Pirate Blood. Eugenio Pochini

      

Eugenio Pochini

       Original title: Sangue Pirata

      Author: Eugenio Pochini

      Translator: Valentina Giglio

      Editing: Miriam Mastrovito

      Cover illustration: Alessandro Cancian

      Graphics: Paolo Martorano

      Arti director: Valentina Cuomo

      First edition © 2016 Eugenio Pochini

      All rights reserved

      No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission og the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidential.

       To Chiara G.

       I kept my promise

      PROLOGUE

       When you go through the entrance arch to the temple of dreams,

       there, just there, you will find the sea…

      LUIS SEPULVEDA

       The rain was pelting down, hammering the ship deck and roaring against the sails, seeping then into the cracks in the hull. It was like that since they had doubled the coast of Florida.

      Samuel Bellamy suddenly cursed. He started smoothing his black moustache, scanning out of the cabin window. He could hardly see the ocean, enveloped in a thick fog. That wasn’t what he had expected to find when Emanuel Wynne had gone and seen him, in that small inn in the port of Nassau. He had liked the French man’s determination and eccentricity, even when he had told the story about the island Blackbeard was looking for. They had laughed, drank a drop of rum… and he had almost dismissed him, when Wyatt had removed his hair from his forehead. His left eye had given a gloomy twinkle and Bellamy had got sure the pirate wasn’t as crazy as he looked.

      They had organized the departure in ten days, thanks to the Jamaican governor’s financial aid. They hadn’t met bad weather conditions or rival ships which could be a risk for the crew along their course.

      But now, that rain!

      Eternal and never-ending.

      Not to mention the fog. Everything was getting rough against him, as if the ocean wanted to warn him to go back.

      “This story is making me nervous”, Bellamy said, turning to the boatswain.

      “I can believe it”, the other man answered. He was checking some nautical maps with a greedy interest.

      “The crew is starting to get nervous.”

      The man lifted his eyes and looked at the bad weather raging outside. “You took the French man’s words too lightly. After all, he isn’t trustworthy. Traitors are never considered willingly, even among us.”

      “Loyalty or not”, Bellamy replied, “we can’t go back.”

      He then added in his mind: If you had seen his eye too, you would change your mind about Wynne’s intentions. I’ve sailed everywhere in the Caribbean and I’ve never met something so…

      Extraordinary, he wished he could say, but he was interrupted by the shouts coming from the deck. They were so loud they covered the sounds of the storm.

      “The watchman will tear his tongue”, the boatswain remarked, without paying too much attention to the mess.

      “Shut up”, Bellamy warned him and opened the door wide. Heavy and big raindrops hit his head and shoulders. He closed his hands around his face, trying to stop them and focus on the situation: the crew had gathered next to the mainmast, looking up in agonizing wait.

      “Land!”, the man on the maintop kept shouting. “Right at the bow!”

      They all rushed forward, gathering at the bow like an army ready to attack. The bravest ones leant out from the ship’s sides, grasping strongly at the shrouds to avoid the danger of the wind and the ship rolling. Bellamy made his way, giving orders and pushing the men. When he arrived, he half-closed his eyes and covered his face again.

      Nothing.

      No land could be seen.

      “I wonder how you can see with a weather like this.” The boatswain voice thundered phlegmatic behind him. He had followed him but he hadn’t realized it.

      The captain tried to reply. The memory of his first meeting with Wynne was clear in his mind, like the sun reflecting on still water.

      “You mustn’t tell anybody my secret”, he had explained. “Or you’ll end up like Edward Teach.”

      “What happened to him?”, Bellamy had asked, much more than suspicious.

      The answer had come in the shape of a single and simple word: mutiny. It was considered the worst of all crimes a buccaneer could make.

      “Where?, Bellamy shouted turning to the watchman. “There’s nothing, Emanuel. Are you sure?”

      The man on the maintop was waving and pointing straight ahead. His hair whipped by the wind and his excessive thinness made him look like a nightmare monster, like those populating the old mariners’ stories.

      “Right at the bow”, Wynne repeated. “Look!”

      Bellamy remarked that the crew too was looking at the point shown by the French man. He tried to do the same and after a while he could see out of the storm, beyond the fog, the island jagged sides. But there was something else. Next to the first shape he saw a second one. He thought for a moment that was their destination.

      “Here we are!”, he exclaimed, in an outburst of satisfaction. He had started gazing at the landscape again, wondering which heavenly wills made it unreal. He then turned his attention to Wynne once more. He was surprised when he realized he was coming down from the maintop in a hurry, grasping at the shrouds like a monkey running away from a predator. And he got still more surprised when he saw him running to the stern cabin, shouting like a crazy man.

      “Captain!”

      The boatswain shook him violently by his shoulders. He turned at once, more worried for the hesitation he had heard in his voice than for the action itself.

      The shape he had seen was slipping through the foggy cover and seemed closer. Yet the ship wasn’t sailing full speed, because of the wind blowing in the opposite direction and the decks made heavy by the rain. Then something which left him astounded happened. The blurred image his eyes had detected dove into the dark depths of that stormy sea with a gloomy gurgling.

      “At starboard!”, someone exclaimed.

      Bellamy rushed where the man was pointing at, trying hard to understand what was going on. The water was boiling some miles away and underneath something undefined was moving straight towards the ship, leaving a long foamy trail behind.

      “It’s coming on us!”, he screamed and he suddenly understood he had to get control of the ship, feeling sure that the boatswain wasn’t aware of anything. By such a bad weather he would defy anyone to see farther than his nose.

      When he got to the top desk, he took the helm just before the Whydah Gally started trembling under the strokes of a violent shake. He tried to tack on the left, but he was flung against the gunwale and he stood there panting breathless. The rest of the crew was swarming on the ship, screaming and asking for mercy.

      Samuel Bellamy got to his feet just as a huge wall of water rose along the right side, roaring and thundering like the storm they had got into. There was a new stroke and the keel creaked. The planks burst out. The mainmast bent aside. The ropes broke. With terror stirring his mind,