a few more exactly the same. For the William and the Jester , and any other ships we acquire."

He stifled a grin. "I'll get right on that." He turned to leave, then paused. "I may or may not have told Tobias and Bonn today that we were Dutch. Sorry."

She stared at him. "You what?"

"I didn't know what else I could tell them. They were insisting that I give them some point of origin."

She looked miffed for a moment, but then broke into a smile. "I guess we're Dutch, then. I hear Holland is nice this time of year."

Jack didn't know what Holland had to do with it. But he didn't ask, because right then he caught sight of the tiny hourglass on Mary's desk.

"Jumping jellyfish!" he gasped, rushing over to look at it more closely. "Where did you get this? My mother used to have one just like it. She'd give it to me whenever she wanted to make sure I returned home on time. I kept losing it, so she put a spell on it that made it so—"

"You couldn't get rid of it," Mary finished for him flatly.

He glanced up at her stoic expression. "Wait, how did you get this?"

She sighed. "My father gave it to me last week."

His stomach dropped. "Last week ? What is it counting down to?"

"The end of the Pirate King contest." She rubbed at her eyes. "If I don't win, if I don't prove that I have what it takes to be a success as a human, then my father is coming to get me and take me home."

Jack stared at her, aghast. "But how would you breathe down there?"

"He'd get someone to kiss me," she answered.

"Ugh," he said with a shudder. "That's awful. So that's why you changed your mind about the contest! Why didn't you tell me before? I could have, well, not helped any more than I have, I suppose, but I could have at least understood what's at stake for you. Did he..." He gulped. Long ago, when they'd been assigning human names to Mer they knew, they'd named Mary's father Kevin, kind of as a joke. As in King Kevin. But try as Jack might, he'd never been able to think of the Sea King as Uncle Kevin. The guy was too imposing, and Jack had always been intimidated by him. Especially since he knew well enough that King Kevin considered Jack to be a bad influence on Mary. Which was fair. "Did he say anything about me?" he asked.

"No, but here's something I've been wondering," Mary said, picking up the hourglass and stuffing it into her pocket. "How did he know?"

"Pardon?"

"How did my father know I'm alive? How did he know where to find me? You said—" She took a few steps toward Jack, her fists clenching at her sides. "You told me that everyone thought I was sea foam. That there was a funeral. That they all mourned. So how did he know?"

"Oh." Jack's shoulders hunched. "That's probably my fault."

Mary closed her eyes. She nodded grimly. "And how is it your fault, Jack?" she asked lightly.

He winced. "I told my mother all about finding you again."

Her eyes opened. "You spoke to your mother? The Sea Witch?"

"I only have the one mother, Mary. And I talk to her every week."

"You swim back to Underwhere every week and talk to her?"

"No, silly." He pulled on the leather cord around his neck until the clamshell pendent he always wore came free of his shirt. "I talk to her on my shell phone."

She stared at him, then stared at the clamshell. "Your shell phone?"

"It's one of my mother's more ingenuous recent magical inventions," he explained gleefully. "It allows us to speak in Mer over great distances. This is just the prototype, you understand, but I think it's going to become all the rage in Underwhere once we figure out distribution. It truly is an amazing little thing. You can talk and send messages to one another, and it has a map function to help you find your way—although this one only works underwater, unfortunately. It can tell you what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, it recites some of the more popular whale songs, and you can even play a few games on it. All in a device that fits in the palm of your hand."

"That is amazing," Mary said, stepping even closer to eye the shell phone with a half-envious, half-reverent expression. "May I see it?"

"Of course." He pulled the cord from around his neck and handed the phone to her.

She opened and closed the clamshell a few times. "You used this to talk to your mother about me?"

"I couldn't help myself. It was too good not to tell her all about you, not sea foam after all , living as a pirate ! But I made her promise not to tell anyone."

"Oh, like you promised me you wouldn't tell anyone."

She had him there.

"So you told your mother about me being here, and she told my father."

"That does seem like the most likely explanation," Jack said. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," she repeated. "Jack. This is all your fault."

"Yes, which is why I apologized just now."

"And what else did you tell her?" Mary demanded, closing the clamshell firmly.

"Hey, be careful with that; the hinge is delicate. I, uh, may have told her about how you were dressing as a man because of the unfair rules about gender that exist Above, and about how you have a dear friend, Tobias Teach, the son of the most famous pirate in history, but unfortunately he died, because pirates don't live very long comparatively with other humans, and about how you were such a mild, unassuming little minnow before, but now you've become this fierce, scary, pirate-y woman."

