...always goes down with his ship.
It was not a good day to be a pirate captain. His ship was on fire, there were holes blasted into its sides, half of his crew was dead or dying, and the British Navy had finally caught up to him. With his head still ringing from musket and cannon fire and smoke beginning to choke his lungs, he looked up at the man that had bested him. Blue eyes met gray and both gazed upon the other with a steel tempered from the countless years on opposite sides of a war born at sea. Neither wavered, both standing still on the deck of the burning and condemned ship.
"Leave the captain."
The order was a surprise. Hadn't that been what all this fuss was about? The years of hunting, the close calls and the epic sword fights? Terrible wounds inflicted on both sides, cementing their roles of good and evil? Even the very commission that the Navy held bore his name, wanted for capture to answer for the various crimes associated with pirating. Why leave him here?
"I said, leave him. Every good captain should go down with his ship."
The order was repeated and so the pirate searched the man's face for any hint of his intentions. Leave him here? Why allow him the honor of burning and drowning with his ship? Of course, the ship was his pride and his joy. The pirate knew her like the back of his hand, knew her timber down to the fibers woven in the wood and the rope. His very life and soul were wrapped up in the sails and colors she flew. If the ship were to go down, it was only right that he would go with her - he may be a pirate but he still had his honor. But that didn't mean anything when there was a bounty and royal orders to bring back his head (attached to the body so that they could all witness his proper death at the end of a rope).
"I thought you were loyal to the King? Why leave me here?" He had to know why. He knew he was condemned to die, for there was no forgiveness for the crimes he has committed. But better it be condemned to the depths of the ocean he loved instead of swinging on a hangman's noose. Curiosity cannot kill a cat that was already dead.
"I believe every captain deserves the honor of going to the ocean with his ship. For whatever else you are, I still believe you to be a good man and I will not see you swing at the end of a rope, no matter how much you may deserve it." The commander spoke softly as he secured the pirate to the mast, splintered and broken from the battle not moments before. A strange sort of calm surrounded the two. There was still the crackling of burning wood and groaning of dying men. A rough shuffle of captive crew as they were hauled over planks bound for the brig. But all seemed to fade away as the two men faced each other down. Two unstoppable forces of nature stilled in the eye of a hurricane.
The pirate captain scoffed at the commander's explanation, a bitterness in his heart that raged against even this simple admission of honor. "And what do you care of the manner of my death? Just so long as I die, is that it? I am sure His Majesty will be pleased to hear you've let me go again. I thought soldiers were supposed to be loyal."
"I am loyal to King and kin alike." A sharp statement for the pirate's ears only. They were truly alone now. Time was moving too fast. The ship, once swarming with friend and enemy in the aftermath of the battle, was now empty. The survivors and the soldiers ushered away to leave them standing together on the doomed ship.
The pirate's lips twitched up into a smirk. "Not loyal enough it would seem."
With a slam of anger and strength, the Navy Commander gripped the captain and shoved him against the mast, the chains rattling against the wood. "Never question my loyalty! I did not chose this!" The calm demeanor was shattered in this outburst of emotion. The commander's eyes were wide, his hair pulled loose from its earlier platt and his teeth snapping together in an effort to compose himself. "I did not chose this," he whispered again, this time almost to himself as he sagged against the pirate.
With anger of his own, the pirate captain returned the shove with equal strength, sending the commander backwards. "But I did! I chose this! And now I will die for it!" The words clawed their way from his throat, spat at the commander's feet, a bitter truth for the two men. The inevitable was always there, at every sunrise and sunset. The threat of capture and discovery inching ever closer as the tides brought them circling around and around back to each other and away again. And here they were, finally at the end of it all.
The commander stiffened and a shadow passed across his face as he approached the captain. Without resistance he finished locking the pirate's manacles, securing him to his fate. The ship, already beginning to tilt in the aftermath of the battle, took this as a sign to give a huge groan and tremble in the water. Neither said a word now, for enough had already been said - though there still remained too many unspoken things, truths too painful to face even now at the end.
The commander turned to leave and a faint understanding began to dawn on the pirate captain as the blue tails of the Naval uniform disappeared over the plank and returned to the British ship. He didn't bother testing the chains. He didn't need any chains to bind him to his ship because in the end he wanted it this way. No matter the divide between the two, this was a final gift from the man that had chased him across the ocean, to be left to walk into the arms of the sea like a free man.
Between the smoke clogging his nostrils, he could smell the salt on the wind and he raised his head to the sky. There was a great crack in the air and the ship broke around him, finally snapping under the weight of battle and flame. Time had run out.
Amidst the wood and the sails that sunk with him, he welcomed the water that crushed him under the surface. And he thought back on the final words that the Navy commander had whispered, words thrown to him across the great divide separating the two, across the years and across the ocean, and so soft they were almost carried off by the wind and blackened smoke. Words that brought comfort to the pirate captain, even in his death among his beloved ship and sea.
"Goodbye and farewell, little brother. May the sea carry you safely home."
:) Kathryn