The Final Days of Springborough

By the time Captain Jonathon James and First Mate Juba made it back onto their boat, the storm clouds had already taken over the whole horizon. Jage looked once but never again, for fear the next time he had to look out at the storm, he would actually only have to look up at it. The sails whipped about in the wind, and the Captain immediately barked out orders to tighten them up; to direct them accordingly to capture as much wind as possible. They were going to try to use the front winds of the storm to the best of their advantage, maybe making it double-time back home and using the strength of the storm to beat it.

J.J. could tell his seasoned sailors were slightly spooked at the storm, and that was always allowed on the high seas. No reason not to fear death of the dark skies when they were always seemingly on the horizon, never compromising, and merciless. Jonathon did his best to keep his crew engaged in the mission of survival, barking out orders when he saw one of his men thinking too much about the perils they were about to face.

“Wash the deck!” he shouted to Murray, who started to daydream destruction while looking up at the cracking mast.

“But, Captain- the storm will surely send waves over the bow,” Murray replied, incredulous.

“Stay busy, Murray. If you have to wash my deck in the middle of the storm to not get distracted, I’d rather you did that! Don’t let the waves take you!”

Murray nodded, and got out a mop. In fifteen minutes, the deck washing sailor would be drenched himself from rain and wind-swept sea water.

The storm looked never ending, but it didn’t matter as the beginning came with a punch. The first winds whipped the sails until the crew were able to catch the wind in them, and then the sails strained against their restraints, threatening to break, as the large curtains of cloth carried their boat on top of the water toward where J.J. believed Quakenfalls to be; toward where his faithful compass pointed. The rain began like a drizzle for a second, but quickly turned into large drops that pock-marked the ocean’s wavy surface, and slapped at the deck of the boat. Murray used the rain water to mop at the dirty surface areas. A job that once proved futile now brought a smile to the man’s face as everyone else was completing their grunt work.

“Murray! Are you mopping?!” a pirate they affectionately called “Bud” asked him, as Bud miraculously tried to tie a rigging in place that equally tried to whip him in the face.

“Captain J.J.’s orders. Mop the deck.” Murray replied, laughing.

“You’re kidding me!”

“Jealous?” Murray asked, lightly slapping the mop against the rail, shaking off bits of food, seasickness, and dirt from the mop back to the ocean waters.

“Very!” Bud responded, finishing his bow knot, and laughing with his crewman.

On the quarterdeck, where J.J. was looking behind him at the storm, and in front of him in the direction the boat was going, he lightly touched the wheel, steering, controlling the rudders, feeling through the wood of the boat the direction the winds and the sky were taking him, and also feeling the ocean’s current below the surface of where the sea wanted to take him. He didn’t want to fight the wind, but he didn’t want to get any further from Quakenfalls either. He had one goal, and that one goal was to get home to his family. He didn’t care much about anything else.

Juba climbed the step ladder up to him, panting at the exertion of walking against the magnificent gusts of wind, and trying to breathe in the air forced down his throat.

“Everything is secure, sir,” Juba reported.

“Thank you, Juba,” Jage replied, watching as all his men worked, keeping their heads turned, keeping one eye on the storm themselves.

“Looks like it’s going to be a long one.”

“Who knows how long it will be, Sailor? Some storms can last moments, while some storms can last lifetimes. It all depends on how you weather them.”

“Remember the half-sailor in the boat, he said-“

“The boat!”

Jonathon James had forgotten all about the mysterious boat. The fright the dust-turning man had given them as he vanished into thin air in front of them, mid-warning, was enough to send the men into temporary insanity, send them running from the boat up over their plank, back onto their ship, shouting to get their own ship ready for the storm. Such a fast moving storm it was that it immediately consumed everyone, making J.J. forget about the other vessel altogether.

He turned to look over his ship’s edge to see nothing but cracking waves. No ship. Had it disappeared like the sailor? Had it vanished in thin air? Was it even there? Did his crew imagine it all together as some group hallucination from being on the water for so long? Impossible. He scanned the waters for it, thinking it might have just been carried away by the current. Maybe it was hiding behind one of these waves that seemed to be growing with every crest. Or maybe it had already sank, which is what they were destined to do if he didn’t keep his wits about him.

The clouds directly overhead were of the simple, dark grey variety. Still off some ways, the blackest of the clouds were still moving in, flashing lightening once every couple of seconds. The waves knocked at the boat sideways, slightly rocking it. Each one of the pirates letting out a “Whoa!” every time the boat tilted. When the ship would right, it wasn’t hard to hear Murray chuckling like a knucklehead as he continued to mop in the rain.

“What’s in the storm, Captain?” Juba asked, knowing the Captain heard him, and understood the question.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think whatever is in the storm is the same thing that cut that man in half? The same thing that emptied him of his blood and guts, and inserted the swirling cloud of black dust?”

Jage shivered at the question, knowing it painted the scene in his memory that he couldn’t shake loose. “I don’t know,” was the Captain’s answer, and would be for all the other questions Juba might ask.

“Maybe it’s the storm itself. Maybe it cut him in half. Maybe that was what was inside of him. The storm. Do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Juba stayed with the Captain, looking out from the Quarterdeck at the back of the boat, looking at all the shipmates, assigned various jobs, and carrying them out without question or grievance. The boat rocked in the waves, getting more and more tumultuous, the sails beat at their restraints, the winds howled in Jage’s ears, the sea water that was kicked up by the wind, slapped at his face, leaving behind salt he could taste. It was getting hard to maintain their footing, and J.J. would hate to lose a man now.

“Get below!” he hollered from the deck. “Get below and get comfortable! This storm is delivering us home, boys!”

The crew, only happy to get out of the rain and wind, hobbled and wobbled to the door down to their quarters, Murray taking the mop with him. Jage, now relieved he wasn’t going to watch any of them be swept off to sea, stood back on his heels, keeping the wheel as steady as he could while spitting the seawater off of his lips. He blinked the rain from his eyelashes and kept his sights on the compass, pointing West.

“You get below, too, Juba,” J.J. whispered, letting his words be carried by the wind to his ship mate’s ears.

“No, Captain, I’d rather stay with you. Make sure nothing happens to you.”

“Appreciate that, sailor. But, we can’t have anything happen to you, either. You got a family, and I promised to get you back to them. You go down, I’ll stay here with the wheel, make sure we all get home safely.”

Captain Jonathon James looked at his first mate with his ocean blue eyes, and the first mate knew that was as polite of an order as he was ever going to get. Thinking it permissible, Juba slapped his Jage on the back in solidarity and headed for the Crew Quarter’s door. “You have a family, too, Cap’t. Don’t forget that. No getting swept out to sea or cut in half or anything.”

Once everyone was below deck, J.J. grabbed the wheel strap, and wrapped it around his body like a belt, securing himself to the steering shaft. No wave was going to knock him off now. He was tied to the boat, for better or worse. If the boat was going to go down, Captain Jage would go down with it. Jage didn’t think the boat would sink, though. Whether or not the wind would carry it, or the waves would throw it into the cliff’s edge of Quakenfalls was another thing.

Several boats have met an untimely end on the wall of rock that was his family’s new dwelling in storms such as this. Survivors talked of not being able to see the rocks until they were seconds from impact because of all the mist the storms would kick up. Well, J.J. looked about him now, and all he saw was mist. He was hoping the next thing he saw wasn’t impending death on the rocks.