Reborn as a Pirate Captain – My Journey to Build a Pirate Republic

Fenwick was half out of his chair before James got another word past his teeth.

"Disease? Who’s taken sick, Captain? Ye said it like a man breakin’ bad news."

"Nobody’s sick."

James waved him back down. "Not yet, and I mean to keep it that way. Which means talkin’ about it now, before it happens, instead of after some poor bastard’s shittin’ his guts into the bay."

Whitlock’s quill hung over the page, waiting to learn whether this was worth the ink. Fenwick eased himself back into his chair, slower than he’d left it, and the whole table leaned closer in the way tired people do when they’ve decided to hear a man out before they start telling him he’s wrong.

James started to explain, "Folk that drink from water sittin’ near where their own waste ends up sicken and die of the bloody flux a sight more than folk who keep the two well apart. I’ve seen it happen often enough to trust the lesson, plain and simple."

"What is it in the water, Captain, that carries the sickness?"

"Educated men call ’em animalcules these days. Little creatures livin’ in the water, as fish live in the sea, only too small to see."

"You’ve seen these animalcules yourself?"

Whitlock’s quill still hadn’t moved.

"Can’t say I have."

James shrugged. "Doesn’t much matter whether a man watches the cause work. A drowned fellow’s just as drowned whether ye saw him go under or only found him afterward."

Nobody had an answer to that, which suited James well enough.

He put the remedy down as plainly as he could. "Keep drinkin’ water and shite water apart. Always. Every household, every street, and I don’t care how much bother it is."

Fenwick snorted. "That’s naught but plain sense, Captain. Any man who’s kept a farm knows better than to dig his well downhill of his own midden. Didn’t need a sermon with that many corners to tell me so."

"Aye, and that’s exactly what I’m askin’ the whole town to do, on purpose and everywhere, instead of just the one corner of yer own field ye already mind."

James leaned forward. "It goes further than the well and midden, though. Every privy pit gets walled, not just dug and left to soak straight into the ground beneath it."

"Walled?"

Fenwick scratched at his jaw. "Never heard of shoring up a shit pit before, Captain. It will cost good timber to keep shit in a hole it was already sittin’ in."

"Less than diggin’ a new well when the old one’s gone bad, though."

James raised a hand before Fenwick could answer. "Every pit sits downhill of the cistern and downhill of the stream both, never up. And when the flux shows its face in a house, whoever’s tendin’ the sick washes his hands before touchin’ another soul’s food or wound. That family don’t share a cup with anybody till it’s passed."

Mateo nodded slowly. "Some towns in New Spain do this also. Havana keeps hers better than most. Even there, men build where the ground is soft, then argue when the rains come."

Adrienne waited until then to speak. "In my own settlement, monsieur, the flux and the fever together took more souls in our last weeks than any musket ever did."

She kept her hands folded on the table. "We trusted our own well long after we should have stopped, because a man does not like believing the water killing his children looks exactly like the water that kept them alive the week before."

Nobody rushed to fill the silence afterward. James let it remain until it had said what it needed to say.

It was Isaiah who moved things along again.

"Then let us speak of what we build."

James nodded, glad enough for the help. "Kennels down every street, as any port already keeps for the wet season, only ours run everywhere and get built right. Sluices where the ground needs controllin’, timber-walled and graded so the muck runs off instead of sittin’ there stinkin’ in the sun. Every household answerable for whatever stretch runs past their own door."

"Graded which way?"

"Away from the cistern and the he stream that feeds it. Every kennel in this town runs downhill toward the bay and nowhere else, and I don’t care whose door that puts uphill of whose."

"And the household whose stretch runs foul?"

Isaiah asked. "Who tells them so, and what follows the telling?"

"As anythin’ else we’ve built today, watch spots it, word goes to the assembly if it doesn’t get fixed quick, and the assembly decides what’s fair."

Whitlock finally put his quill down. "I’ve written laws punishing men for what they’ve already done, Captain. I confess I’ve never written one meant to punish a man for something that never happened, on account of the law working."

"Count the graves you didn’t have to dig," James snickered. "That’s your proof."

Fenwick waited until then before trying again. "Beggin’ pardon once more, Captain, but where’s a pirate come by knowin’ this much about water and drains and walling shit pits? You talk of it like a man who’s buried more folk than he’s ever led into a fight."

James clicked his tongue. He couldn’t quite say it was knowledge from the future.

"Ask me again once somethin’ I’ve told you has turned out wrong, Fenwick. I’ll wait."

Nobody at the table took him up on it.

James turned instead toward the gallery, where three captains had been standing about pretending this business had nothing to do with them.

"One more thing, and it’s not for the table. It’s for the three of ye back there."

Thatch raised a brow, Bonnet politely stood to listen and Sam tilted his head.

"Scurvy takes more men on a voyage than most captains care to admit."

James said. "Doesn’t touch you much hoppin’ island to island, but if you are out weeks with nothin’ but salt meat and ship’s biscuit, lay in citrus and greens. The lads will thank you for it, even while they’re cursin’ you for makin’ ’em eat fruit like scolded children."

Thatch snorted, looking wounded by the accusation. "Never lost a man to scurvy aboard the Revenge in me life."

Sam leaned in, more curious than offended.

"How much is enough, then? A barrel a man, or less?"

"Enough that a man’s gums stop bleedin’ before you reach open water. More than ye’d think, and less than ye’d fear."

Bonnet nodded, with rather more ceremony than the moment called for, "I am obliged for the counsel, Captain, and shall see it done at once."

Whitlock tapped his finger on the quill.

"I was not aware this assembly’s authority extended to captains standing outside its own vote."

That earned another laugh, and at last the room’s energy began to thin, the way it does after a long afternoon when everybody’s business is near enough done and nobody quite wants to be the first man to stand.

It was Mateo who broke the last of the silence, in a easy tone. "Captain. There is a story making the rounds among the sailors. I have heard it from three different men now, and each tells it a little differently."

James looked over.

"About old ruins hidden away where nobody thought to look before you arrived."

Without quite meaning to, every eye at the table drifted toward James.

James kept his face easy enough, though what lay behind it wasn’t easy at all. It reminded him of a man smiling through a wound hidden beneath his coat, where nobody else could see the blood.

For a moment he said nothing.

He turned the question over in his head the way he’d turned over every other matter that afternoon.

The difference was this one wasn’t going to settle half so neatly.