"The only way to truly ensure that the Urca gold doesn't return here is to eliminate everyone with the knowledge of where it is and how to retrieve it." "Are you angry with Anne for leaving or are you angry with me for offering her the opportunity?" "You think there's something valuable enough to make the British Navy forget that you and I are pirates?" "Not what, who." "Acquiring the partnership of a plantation the size of Mr. Underhill's could help bolster commerce on my side of the island." "Richard Guthrie betrayed Nassau." "As far as you and I, I was warned about you." "Warned you would betray me." "I made clear the price for the girl." "You should know me well enough to know I will claim it." "My father said there would be law in the Americas the day Captain Flint swung over Charles Town." " You're Captain Flint?" " I am." "And you wish an audience with Lord Ashe?" "Welcome to Charles Town." "I can't say enough, miss, how saddened we all are by this loss." "All my life I was a pauper." "With your father's help I plied a trade." "I'll always be grateful for that." "Do you need a respite, ma'am?" "Some bread and fruits from the girls." "May I sit?" "Thank you." "I can imagine how difficult this must be." "Being the daughter they expect you to be." "I would think that at least with me, you would know that I know the truth about how complicated the situation is for you." "Your relationship with him." "Your relationship with Captain Vane." "And because of that, you would not pretend otherwise." "And that that might bring some small measure of comfort." "There is no part of this that is complicated." "I crossed Charles, he retaliated." "That is what happens in a war." "A war?" "A state of affairs in which resolution only comes when one side has suffered enough pain it's willing to concede its principles." "I presume you've heard Charles's manifesto." "I heard it's been read aloud on the beach." "Everyone must take a side, he says... with him against reconciliation with England or with me." "Those people out there heard him and they came to my door not to pay their respects, not because they loved my father... but because when this war begins, they want to make sure I don't mistake them for enemies." "Is that why you've come?" "Or have you yet to choose a side?" "I'm interested to see what she does now." "How did that go?" "I have seen what Eleanor Guthrie can build when she is feeling ambitious." "I have seen what she can destroy when she is angered." "Which of the two was she just now?" "She was something else entirely." "How soon can you be ready to sail?" "Just finalizing the route, sorting out supplies." "I assumed we'd depart tomorrow at some point." "Leave as soon as possible." "There are foul things brewing here." "Yes?" "They're here." "Do you know why you're here?" "Yes, ma'am." "Good." "Then we move at sundown." "The proposal that I have come all this way to make is one that may at first strike you as implausible." "However, I ask that you remember that..." "I love my daughter." "More than life itself." "When I received that despicable letter" "I was given to dark thoughts, rage." "A desire to visit revenge upon those men that put her through that ordeal." "It would seem only reasonable, then, that I bear an equal measure of gratitude to the man who rescued her from it." "Were it not for that gratitude, you and I would not be speaking like this." "You and Colonel Rhett would be having a very different conversation." "Because while I knew you once, called you friends once," "I cannot fathom how those people I knew turned into you." "Ask me, then." "Anything you want to know." "I will be truthful." "Anything?" "When did you first arrive in Nassau?" "Two months after we saw you last in London." "February, thereabouts." "The first accounts of Captain Flint raiding shipping in the area began in June." "You became the captain of a pirate crew in four months?" "I became the captain of a pirate crew faster than that." "It took us four months to secure our first significant prize." "How did you manage that so quickly?" "I met a man in a tavern." "Quartermaster of a well-respected crew." "I persuaded him that I was someone worth listening to." "A crew followed shortly thereafter." "And how long after that was it that you decided to murder Alfred Hamilton?" "I received a letter from a former servant." "She mentioned innocently that Alfred was travelling in secret." "And she mentioned the name of the ship." "I encouraged James to find him." "And to kill him." "If you're going to blame anyone for it, please, blame me." "The governor may know who you are," "I only know what you are." "Let us agree that if either one of you gets any closer to the governor than you just did," "I will be forced to consider that a threat to his person and I will shoot you where you stand." "I cannot stand before you and claim to be without sin." "When we received that letter from you informing us of Thomas's death, the damage wrought by Alfred