#9,5 My life, chasing my seadream

Part 3: Tortuga!

When the sea battle was behind us I went to my hammock. Because the capatian had appointed me to the ship with the quartermaster. I felt kind of dissapointed, because I still wanted to ask the captain about the letter with my ring as a stamp, I found in the library. But these were the orders. And eitherway I don’t mind the captain putting me with the quartermaster because now we can speculate and talk about the maps we have found. I unlocked my chest and opened it, taking out the letter and putting it in my pocket. I don’t need anything else I suppose as I closed and locked my chest again.

I walked out of the room back to the stairs leading to the deck. When I got to the deck, the fresh air of the seawind blew me in my face, and small drips of salt water hitting my arm as a wave hit the hull. I walked over to a boarding plank and pulled myself on the edge of it. As I walked over I could feel the plank rocking up and down between the two ship. “as long as the boarding plank stays on the railings I’m fine” I tought. I walked across and jumped off of the other edge of the plank onto the boards of the new ship. “this is a very nice looking ship, it looks new” my toughts told me. I looked around and saw the door to the captain’s quarters, where the quartermaster was standing. He was busy, ordering fellow mates what to do.

I went to the opening near the captain’s quarters to go down to the crew’s sleeping quarters. As I walked down the stairs, the planks creeked from under my feet. When I was finally one stair down, I walked behind the stair, because there was a door to somewhere I didn’t check yet. While walking around the staircase I tought “I hope there won’t be anyone waiting for me there on the other side with a mace ready to bash my skull”. I opened the door with a slight creek “what a stenche” I said out loud while covering my nose with my arm, and to my surprise I saw a room, much like the library on my captain’s ship. but itstead of a library there was blood everywhere. Torture weapons and machines and straps on the walls. But the smell, the smell was awefull.

I closed the door to the room and walked back to the front of the stair. I glanced back to the door while I walked back up to the deck to find the quartermaster. When I got up to the deck, I wasn’t able to see the quartermaster in sight. So I decided to open the doors to the captain’s quarters and look inside. There I saw him standing, looking at some books in the shelves. “there is some interesting information on this ship” he said without even looking my way. “yes, and the room below this room looks like a torture chamber. There is so much blood everywhere” I told him.

He looked at me with his eyebrows frowned up, and said “show me instantly, what you saw” he said a little concerned. “why did he react so strange on this information” I tought. Aye, I said to the quartermaster. We walked out of the captain’s quarters onto the deck and down the stair. We then walked behind the stair and i said to the quartermaster, “here tis, sir. Cover up your nose” I said. But he din’t wait any longer and he din’t even cover up anything from the stench when he walked in. He looked around the room as if he were looking for something he lost. He then walked to the corner of the room to a small chest. He opened it and said “bollucs” he then ran back to the door and ran upstairs. I think I heard him call for the captain while running over to the boarding planks. “what’s his deal” I tought.

Wait a minute “what’s in the chest” I asked myself. I walked over to the closed chest. The strong oder of rotting flesh became stronger with every step I took towards the chest. When I stood in front of it I tought “this smell is almost making me throw up”. I open the chest with my foot and gag to the sight of a face that’s been rotting there for a couple of days. I din’t recognize it nor did I want to look at it any longer, so I closed the chest and walked out of the room, still covereing up my mouth and nose.

“how are we supposed to sail with all this stench on the ship” I tought. I walked to the boarding plank in between the ships and crossed it, landing on the captains deck. I look around and see the crew carrying some goods around. “where is the captain?” I ask a random mate. “I think he’s in hit cabin, that’s where I last saw him” he replied. So I walked my way to the captain’s quarters and pushed open the door. The captain and quartermaster looked at me, and the captain said “come in, you are just the one I want to talk to”. I make my way to the table the captain and quartermaster are standing around.

“have you seen what is in the chest” the captain asked me. “I saw a rotting head” I said. “shush! Not so loud” he replied, “no one can know about this”. I nodded and said “what’s going on?” the captain looked down at the table and said “that ship is a place where people are tortured and killed. It is a spy ship. we have to get rid of that room, and make every piece of evidence that leads to a spy ship dissapear, because even spy ships are not alowed in Tortuga” he said with a serious tone. “we need someone to clean this mess up, but we can’t tell anyone on deck that the other ship was a spy ship” the quartermaster says. “I don’t want to clean this mess up, it might take days. And the scent would be realy bad” I tought. “so you” the quartermaster said, “will clean up this mess”. I rolled my eyes and sighed “ill get right to it” I said. The quartermaster started gigling “ofcourse I will help you with this task, as it is one of the most discusting things I have seen. And it would be torture just to be there alone for days just cleaning everything up”. That was a little relief, knowing the quartermaster would help me clean the ship.

“right let’s begin cleaning immidiatly” the quartermaster said. I agreed and followed him to grab some cleaning stuff from the ship. we walked back to the room and put a bandana around our face to somewhat lower the chance of getting any illness from the rotting flesh and wood, if that was even possible. We started cleaning the flesh by collecting it in a crate, wich we eventually would throw overboard with the chackles that were hanging on the wall. We worked the rest of the day untill deep in the night. Most of the mess was gone, all we had to do now was to get the stench out of the wood. So we decided to paint the wall with a white paint. And rip out the floor to then let the carpenters make a new floor in the room.

The next day we started on the floorboards right when we had breakfirst. The ships were still together, but there were no boarding planks between them. It made it look from a distance like there were two ships visiting each other, or doing a trade. The crew knew now the floor was getting repaired and helped us out fixing it. So they threw all the old floorboards overboard and helped put in the new floor. In two days the ship was fixed and we were ready to set sail to tortuga. The good news reached our captain and unrolled the sails. We also unrolled the sails and followed the captain on the rushing waves.

Rocking back and forth we had almost arived on Tortuga, when we saw a big storm coming our way. We talked about what to do, and if we go to the side we should be able to avoid most of the storm. But the big storm was developing into an even bigger storm, and started to become a real threat. So we decided to secure everything and hoist the sails. This way the sails would not get damaged so much. The captain told us we should keep a good distance between the two ships, so there would be no collisions of sorts. We then prepared ourselves as the storm slowly took over the bright sky, and filled it with rain, thunder and massive waves.