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The master of the Wasp took on a brand-new crew that had not sailed with him before. Of the former crewmembers who had survived the Octavius, he kept no one on this ship; the survivors were scattered and their full purses would ensure their silence. His religious use of the nine-tailed cat for every slight taught the crew their catechism. His new cabin boy was a cowed, stupid lad who blubbered when he was beaten, and scuttled to obey faster; he no longer had a cabin boy who looked at him with murder in his clever, wicked brown eyes that warranted a regular flogging to put out.
Captain Milverton continued in his peculiar specialty. Spanish, French and English ships alike fell under his hand, and their best-dressed and –adorned passengers into his keeping until relatives or wealthy connections provided their ransoms. Coin and gems continued to flow in, and to go out again – lavishly to their patron, generously to the captain, frugally among the officers, and whispered out to the crew. Milverton’s ice-blue eyes glittered behind their round spectacles at the wealth he amassed, and wanted only more.
The men muttered at the Navy-like treatment – the rules among the Brethren dictated looser hands and more even distribution of the wealth – and Milverton responded by letting their backs understand that their Royal Navy patron meant Royal Navy discipline aboard. The men who presented a petition, as was the right of the Brethren on a pirate ship, were flogged for it. If the men complained, they were flogged. The quartermaster who confronted Milverton about his unhappy crew lost an ear; his replacement routinely reported “no complaints,” and won an extra handful of gold for exposing a secret meeting belowdecks that resulted in three men flogged to death and the others from that meeting merely to the edge of death. To save himself from incipient mutiny Milverton doubled the grog ration and let his crew vent their rage and lust upon their captives too poor to keep alive as prisoners. The Wasp lived up to its name.
But sailors talk to each other in port, and at the scuttlebutt, and the stories began to spread: Cap’n took gold to destroy his own ship. You heard of the Octavius? Dozens killed in that explosion, good men – and all to set a trap to catch one man from the Baker, the one they call Gold-Hand. But Captain Shear-Lock and his men stormed a Navy ship to fetch him back!
Milverton cured ship’s gossip with a tarred rope and double-watch for the groaning salt with the bleeding back, and the phrase “Did you hear?” became a floggable offense on the Wasp – as were the words “Baker,” “Shear-Lock” and “Octavius.” In a very short time only words and phrases that carried out ship’s business kept a man from losing his tongue.
Milverton sat in his quarters amid his hoarded gold, his little reptile eyes glittering. These men were only pirate scum, easily cowed and taught to fear their betters. Give them enough grog, let them at the captives, dole out a bit of silver, and they were his.
While aboard the men were not allowed to speak save for ship’s business, and none but one or two could read or write anything. The gossip stopped. Milverton smiled.
The gossip that Milverton could understand stopped, that is to say.
Whispers travel around the tightest ship. Where words are forbidden, signs and signals appear. Where words are carefully controlled, other meanings become tucked into them.
The men needed to continue to exchange messages to each other to run the ship – orders sent from deck to masthead to crow, from jib to poop.
“Mr. Abelson, spread the top two sails!” accompanied by an arm circling in a large O. (Mr. Abelson, open your ears! It concerns the Octavius!)
“Bring round the jib-boom!” with a tug at one’s pigtail, a hand slashing a throat, another circling arm. (Captain Shear-Lock killed an Octavius man.)
“Aye aye!” Hand waggled back to front to back. (Retaliation, revenge?)
“Aye, that’s the way!” (Yes.) “Now secure the line!”
A rigger who caught the pantomime made two circles with his arm. (I heard he killed two Octaviuses.) Touch to the ear and then the mouth. (Gold in their mouths.)
Later, across the deck: Ear-touch, touch the hand, throat-slash, O with the arm. (Gold-Hand killed an Octavius.)
So it continued, around and under and through Milverton; hand gestures, hand signals, certain knots on the ropes, carvings on whale’s teeth that looked like no Christian alphabet.
The story continued, and the men learned: Shear-Lock and his rescued man, Gold-Hand, and all the Bakers were methodically killing all who had been on the Octavius.
The men worked silent, compliant, around the glitter-eyed Milverton, hands to forehead and muttered obedience. But everything they did in perfect compliance to Navy discipline to Milverton’s face, all bore a second message:
Soon.