Hamilton was too much for us to bear." "We were angry." "We allowed that anger to drive us to a dark deed." "But I ask you not to judge me by that one deed." "Judge me by the ends that I have come here in service of." "The redemption of Nassau in accordance with the principles that you and I and she and Thomas Hamilton committed ourselves to all those years ago." "I ask nothing from you but your ear." "I'm listening." "Footrope." "Bitch of a spot." "Fucking death trap if it isn't fixed before we set sail." "Let's try this again." "You idiots are the fucking riggers of this ship." "So which of you would like to volunteer to repair our topsail yard footrope so that when Captain Flint returns, he returns to a ship that can hoist its fucking sails without fatalities?" "It's a bad omen." "A man died on them ropes." "Can't touch it till it's fixed." "You're all good people." "Tell me something." "Is he going to find anything up there?" "What would he find?" "An indication that the rope didn't just fray on its own." "No." "Absolutely not." "It'd be almost impossible." "What?" "What is it?" "I thought I saw something in the water." "Tell the watch on the main so they can keep an eye on it." "I'm sure it was nothing." "Tell them anyway." "The Lord is my shepherd." "I lack nothing." "He makes me lie down in green pastures." "Leaves me beside the quiet waters." "Refreshes my soul." "He guides me along the right path for His name's sake." "Even though I walk through the darkest valley," "I will fear no evil, for You are with me." "Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me." "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies." "You anoint my head with oil." "My cup overflows." "Surely Your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord evermore." " Amen." " Amen." "Mr. Underhill." "All his wealth, all his ambitions, yet here he rests." "One might see a lesson in that." "Before you return home," "I had hoped that you and I might share a word." "Privately." "What do you wish to speak about?" "Ambition, sir." "Yours and mine." "Total reconciliation?" "This is what you're suggesting?" "A return to colonial rule with an existing power structure in place." "And I am to believe that 500 hardened pirate raiders will voluntarily step down, fall in line with this plan of yours and volunteer their labor?" "Not all of them." "A lot of them." "Most of them." "Enough to resist those that won't." "Enough to make it worth giving them a chance." "I made an appeal to my crew of 100 men." "And better than 70 of them are sitting right now just outside your harbor in full support of it." "It is exactly as Thomas proposed" " all those years ago in London." " Yes." "But then we were talking about less than half the number of criminals on the island." "We were talking about a failing colony, not a failed one." "We also didn't have the most respected captain on the island standing in advocacy of our plan." "Now we do." "We didn't have the trade boss of the island actively working to reform operations then." "Now we do." "And we didn't have a man who has established himself as the New World's most committed pirate hunter endorsing it." "The first thing that they will ask for is a name." "A name?" "It is as true now as it was then." "New Providence will only ever succeed insofar as its governor can make it so." "Were I to make this case to the men I know in Whitehall the first question that they will ask is who will oversee all this?" "Who will be responsible for its success or failure?" "You?" "There are things that I can do to help protect the fledgling colony." "I can help establish the militia." "I can organize the navy." "But beyond that," "I don't think that there's a part for Captain Flint in Nassau's future." "Not with the blood on his hands." "He will have to go away and leave James McGraw and Lady Hamilton to retire to the interior in peace." "Yes?" "Father, Mrs. Tyler says it's time to turn the room over for dinner." "Please ask Mrs. Tyler to arrange a room for our guests to retire to in the interim." "Something wrong?" "Nerves." "I'm fine." "If we're so worried he's gonna find something up there... what are we still doing here?" "Where exactly do you think we'd go?" "Charles Town is sleeping with one eye open and a knife under its pillow tonight." "Any one of us sets foot on that sand absent an engraved invitation from the governor is likely to greet the sunrise swinging." "We arrived on this ship." "Until and unless Captain Flint is successful in his endeavor, this ship is the only way we leave here alive." "If he was suspicious, he'd have come down by now." "I'm going to find Randall." "See who I can ridicule for the crew's amusement." "Randall." "Crew address is due at next bells." "If you have anything new for me by the way of gossip, now... would... be the... time." "Danger!" "Secure!" "Tie 'em up." "Down in the well with 'em." "Take them alive." "He doesn't want to consider it." "He spent so many years hardening himself