‘Blackie Boy’
Scrawny Clay Evenstar was floundering forlornly amid the torn bodies and seething sharks; consigned to the deep by dour Jonah Heel, the ship’s purser, now the ranking man of the much diminished crew. Jonah Heel bellowed at wild Mickey Durst, who was then poised to rescue Clay, “We have boarders, Durst. You must let him sink.”
And do I deserve to drown! I am coming, Mister Eager, to join you in your sad place in the cold belly of Mamma Ocean.
Mickey was their legendary rigging monkey, a bad boy from Baltimore, a prize fighter, the only one of them who had not feared The Captain. The Captain had bailed Mickey out of the jailhouse for some fight and given him a job as a seaman. Clay was in awe of Mickey’s physical prowess; had always secretly wished he had some of it for himself.
Mickey, a ghost at the lamp light’s edge, glared at Jonah—who stood full in the light of the stern lamp—even as the two savage red men in the form of creeping shadows climbed the bow and began to top the gunwale. Jonah was giving Fat Sam and the crazy white man a hand over the top, the white man being of no use at all, intent as he was on doing nothing but clutching the strange spiral case.
Mickey looked to Clay who must have just seemed a bobbing top amid the sundown waves, and shouted, “Blackie Boy, kick those feet and grab my waist rope!”
With those words Mickey swung out into the shark splashed waters and dunked in right next to Clay. Clay was stunned by his face being hit by Mickey’s shoulder and groggily heard a scream in his ear to hold on. Hold on he did. He hugged Mickey like he was his long lost mamma, his wrists getting caught under a rope wrapped around the lean waist, as they plowed through the waves from the pull of the rope.
A loud thudding splash brought him out of his astonished state.
Oh, my, I cannot breathe! To have a little flesh and bone barrel for a chest like Mickey would make adventure at sea so much more enjoyable.
Smacking against the hull had brought him half out of his daze and he clutched to Mickey, ‘that little Irish gutter-rat,’ as Jonah had always called him. Mickey hauled himself and the clinging Clay up the rope hand over hand.
A splashing beneath them and the smashing of Clay’s bony shin between the hull and a large cold body shocked him into a state of alert. Clay was now vividly in the moment, his normal ‘spells of introspection’ as Mistress Evenstar had called them, having flown. Clay was, for once, part of this crew, bound to Mickey like a truest friend.
There, my lost breath is found—it is so very fair to breathe!
A musket shot sounded, ringing out on deck as they scrambled over the rail, for Clay was scrambling now too. Clay and Mickey came to their feet as Mickey cast off the rigging rope and shoved Clay to his knees with the other hand.
“Stay put, Blackie Boy.”
Then sounded the guttural roar of Jonah Heel, bellowing like a parson turned devil in the stern of the sloop that had been meant to bear them to an earthly paradise, an island with pretty, garlanded girls to see, and clean, soothing air to breathe, not this...
