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“Dance the hempen jig.” – To be hanged.

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“BOAT YOUR OARS!” called Oddsummers to his men. The plaguemen pulled in their oars and jumped out to walk waist-deep in water, and hauled the longboat to shore. Oddsummers had been the first in the water, the first to the beach, and the first to draw his sword and pistol. When the plaguemen saw their captain do this they looked between one another uncertainly. “It’s up there,” he said, pointing towards a hill, atop which there was a craggy rock. The desert island was the largest of its dozen or so brothers, with only six palm trees and a short field of rugged grass blowing in the breeze. “Let’s go.”

“Oughtn’t we make camp, thirrr,” slurred Bainbridge. His yellow flesh sweat beads beneath the harsh sun.

Oddsummers smiled behind his plague mask. “No need. We won’t be here that long. You there, Mason, watch the boat while we’re gone. Have a pistol ready in hand, in case lookouts on the Edinburgh signal that they’ve spotted a ship.” He looked out his fifth-rate ship. Iron-sick as she was, the bitch had held together, through no small effort of his crew, who had laboured day and night (and Long Night) to use the spare lumber and materials they brought with them to repair her as they went.

“The rest of you, follow me. It isn’t a long walk but it can be arduous, I’m told.”

They set out across the hissing grass, a line of filthy and sickly-looking men with only a few swords and pistols between them. Some of them only had a shovel or a pitchfork for defence. Oddsummers was not worried, though, he did not anticipate any trouble this far out from the Caribbean.

When they got to the foot of the hill, Oddsummers commanded a man named Cecil to stay behind with a pistol in hand, to signal them in case they could not hear Mason’s shot once they were inside the cave. Oddsummers began the climb, almost straight up in places, requiring him to climb by scrambling up jagged rocks, narrowly avoiding slipping on dried shale. Sweat poured off his skin, he breathed heavily within his plague mask. His feet crushed the remainder of an ancient bow, and he kicked over a stone arrow more than once. No doubt both were left by some ancients no one remembered, not even the Mayans or Aztecs. Just one more offshoot of mankind, probably ancients who went for a single canoe ride and got blown out to sea for days, perhaps months, surviving by fishing at sea until at last their canoe washed up here. There were clay bowls that indicated they perhaps built a small civilization here. Wonder whatever happened to them?

Probably whatever happened to the poor soul resting at the mouth of the cave. Once he reached the summit, Oddsummers stared into the black maw of the cave’s mouth, and there lay the dusty, broken skeleton of a man wearing nothing but shredded rags. Behind him, Bainbridge shuddered. “It’s all right, Bainbridge,” Oddsummers said. “Shipwrecks happen all the time. You’ll find more sad souls like this on most islands, especially the closer we get to the West Indies.”

“Yeth, thirrrr. It’s only…” He trailed off, and wiped the drool from his deformed jaw. “I never thhaww no man ever in thith kind o’ shape. Usually thar ain’t nuthin’ left.”

“Aye, but you’re used to sailing closer to home,” Oddsummers panted. Out here it is a battle between dampness than can spread infection, and dryness that can wither you. Only the grass and trees have figured out a way to survive in the long term. Well, them and the Caribee.” He glanced around at the small cays in the distance. “Thank God none of them are out here.”

“Are they at thavage as people thay, thirrr?”

“Worse than savage, I hear.” He knelt beside the dead man, looking into his jawless face, the empty sockets. Oddsummers pulled out his vial of Tam and shook it. Pink light emanated from within, like a captured lightning bug. He popped the vial and poured a bit onto the dead man’s bones. He waited a while. Nothing happened. The plaguemen all stood in the sun, impatiently watching their captain. When nothing changed in the dead man he replaced the vial in his coat and said, “It’s further in.” He stepped into the shadow of the cave, and almost at once the blessing of a cool, damp environment assuaged their discomfort.

Oddsummers snapped his fingers at Bainbridge, who gestured for a young man named Anderson, who quickly knelt and pulled a torch out of his burlap bag and used knife and flint to create a spark. In seconds the torch billow flame and he handed it to Oddsummers, who led them into the cave, towards the sounds of rushing water. “Stay close,” he told them. “There are old traps here, some of them may still work.”

Following the sound of water, they came to a hole in the ground big enough to fit several horses through. There had been collapse of the cave floor centuries ago, leading into an underground cavern and (if tales were to be believed) a huge spiraling storm of water. A whirlpool. But before he walked around to the other side of the hole, Oddsummers knelt and ran his torch all over the ground, and found a tripwire which he followed to a pair of sticks cleverly hidden in shadow, propping up dozens of rocks that would collapse from the wall and crush a man. He sliced the tripwire carefully using a dagger, then searched for more.