"In other words, you told her everything."

He sighed. "I always tell her everything. She always wants to know every detail of my life. I'm supposed to call her tonight, in fact."

"Oh no, you don't." Mary closed her fist around the shell phone, walked briskly to the window in the back of the captain's cabin, opened it, and hurled the clamshell into the churning ocean.

"It's bad enough that he found me," she said crossly, "and that he interfered, because he always wants to interfere, and of course he had to give me some kind of ultimatum, didn't he? But he's not going to know about my every move up here. I am my own person. This is my life, and I refuse to live it with him bubbling down my neck. I'm going to win this contest and become the Pirate King, all on my own, without his meddling!"

Jack was still staring in agony out the window, his hand outstretched as if he could reach back in time and snatch up his precious shell phone. "Why, why would you do that?" he whispered. "I was almost at level one hundred on Crabby Crush!"

Her jaw set. "I won't have my father spying on me!"

"He's the Sea King! If he wants to spy on you, he can do it without my shell phone!" Oh, Great Waters, what would his mother think when he didn't call her? What would she do when she found out that Mary had destroyed his phone? His mother wasn't evil, but Jack didn't know what she'd do if she got truly angry on his behalf—one time in third grade she'd gone all Mama Shark and turned a boy who was bullying him into a cuttlefish. He didn't think his mother would turn Mary into a cuttlefish, seeing as she was family. But he couldn't be sure.

"When I saw the whale today, I thought maybe...," she began.

He sighed. "Me too. I thought we both might be in some kind of trouble. But it turned out just to be an angry whale."

"What else did your mother give you?" Mary asked.

He shrugged. "Not much. She packed a bag for me with a few provisions: that organic kelp I like, a bag of seaweed chips, the face tonic she makes for me because I occasionally get those red spots on my chin, and a couple magical potions she thought might be useful, although I'm not actually sure what they all do." He shook his head, seeing the clamshell tumble through the air again in the back of his mind. "I can't believe you just threw away my shell phone!"

She scratched at the back of her neck. "I thought it might magically return to you. Like the hourglass. I was attempting to make a dramatic statement."

"I said it was a prototype!" he huffed.

Suddenly there was a shout from directly over their heads. An Irish shout. Bonn. "Sails! A ship! A ship!"

"I hope it's a big one," Mary said as she fetched her cutlass from behind her desk. She sighed. "I hope this whole treasure of Blackbeard's is more than just wishful thinking."

It was the first time Jack had seen her anything but confidant in their plan to get the treasure.

"Me too," he said. "I need that thousand pieces of eight."

"To get married?" she said doubtfully. "That is one expensive wedding."

"To get divorced," Jack said.

"What?"

"Bonn. Not me."

"Did anyone hear me yelling, SHIP, SHIP!" came Bonn's voice again.

"Anyway, there's no time to explain," Jack said, and then he and Mary both ran for the door.

Out on the deck, the ship was in an uproar (again), everyone running about preparing. Bonn was still up in the crow's nest. Jack followed Mary to the helm. As always, Tobias appeared beside her.

"What's the prize?" Tobias asked.

Mary put her spyglass to her eye. "Merchant ship." She squinted. "The Kingston ?" She frowned and lowered the glass. "They are already flying a white flag, and I don't see the crew on deck."

"Like with the William ? Someone offering up a ship?" Jack asked. "How about money? Do you think they'll be carrying, say, a thousand pieces of eight for each member of the crew?"

Mary snapped her spyglass shut. "Let's go get it. Full sails, men!" she called out. "Heave to! Take us straight to her, Mr. DuPaul. And Tobias, signal the other ships to stay back. It could be a trap from one of the other Pirate King contestants."

They set off at top speed for the Kingston .

"Wait, it could be a trap, and we're going to sail right into it?" Jack had questions.

"We're tough. We can handle anything," Mary said. "Besides, what do we have to lose?"

Jack could think of a few things. "Uh, our lives? Our ship? A lot of bananas?"

"The Kingston isn't any pirate ship that I've heard of," said Tobias. He unrolled and consulted a map. "But we're nearly within sight of Port Royal. We'll need to move fast."

Mary clapped him on the shoulder. "It's exactly what we've been looking for. Do you reckon that's a big enough ship to hold your pa's treasure?"

