"It's lost." "For the moment, Nassau town is lost." "That much is painfully clear." "It is our duty now to secure ourselves here." "I think we're all properly angry about what he did on the Underhill estate, but Billy has influence that is best not ignored." "Billy told me I should worry that you will be Madi's end." "After you fled, reprisals were visited upon our loved ones upon the Edwards estate." "I wonder, ma'am, if he might want you to leave when he learns of your current state of being." "She's flying the governor's banner." "It's him!" "Ready the men." "We'll make our landing under cover of the fort's guns, reinforce them, and move to retake Nassau." "I am prepared to surrender the governor's remaining forces to you, control of the fort, all of it, in exchange for the cache." "No." "Trust me." "Give me a hand with this chest." "Where have you been?" "And where's Flint?" "In a moment, a woman I don't know is going to walk out of that fort." "She's going to move towards a longboat in which we'll have placed two men to row her to Governor Rogers' ship." "We have ensured that she'll arrive unharmed to deliver a message to the governor." "We ensured?" "I'm sorry." "When and why did we decide to do that?" "Because Captain Flint has offered himself as collateral to Eleanor Guthrie inside the fort." "If we breach our pledge, he dies." "Collateral?" "What the fuck are you talking about?" "To guarantee our compliance... as part of a bargain in which the British will be surrendering their position in Nassau." "Every man on the beach will need to be told." "Pass the word." "Now." "I would appreciate it if you'd double check... the transport." "Yes, ma'am." "There are some supplies that I would like to be transported over, too." "Thank you." "Go and find Mrs. Hannah." "She'll know what to do." "No one will harm you out there." "How can you be so sure?" "Because they know if anything happens to you, Flint dies." "No one is going to test me to see if I'm serious about that." "When you get to the ship, when you get to him, you know what to say to him." "Yes, ma'am." "And you know what not to say to him." "If he balks about leaving, which he is almost certain to do... it might help if he knew it wasn't just your welfare that was in question." "I won't have him learning about it like this." "I just won't." "I understand." "You should be going." "Eleanor Guthrie..." "Eleanor Guthrie told you she'd surrender the fort and all of Nassau with it if Flint agreed to act as her hostage to guarantee the deal?" "Are you really gonna make me ask?" "It wasn't all she got." "What else did she get?" "It was agreed that in addition to guaranteeing the safe departure from the island of her and all her people... that we would retrieve and surrender to her the cache of gems remaining from the Urca gold." "It guarantees a quick victory to a fight we'd otherwise be far from guaranteed to win." "Guaranteed?" "When is anything ever...?" "And you agreed to this?" "I didn't agree to anything." "The offer was put to Captain Flint." "He had little time to decide." "I trust his judgment." "They're right in our path." "What do you want to do?" "I have this." "What the hell is this?" "Mrs. Rogers has asked me to relay a message that is of the utmost importance." "I should certainly hope it is." "She intends to surrender her position." "What?" "She has negotiated an arrangement with Captain Flint in which he will pay for this surrender with the stolen cache of gems to secure your future together." "She asks that you withdraw to allow for this transaction to proceed, retire to Port Royal for a fortnight and await her arrival." "If she has not arrived..." "Someone clear that launch." "Mr. Molin, get us underway." "We proceed." "Prepare to make our landing." "My lord." "Prepare for landing!" "Is the governor still approaching?" "He is, ma'am." "If I wanted to fire a warning shot, how close would I have to aim for it to be effective?" "How close?" "I'm not interested in holing his ship, but need him to understand that I am committed to this." "What's the distance to his ship?" "What's the distance to the governor's ship?" "1,200 yards, approximately." "Closing." "I'd lead her by two ship lengths." "Continue our approach." "Again, please." "Ma'am." "Again, please." "Reload." "I beg your pardon, my lord, but she demanded that I relay what follows..." "Her words precisely..." "In spite of any protest you offered." "She says she knows that you will be angry and that this will be hard for you to understand... but she said..." "She said you should trust that her commitment to you remains inviolable... and that this is no betrayal... but an act of love." "And an act she is determined to see through to its end." "Mr. Molin." "Come hard to starboard and make your course north-northwest." "Sir?" "Stand down the gun crews." " Hard to starboard." " Set course north-northwest." "Stand down the gun crews." "Set course for north-northwest." "Thank you." "Are you all right?" "I am." "What happened?" "I heard the governor took Captain Teach's ship and threatened an invasion." "Why now does he sail away?" "Flint just agreed to trade the cache in exchange for a complete surrender." "To trade it?" "All of it?" "All of it." "The money that was to be our treasury upon which the viability of this entire enterprise was premised." "If this bargain consummates, it will be gone." "So much to give up." "But I think he made the right decision." "Controlling Nassau without the