Marooned

He sat back against the log of the collapsed palm tree while sipping from the bottle of rum that sat besides him. The fire he built crackled in front of him and hid the darkening shadows of his ship’s tall masts and white sails behind it. A bright full moon reflected off the surface of the water with the plethora of constellations he studied in order to navigate the seas. Their blinking was blurred in his drunken vison as he glared up at them and hummed shanties until his eyelids slipped closed and he drifted off to sleep with the sound or cracking wood and crashing waves.

He heard her screaming as the sun started shining above the horizon and lifted his eyelids to see her standing at the edge of the water drenched like she had been swimming. Long red hair clung to her neck and her elaborately draped gown. The white ruffles of her underclothes were fraying and starting to tear. She stomped her foot in the sand at the receding white sails that ignored his ship then turned to face him.

“You!” she screamed. “This is all your fault!” She pointed an accusing finger at him with a voice that grew hoarser each time she opened her lips to let out the Irish accent she tried to hide so well.

“You should take a swig of this and wet your lips a little bit, Miss,” he slurred. “I can hear the salt beginning to tear at your throat.” His voice came out gruff with his accent broken by the time he spent as a privateer for the King’s navy.

“I don’t need your bloody rum you damned pirate!” She stormed over and knocked the bottle from his hand. It fell and shattered in the sand.

He watched her disappear into the brush behind him, swaying in a way that made him stare. A fine woman he thought. As well as wonderful company. He stood up and tried to follow her, but his body was still recovering from his nighttime drinking. His eyes wandered to the broken bottle in the sand where the deep red liquid of his rum dripped and soaked into it. He found it a shame, seeing it go to waste. At least the white sails of his ship were still sitting in open water and not scared off by the lady in red that escaped into the bushes within the palm trees. She would die of hunger or fail to quench her thirst in the brush. He picked up a coconut from the ground, one that seemed like it would hold enough water within it, and did his best to follow her footprints that led further inland.

She was sitting on a flat rock near an abandoned water powered mill that was crumbling in its stone foundation. Her eyes studied it and tried to make sense of its function. A trench dug through the island where the water would run through and spin the wheel that ran the mill. What kind of mill, that was unknown to her, but she studied its shape from afar. When he found her, she was staring as intently as she could and did not look up when he stepped over a decaying log to sit down close to her. He found a rock amongst the branches and slammed it into the hairy shell, pulling away the piece that fractured away and trying to hand it to her.

“Drink,” he said, trying to sound as genuine as he could.

“I told you, I don’t want your rum,” she barked.

“It’s not rum. Your thirst will take you first if you don’t drink.” He tried again, handing her the broken open coconut, and she snatched it from his hand, spilling a portion of its contents over her still drenched clothing. “Be better if it was rum,” he mumbled. She glared sideways at him over the rim of the coconut’s shell. “So, what led you to be stranded on this lonely stake of land?” She stopped sipping a moment to answer him.

“The captain of the ship that I was on, cursed be his name, decided that having me aboard was bad luck after a number of his crew came down with scurvy.” She tipped back the coconut and let the last of its contents drip helplessly into her mouth. As she moved to toss the empty husk, he grabbed her by the wrist.

“No need to be wasting a good shell.” He took it from her hand. “Fruit is good for scurvy.” She continued to stare at him. “Well, don’t wait on me, continue your tale.”

“They threw me overboard to save themselves, let alone the bad luck that could come from tossing me aside to begin with.” She huffed and bent over, resting her chin in her hand.

“You are missing a few key details in your storytelling there,” he said mindfully.

“Like what?”

“What you are called perhaps, maybe why you were traveling aboard a ship to begin with?” He stared at her waiting for an answer and she sat back to continue looking at the old mill. She acted like she was not going to answer him anytime soon and he stood to leave her to her musings but she stopped him before he had taken his third step.

