Days Gone By Chapter 4—Pirate's Booty
Novel Excerpt by Abram Dress
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The Old Man’s Story
Arabian Sea
September, 1695
The sun beat down on the Arabian Sea, turning the waves into shimmering diamonds scattered across a vast sapphire canvas. On the horizon, a plume of black smoke snaked towards the sky, a harbinger of the storm brewing beneath it. I gripped the rail of the Fancy, my trustworthy forty-six-gun frigate, as a familiar predatory grin split my beard. Behind me, a dozen other pirate vessels waited, blood-thirst wafting over their decks. Ahead, a magnificent spectacle unfolded.
Flags emblazoned with a golden tiger danced in the wind, proclaiming the might of the Grand Mughal's fleet–all twenty-five ships. My greed and my desperate hope, as insatiable as the ocean itself, fixated on one vessel–the Ganj-i-Sawai, the jewel of the fleet, rumored to be laden with treasures beyond imagining. And harboring the desperate source of my hunt.
You’re here to save me, and yet you bring a poor man’s armada? Perhaps I chose my hero unwisely. That siren voice had found me, first in my dreams many months ago, then in the periphery of my waking thoughts, then finally as an urgent and unignorable cacophony that stole all my focus and energy.
Tsk. I suppose this is what I can expect when my powers are weak. A champion in kind.
“You’ve promised much, woman. But mind your tongue if you want me to save you from this gilded prison.”
I knew she could hear me when I responded. I wondered, could she hear me always? Could she hear my thoughts? Could she hear me as I told myself that her promises were so incredible that nothing in the seas or blood-cursed land would stop me from rescuing her?
Enough talk. Enough thought. Get to your bloodshed.
All the words I needed to hear.
“Full sail!” I roared.
As the Fancy, a mere speck compared to the Mughal armada, swept closer, a cannon roared on the Ganj-i-Sawai. The ball sang past, exploding harmlessly astern. I chuckled, a dry, humorless sound. "They don't know who they've invited to their party."
I wheeled her to port, and two dozen guns glared with ferocity upon the Ganj-i-Sawai’s stern. With a roar that would have made a lion cower, the Fancy unleashed her full fury. Cannons spat fire and death, carving crimson streaks across the blue. Fancy’s first barrage struck with pirate-luck and a powder store on Ganj-i-Sawai exploded, sending smoke and dying screams into the battle-ridden air. The Mughals, surprised by the audacity of the small pirate flotilla, fought back in kind. The air crackled with the smell of gunpowder and burning flesh.
I was a viper in shark-infested waters. I maneuvered the Fancy with the grace of a dancer, dodging broadsides and peppering the enemy with deadly precision. My pirates, inspired by my fearless spirit, fought with the ferocity of cornered wolves.
Time moves differently dependent on the experience one is within. Entwined in the luscious limbs of a Far East harem, it moves both as lightning and melted lead. Trapped in the doldrums, food and water stores depleting barely just faster than crew morale, it moves like leprous skin languidly falling from a dying man’s face. In fierce and bloody battle, as friends and enemies crumple around you, ships burn and crush beneath the waves, and that bloodlust all men feel but only the best embrace engorges your own muscle and ferocity, time moves like the first gulp of freshly opened rum. Fast. Burning. Invigorating and inebriating.
You move through that time, watching and waiting for the moment that will bring victory.
I seized a gap in the Mughal defenses. Smoothly trimmed sails and a blood-drenched west wind aided my hunt, and the Fancy lunged towards the Ganj-i-Sawai, grinding to her broadside. Grappling hooks latched onto her gilded hull, and my bloodthirsty crew swarmed her decks like ants onto a fallen giant.
The battle on the Ganj-i-Sawai was a whirlwind of clashing steel and guttural roars. I was a tempestuous storm in human shape, cutting through the Mughal ranks, my cutlass flashing like a silver serpent. The Grand Mughal's guards, armed with jeweled daggers and curved sabers, fell like wheat before a scythe.
Finally, Captain Abdul Hassan, the Mughal commander, a man adorned with more gold and finery than battle sense, faced me. Our blades met in a dance of death, sparks showering down like fireflies. But Hassan, weighed down by his riches and arrogance, was no match for my raw rage and honed skill. With a final, brutal parry, I sent Hassan's head spinning through the air.
