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I do not know if it is by design or chance that my guard is a former Octavius (Sammel Kees, gunner's mate, by process of elimination). Very likely he begged for the duty to permit his petty vengeances on me.
My harbour cage is not enough of a sentence for him. The edict was to leave me hanging in this gibbet over the water in the shipping lanes as a warning to my fellow Brethren until I die. Thirst is the likeliest culprit, though the occasional rain staves that off little by little, but starvation is not far behind. Perhaps a rogue thunderstorm will mercifully end my life with a lightning-strike to the iron bars that hold me. Small boys make a sport of pelting my cage with stones and cheer when one of them gets through the mesh to hit me. (I could use a lad like that on my ship, clear steady aim at a swaying target – even here I cannot stop being a ship's captain.)
The floor is iron lattice as well, permitting me an untrammelled view of the sparkling clear water a few feet below me – the sea that means freedom to a sailing-man but might as well be a hundred miles away. At least, I think ruefully, I will not die wallowing in my own excrement and urine.
The most terrible tormentor I have is not the man who bangs the bars to disrupt my scattered sleep at night, prods at me with his pike, offers me heavily salted beef with a grin and volunteers to piss into my mouth if I need a drink. It is my realization that I had trusted in my fellow Brethren a little too much.
I had foolishly thought to command men by appealing to their heads as well as their gold-lust and bloodlust. But far too many do not care to think beyond their next meal, their next whore, their next raid. And clemency coupled with gold are natural incentives when a man is caught and faces the rope for his own acts of piracy, especially when the man he gives up has terrified a powerful Royal Navy Admiral.
Not all pirates are my peerless ship's surgeon Jack, who lost his hand to that admiral's torturer rather than divulge the Baker's hiding place. I am amused that the kindest man I have ever met is feared in these waters under the name Gold-Hand, who wears his gilt bone-saw in place of his missing limb and aided me in striking fear in the Octaviuses.
Jack… Weeks have passed, at least three and approaching a month, that I have been dying. Jack did not rescue me, and for that I am grateful. Moriarty clearly thought Jack and the other Bakers would charge in to save me, treating me like a hooked minnow to capture a swordfish; but regularly he drops by and rages about cowardly pirates. I am worth a good deal of gold dead or alive for piracy, but Jack alive is a treasure-house to bring to Their Majesties, to suffer a public execution in London as a traitor. But their treasure-house did not take the bait, and I must die alone, abandoned by my men.
If he was wise, Jack has fled the Baker to some remote island where neither pirate nor Navy man will ever find him again. Fish and grow old, my other hand. Remember the mad privateer who waged war on the whole South Seas for your sake.
Soon I will cease to think. My hunger has finally become ignorable, but the thirst is maddening. The sparkling sea-water below me provides further torment in more ways than one. More death swims beneath, great fat sharks who have learned that bones and rotting flesh drop out of these cages in time; in my heat-muddled mind I have categorised at least seven different types of these monstrous fish. Several of them are quite beautiful, and I regret that I will not learn more about their ways before I feed them.
The water beckons: Drink me and die. I cannot even do that.
Jab. Jab. Jab. Sammel Kees prods me with his pike again as another bored sailing man walks past, intent on his evening business. Again he offers to let me drink his piss.
I'd rather drink your blood, Octavius dog
"He'll drink your blood, Octavius dog."
The sailor turns. A flash of gold and then of red and a muffled scream. A warm spatter on my face.
I see my golden-handed Jack and a dead tormentor lying in his blood.
God be praised, I've finally gone mad or am dying at last. I touch my tongue to the spatter. It's like wine, red wine.