Pirates of the Storm (Stranded In Time Book 1) (25 page)

“You know about that, huh?”

“Of course, I gave Robinson the
assignment and suggested that he enlist your help. I trust that you
do not object.”

“No, not at all,” Jeff grinned. As
Jeff opened the door to leave, Coxen added, “I will see to it that
your work is not disturbed.”

“Thank you, Captain. I’ll make sure to
do a good job!”

The Captain smiled, “I know that you
will. Good night, Mr. Greene.”

“Good night, Captain.”

Jeff made his way to the cargo hold
where Jenny had moved crates around to produce a hidden spot in the
back. Jeff was pleased to find the sacks were covered with some
fine bed linens that had been part of the haul from a recent raid.
“Shall we get to work?” Jeff asked as he closed the door to the
hold behind him.

“Yes,” Jenny smiled. It’s a big job.
This might take all night!”

In the afterglow of the first round on
the makeshift bed, Jeff turned to Jenny and said, “You know, if I
do get the opportunity to go back to my time, you could come with
me.”

Jenny looked at him and
sighed, “I won’t say that I’m not flattered and even tempted, but
no. Jeff, I do cherish our moments together, but it would not be
right for me to join you in your time. What would I do in the
21
^st
century? Things in your time would be so strange to me. This
is my time and it is where I belong.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Jeff agreed,
“It would be quite a challenge to get you assimilated in my time.
Just trying to get you a legal identity would be
impossible!”

Jenny leaned over and kissed him.
“Some things are not meant to be. But for as long as fate allows us
to be together, let us enjoy it,” she said softly.

“Yes, by all means. I for one am ready
to enjoy it again! How about you?” Jeff asked, to which Jenny
smiled and pulled him to her.

After a few more hours
together in the cargo hold, Jeff and Jenny snuck out to their bunks
to get some sleep. The next morning, he helped load a few remaining
supplies on the longboats and watched as they rowed over to the
sandbar to begin repairs on the
Grand
Booty
. The rest of Jeff’s morning was
spent attending to the wounds of his patients. He was happy to see
that everyone was still doing reasonably well and that none had any
signs of serious infection.

As he headed out on deck
to get some air before lunch, he could hear sounds of hammering and
sawing coming from the sandbar. The Booty had suffered quite a bit
of damage and Jeff figured it would be at least a few days before
she was seaworthy again. As Jeff periodically checked up on his
patients, day gradually turned to night once again, and on this
night, some of the men from Jamison’s crew came over to the
Wench
to share some
dinner, rum, and tall tales. The party went on late into the night
and Jeff dragged himself off to his bunk after several of the men
simply passed out on the deck.

After a few days, Captains
Coxen and Jamison agreed that the
Grand
Booty
was in good enough shape to make
sail, but she would need more extensive repairs before she was
ready for another fight, so further raiding would be postponed.
Despite the fact that there was a writ out for Coxen’s arrest
there, they decided that the only real option was to head for Port
Royal, Jamaica to get the needed repairs and to sell off some of
the spoils of their raids. But first was the matter of getting
the
Grand Booty
off of the sandbar.

Re-floating the
Booty
proved to be no
easy task. Although the beaching had been done at a relatively low
stage of the tide and most of the cargo had been offloaded, even at
high tide, the heavy wooden ship rested firmly on the sand. Several
ropes were tied off to the ship with the other ends tied to
longboats crewed by the strongest-armed men available. Meanwhile,
several other crewmen set about digging away the sand from under
the hull. The men in the longboats rowed as hard as they could as
the men on the sand bar dug at the sand. At first it looked to Jeff
like the efforts would all be in vain, but to his surprise the ship
finally started creeping back off the sandbar and soon was being
towed slowly out to the deep water of the cove. After the intense
efforts of their men, the Captains opted to delay their departure
for Jamaica until the next morning in order to give the crews time
to rest.

Just after dawn the next
morning, the three ships set sail for Jamaica. As most of Jeff’s
patients were now healing quite well on their own, there was once
again little for him to do. Fortunately the sail to Port Royal
would only take a few days and from what Jenny and the others had
told him, unlike the Port Royal on Roatan, the one in Jamaica was a
very large town for the 17
^th
century and there would be
much to do and see when they arrived.

Jeff had come to accept that the
pirate’s life was one of often long periods of monotony and boredom
punctuated by intense periods of excitement, fear, and bloody
violence. The sail to Jamaica was the former and was essentially
uneventful with the exception of the periodic episodes of “Lefty”
cursing Jeff when he changed his bandages and applied more of his
stinging lime juice antiseptic treatment. Jeff was thankful to hear
the Captain yell out, “Land ho!” as they came within sight of their
destination.

Due to the writ for his
arrest that had been issued by none other than the famed Henry
Morgan in his capacity as lieutenant governor of Jamaica, Captain
Coxen needed to keep a low profile. To this end, he remained aboard
the
Wandering Wench
, which anchored well offshore in an attempt to avoid
detection by the Jamaican authorities. Jeff, Jenny, and several
other members of the crew took longboats over to the
Grand Booty
with the
cargo to be sold in town and they and
The
Crow
continued into the port.

The ships tied off next to each other
at the end of a dock. Captain Jamison and a few members of his crew
went into town to arrange for the needed repairs and to find buyers
for their cargo while Jeff and the others remained on the ships to
guard them. An hour or so later, Jamison returned with a few men
with wagons and the offload of the cargo began. All hands
participated in the offload and within a few hours it was done.
Jeff and most of the remaining crew members were then allowed to go
into town to seek out their preferred forms of entertainment, with
instructions from Captain Jamison to return by first light the next
morning.

