Weather at sea is a fickle mistress. One moment, the horizon held only a few bruised clouds; less than half an hour later, the entire sky looked as if an ink bottle had been smashed across it, the light swallowed by a churning, suffocating grey.
The breeze was no longer a salty caress. It had sharpened its teeth. The wind howled through the rigging, making the worn canvas flap with the sound of pistol shots. Below the hull, the waves began to mountain, slamming into the Sea Serpent with rhythmic, bone-jarring thuds. The ship groaned, pitching so violently that the deck became a treacherous, sliding slope.
"Furl the sails! Furl them all, ye lazy dogs!" Gibbs screamed, his voice cracking against the gale. For the first time, a sharp flicker of genuine terror danced in his lone eye.
The pirates, their previous laughter forgotten, scrambled up the ratlines like panicked spiders. They fought the heavy, wet canvas, trying to haul the main sail in before the wind could snap the mast like a dry twig.
Hugo staggered out from the stern, nearly losing his footing as a spray of icy foam blinded him. He took one look at the sky and then at the crew's frantic efforts, and his blood ran cold. He had anticipated a storm, but this was a titan.
"No! Don't furl all the canvas!" Hugo roared, his voice barely carrying over the cacophony.
In a gale this fierce, losing all sail meant losing "way", the forward momentum required to steer. Without power, the Sea Serpent would become nothing more than a cork, spinning helplessly in the trough of the waves. The correct move was to keep a scrap of the foresail, enough to point the bow into the teeth of the sea and cut through the swells rather than being rolled by them.
The "Basic Seamanship" skill in his mind was pulsing red, a frantic warning.
"Shut your trap, boy!" a pirate snarled, clinging to a belaying pin. "You want the wind to take the mast and us with it?"
Hugo ignored him, lunging across the tilting deck to reach Gibbs. "Gibbs! You have to leave the foresail! If we lose steerage, the sea will broach us!"
Gibbs was a man possessed, his face slick with spray. He shoved Hugo back with a snarl. "Get below, you cursed pauper! This is a man's storm! Don't you dare tell me how to save my ship!"
Hugo stumbled, catching himself on a coil of rope as a massive swell slammed into the port side. A wall of seawater cascaded over the rail, sweeping two men off their feet and nearly into the dark abyss. The ship tilted at an impossible angle, its timbers screaming in protest.
Suddenly, the doors to the Great Cabin slammed open. A tall man with a meticulously braided black beard and a faded but regal captain's coat stepped onto the deck.
Hugo squinted through the rain. This was the man they called Barbossa. But as the light caught his face, Hugo felt a twinge of bitter disappointment. This wasn't the legendary pirate of the movies; there was no monkey on his shoulder, no aura of ancient curse. He was simply a man - arrogant, aging, and clearly out of his depth.
"Gibbs! Report!" Barbossa bellowed, his hand white-knuckled on the hilt of his sword.
"It's a devil of a blow, Captain!" Gibbs shouted back. "We're furling now!"
Barbossa looked at the mountainous seas and his face paled. He began barking orders, his voice carrying the weight of command but lacking the wisdom of the situation. "Secure the hold! Helmsman, bring her about! Go with the waves! Don't fight them!"
Hugo's heart sank. Go with the waves? In a Following Sea this large, running before the wind without power was a death sentence. The waves would overtake the stern, "pooping" the ship and dragging it straight to the bottom.
"Captain!" Hugo screamed, dragging himself toward the mast. "Don't run before it! You have to face the swells! We need a scrap of sail for power or we're dead!"
Barbossa turned, his gaze cutting through the rain like a rusted blade. "Who is this whelp?"
"The one we pulled from the drink, Captain," Gibbs answered, sounding exhausted.
"A drowned rat dares to command my deck?" Barbossa's lip curled in disdain. "Throw him in the brig! If he opens his mouth again, feed him to the sharks!"
Two pirates lunged for Hugo, their faces masks of mindless obedience. Hugo looked at Barbossa, at the man's stubborn, foolish pride and a surge of desperate fury welled up in him. He didn't survive drowning just to be buried by an amateur in a fancy coat.
"You're going to kill us all!" Hugo yelled, pointing toward the western horizon. "Look! Over there!"
The argument died in an instant.
Emerging from the gloom was a rogue wave, a vertical wall of black water taller than the Sea Serpent's mainmast. It wasn't a wave; it was a moving cliff, capped with a jagged crown of white foam. It carried the roar of a thousand collapsing buildings, an unstoppable force of nature that made the ship look like a child's toy.
The pirates went silent. Even Barbossa stood frozen, his mouth open, his "experience" rendered a joke in the face of such absolute destruction.
The storm had arrived, and it was more final than any of them had imagined.