Confident there were no more traps, he handed his torch over to Anderson to light a second and third torch. Oddsummers tossed his torch down into the hole and watched it fall twenty feet before it clattered against damp stone floor. Bainbridge took the rope he’d hauled from the Edinburgh and tied it to a sturdy boulder outside the cave, and tossed the rest of the rope down.

Oddsummers ordered three of his men to go first, including Bainbridge. While he believed his crew was loyal to him, Oddsummers lived by the philosophy, Trust, but verify. He could not risk going down first, only to have them roll up the rope and leave him for dead, and abscond with his ship. Once a few of them rappelled down, Oddsummers began his descent.

The roar of rushing water became louder. Damp spray collected on his cheeks and forehead. It became almost too cold for him, and he was glad of the torch’s warmth was he reclaimed it. He waved the flames around slowly, revealing the narrow passage ahead, so narrow only a single man could go through at a time, sideways, squeezing through.

Once they were all down, Oddsummers took the lead. The rushing water soon became deafening. The ground sloped dramatically. Once out the other side, he ordered his men to fan out, and they all stood in terror at what their torches revealed. A whirlpool of stupendous size, occupying this chamber alone, swirling at mind-boggling speeds and creating enough force and noise they had to shout to one another to be heard. “Careful now, lads.” He gestured for them to follow him. Some of them stood transfixed by the power of this tremendous whirlpool, spinning in darkness for who knew how many centuries, slowly eating away at this cave.

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There was a small path between the whirlpool and the stone walls. They picked there way carefully around the churning water. One of them slipped and nearly fell in, screamed, then turned and tried to run. Oddsummers jerked his pistol out and said, “On your life, plagueman, do not desert me! You are my devotee! Stay your feet, keep your courage, and lay eyes on something few others ever see!”

The plagueman nodded tremulously, but followed his captain’s order.

But even Oddsummers had to admit the gargantuan eddy challenged even his courage. One slip, just one small misstep, and he would be gone, pulled down into the black water and drowned and coughed up somewhere along the seafloor, or wherever this whirlpool let out.

They made it to a flat patch of rock on the other side, and walked away from the whirlpool. Everyone calmed down for the moment. That is, until, they came to the pirate graveyard.

The cavern they stepped into was littered with cairns, stone pilings that honored the dead men and woman laid to rest beneath them. The ground was all rock, none could be buried here, but the tales said pirate crews who held their captains in the highest esteem sometimes brought their bodies here after they had died gloriously, and were given a special service and a final sea chanty written in their name. Some of the Pirate Kings were down here, one or two who had served under Blackbeard himself. They came to rest here, these poor, degenerate, brave souls, in a place that not even God’s footprint could touch.

The room was stagnant, the air did not seem to move down here. Oddsummers waved his torch around, the flames revealing one cairn after the next. The most recent dead were put near the back. He made sure his men spread out, to cover more ground.

Bainbridge whispered, as if the dead could hear, “I’ve never heard of anything like thisshhh, sir.”

“Nor had I before last year,” said Oddsummers, coming to the farthest grave. The most recent. “I wasn’t even sure it would be here.”

He knelt and set the torch to one side. He started digging through the pile of stones. It did not take long to reveal the dead captain. His body had some dried muscle on him, bits of meat clinging to his chest, neck, and jaw. Down here, the maggots would never reach him. Some of the Caribbean’s pirates thought this place was magical, and that once placed underneath these stones the captains would all be preserved. Gold doubloons were laid on their eyes as part of this superstition, to pay off whatever spirit kept the whirlpool spinning. Apparently it was a ritual that began a long-forgotten cult, whose influence had spread briefly throughout the Caribbean, and had blended with other beliefs from the Moors out of African and certain witches from the Colonies.

That was what the Caribbean had become, a melting pot of not only peoples, but of beliefs.

Oddsummers did not seek the gold doubloons laid on the captain’s eyes. What he wanted instead was an experiment. He removed the vial of Tam again, popped its cork, and spilled a few drops across the captain’s body. He stood back from the corpse and waited.

For a long while nothing happened.

Bainbridge and the others shifted nervously, all of them hovering near the edge of the graveyard, ready to leave.

Then, there was movement. It looked as though the dead captain’s left wrist twitched. Oddsummers thought he might have imagined it so he waited a few minutes longer. He lifted his torch and paced around the captain’s corpse, looking at his timepiece. There was a rattling sound from the corpse. Bainbridge made some low moan of anxiety.

