CHAPTER 4 : GALLOWS ESCAPE

As we sit in silence, Smeathe says out of the blue that he wants to be called Heikelos, like the sound of his eye, instead of Smeathe, like how I'm Duranté but known as Butezda.

I just said, "Okay," dazed in the discomfort of my painful body.

After a while, Smeathe now, "Heikelos", gets up aloof and says it's not so bad. he thinks maybe it isn't even the right eyeball as he can't see from it. And starts stumbling, walking about the deck acting as if his looking for another eyeball. But I bet you he was off in thought.

I then convince him to allow me near him to inspect his eye, and we go to my captain's cabin and I sit him on my bed and fix up his eye as softly and gently as I can, both thickened lower lipped, nostalgic. I did this with some of the last medic aides that we had left. He said he felt much better. And got up and brushed his hands off his pants and then inspected my cabin.

I suggested to him he brings his bedding and makes himself a warm bed in my room somewhere where the memory of them could vanish.

He said, "alright."

I helped him move his stuff, and it wasn't long before we heard footsteps on the deck.

Both of us, 3-eyed now, were as big as plates in ice-cold shock. My body was still very injured, as was Heikelos's.

Bang! The cabin door flew open and we were arrested by a man with a black moustache in a black coat and outfit with blue dressing pieces here and there. He spoke a Latin language but could translate.

They shoved Heikelos and I Butezda in our own ship's storage and brought fence gates to cell us in.

Seizing the ship with what seems to be 83 blacks and 6 whites, all Latin or Italian.

We heard his name was Master Gustav.

We sailed celled, but fed on the 4th day per week and left alone mostly for about 6 weeks.

Then we were taken from a harbour in Europe somewhere right of Italy was what we suspected but it could have also been France Marseille's harbour. We weren't sure.

Then we were split up and put into different jail cells, 7 apart to be exact. All ordered for the gallows, a hanging, but because Heikelos sweared at them when they picked him up, they said off with his head instead.

We waited 4 days until we were moved to the gallows, which is where they do it.

Heikelos and I maneuver ourselves in the Que strategically to be again with each other, and Heikelos takes off my mouth cloth, and I cut open Heikelos' hand ropes. And Heikelos is free but not me, and I could have been 4th or 16th who could be next inline for the hanging..

Heikelos vanishes for a while into the audience. I am called up 4th and feel the noose around my neck, just as they pull the lever and I drop a sword flies out of the audience and I stand barely on the sword. Balancing not to fall of, and from the sack over my head I could make out Heikelos making his way to the podium from which I hung.

Slice! I fall into the box of dead people and crawl, still hand tied to the door opening. I am so gratefully relieved to find Heikelos telling me in haste that we should leave in his swear tone of voice.

I tell him, "Don't swear at me, I am half angelic, I survived a hanging." He says he knows and cuts my hands free with 3 attempts as we make way for the audience.

Now we were walkingly on the run.

We made our way to a man called Portian. He resembled Raelph a lot. And Heikelos introduced me, and he just said put on these wigs and nudged to a few fancy dressed guys lacking wigs dead in the aisle.

We put on the wigs and wanted to dress ourselves in their clothing when Portian says, "No, No, No, no time for that, you're strippers from that brothel for this brothel, go go chaps!"

We go.

As we stand with topless women in two different rooms playing provocatively with scarfs with us, we see Portian murdered on the water statue from where we last spoke to him via the windows.

Heikelos says to me, "No, it's a setup, she's trying to murder me and look no teeth!"

I shouted out, "agreed!" As the French girl by me was trying to cuff me to the bed frame.

I left from the window and Heikelos couldn't.

So I circuited the building and fetched Heikelos laughing with 6 girls in a bed tied up and tortured.

We left with all the girls as I took out the head mistress in the foyer.

The girls said I rescued them.

They show us to 4 different baths for different purposes and dress us as the neatest most respectable men. Then Heikelos and myself tread a travel route with four of them to a country cottage.

The other girls that did not want to come with had children and mother's and husband's houses in town or nearby.

We travelled on foot until a black and white carriage stopped by us and asked for our papers. Heikelos didn't even think twice and slit the carriage drivers' necks and I hostage the fat cab bee woman.

The girls were shocked and shouted "You're pirates we thought you were innocent from the hanging! Fruit or something!"

"We're gonna leave," and they treaded away off on their route with one girl crying and blowing Heikelos a kiss. Half heartbroken but at ease.

Next up I stab the cabbee woman just just in the chest and take her jewels. And Heikelos and I hop on the carriage. And off we went. Neither one knew where to the road led, but away from the Gallows most assuredly.

Dust followed our hastened carriage, and the horse's shoes knackered on the gravel road as we went.

We discover booze under the seat. Yet again, a pirate's life for me.