cache will be a challenge, but one I don't think can be avoided." "You're kidding me!" "No." "Are you kidding me?" "You did not see what I saw at the Underhill estate." "There has been immeasurable, unspeakable suffering on this island as a result of Billy's actions." "Whatever trust may have been between the slaves here and our alliance is gone." "This enterprise is on the verge of collapse and it cannot withstand a fight against the governor's men right now." "What price can be too high to prevent it?" "Drastic measures will need to be taken of which, I'm afraid, this will only be the first." "What is that supposed to mean?" "The damage done to this alliance was caused by Billy." "It may be that the only way to repair this damage is to remove that which caused it." "Remove him?" "It will be the only way to regain the trust of those slave communities uncertain about what this alliance stands for." "And you know as well as I" "Billy cannot exist alongside Captain Flint for long." "Sooner or later, one or the other must go." "If we win Nassau even through surrender, we are still going to have to control it." "Without the resources afforded by the cache or the force supplied by Billy and his men, how the fuck do you imagine we're going to do that?" "We will struggle through it, train men, gain strength through numbers, hunt for that which we need." "It will be difficult." "But since when did we expect this would be anything else?" "What?" "Jesus." "You sound exactly like him." "Why is this a problem?" "Where are you going?" "I have a siege to manage, for which I'm going to need Billy's help." "Wait!" "Billy was your friend." "This is not easy for me, but I know it is harder for you." "Please." "Don't forget that I know that." "I haven't." "If this goes away," "Flint's war, if it all ended and we had to walk away from it..." "Walk away?" "Would I be enough for you?" "You know what?" "You don't have to answer that." "We'll send Kofi to retrieve the cache." "Your mother will trust him." "No news from outside the walls?" "A ketch was seen departing the day before last." "We were told it was sent to retrieve the cache, but since then, nothing." "He's dead, isn't he?" "Mr. Scott." "Were you with him?" "I've heard about his role amongst your maroon allies." "Were you with him before he died?" "I was." "I've been told that he departed the island before all of this started." "That he killed two soldiers in the process." "Everyone assumed he'd turned, that somehow one of you had turned him, but that isn't what happened, is it?" "No, it isn't." "For how long had he been secretly aiding them?" "He began, he said, after the Spanish raid." "Did he say why he did it?" "He told me that he feared for the safety of his wife and his daughter, so he had them transported to a place they'd be safe." "They weren't killed in the raid?" "Are they still alive?" "Yes, they are." "For so long, I thought I knew what I was." "A daughter who usurped her father." "A woman who had taken control of a wild place." "Scott was proof of that." "The one who saw me that way, too, who substantiated it." "And all that time, all he saw was a girl so ambitious... she would never doubt his story." "So, she would continue to play the part." "Draw everyone's attention away from himself." "You did do all those things." "I know I did." "But always with a man behind me doing his damnedest to bend it all to his benefit." "My father, Scott, Charles, you." "So many goddamn men here." "Too many goddamn men here." "Woodes Rogers." "He's really so different from the rest of us?" "There's very little I wouldn't do to protect my wife." "Of course, my lord." "I had concerns when we first arrived in Nassau, and I told her as much... that the instincts that had allowed her to survive for so long there, to thrive there, would eventually return." "And that when they did, it would cause conflict between us." "I don't believe that's what's happened, my lord." "You don't?" "She's done this out of devotion to you." "There's no doubt in my mind about that." "No, I don't doubt it either." "I know she has no love for Flint nor any sympathy for his cause." "I fear the instincts that have awoken in her are more insidious than that." "She has begun to believe again that disorder in Nassau is inevitable, that civilization is powerless, either through lack of will or capacity to do anything about it." "Civilization has a number of faces." "To think them all powerless to alter Nassau's future... is a terrible mistake." "Yes?" "Harbor patrol is deploying." "We've arrived." "Harbor patrol?" "My lord, where are we?" "There is very little I wouldn't do to protect my wife." "What the hell have you done?" "If the British Empire will not aid us in fighting our present enemy, perhaps a different empire will." "Strike our colors." "Raise the white flag and make a course to enter the harbor." "Strike our colors!" "Raise the white flag!" " Strike our colors!" " Raise the white flag!" "If they fire on us... we'll be sunk before we get our gunports open." "They won't fire on us." "I beg your pardon, sir, but we're at war." "Why wouldn't they?" "The most recognizable British governor in the New World is attempting to sail a man-of-war requesting parley into the port of Havana." "If you were them, wouldn't you want to know why?" "Your contact?" "Juan Antonio Grandal." "Colonial Intelligence." "That's the Walrus." "Everything we've put that ship through... and she just refuses to die." "It's