“We needed a ship, not for a passage across the sea, but for our own. But we didn’t have any money with us to hire a ship, let alone buy one. So we decided to steal one. And the best ships were usually the naval ones. There, at the military docks of Campache, we saw some of the best ships of the Navy. Naturally, they were off limits to civilians. One of the ships there caught my eye. It was the most beautiful ship I’ve seen in my whole life. According to the information that we gathered, of all the ships that were there, it was one of the fastest. But unfortunately, that also meant it was heavily guarded. We also heard that the ship was sailing in a month. We needed to come up with a good plan to steal the ship.”

Shelly paused to take a breath. Then she started again. “From the next day, we started gathering information about the crew and the captain of that ship. We found out that the man who was going to be the captain disliked pirates, but he was very fond of gold and any sort of riches. A little too fond,” Shelly added with a sly smile. Her crew snickered too. Unless they were a strict follower of rules and discipline, greedy captains were easy to manipulate, if one knew how to talk well.

Shelly continued, “After knowing everything we needed to know, we came upon a plan. It was a silly plan, now that I think about it. But it worked. We dressed up as sailors and took jobs on that ship. We set sail on a perfect day. My partner and I kept an eye out for a nice stretch of land with a deep forest which would help us in our plan.

After almost two weeks, we found such a place which was perfect for what we had in mind. As arranged, we started an argument on the deck, which caught everyone’s attention. The captain came on the deck and asked for an explanation for our behavior. To this, my partner answered that; she had heard at the harbor that the famous pirate ‘Calico’ Jack had buried a treasure on the land that we were passing. She said that she wanted to tell him about this, but I wouldn’t let her. The captain glared at me-” Shelly paused and looked at Gary, who was telling something to Roy in his ears. “If you are not interested in the story,” she said angrily, “then there’s no point for me to waste my breath on you.” To which everyone hit, glared or yelled at Gary for ruining the story and Shelly’s temper. “Shut up!” Roy yelled. Once everyone calmed down, Shelly picked up where she left.

“Well, to make a long story short, the captain left me and my partner on board with two other men, and went to search for the treasure with the rest of his crew. After he was gone, we hit the remaining two men with two heavy sticks, tied the two fainted men with ropes and threw them in the galley. Here we made the mistake. Our mistake was to keep the men with us, and not throw them overboard. We didn’t even tie their hands! We had to pay a terrible price for our stupidity.

We started for Tortuga. Everything was going on fine. We were so happy with what we’ve done that we never suspected what was happening below at the galley. When we were almost at Tortuga, the two men came up from below.

My partner, she was at the wheel. She saw them first. She fired her pistol at once. Hearing the sound, I turned around and saw them. One of them was coming towards me. The other one went towards my partner. I took out my sword and blocked the man’s attack. On the other side of the ship, my partner was parrying the attacks of the other man. I sidestepped as my opponent crashed down the sword heavily. Then, I heard a scream.

As I turned to watch, my heart nearly stopped beating. Blood was flowing form my partner’s body. I wanted to run to her, but my opponent hit me in the chest and I fell down. My head felt dizzy, I could feel blood in my mouth.
When I got up, the man hit me again. My visions became blurry. Through the blur, I saw my partner toppling over the railing and falling down, towards the sea. But she did not go alone. At the last moment, she held the man who was her opponent, and together the fell down into the sea.

I couldn’t believe what I saw. Blood rushed to my head. I was so angry. I didn’t want to believe that I lost her. In my anger, I didn’t see the man readying his sword for one final attack. He held up his sword, and then charged it towards me with all his might. I wasn’t very fast in avoiding his attack. The sword tip scratched through my left eye.”