***
The first moments were the most traumatic. Falling, then blackness rushing and tumbling around him; an incredible popping in his ears and a steadily increasing pressure. And then his air was gone and he gasped in a lungful of seawater - surely he must be almost dead - because who could stand this awful trickling-dripping-itching-burning in his chest? But it seemed to be taking so awfully long... it was going so terribly, terribly slowly, and his life wasn't flashing before his eyes, and instead he kept seeing that damned chest of coins and hearing the words of the curse ... and then, when he should have been long drowned, he believed them. And he was frightened.
The cannon carried him down through the water and he turned unseeing eyes towards what he thought, with the last vestiges of awareness, was the surface. And even as the madness set in and he began trying to struggle against the inexorable downward pull and the fierce pressure of the water, his eyes were full of the ones he loved. His son (safely in England, bless him), his mother (God rest her soul), and the captain (surely dead by now) he had so unwillingly betrayed.
***
The morning after the hurricane, Jim's mother sent him down to the beach, purportedly to look through the storm wrack - but in reality to keep the energetic seven-year-old out of her way while she attempted to repair the storm damage to their modest home. All Jim knew was that he'd gotten up early, planning to help his mother in his capacity as man of the house, but she'd had other ideas. And so, armed with a long, forked stick he'd long ago discovered to be useful for adventuring, his little water skin, and a piece of soggy bread for lunch, he found himself on the long strip of sand below his home.
As he waded through the piles of debris littering the beach, Jim kept his eyes open for any *real* valuables that might have washed ashore. This included various shiny stones (which he collected), interesting
shells (which he also collected), bottles (with or without messages), gold or jewels (preferably from a pirate hoard), and/or treasure chests (also pref. from a pirate hoard). So far he'd had little luck finding any but the first two. Little boys, however, are not easily discouraged. So it was with great vigor that Jim searched the beach that day - leaping at the birds that had come to scavenge with him, bursting the jelly fish that had washed ashore, and jabbing piles of seaweed with his flashing sword, er, stick.
It was in the midst of this last that a strange thing happened. And this is why: each time previously that Jim had stabbed the tangled masses of seaweed, there had been a faint squelching noise, followed quickly by the grate of his stick on sand. This time, however, as he was impaling a particularly huge pile of debris, there was the squelching and then a strange groaning sound. Jim's fear at this development, if there had been any in the first place, was quickly overcome by his innate curiosity.
Using the fork of his stick, he gingerly lifted a mass of seaweed and peered beneath it. There lay revealed, to Jim's great surprise, a man. Jim thought he looked like a nice man, but more importantly, like an interesting one; and even more importantly, one sent by divine providence. Because who else would have survived a storm of such ferocity and magnitude just to wash up on this largely uninhabited spit of land right were Jim was searching for treasures?
And if he was, as Jim suspected, divinely intended for this beach, then wouldn't his mam be ever so pleased to have one of those men of God she was always bemoaning the loss of in her house? So Jim set about uncovering and unearthing the man, determined to have the story of his grand adventures out of him.
Jim was perhaps two-thirds of the way through his rescue when the man opened his eyes. Jim wasn't quite sure just when the man had come to, because he'd been rather busy digging out his left leg and telling a scuttling crab all about what *must* have happened to his man (for that was what he'd taken to calling the poor soul he'd found beneath the seaweed.) In fact, it wasn't until the man croaked out, "Water," that Jim even realized his man had awoken.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, fumbling at his belt for the water skin, "Here sir, I reckon you've got a powerful thirst after what you've been through." The man smiled rapturously at the first taste of water; far more so, Jim thought, than was warranted. Later, as Jim was feeding the man his soggy bread he remembered something of his manners.
"By the way, sir, my name's James Hawley, I'm seven, and me and my mam live up that-a way. You can call me Jim." He looked expectantly at his man, who had finally managed to struggle into a semi-upright position. His man smiled, swallowed the last of the bread and held out a hand, which Jim was quick to clasp in what he thought was a very manly manner.
"William Turner, Jim. A pleasure to make your acquaintance." And
then as Jim was leading the way home, "You can call me Bill."
TBC