fucking unnatural." "They'll all follow you." "You know that, don't you?" "Flint thinks these people would run when confronted by the governor's men." "He's so convinced they won't stand behind you and fight, he's ready to hand over the cache to avoid the outcome." "And he's wrong." "You're exactly what I hoped you'd be." "A rational man to lead Nassau." "That's the first in recent memory." "And one that they'd allow to lead them into a rational future..." "This doesn't have anything to do with reason, and you know it." "You want them following me only to the extent that I, in turn, will follow you." "I'm a convenience designed to aid you in ruling over Nassau with the same uncompromising grip you'd vilify from Flint." "If I choose to side with him, trade the cache for the fort and his life, are you honestly suggesting you'd let it happen?" "That you wouldn't use your men to force a scenario by which he ends up dead?" "I'm not gonna stand by and watch while all our futures are destroyed." "No." "But perhaps it's worth focusing on how hard I'm working to persuade you not to make that decision." "I would far, far rather do this with you than against you." "And I have faith you can see what is abundantly clear here." "We have Nassau." "We have a ship with which to hunt and acquire more." "And when that cache arrives, we will have the money to govern it all." "We made a deal, Billy." "We gave our word to Madi, her mother, their people that we were all committed to the same war." "That's Flint's deal, not mine." "And not yours." "Their people need a place to call home?" "Here it is." "And we are contemplating throwing it away to continue a war that, sooner or later, is guaranteed to end in defeat." "You know I'm right." "You know I'm right." "Slow them down." "The sooner that ship's afloat, the sooner they'll all want to hunt, and we need them on the beach." "Consider it done." "I would like to be alone." "All right." "You'd like to be a part of this?" "What would you do?" "Sooner or later, that cache is going to arrive, and there'll be no more delaying." "I'm committed to Flint." "I'm committed to Madi." "Yet the road they intend to travel is one I'm losing the ability to understand." "I know what Billy's done..." "What should be unforgivable..." "And yet till so very recently, there's no one in the world I called a closer friend." "The more he talks, the more I remember why." "To turn on him now, to have him killed... which is what it would take to side with Flint... seems like something" "I don't know I have it in me to do." "You don't know?" "You don't know?" "Why should I follow you if you don't know?" "Why would anyone?" "I don't give a shit what goes on in there." "Fuck Flint." "Don't fuck Flint." "Fuck Billy." "Don't fuck Billy." "I don't give a shit what you choose, but fucking choose!" "And don't make me suffer the thinking." "Worry ain't a good look for a king, not in a kingdom like this where loyalty is in short supply." "Did you counsel him to come here?" "No." "But the urgency of his situation demanded it." "It was a mistake." "Inglés?" "I think you know who I am." "I think you know what I am." "You and I are enemies as our kings are at war with one another." "But their war... right now their war is meaningless to me." "I came to Nassau before it began to foster commerce, and toward that end, to combat piracy, to defeat it." "That was my war." "And I had that victory within my reach." "I had it." "But my enemy has remade itself since then, made allies with an army of maroons, and has now dedicated itself to disorder of the grandest scale." "Inciting others..." "Slaves, sailors, wage laborers alike..." "To join their fight and give their lives to destroy the civilized world." "Labor fuels commerce and commerce fuels security." "If these people are successful in compromising the first, there is no end to the damage they can cause the rest." "In this war... you and I have far more that unites our interests than separates them." "For if Nassau falls, if it becomes a dark symbol of what mayhem these men can unleash, a rallying cry that might be heard throughout the New World... how long before these same men turn their eyes to Cuba?" "To your plantations and your ships?" "How long before Spanish slaves are emboldened by it and set their eyes on you?" "When you are forced to write to King Philip, begging his assistance in staving off the army of slaves and pirates on your doorstep... would you not wish in that moment that you had this one back when it was possible to kill this monster in its cradle... cheap and quick and quiet?" "I had a younger brother once." "Simón." "He was a midshipman aboard Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación." "Beneath a flag of surrender, he was butchered." "And I'm told you likely wielded the sword personally." "Am I misinformed?" "No." "You are not my enemy because my king tells me so." "Don't insult me by suggesting otherwise." "If the situation in Nassau is as you say it is, why are you here?" "Why are you not in Williamsburg or Kingston seeking help from your own?" "I've tried." "They won't listen." "Maybe because they care more about the war against Spain than I do." "Maybe because this just isn't as personal to them as it is for me or for you." "This is personal to me?" "Of course it is." "The pirates offered me a cache of stolen gems to persuade me to surrender." "The cache of gems representing the last remaining share of the Urca plunder." "They're