Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom

and reefed the sails.
Jack, seeing him swarm up the spidery rope ladders, then walk
along a yardarm as though it was as wide as a street, exchanged a
covert glance and nod with Robby Greene. He’d been much the same
way when he’d first been allowed aloft, at the age of ten. When you
were young, fear was the last thing on your mind. There was only the
exultation of being up so high, of doing a man’s job.
As soon as the water beneath the Wicked Wench’s keel began to
take on the azure tints of the Caribbean, Jack altered his course,
turning north by west. He checked his position by sighting the
outermost islands of the Caribbees off his port beam, through his
spyglass. The first one in the arc of islands was the comparatively
large Barbados, then St. Lucia, identifiable by its high mountains,
followed by little Martinique, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua, and
Barbuda.
The captain’s decision to skirt the Caribbean was prompted by
his consciousness of the valuable cargo he was carrying, coupled with
the vulnerability of his under-gunned vessel. True, he’d organized all
available crewmen into gun crews, and begun training them to load,
aim, and fire the big guns as quickly and efficiently as possible, but his
men still had a long way to go before they’d be ready for battle. And he
didn’t have much powder to spare for practice.
Jack knew only too well that pirates had eyes and ears throughout
the Caribbean, and that news from a paid informant, describing the
Wicked Wench and reporting she was bound for England with a select
cargo of gold, ivory, rare woods, and spices, might well reach the
wrong ears. So he decided against docking at any of the established
ports. Still, he needed to replenish his water supply, and fresh food
was always a plus to sailors.
With this in mind, Jack sat down in his cabin one evening, thinking
about the many cays in the vicinity of the Bahamas. Men on the
account were always on the lookout for small, uninhabited, uncharted
islands that nevertheless boasted a supply of fresh water, and
sometimes even the prospect of fresh fruit, fish, and game animals.
He remembered a cay that Teague had used several times while
he’d sailed with him, a smallish one, only two and a half miles long and