Stormy Seas: Part 19

    Sweat began to bead on my forehead as soon as we stepped past the boiler room on the pirate ship. A fairly young looking man with a bristling beard was leading myself and a handful of other crew from the Lethargy. We had been taken prisoner and brought down into the bowels of the pirate's ship.
    “Not so good lighting, yes?” Ameya whispered at my side.
    I shushed him. The bearded man had a pistol in his hand and was watching us closely.
    “Through there!” he ordered. He pointed with his gun through a dark little door that most of the other captives had already crawled through.
    I bent down and inside with Ameya following close behind. It was very dark inside, since there were no windows or lamps, and it was quite warm from the boilers.
    I could hear rather than see the other captives as I tried to find a place to sit. I heard the door slam shut and the lock click just before I sat on someone who I had thought was an empty space.
    “Excuse me,” I apologized as I inched past him, trying not to step on anyone else.
    There was silence after that for a long moment. Outside I could hear the sounds of the engine and of shovels scraping coal.
    “Is very dark now, yes?” Ameya broke the silence.
    Someone snorted.
    “Get used to the dark lad,” another man said. “They'll probably sell us to the gold mines in Africa.”
    “It'll be coal mining, everyone needs coal,” someone else added pessimistically.
    “Where are you fellows from?” I asked. I crossed my arms over my knees and leaned against the wall.
    “The H.M.S. Gloryling,” someone said. It was hard to tell who was who.
    “We were sunk by the pirates and they pulled us few out of the water.”
    “And we've been in here ever since.”
    “Really,” I commented. I half turned and started poking at the wall behind me. “Do they ever open the door besides when they bring new captives in?”
    “Never that I've seen.”
    “What have you been eating?” I asked.
    “They open a hatch in the door and put the food in. If you can really call it food.”
    “After a few weeks you'll be happy just to see that!” an older sounding voice said.
    “That sounds like what we need,” I said. I shifted to my knees. “Which way is the door?”
    “Here,” a voice to my left said.
    I crawled that way, trying to be careful of where the others were. My hand hit the metal door and I began running my hand along it, looking for the hatch.
    I felt an indent in the lower part of the door, just about five or six inches above the floor.
    “Have any of you ever tried to open it?” I asked.
    “Sometimes for light,” someone said.
    I started sliding it open with my fingers. It was slow going until I got it open wide enough to fit my fingers through. I bent down and stuck my head out. I turned to the side and craned my neck to see  out into the boiler room. There were two pirates there, one sitting and smoking a pipe, and the other stoking the fires. Neither noticed me opening the hatch.
    I pushed the hatch open the rest of the way and tried to see if my shoulders would fit through.
    “Where are you going Mr. Elderton?” Ameya asked.
    I pushed myself back into the cell and shushed him.
    “You'll end up shot,” someone said.
    “I'll try and find a way to get us all out of this,” I said. “Keep quiet if you don't want to be sold in Africa!”
    I tried again, putting my arms through first. My shoulders made it through the opening and I continued crawling out.
    The pirate who had been shoveling coal tossed his shovel aside with a loud crash that startled me but when I looked he was climbing a ladder out of the hold and his smoking companion appeared to be sleeping.
    I continued crawling out until I was stopped by my backside. The hatch was just barely too short. I tried to wiggle myself through, which caused the metal of the door to dig into my hip bones. One more wiggle got me through and my legs followed easily.
    I crawled away from the boilers quickly and started looking for a hiding spot while rubbing my bruised middle. Then I had another idea.
    I turned around and went back to the boiler room.
    “Mr. Elderton?” Ameya whispered through the still open hatch.
    I wordlessly bent down and slid it shut again. I stood and peered around the corner into the boiler room. The pirate was still seated with his pipe in his hand and his eyes closed with his head on his chest. I took careful footsteps across the coal littering the floor and then climbed up the side of their boiler where the pistons were hard at work moving the ship.
    I passed them carefully and found a huge bin shaped thing filled to the ceiling with coal. After I shifted some of the coal I crawled around to a place where I could look down on the boiler room. If I waited until most of the pirates had gone to bed I could sneak back down, free the others, and we could all take the pirates by surprise.
    The coal moved uneasily below me. I tried to scramble for the edge of the coal store but more and more coal slid out from underneath me. I began to feel myself sinking.
    I looked down. The chair the sleeping smoker had been sitting in was empty but I had a good guess where he was. At the controls for the giant coal box I was sitting in, prepared to drown me in coal.