“I was traveling across, hoping to see my brother.” Her voice hitched and sounded like she was on the verge of tears. “He’s been staying in Florida, helping set up a new plantation. It had been a year since his last correspondence and I was beginning to get worried.” She swallowed back hard and tried to get the rest out. “Before long, I had sold my mother’s jewels and hired a merchant ship to take me across the Atlantic.” Her face quickly turned sour and she glared angrily at the mill with her chin upturned. “I guess my name meant nothing to those filthy men once they marooned me.”

“And what name might that be?” he asked.

“Cranston, Elizabeth Cranston.” She kept her nose upturned and sat with her legs crossed like she was posing for a courting at an elegant ball. His jaw dropped.

“I have heard many a tale come from the Cranston household,” he muttered. “And I am ashamed to say that I do know of your brother and his tale.” Elizabeth perked up and rushed him eager to get more information.

“You knew my brother?” she asked excitedly. “Where did you meet him? Do you know where he is? Is he safe?”

“Calm down, Miss Cranston.” He put up a hand hoping he might slow down her rambling. “I claimed to know of him. In no way have I personally interacted with someone of your family until today.”

“Well, have you heard of anything that could be of any help?” Her eagerness was disheartening for him and he looked at her with pity in his eyes.

“The ship that he was supposed to be on was sunk by the Spanish navy many months back. Whether I can say if that was before or after your brother arrived in Florida, I cannot say.” He sighed and decided to give her a small bit of hope. “However, I did hear the plantation men talking of a man with your last name.”

“You can say it,” she cried dejectedly. “My brother is dead.” She walked back over and collapsed down onto the fallen log.

He took his seat back beside her and was deciding what to do with her. How he was supposed to get a noblewoman to follow a privateer was beyond him, but he thought there was no shame in trying. He was thinking that if he could get some of the plantations to trust him enough with their cargo, getting her to trust him would be easy enough.

“John Sullivan, captain of the Ravens Wing. My ship, the one with the white sails that you were screaming at, is more than capable of making the journey to wherever it is you need be.” He looked at her hoping he struck home, but she just glared at him.

“And what makes you think that I should trust you? You’re just a lowly pirate,” she grumbled.

“You trust me, because I haven’t yet sent you to Davy Jones.” He pulled his Flintlock from the space in his belt and presented it to her, holding it by the barrel so the grip was facing her.

She slowly reached a hand out to it and took the pistol by its grip. The weight of it was heavy in her hands and she struggled to close her fingers around it tight enough as to not drop it. She had never held a weapon of any kind outside of the knives she had used at the dining table. It was an effort to try and pull back the hammer but she eventually managed to do it after bringing up her other hand to help her stabilize the pistol. All the while, John stared at her with a raised eyebrow. With both hands, Elizabeth aimed the barrel at John’s forehead. To her surprise, he leaned into it.

“You want to trust me, then trust me,” he said. He watched as Elizabeth pulled the trigger and was met with the subtle soft click of an unloaded weapon. She stared at him confused. “Spare powder and shot are still aboard my ship,” he said with a grin that was missing a couple of teeth.

She tossed the pistol into the sand and looked back towards the mill. There was a spot on one end that looked like a door and she decided it would be a good idea to take a look inside. Elizabeth stood and walked over to the opening. The ground was uneven and littered with rocks and loose dead branches. John got up to follow her and walked over to stand next to her in the doorway.

As far as the mill went, the inside was falling apart as bad as it was on the outside. The wooden beams that held up the roof were rotting away from how long the structure had sat dormant. The shrubbery had grown in from the floorboards and a collection of moss, leaves, and vines were descending from the support beams. It looked like a maze of broken milling equipment throughout and it was an effort to get through will the full gown that she had on. The fabric kept snagging on the ends of tables and other fragmented bits of wood.

Elizabeth took one wrong step and fell into a support beam; the roof could be heard crumbling and John threw himself into the building to grab her. He managed to grab her by the wrist and pull her back through the door just at the roof caved in on the two of them. They stumbled out the door and into the sand. John fell backwards with Elizabeth landing face down on top of him. They looked each other in the eyes, just staring. It felt to them like they were staring into the other’s soul. The moment went by while the continued to stare until one of them finally spoke up.

“Fine, I’ll let you help me find my brother.”