The Song of the Sea

32. Trading Sirens

Jacob was surprised at how easy it was to persuade his men to go back and fight for their possessions, but he couldn't find it in him to be happy about that. The fact that they were willing to put their lives on the line so easily worried him. When he looked round the room, all he saw in their faces was desperation and weariness. Pete summed it up well.

"We're tired, Captain. We've been at this now for 5 years. None of us are getting any younger and losing Marco has brought certain truths home to roost. If we never succeed, what's the point of our lives? Our children have grown up without their fathers, some of our parents have passed away without us there to pay our respects. And for what? So we can feed Jinx and his ever growing army of reprobates? I say it's about time we took the battle to them. Let us be the ones to hunt him down for a change. And you know what? If I die, so be it. But I'll be damned if I don't take several of those blood thirsty parasites with me."

That speech got a resounding amount of cheers from the rest of the men. Pete was right. They'd been doing this for far too long and getting nowhere. It was time for a change.

Jacob had spent the rest of the day coming up with a plan. He'd gone over and over different scenarios in his mind, and this was the best he could come up with, but he knew it was still a long shot.

"Ok," said Jacob, addressing his men that evening, "here's what I've come up with. Fingers has informed me that he has tricked the pirates into thinking that the Muntle seaweed actually works. This is where we have the advantage. We know it's all lies so we'll have to come up with another way to stop us from hearing the song."

"Other than just putting our fingers in our ears?" Tyler asked.

"Yes," Jacob replied. "You never know if you'll have to fight, which you can't do if your hands are stuck to the side of your head, can you?" Jacob said, sounding a little impatient.

"So you think we should plug our ears up with sommat then?" Pete asked.

"Yes, and I've given it some thought and I was thinking candle wax."

Most of the men looked baffled, but Jacob could see that the more intelligent men in his crew were thinking it through and nodding their heads.

"It goes soft when it's warm so we should be able to mould it to the shape of your ear canal. It's waterproof so that means that no air can get through either so it should be good. I tried it last night and I couldn't hear a thing."

"Right, so we've all got our ears plugged, so what happens next?"

"Well I think we can safely say that it's no good just attacking Jinx's ship. Their ship will easily overpower ours, so I think we've got to be clever about this. What if we offer Jinx something he can't refuse. Something we can try and get him to agree to trade Raephier for."

"But we've got nothing to trade!" James said.

"I know. But that's not important. He just needs to think we have something."

"Ok, but what is he going to want enough to give Raephier up?" Pete asked.

"Oh that doesn't matter, anything will do."

"How can you say it doesn't matter?" James asked, looking rather stressed. "We're going to have to come up with something big for Jinx to even consider the trade."

Jacob chuckled and shook his head. "But we're not going to trade."

"What?" James said, looking confused.

"Jinx is a pirate," Jacob said, "a pirate who just took everything we own. He's so arrogant he will accept the trade of anything because he has no intentions of trading. He's going to just keep everything himself."