May There Always Be Adventure

Captain Henry Blake III was a very handsome young man. He was also a wealthy young man for he had quite the fortune in his name. This had granted him many fleets and harbors filled with the most exquisite ships. He had rooms filled with jewels and gems, all sorts of beautiful treasures. He had barrels of rich dark ale, boxes of cigars, and cases of fine-aged rum. And yet he remained sober. He never drank, never smoked, not even the occasional pipeweed. Now for his looks. He was quite the eligible bachelor. He may have braved vigorous storms and nights when you couldn’t tell where the enemy may attack from, but he had a high reputation to abstain. And so, he dressed in fine silks, top hats and velvet overcoats, white button-down suits, pressed and folded neatly. He was just under 6 foot tall and a thin lad with a kind face, coffee brown hair, and eyes the color of the sea in the sunlight. A dagger in his right boot and an old tarnished gold watch deep in his coat. A circle scar on his left pinky finger, hidden beneath black gloves. 

“Blake! Captain Blake!” Third Mate Reginald yelled for the deck of The Clarence, Blake’s own personal ship. They had been sent westward toward the White City of Gondor, but after two weeks of sailing in what seemed to be never-ending waves and brutal winds without the sight of the White City’s tower, they feared the worst. Now just north of the Gondor was the gates of Mordor. Why there are not enough immoral words to explain the horrid things that lurk where the Shadow lies. It was a place thick in evil, deep in scars and much bloodshed. “Henry Blake! You got to see this, sir,” Blake raced up the steps as the others started to gather around. 

“Holy… Cow… Batman…,” he stood in shock. Overhead were the arches of Mordor’s knight black gates. Back home, they were myth. And here he stood as the towers, a raven black twined in dark emerald vines and scarlet red leaves, lay before him. 

“Reginald, turn this ship around at once! Smee you're on watch! Finely sails and Viggo on deck with me!” Blake broke the silence at once, “With Godspeed men!” It would be no easy task though. The walls seemed to be slowly collapsing around them. The murky water lay suspiciously still. And the air had become thick in a balmy heat that coated their lungs in a metallic taste. But Blake’s mind had gone off to other things. A young castaway had gone missing some years back after trying to cross the Red Sea to Yorkshire. They would find the boat in pieces, the captain and all the crew had been declared perished in a storm that even the most experienced sailor would have drowned in. All declared dead, but one. A girl by the name of Lily was on that boat, but in the rubbish, there was not a trace of her. She wasn’t declared dead, she was declared missing… kidnapped. The children back home had formed wild tales around Lily’s vanishing act. Soon after Lily went missing at sea, a pirate who called herself the Dreaded Captain Robinson started to rule the ocean, killing and robbing as she went. Many suspected she was Lily. Blake hated the stories and he hated the truth, both meant Lily was gone. As you see Lily was the only one Henry ever loved. 

The ship came to an abrupt halt. It had become the dark of night at a worrying rate. And the air became a blood-freezing cold. 

“Blake?” snapped Smee, “What happened?” he whispered.  

“I haven't the faintest clue,” keeping his voice down as well.

“Should we get the candles?” asked Finnely.

“No, stay just as you are. No one move not an inch,” Blake ordered into the dark. And they did as they were told. Each breath feels like an eternity. But no one dared to move, not an inch. But out of the black, someone shot off a gun, and there was a scream that would have shattered the world if only the world could hear. Matches were lit. Swords drawn. And there before them, standing as if she herself was Peter Pan, was the Dreaded Captain Robinson. She stood at five foot nine, a burnt orange dress flowed down just to her scraped knees. Under the dress, she wore a tight knitted corset, over that a white blouse with oversized long sleeves, puffed and blood covered at the ends. She had sun-bleached hair braided and an awfully small nose. Her eyes were sharp with a seasick blue. The diamonds around her neck could cut straight through flesh, down deep right to the bone. Two dragon eye daggers lay strapped across her back. A rusty gold sword in her right hand, and a scar in a crescent shape on her pointer finger, shown proudly. It was the mark of a pirate. A pirate who led a ruthless path of murder and betrayal, causing much innocent bloodshed. Ruthless she was. 

