Knives Are Dangerous
The dagger flew from my hand as it was thrown, the shining edge plunging its way into the chest of a french sailor. It was our second day of battle on the seas, our prey finally too damaged to escape. The boom of cannon fire stretched over the water, the splintering of wood showering the enemy. Steel clashed iron during hand to hand combat, our crew boarding the french vessel. The air filled with the stench of gunpowder, pistols fired back and forth as the battle raged on. Captain Archer’s coat must have been a warning to those that opposed him, its crimson colour matching the blood that dripped from his sword. A pistol hung at his side, its metal shining as if thirsting for bloodshed of its own.
Close by, I saw James brawling with a french man. The french man had unarmed him and was now slashing wildly at James’ torso and raised arms. I shook my head and turned for a moment towards their scuffle. With a twirl of my wrist, I launched a dagger forward. In less than a second, the dagger sprouted from the french man’s neck, his body becoming limp and falling to the ground lifeless.
James looked at me with both frustration and obvious relief. “I had that bastard, you know.” The sweat from his brow trickled down his temple as he began to laugh half heartedly, then plucked the dagger from the corpse and went back to screaming and killing.
“Stop fighting,” the captain’s loud voice could be heard in any battle, over any clashing of metal and even cannon fire. Some of the french sailors halted their quarrels, standing in fear and waiting for his next order. “Surrender, or death.”
One sailor was stupid enough to try and swing at the captain from behind. My body acted without thought and, next thing I knew, one of my daggers had disappeared from my sash and reappeared in the sailor’s hand. A moment of agony crossed his face as he dropped the sword and gripped onto his wrist tightly, then the captain took his hungry pistol from his side, planted the barrel on the bridge of the sailor’s nose, and pulled the trigger. Crack deafened the world, and the body slumped to the deck in a heap of blood and gore.
The next few minutes were filled with the french sailors surrendering their weapons and tossing the dead into the ocean. The waves crashed against the hull and became red with the blood of corpses. We rounded up any french survivors that were well enough and placed them below deck in the brig. The rest were either too wounded or too stubborn to surrender, and so they were gutted and thrown into the water below. Once the bodies had been cleared, I obtained my trusty mop and began cleaning the deck. Blood stained the dark oak, and it was then that I realized the wood got its deep colour from battles sending blood into the planks. Now that we carried prisoners of England, our next stop would be shore. If shore was involved, that meant taverns, which meant drinking. Those were the days a sailor looked forward to the most, second only to the days of sea water spraying in the wind.
I had earned my place in Captain Archer’s crew, a crucial piece to his strategy. My accuracy was like nothing he’d ever seen, the storms in my eyes reflective of the dark past they’d witnessed. When it came to getting the job done, he knew I was the one to count on. Three years had passed since I began my voyage as a Royal Navy sailor, and I was prepared to sail for another seven if that was what the captain asked of me. I did not enjoy the killing of men, but it was a necessary evil while I was a part of the crew.
The French were our allies one year and enemy the next, always changing back and forth like the tide crashing against the shore. Spanish ships rarely appeared, but if they did we would be ordered to eliminate the threat. Once, we even had to face a Scottish vessel. Needless to say, their skills in combat was much better than battling upon the ocean. It was as if we worked without rhyme or reason, other than that we had orders to follow. The one sailor that had disobeyed Captain Archer was met with a bullet to the skull and thrown into the depth below without even a second of hesitation. So, we remained compliant, our love for the sea the only thing that kept us sane. On difficult days that wasn’t enough for some sailors, and they had to remain distant from the captain in fear of being shot.
One battle after another, blood staining the deck evermore. I would be here, a piece of an ever-growing puzzle in an expansion of the sea that never ceased. There was talk of a Spanish treasure that had been lost off the coast of America. Captain Archer would mumble to us the rumours, asking for our inputs and opinions on how accurate the stories might be. James and I remained skeptical, but in the security of our cabins we spoke of nothing but living like kings.
James knew what wealth felt like, but I was a stranger to the concept. He spoke of laying in bed every day with a woman each night. I felt that one woman would be enough for me, but James knew how to live in such a way so maybe I was mistaken. We talked about land, the ocean, legends of mermaids and spirits attacking men in the water and dragging them to The Locker. Some nights I’d lay awake and watch the stars, their glow sending me back to that night with my brother. That night we made a promise to each other, our love for the ocean would never die, even after he left me to follow the dream on my own.
The world continued, the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, and I was a stationary piece in the plan that no one knew. Sadly, the plan had something disastrous in store me. The Britannia would continue to sail the ocean blue, and would live to another bloody battle at sea.