to these ideas." "But I don't think he can work out how to say no." "If he says no, it means there's a part of him that is no more." "A part of him he doesn't want to let go of." "Did you mean it?" "Earlier." "You said Captain Flint would have to disappear for this plan to work." "Are you truly ready to let him go?" "Did I ever tell you where that name came from?" "No." "I told you of my grandfather who raised me." "A fisherman in Padstow." "Well, in his youth he was a deckhand on a privateer off the coast of Massachusetts." "And one night he was alone on the late watch at anchor in the Boston Harbor when he sees this man climbing out of the water and onto his ship." "A stranger." "Now, my grandfather thought about ringing the bell, but curiosity got the better of him." "The stranger approaches my grandfather and asks him for a little rum." "Man said that he'd fled his fishing trawler." "Accused of killing another man." "And when asked his name, the man simply replied..." "Mr. Flint." "This stranger, he never said whether he was guilty of the killing or why he chose that ship or where he was bound, he just... just sat there." "Eventually, he asked my grandfather for a little more rum from below." "My grandfather went off to fetch it, but when he returned... the man was gone." "My grandfather was in Boston for a month after that." "Never heard a word about a killing or a fugitive at large." "It was as if the sea had conjured that man out of nothing and then taken him back for some unknowable purpose." "When I first met Mr. Gates and he asked me my name..." "I feared the man I was about to create." "I feared that someone born of such dark things would consume me were I not careful." "And I was determined only to wear him for a while and then dispose of him when his purpose was complete." "And I thought of that story." "Am I ready to let him go?" "Truth is... every day I've worn that name" "I've hated him a little more." "I've been ready to return him to the sea for a long time." "James..." "They're ready for you downstairs." "What the fuck do we do now?" "The moment this ship is clear of the area, if not sooner," "Captain Vane will put the crew to the sword, yes?" "Most likely." "Eventually, they find us down here and do the same." "So either we swim to the beach and likely face the noose, or else do nothing, in which case it's the sword." "Come with me." "Where are we going?" "To execute the third option." "Persuade Captain Vane to surrender the ship." "Governor Ashe?" "He's coming here?" "Plans are underway as we speak." "When he arrives, I propose that you and I greet him together and we explain to him our joint venture to reclaim Nassau." "My ships, your sugar." "The return of legitimate commerce and the return of law." "For so many years" "I have watched you and your kind thieve and whore and kill like a plague upon this island, doing whatever you please because you can." "I've heard your appeal." "How could I be expected to trust one of you?" "How could you trust a pirate?" "Exactly." "I am no pirate, sir." "I'm an Englishwoman." "I'm my father's daughter." "And I will be the end of piracy in this place and it begins tonight." "What do you mean?" "I discovered a plan by one of the crews on the beach to reclaim a prize that is so large it would upset our world here." "Embolden piracy for years, possibly decades to come." "I identified the members of that crew with the specific knowledge of the whereabouts of that prize." "And I have ended their endeavor before it began." "You've ended it?" "How?" "Shh." "You're back." "Just landed." "I shouldn't have left the way I did, without telling you." "Wasn't your fault what happened." "It was a hard fucking choice put on you." "I didn't think I was gonna see you again." "I thought you'd just get to Port Royal and board a ship and never look back." "I thought about it." "But then I..." "What?" "Then I..." "My lord," "I know there are many reasons to say no to this, however..." " Colonel Rhett." " Yes, sir." "I'd like everyone to clear the room." "Sir?" "I'd like to speak with my guests privately for a moment." "Wait in the hall, please." "I believe there is a way that I can help you achieve your intentions for the future of Nassau." "And I am ready to do it." "However, my plan will require an act of you, Mr. McGraw, if it is to succeed." "And I don't think you're going to like it." "Are you hurt?" "Mostly unscathed, thanks to Anne." "Mr. Stayton and Mr. Atz are dead." "Jesus." "It would be wise not to tempt fate any further." "Eleanor will be returning from the interior sooner than later." "Can you sail without those men?" "Yes." "Fuck it." "Fuck her." "We leave now." "Go get us our prize." "Shift capstan bars." "Snap and go, boys." "Raise anchor." "Wait." "You certain this is a good idea?" "Yes." "We sever the forestay, the ship can't sail till it's repaired" " which could take hours, yes?" " Yeah, but..." "The longer Captain Vane remains in this harbor, the more dangerous it