Now there was no mistake—the entire left hand began to move.

Oddsummers knelt and studied the muscle tissue there, becoming wet and viscous, then solidifying. He stared in wide-eyed amazement. The muscle tissue suddenly extended along the forearm. It’s trying to re-grow but can’t. He watched for several more minutes until at last the hand came to rest and never moved again.

Oddsummers ran his tongue along his teeth, thinking.

He decided to try more, so he knelt beside the dead man again and this time poured half the vial of Tam onto its arm and forehead. For a while nothing happened.

Then, suddenly, red viscous fluids began leaking like pus from every crack in every one of the dead man’s bones. Some of that fluid solidified and became a muscle-like structure.

Then something happened that had the other plaguemen running from the graveyard, every one of them screaming. A man was running so fast he slipped and fell into the whirlpool and was never seen again, taking one of the torches with him. Another man dropped his torch into the whirlpool by accident. In darkness they all scrambled, and screamed, and begged to be out of this place. All except for Captain Oddsummers, who stood watching the dead captain who had risen to his feet and was groping around the cave like a blind man in search of his eyes.

____

When he returned to the Edinburgh, Oddsummers was surprised to find two of his plaguemen that he’d left behind to watch the ship had hung themselves. Their yellow bodies swung quietly in the wind from ropes lashed to the yardarms. “That is rather fortunate,” he said as he climbed back aboard the ship.

“Wh-what ithh, thirrr?” said Bainbridge, still trembling from fear. He and the others looked damned happy to be returned to the Edinburgh.

“Freshly dead men,” he said, looking up at the hanged men. “I make this short stop because I knew there were dead men here to be experimented on. Now look what those two fellows have given me. Poor souls. But their sacrifice will let me know how much more use it will be.”

“What will be, Cap’n?”

“The Tam, Mr. Bainbridge. The firmament has produced a Disease that kill men, but its gift is that the Tam their bodies become may restore life to those already gone. But how far gone must one be for the Tam to have no use?” He gestured at the two hanged men. “We are about to find out. Cut them both down, if you please, and bring one of them to my cabin.”

____

That night, Oddsummers sat in his cabin with the corpse of a Mr. Taylor strapped down to his desk. The Edinburgh had weighed anchor and was headed west, deeper into the Caribbean proper. Mr. Taylor thrashed for a moment against the ropes and chains that kept him fastened to the table, and Oddsummers had pen and paper out and was sketching the Resurrected man while taking notes on the smell, the observant decay, and the man’s inability to speak.

Fair more animated than the others, though. The ursulas were all right about one thing, though, the Tam’s power is getting stronger.

Oddsummers removed his shirt and folded it neatly over the back of his chair. He opened the cabin door and called for Bainbridge. When the man arrived, he said, “Bring the goat.” Moments later, the goat was led into the cabin by rope, and Bainbridge and Rollings and two others were made to sit and watch as Oddsummers drew the knife across the goat’s neck and then held it up by its hind legs. The blood splashed down into a bowl made of copper and when it was all done Oddsummers drank it, then shared his drink with Mr. Taylor, who appeared to remember what thirst was.

He then dipped his fingers into the blood and drew the symbols for Jupiter, Minerva, and Concord across the dead man’s chest. “Rest easy, friend. I know you meant to be free of my service, but I’m afraid we have a bit more need of you just now. Then you may rest. When your service to me is through, then you may rest, I promise.”

Bainbridge and the others remained silent, but exchanged worried glances. A chill wind came in through the window.

Then, suddenly, Mr. Taylor reached his hand out, and Oddsummers took it. He looked into the dead man’s eyes, both of which looked mostly lucid if a bit rheumy. He spoke to Mr. Taylor for a while, trying to get him to converse, but alas the dead man had nothing to say, but kept looking up at Oddsummers the way a trusting child will look upon its father for guidance.

As the night wore on, Mr. Taylor moved less and less, until at last he went still and never moved again.

Oddsummers made note of that, and of everything else that had happened. Then he drank the last of the goat’s blood and said, “Tell Mr. Corbin to tack north. I think I sense a tramontane moving in.”

“Yeth, thirr.” Bainbridge left. They all left except Rollings, the engineer, who stood in the doorway looking back at the captain.

“Something else, Mr. Rollings?” said Oddsummers.

“What was all this for, Captain? This expedition. The experiments.”

Oddsummers sighed and sat in his chair and looked out the window at the setting sun. “Imagine a crew that could never die, Mr. Rollings,” he said. He lit a pipe and took a draft. “Wouldn’t that be a famous thing?”