“Well… well… well… what do we have here?” her voice didn’t match, it was too soft… too motherly. Nevertheless, no one backed down and none of the men said a word. “Well, if no one is going to speak, I guess I will just have to kill you, myself,” Blake broke away from his silence. “Robinson, I challenge you to a duel. If I win, my crew and I go free and you show us the way out. And if you… you win… you may do to us as you wish,” the other men turn pale at the sound of Blake’s words. 

“Deal. But mark my words, when I win, you will have hell to pay, Blake,” her tone awfully sharp. 

“Blake, I swear, you better know what you're doing,” Viggo muttered to him. 

“Ladies! Take prisoners,” she hit her heel on the oak board and rose such a clatter. Light came from what seemed to be nowhere in particular blinding the men. Each had their weapons stripped from them. Mouths gagged and hands tied rigid behind their backs. Then their feet were tied and in the flicker of an eye, each was hung upside down, knives at their throats. But for Captain Blake, he was left unscathed. His eyes locked on her. Captain Robinson stalked down the steps till she was only a foot from Blake. The muffled screams of his crew seemed to melt away as she whispered in his ear. 

“You think you can win. Don’t you, Blake?” her words soft. 

“Yes, I do,” he replied. 

“You really think you're strong enough to take down the Dreaded Captain Robinson. Orphan boy…” her words turned bitter as her sword came up to his cheek.

“I am,” Blake could hear the stutter in his own words. 

“Orphan boy…” she repeated. And he realized. 

“How… how do you know?” he looked down at his hands, the black gloves were still on, covering his greatest weakest. 

“I know a lot about you, Blake. Born July 6th, 1817 to Edith and Edward Morel. You would become an orphan at the age of two, when your mother died of the fever and your father gave you up. You would later come to learn your father died of suicide three months later, but you would take your mother's maiden name, as you still can’t forgive your father. You would grow up alone in this huge world. You would be branded with a scar on your left pinky, so everyone would know you were nothing, but a silly orphan boy. Yet, for some twisted reason, you believe in the Gods. You would become a sailor to prove to the world you were somebody, but you also you have the desperate need to run away from your problems because you never in truth became a man. You will always be that lovesick, forsaken child that was left at that orphanage's front steps over two decades ago. And when you did find a lover, a girl by the name Lily Jeter, you would give her up without even a fight! Did you even cry or shed a tear, or did you just shrug your shoulders and move on to the next pretty young face?!” 

“Now see here, Robinson,” Blake’s voice quivered as he tried to stand a little taller in her grand shadow. The sword still pressed forcefully into his face and blood had started to rise, pooling on the knife's blade and spilling out down onto his hot cheek. It would leave a scar that he would carry for the rest of his life, “I would spend years grieving over my lover. And I searched the globe four times over, just to find any trace of her existence, and just what did I come up with, nothing, absolutely nothing. And you know what, as long as I breathe, as long as my heart beats inside its lonely cage, I will never love again… I can never!” he screamed and then started to crack. A hysterical laugh came out of the back of his throat. It was the cry of a madman. A cry of someone who had already long gone off that cliff of insanity,  “Robinson, mark my words, I will never! Never love as deeply as I did once, never again. And probably now never see the light of day if it’s up to you. And you know what… maybe this is a blessing. You can put me out of this godforsaken misery. Go ahead, cut off my head. Hang it up high so the whole world can see my beautiful drained pale face. Or maybe…” he continued to laugh with a cough that came from his stomach, “Shoot your pistol, one bullet is all you would need. Why I bet you have the best aim. Go ahead, shoot my heart so I bleed slowly to my own death, like a true hero… warrior… man. So my flesh and crimson red blood stain these old boat boards forever. Your words are completely right my dear Robinson. I will die with no one to weep over my dead body,” his heart was pounding as the sword lowered to her waist.  

“You can be so blind, my dear Henry,” his name. It sounded as if a ghost itself had said it. His eyes locked into hers and for a second she was no longer Captain Robinson, she was purely Lily.