As the gory orb rolled across the tossing deck, her voice whispered. Well done, Captain Avery. Let your crew clean up the remains. I quite want to meet you.
The screams of the dying surrounded me. Different languages, different societies, different parents, families, heroes and villains in their stories, but when a man dies, he always screams the same. Those screams reverberated off the narrow wooden passages that led deep into the storage and slave compartments of the Ganj-i-Sawai.
The battle had left me wounded in various places: shrapnel from the defensive cannons had left a bloody morass along my left side, cutlass and knife cuts on my forearms, even a musket ball graze that left me limping. None of that mattered to a man like me. The wounds would heal, or they wouldn’t. My crew, and the crews of the pirate ships that had joined me on this most dangerous and rewarding of missions, had won the day. The treasure of the Grand Mulah’s fleet was ours. Enough gold to ransom a bevy of kings, and purchase the favors of their wives.
But such was not my true aim. I passed the chests of treasure, the religious relics, the priceless artifacts. I followed the voice.
Avery, do hurry.
“I’m hurrying,” I grumbled. “You could have been more accessible.”
Residing within a treasure ship captured by pirates is no time to be accessible.
“Fair point, m’lady,” I said. I shoved an overeager pirate out of my way as he dragged a screaming slave girl into the darkness. A clearer example of the voice’s point could not have been made.
The battle sounds had faded far behind me when I finally arrived at my destination. At the end of a long hallway, nearest the bottom and aft end of the ship, stood a door. Engraved with glowing symbols that I’d not seen in a lifetime of sailing a dozen seas. Inlaid with precious metals and gems worth as much as any treasure chest I’d passed on my way down here. Two burly Arab men stood guard in front of the door, each wielding a scimitar as large as my leg.
“You’re here,” a voice said from behind the door. Her voice.
As one, both of the burly guards gasped and slumped to the deck, eyes rolling backward in their heads. Blood seeped from their ears and eyes and nostrils. Two quick flicks of my cutlass and their throats lay open. No reason to take chances.
I opened the door.
The Countess Alia-Mariah stood before me, dressed in gold-filigreed silks and wrapped in priceless jewels. “I’m so glad you found me, Captain Avery. We have so very much to accomplish, you and I.”
The remaining Mughals, their spirit broken, surrendered. The Fancy, battered but victorious, towed the plundered Ganj-i-Sawai into a hidden cove. Jewels spilled from bursting chests, silk robes shimmered in the moonlight, and gold coins clinked like a macabre lullaby. My pirates, transformed from ragged wolves into gilded eagles, reveled in their bounty.
But even as my pirates gorged themselves on their ill-gotten riches, a darkness lurked at the edges of our revelry. I had won the day, but I brooded. The treasure, vast as it was, could not quench my insatiable thirst.
“They play like children with baubles, but they know nothing of what true riches, true power, is.” The Countess reclined atop a pile of pillows and blankets, sipping at a glass of wine worth more than the lives of half the men in my crew.
I nodded. “You made many promises, m’lady. Tell me more of these… stones.”
The Countess smiled. “Enjoy the evening, Captain. When your men have sated themselves, you and I will set sail. South. There is a thing of great power that must be mine.” She coughed politely. “I mean ours, of course.”
“Of course.”
Time moves differently dependent on the experiences one is within. In the partnership of a beautiful woman, uncountable riches, and the promise of future power beyond any mortal’s ken, it passes pleasantly indeed.
The next day, we sailed south with a small contingent of my most trustworthy crew, never to waste time in the mundane world of myth-making piracy again.
The news of my audacity spread like wildfire, sending tremors through empires and electrifying the hearts of every rogue and dreamer from London to Zanzibar. I had dared to steal from the most powerful Mughal ruler and lived to tell the tale, becoming a legend, a ghost in the night, a beacon of defiance against the established order.
That story of Captain Henry Avery, my story, faded into the mists of time, a cautionary tale of daring and avarice, a testament to the fleeting nature of fortune and the enduring allure of the sea's siren song. My name still echoes in the blood-soaked pages of pirate lore, a reminder that even the most audacious heist can only buy a moment's glory in the ephemeral kingdom of outlaws.
But my story is not yet complete. For, as the Countess said, we still had so very much to accomplish.
—CONTINUE READING Chapter 5—Rising Tension
Copyright 2024 Abram Dress