While they started out as
a group, by the time they had gone just a few blocks, the others
had all dispersed to seek out their particular interests and Jeff
and Jenny were left to themselves. Although he could tell from the
ship that Port Royal was a much larger town than anything else he
had seen during his time in the 17
^th
century, Jeff was amazed at
how big it actually was once he was in the middle of it. While much
of the activity seemed to center around the entertainment of
pirates and sailors, with the brothels, gambling halls, tattoo
parlors, and taverns that their shipmates had no doubt disappeared
to, there was actually quite a variety of businesses present in the
town.

Jeff and Jenny walked slowly taking it
all in as they politely declined the offers from the numerous
prostitutes lining the streets. “Have you been here before?” Jeff
asked Jenny.

“Yes, a few times. It seems there are
new things to see every time though.” She replied.

“Do you have any suggestions on what
to do?” Jeff inquired, raising his voice to be heard over the
clatter of a horse-drawn wagon.

“Well, we could hire a
couple of these lovely ladies, or perhaps we could get a room to
relax in at the
Hotel
Royale
. Some of the rooms even have copper
bath tubs and for a small fee, they’ll bring up buckets of hot
water.”

“Sounds good to me, but how much does
it cost? I didn’t bring a lot of silver with me.” Jeff
replied.

“Not to worry, I was planning on it,
so I brought plenty of coin,” Jenny assured him.

“I always wanted a sugar momma,” Jeff
said with a grin.

“A what?” Jenny asked.

“Sugar momma – a woman who pays my
way.” “Oh, I’m not a sugar momma. You will be paying me your share
when we get back to the ship!”

“That’s how it is, huh?”

“That is how it is – if you wish to
share my hotel room and bath!” Jenny replied.

“Very well, lead the way.” Jeff said
with a wave of his hand.

The pair made their way down a side
street and soon were standing in front of the hotel. Jenny turned
to Jeff and said, “I’ll go in and make arrangements for the room
and the bath. You wait here. It would look a little odd for two men
to request a room together. Once the bath is ready and there won’t
be any interruptions, I’ll call you up from the window.”

“I’ll be waiting,” Jeff acknowledged.
Jenny entered the hotel and Jeff leaned up against the railing that
ran across the front porch of it to watch the happenings on the
street. From the stories he had heard about Port Royal, it was a
pretty wild place. Even in the daytime, there were a number of
prostitutes on the street and they were having no trouble finding
customers. Just as numerous were the drunks, some staggering down
the street, and others passed out in out of the way corners.
Periodically, wagons drawn by horses, mules, and occasionally men
would pass by loaded down with everything from sacks of food, to
barrels of rum, to parts for ships.

Quite some time and several
propositions from the working women later, Jeff was starting to
wonder what was keeping Jenny when he heard her voice from above
him. “Mr. Greene?” Jeff stepped into the street and looked up at
the second floor of the hotel to see Jenny looking out of the last
window on the end of the hotel. She didn’t say a word and merely
cocked her head to the side, gesturing for him to come up. Jeff
walked into the hotel and saw the stairs next to the front desk,
which was unattended at the moment. Jeff quickly made his way up
the stairs and down the hall to the end room. Jenny was awaiting
his arrival and opened the door just as he raised his hand to
knock. She was already naked and she grabbed him by the shirt and
yanked him into the room, closing the door behind him. “Come on,
the bath will not stay hot forever!” she urged him as she pulled
his shirt over his head.

She led him over to the
large copper bath tub and climbed in while he slipped off his
pants. He carefully lowered himself into the water facing her and
leaned back, splashing a little water over the rim of the tub.
While the water was not exactly hot, it was the closest thing to a
hot shower Jeff had experienced since arriving in the
17
^th
century, and it felt great.

After the initial joy of feeling the
warm water against his skin, he noticed an odd foam floating on the
surface of the water and was struck by a familiar smell. “Is it
just me, or does this bath smell like… food?” he asked.

Jenny, who was just finishing washing
the grimy disguise from her face, replied, “Yes, I think they were
using this water to boil potatoes before they brought it up for the
bath.”

Jeff nodded, “That would explain the
weird foam too. This is one high-class establishment!”

Jenny laughed, “Only the best potato
bath for you, my dear!”

Jeff smiled, “I shouldn’t complain. In
my time there are probably spas where people would pay big money
for a potato bath! It’s not really a bad thing, but somehow I feel
like I’m an ingredient in soup!” The two sank back in the tub and
relaxed in the warm water. The copper tub held the heat of the
water remarkably well and by the time it started to cool, both Jeff
and Jenny were so relaxed that they could barely climb out of
it.

They dried off with the rough pieces
of cloth that served as towels and Jeff was struck by the fact that
hotel towels had not improved much in 300 years. Once they had
dried off as thoroughly as they could without removing skin layers
with the sandpaper-like towels, the two plopped down next to each
other on the bed, such as it was. It was no wider and was
significantly shorter than a modern twin bed and their legs hung
over the end a good foot or more. The mattress appeared to have
been filled with a mixture of straw and feathers, providing a
surface that was remarkably lumpy and poked at the skin.

“The pile of sacks in the cargo hold
was a lot more comfortable,” Jeff commented, “But this bed would be
great for anyone into S&M!”

“S and M? Those candies you spoke of
once?” Jenny asked in confusion. “No, those are M&M’s – very
different from S&M! S&M is sado-masochism – when people get
off sexually from causing or receiving pain.”

“I see, but why would someone get
pleasure from pain?” Jenny asked with curiosity.

“It’s not my thing, but some people
are really into it for whatever reason,” Jeff replied.