Steel

Jill straightened, curious, as if the movie in front of her had just gotten to the good part.

“Abe. Bring ’em up,” Marjory said, never looking away from her captured counterpart.

The quartermaster called to several of the crewmates, who followed him down the dark hatch into the ship’s hold.

Just as they’d captured them, the Diana’s crew held back their victims by intimidation and possibly reputation. Their seeming madness inspired fear. The other crew cowered, shoving at each other to get farther away from the pirates, and never made a move to resist.

Jill expected Abe and the others to carry up crates, boxes, barrels. Maybe even sacks of gold. The treasure from a million pirate stories. But that’s not what emerged from below.

Abe guided a person, holding the man’s arm, helping him step carefully. He was thin, weak, barely able to stand. He moved slowly, shuffling—iron bands and chains weighed down his ankles. His skin was black, his dark hair short and matted. Abe led the man onto the deck and to the side. Behind him came another man with chains banded to his ankles. Behind him, another. And another, and another. Abe and the others led twenty men and women in chains onto the deck.

This was a slave ship.

“Valuable cargo, isn’t it then?” Marjory said to the slaver captain.

“I just transport ’em. That’s all, where’s the fault?”

Captain Cooper planted her foot on his shoulder and shoved. He sprawled and begged again for mercy.

When the slaves were all on deck, Abe began leading them over the side to the Diana. It took a long time. With the iron chains, they moved so slowly. Many looked sick besides, thin and weak. They all had red sores where the bands cut into their skin. As they came aboard, they passed by Jill where she leaned on the side. They never looked up; their heads were bowed, their eyes downcast. She wanted to reach out to them, offer some kind of comfort, but she didn’t know what to say. So she just watched.

Now that some of the gun smoke had cleared, a new smell tinged the air, drifting from the other ship. The smell of illness, of people living packed together without washing, without clean water, without anything. This had stopped being anything like a movie. Or a dream. This couldn’t be a dream. Jill didn’t have the imagination to produce a dream—nightmare—like this. This wasn’t a dream, and she wasn’t going to wake up.

Back on the slave ship, Captain Cooper was looming over her prisoner.

“I think I will also be taking that pretty coat from you.”

When he didn’t move quickly enough, she grabbed the collar and pulled as he tried to scuttle away. With little apparent effort, Cooper twisted and yanked, and the coat was off and in her hands. She tossed it to Henry, turned away from her prisoner, and never looked back.

To her own crew she said, “Move on, scurvy dogs, scour this wreck for what we can use. Quick now, so’s not to spend more time among scum than we need to.”

This was obviously a process they’d been through before. Several of the crew kept watch over the prisoners on the deck of the captured ship, keeping muskets trained on them and threatening death. The rest went all over the ship, looking in crates, trunks, and casks. The sounds of smashing and breaking carried from belowdecks; the slaver captain winced at every jolt.

Soon, a procession started from the other ship to the Diana, crew members carrying not just wooden boxes and crates, but also coils of rope, bundles of sailcloth, and other tools and equipment of obvious use on a sailing ship. None of it was the kind of treasure Tom had gone on about. But Jill considered—what good would chests of gold do out here? These supplies would keep the Diana sailing for months.

“Move aside, Tadpole, if you can’t be of any use,” Jenks grumbled at her when he came over the side, too close to where Jill was lurking. She scrambled away, but glared after him. He’d gone out of his way to bother her.

The whole operation took an hour or so. Then Captain Cooper shouted, “Let’s away from this cesspit, don’t make me tell you twice or I’ll throttle ye myself and hang you out to dry!”

The crew, shouting and jubilant, scrambled back over to the deck of the Diana. Jill crouched by the side, hiding.

Cooper had put a booted foot on the gunwale, ready to cross back to the Diana herself, when one of the other crew broke away.

“Take me with you!” the man called, and fell forward, pleading. Really pleading, on his knees, hands clasped and everything. He looked sick, with a long, sallow face and an almost toothless mouth. His hands looked arthritic. But he didn’t seem old. “I’ll sign your code, I’ll scrub your decks, I’ll do whatever you say. Take me with you!”

Cooper looked down at him. Still imperious and avenging, she seemed to be considering, but no—she was only taking a moment to sneer at him.

“Keep to the lot you chose, scum.” She returned to her ship.

The captain of the slave ship took this moment, when the pirates had already left and he didn’t risk retribution, to vent his anger. Sputtering, he clutched the side of his ship with one hand and shook the other, in a fist, at the Diana. “God damn you! You’re not a woman at all, you’re a whore! You’re the devil’s own whore!”

“Better the devil’s than yours!” Marjory Cooper shouted back at him. “Give my regards to your wife!”

With more laughter, the ropes between the two ships were cut, and the Diana drifted from her victim.

The crew did the work of setting sail and steering the Diana away, quick and smooth, in high spirits. The deck was crowded, because the slaves from the other ship were still there, huddled together, looking furtively around. Maybe wondering if they were in worse danger now than they had been.

Abe passed by Jill on his way to keep watch over the string of prisoners they’d rescued. He glanced at her. “You’re frowning.”