is for him and the more likely it is that Captain Flint might just win over the governor and bring his militia to bear to retake the ship." "I understand that, but the moment you go out there to sever that line, they'll send a team of men down here to clear the hold again." "We evaded them once." "Which makes trying it a second time that much more insane." "Perhaps." "But I see no other way that I... we survive this ordeal." "I can." "We swim and hope for the best." "It'd be dangerous, but it wouldn't be suicide." "Just tell me this, are you suggesting we do this to save ourselves or are you suggesting we do it to save the crew?" "You're the boatswain." "Mr. Gates's boy, aren't you?" "I've got a confession to make." "The Singleton affair, when Jack and I attempted to alter the vote on your ship, see Flint deposed, it was intended to induce key men on your crew to defect." "Then to recruit them ourselves." "But most specifically, it was with an eye toward recruiting you." "We'd heard about you." "Not some petty thief in it for coin." "Not some coward in need of a bottle to find his courage in a fight." "A proper pirate committed to our way of things." "Committed to a life free of the yoke..." "Fuck you." "And loyal to a fault." "You can see how that is a man we'd have wanted on our side of things." "A man I could still use now." "You have no fucking idea what's going on here, do you?" "Flint stole from me and I'm making it right." "Exactly." "You hate Flint." "I hate Flint." "But right now he's talking about how we survive what comes next." "And you're talking about what you think is yours." "When the navy arrives, they aren't gonna give a fuck what belongs to you or what belongs to me." "Because to them, there is no difference between you and me." "He has you so afraid of an imagined threat." "Nah." "I saw it with my own eyes." "The garrison on Harbour Island." "Royal Marines, a full company of them." "200 men in support." "The Scarborough anchored." "And a commander just waiting for the order to begin his assault against us and exterminate every last one us." "There is nothing imagined about the threat we all face, I assure you." "And right now your only plan to reckon with it is to try and fight them head to head, each crew for themselves?" "Right now, Flint's plan is the only plan." "Forestay!" "Forestay, Captain!" " What's going on?" " We lost the forestay." "Lost it?" "Fuck you mean, we lost it?" "Sabotage." "We must have missed someone." "Can we sail without it?" "Not without seriously risking losing that mast." "Drop the anchors." "Repair the stay quickly." "I'll get a team, clear the hold." "No." "I don't want to divert men away from the prisoners." "We can't leave a saboteur down there." "I don't intend to." "There are men in Whitehall who could potentially find a proposal such as yours to be plausible." "On religious grounds, on economic grounds." "I know some of these men." "You could almost certainly win them to your side." "But there are other men who will oppose it categorically for the same reason all men refuse to do things they should." "Pride." "You think they're too proud to put pardons on the table?" "I think they fear you." "And to capitulate to something one fears is a humiliation that powerful men cannot accept." "If we are to persuade them to ally with you, then we have to completely redefine their understanding of who you are, what you are." "How do you propose we do that?" "With the truth." "I will come with you to Nassau, survey the situation." "If it is as you say it is, you and I will sail to London together." "And when we arrive, you will stand up... and you will tell your story." "My story?" "What part of my story?" "All of it." "You will tell them about the affair with Thomas." "You will tell them how it ended." "You will explain to them what it drove you to do." "You will reveal everything." "And when you do," "Captain Flint will be unmasked, the monster slain." "And in his place will stand before all the world a flawed man, a man that England can relate to and offer its forgiveness." "What you're asking of me..." "I wish there were another way, but I have given it great thought and I cannot find it." "Tell me this is something that you are willing to do, and you and I will walk out of this house together, announce our partnership to the street, and prepare to set sail for Nassau." "Your clock by the wall... where did you obtain it?" "What?" "It looks very much like one that used to reside in my husband's parlor in London." "Identical, in fact." "I don't remember gifting it to you." "It was there when I left." "So I ask again, how is it you came to possess that clock?" "It was a gift." "From whom?" "From Alfred Hamilton." "The earl was no friend of yours, yet he grants you gifts from his own home." "Why would he do that?" "All these years it never sat right with me how Alfred was able to turn the navy against James." "He was far too admired by his superiors for his career to be dashed by