He nodded. "A good portion of it, anyway."

"But it seems too easy, doesn't it?" Jack said. "A ship just there for the taking?"

"You don't know, Jack," Mary said. "That's how we got the William . Sometimes the ocean just gives you what you need, right at the moment you need it."

Jack hoped that was true.

Within the hour they were alongside the Kingston and could confirm that it was abandoned, save for a small crew of ten men, who were meant to keep the ship anchored and afloat.

"What are you doing out here?" Mary asked them when she'd crossed over to parley. They did not look like pirates. They were dressed in nondescript sailor's clothing, but something about their bearing was more rigid, more straight-shouldered, than the typical buccaneers. "What say you?" Mary demanded.

"We're messengers," one of the men said.

"And what is your message?" Mary asked.

Jack had a bad feeling about this. His squid sense was tingling.

The man gave Mary a tight smile. "Death to all pirates," he said with a sneer. "Courtesy of Jonathan Barnet."

"Sails!" came Bonn's distant voice from the Ranger . "Sails! SAILS!"

"Where?" Tobias yelled up.

"Three to starboard. Four to port!" Bonn screamed. "Seven big ships, led by a frigate flying the British flag. All of them closing fast. Get back here! It's a blooming trap!"

A trap. Not one set by another captain in the contest.

One set by the notorious pirate hunter. Meant for any wannabe Pirate King.

"Oh ship," muttered Mary. "Retreat!"

Once the boarding party was back on the Ranger , Mr. DuPaul attempted to turn about, but the wind was against them. The British ships were closing in like pincers. They were vastly outmanned and outgunned, and everyone on the Ranger well knew it. The crew was already starting to panic.

"At least we sent the other ships away." Mary paced the deck. "It will only be us they capture."

"What will they do, if they capture us?" Jack asked tremulously.

Mary shrugged. "Take us back to Port Royal, I imagine, and then we'll hang."

Jack swallowed. "And how can we prevent that from happening?"

Mary stared at him, helpless. "You can go," she said.

"Go?"

"Swim away. Go home, Jack. Save yourself."

He let out a breath. "I can't do that. I won't. What else is there to be done?"

"Nothing," she said. "It would take a miracle."

"Right," Jack said. "And what's a miracle?"

"Something wondrous and unexpected," Tobias explained weakly. "Like magic."

Mary's eyes widened. "Magic," she gasped. She turned to Tobias. "Toby, go tell Diesel to lighten our load. We're going to run."

Tobias hurried away. The moment he was out of earshot, Mary grabbed Jack. "Go get your mother's potions. Maybe one of them can help us."

Jack thought he knew just the one that would do it. He dashed down to the berth, fetched his bag from under his hammock, and ran as fast as he could back to Mary.

"We can use this one to escape!" Jack held up the dark blue vial with the lightning bolt on it. "I accidentally mixed it up with my face tonic one time, and then it started to rain and thunder all around my head, and it was a mess. Thankfully Bonn wasn't there."

Mary took the vial from him. "So what does it do?"

"It conjures a storm."

She nodded eagerly. "That could work. Good! There's no time to lose!" She uncorked the vial. "We'll need a lot of it."

"Mary, wait! We should—" Jack called, but it was too late. Mary had already run over to the side and dumped the entire contents of the vial into the water.

The result was instantaneous. A thick fog billowed up all around them, obscuring any sight of the oncoming ships. Black clouds rolled in over their heads. Lightning cracked in the sky as an enormous wind filled the sails.

Jack grabbed Mary by the shoulder. "I SAID WAIT!" he yelled, but it would have been hard to hear him over the rolling sound of thunder.

"AND I SAID THERE WAS NO TIME TO LOSE."

The ship lurched violently to one side.

"YOU PUT IN TOO MUCH!" Jack groaned.

"I'M SORRY!"

Many things happened quickly then:

The ships that had been chasing them, lost them. Yay!

They almost got driven aground on the island of Jamaica. Boo!

The storm pushed them toward the rest of their fleet—the William and the Jester . Yay!

And then the storm was directly on top of them. Boo.

Bonn came down from the crow's nest just before it got struck by lightning. Jack ran toward her, relief filling his chest. She was safe. Yay!

But just before he reached her, a huge wave crashed over the ship, and Jack slipped. He fell. He was caught up in the wave as it raged across the deck, and he was swept away.

Boo.