Red

His hands left a trail of red on the rig for a fortnight. Fourteen days of scabbed palms and aches in places he'd not known could hurt so, simply from a day's hard work. Climbing the ratlines was like scaling a roof to shingle it, only the whole of the house was a-tilt in the sea and no steady hold came to hand.

The lines were salt-crusted; salt burned in his wounds, but salt kept the fester away.

But naught could keep the fester away from his heart. If he'd only run faster, or fought harder...

My Dearest Darling Jenny-bird,

Yellow

The yellowed parchment trembled in Jenny's hands. She could not read the crabbed script, but her brothers had brought a man who could. He had given her the words, three times through, and she clearly recalled each one.

She knew he lived. She knew he loved her still.

The babe kicked in her belly and her throat closed, sealing in her fear. She knew him for a fool.

He hoped she'd refuse marriage to John White. The letter had called him "that villainous cad" and begged her remain unwed.

She must think of Joshamee Gibbs as dead, and go on.

Green

In a hurricane the sea turns green. All the old salts said so. He'd always pictured it being the color of grass, not the bottle green that hung over the water's surface now.

This blow looked to be the worst he'd seen, and Gibbs wondered if this would be when he went down to the emerald depths with the shards of a ship around him.

Hail Mary, full of grace... he prayed his Aves and his Pater Nosters, and then ended the way all his prayers did, ...and preserve her life and fill her with surety of my love, Amen.

Blue

Blue ribbon held her copper curls. Blue, too, was the voluminous dress that covered her. Blue always made her think of Josh's eyes.

The banns had been read and the vows exchanged; the feast had been held and the babe would be born with a name.

The skin on her arms was not blue; it was pale peach, decorated with green and purple. The marks on her thighs were still darker reddish-black. John White was a violent man when the drink was on him; that much Joshamee had been right about.

But the babe would be born with a name.

Purple

Dawn had a lavender cast to it here on the Caribbean Sea. First light always made the mists thicker, where full dark hid the humidity. Gibbs missed the honest night-fogs of London, subtle and grayed. A man could descry little in the night yet see clearly in the day. This was as it should be.

The tropics were all askew, in this as in every other thing.

Here on warm ocean a man might forget his heart. Here on the southern sea a man might glance at a fellow sailor and have a thought of... something not to be spoken

Black

"How did you learn your letters, John?" Gibbs asked, as Cotton made ready the ink and quill and pounce and parchment.

"Mum taught me, and all my brothers as well. Said it would serve, no matter what we 'prenticed," Cotton snorted a quick laugh. "Not much call for fine script in a sailor's life, though. She'd hoped I'd clark or keep shop."

"If'n you hadn't learnt, I'd be spendin' all my wage on the scriveners, aye?"

"Aye, and then you'd have less coin to stand me a round, come to time," Cotton licked his blackened fingertips, and dipped the pen.

White

She had planned to wear lily-white on the day they were wed, though the swell of her belly would have given lie to the color she wore. He loved her. He would have married her, even though he knew she carried another man's child.

Jenny loved Joshamee for the safety he'd offered her.

But her plans had come to nothing.

She wore lily-white when they laid her out in her coffin. She had buried two husbands by then, neither of them as brave nor as strong as the lad taken away to sea.

Gibbs' letters still came for years after.

Colourless

The old sailor's hands were gnarled and his colourless skin hung in deep creases all around his jowls. His chest rose and fell without rhythm and his eyelids trembled with the effort of holding together body and soul. Kneeling over his bedstead, the young priest took a deep breath and composed himself for the Last Rites he'd been called to give.

"Have you anything to confess, my son?" It felt strange to call one old enough to be his grandsire by a child-name.

Gibbs acknowledged the only sin that mattered: "I loved a woman. I loved her more than God."