paying for their war with your money." "What is it you think will come from this?" "You think I'll commit men and sail with you?" "To fight an insurgency on your territory, force my men to decipher friend from enemy amongst that sort of confusion?" "My friends are all besieged within Fort Nassau." "My wife is there." "I'd beg you to spare them, avoid the fort entirely." "And in exchange, the fort will offer no resistance to your landing." "Once you land, once you are past the fort..." "I envision no confusion." "You needn't decipher anything." "I'd simply ask that you burn it all to the ground." "The ship was spotted on the horizon, approaching the rendezvous beach from the south and flying no colors." "Kofi and his men are returning." "The wind is dying out." "The cache will be on the sand in a few hours, at most." "Who knows they've arrived?" "So far?" "Him, you, and I. That's it." "Sooner or later, people are going to know." "And we're gonna have to give them instructions about what happens to that cache once it lands." "There's no more putting off a decision." "Giving up that money is an impossibility." "Flint will just keep pushing for these things, costly things that we pay for with our own suffering, with our own lives." "You know this." "You've always known this." "Sooner or later, it has to end." "You send word to the fort and tell them it's here." "Arrange for them to come out." "I'll have men waiting there." "I'll end it quickly." "All you have to do is look the other way." "I don't want it happening in full view of that beach." "Yeah." "What was that?" "It's arrived." "The cache?" "What else does it say?" "It's across the island." "Mr. Silver insists that we exit through the northwest tunnel where we'll be escorted over land to the southern coast." "The transport will meet us there." "This wasn't part of the deal." "Sailing a fortune in jewels into that harbor in full view of a beach filled with enraged pirates, you can understand his reluctance." "This way, there will be far less risk of anyone disturbing the exchange." "I saw his face when you accepted this deal, and I imagine you did, too." "If there is anyone on that beach with a desire to disrupt this exchange," "I'm concerned Mr. Silver may be first among them." "I'm not concerned." "Lieutenant Utley." "Select six of your men to escort us." "Mr. Soames is in charge until I return." "The men are all in position?" "They are." "About a dozen of them beyond that tree line." "Once Silver gives the signal, they'll close in." "They'll have soldiers with them." "Tell Silver it's important we wait until they've all cleared the tunnel before we make any kind of move." "When the time comes," "I don't want anyone else touching Flint." "I'll handle it." "This isn't right." "All those men out there that you and I have fought alongside." "I can't believe I'm the only one who knows this isn't right." "You built all of this." "The resistance." "It wouldn't have worked without you." "But part of what you built, it worked too well." "Long John Silver." "All he had to do was open his mouth, say your name, and everyone listened." "What was it that he said about me?" "He said the reason Flint's fleet never got warning of the barricade in the harbor wasn't because Mr. Featherstone didn't relay it... wasn't because Max intercepted it." "He said it was because you never sent it in the first place." "And they all believed him." "I don't think anyone actually believed it." "You weren't indicted based on the facts, or our suspicions of your motives." "He just said it." "Only, no one had the balls to defy him." "I told them" "I should be the one to do it." "If it was gonna happen," "I thought it should be a friend." "But fuck it." "I won't do it." "You've all forgotten your oaths." "They were given to this man when that man was just a fiction." "To hell with all of you who can't tell the difference!" "To hell with all of you!" "Stop!" "Take him to the Underhill estate." "Do it." "Captain?" "Is the cache on the sand yet?" "The cache isn't here." "What the fuck is this?" "I don't know." "Stand down." "Just wait!" "What are you doing here?" "We escaped the governor's men." "Came back to rejoin the fight, but didn't know if the harbor was safe to enter." "What are you doing here?" "You want to trade it?" "You want to trade the cache, my cache?" "It was the only way we could avoid a fight we were more than likely to lose." "And it guarantees us control of the island today and for certain." "All it guarantees is we no longer have the cache that we all agreed was critical." "And who decided this?" "You and Mr. Silver?" "It won't work." "It's done." "It's already agreed to." "She agreed to it." "Her people agreed." "You've agreed." "But it's all meaningless unless and until he agrees." "Woodes Rogers." "He left the island for Port Royal as she asked to await her arrival with the money." "He's already agreed to it." "No, he hasn't." "What is it?" "What do you see out there?" "I watched him defeat Edward Teach in battle... outnumbered and through sheer force of will." "I saw his bloodlust with my own eyes." "That man will never surrender his position here." "He will never allow himself to be defeated by you or I." "Not because we bribed him, not because Eleanor Guthrie told him so." "He simply will not allow it to happen." "I don't know where that man went or what designs drew him there, but this I know..." "Woodes Rogers will be returning... and this fight isn't nearly over."