solely on hearsay." "Alfred would have known that." "He wouldn't have gone to them armed only with unfounded suspicions." "He would have needed a witness, someone who knew Thomas and James well enough to give the accusation credibility." "Alfred came to you, didn't he?" "Asked you to betray Thomas in exchange for which he'd... see you made a king in the New World." "Perhaps this is an opportunity for us all to find a little forgiveness." "Forgiveness?" "What forgiveness are you entitled to while you stand back in the shadows pushing James out in front of the world to be laid bare for the sake of the truth?" "Tell me, sir, when does the truth about your sins come to light?" "You know nothing of my sins." "Were you there when Alfred Hamilton threatened my family's standing, my daughter's future if I failed to cooperate?" "Were you there when I visited Thomas at the hospital to confess my sins and heard him offer his full and true forgiveness?" "He knew I had no choice in the matter." " No choice?" " A hard choice." "Made under great duress, but with the intent to achieve the least awful outcome." "You wish to return to civilization." "That is what civilization is." "I am so very sorry for what you have suffered and for any part I may have played in it." "Please believe that." "But at this point, the most important thing is what comes next, what we make of this." " You destroyed our lives!" " Miranda." " You caused our exile!" " I am sorry for what I did." "Thomas died" " in a cold, dark place..." " I am trying to help you." " What more do you want from me?" " What do I want?" "I want to see this whole goddamn city, this city that you purchased with our misery, burn." "I want to see you hanged on the very gallows you've used to hang men for crimes far slighter than this." "I want to see that noose around your neck and I want to pull the fucking lever with my own two hands!" "This is not what I wanted." "Do not shoot him." "Don't shoot!" "We have a deal, then?" "Yes." "We must get back before we're missed." "We have much work to do." "Your father... when he came to me seeking sanctuary, telling me he wished to resist the continued presence of the pirates, he told me he'd repented for his past sins." "He seemed so genuinely contrite." "I knew his reputation." "I knew he was most likely telling me the story I wanted to hear, that his contrition was utilitarian at best." "But you, you don't even seem to be wanting to appear that way." "The time for storytelling is past." "Now is the time for cold, hard truths." "What is this?" "Who are you?" "Are you Underhill?" "I am." "Then I suggest you step aside, sir." "We've no quarrel with you." "However, we will be taking the girl." "Launch approaching!" "Hello." "Hello." "Man your stations." "Ready the guns." " What's happening?" " Shut the fuck up." "So... what do you suppose happens next?" "Pirate vessel!" "Pirate vessel!" "What follows is a message from the Lord Governor of the Carolina Colony." ""I trusted the good faith of your arrival and I accepted Captain Flint as my guest in the same spirit." "But I now regret to inform you that he has violated that trust in a most deceitful manner." "Therefore I've placed him under arrest." "This trial and its resulting sentence will be swift, just, and final." "And it will reestablish beyond any shadow of a doubt that the rule of law lives in Carolina, that the men and women of this place will not shrink from you, from any of you, from any like you," "and that the death of piracy in the New World has never been nearer than today." "At the conclusion of this trial, if your ship remains, I will seize or sink her."" "Now, let me tell you what happens next." "You were right." "Right about what?" "They can't tell the difference between you and I." "Nassau is strongest when she's feared." "And if what promises to happen here tomorrow actually happens, a trophy made of one of her most notorious captains, she may never be feared again." "So I suggest we do something about this." "I suggest we... get him the hell out of there." "Captain Hume." "I understand you hold in your possession 10 pardons for whomever was to deliver you Captain James Flint." "I wonder if I can't do better." "This is Eleanor Guthrie, the trade boss of Nassau, the woman who lorded over a savage pirate kingdom as if it were a plaything." "And without whom it cannot function." "Imagine, sir, how London would react to the arrival of the queen of thieves." "Imagine the spectacle of her trial." "Imagine the celebrity that'll be heaped upon her captor." "# I stepped into an avalanche #" "# It covered up my soul #" "# When I am not #" "# This hunchback that you see #" "# I sleep beneath a golden hill #" "# You wish to conquer pain #" "# You must learn #" "# Learn to serve me well #" "# When I am on the pedestal #" "# It did not raise me there #" "# Your laws do not compel me now #" "# To kneel grotesque and bare #" "# I myself am the pedestal #" "# For this ugly hump at which you stare. #"