All at sea: Chapter 6

Chapter 6: All in the same boat
Hope had to admit: she was scared. She was out of her depth, faced with a situation that none of her lessons had taught her about. People like the man before her would never have been allowed to attend one of the academies parties, except perhaps as part of the buffet. He looked as if he’d drowned, face down in a rock-pool.
  “My name is Bootstrap Bill Turner.” He said. “And this is the Flying Dutchman.”
Hope glowered at him.
  “The Flying Dutchman? Mythical ghost ship, haunting the seas for eternity? Who do you take us for?”
  “He’s telling the truth, Hope.” Amelia interjected.
  “Is this some sort of hoax? Who put you up to this?” She turned to Margaret and Angela. “Don’t tell me you’re in on this too?”
  “It’s no use denying it.” Bill droned on. “We’re all in the same boat now. You’re part of the crew. Part of the ship. Part of the crew. Part of the…”
  “Someone hit him.” Hope snapped. “He’s stuck.”
  “What I’m trying to say is, there’s no going back. One hundred years of service, no escape. No time off for good behaviour.”
Hope bristled. Margaret, however, butted in before she could speak.
  “A hundred years? We won’t live that long. I’d be…” She looked at her fingers, and her mouth moved silently. “…118 years old.”
  “The ship would be full of pensioners.” Angela added.
Bill looked, if possible, even sadder.    
  “You don’t know? You don’t know what the curse can do? It binds you to it, the ship. One hundred years you agreed to serve, and one hundred years you will, and neither age nor the sword will stop you from serving your term.”
Amelia’s face broke into a huge, shocked grin.
  “Immortality!?”
  “Or course not!” Snapped Hope.
  “Of a sort.” Bill continued. “For the time you serve here, nothing but the Captain’s will can cut short your sentence, however much you may wish for it.”
  “We’re immortal!” Angela laughed. “Wow!”
  “But at a price.” He glumly indicated the collection of sea life stuck to his face. “How do you think I got this?”
  “A fishing accident?” Margaret suggested.
  “The rest of the crew glued it on to frighten us?” Hope’s voice was now less angry than pleading.
  “It’s the curse. The longer you’re here, the more it takes of you. You…change.”
Memory of the lumbering monsters that had taken them to this fate stirred in Hope’s mind: she remembered fish-men, and the monster that had wrecked the ship.  
  “But I don’t wanna be a fish!” Margaret whined.
Bill sniffed.
  “It’s such a shame.” He whimpered. “Three fine young boys like you, with all your life ahead of you, stuck on this ship!”
  “Boys?” Margaret simmered with indignation. Hope nudged her viciously with her elbow. “Ow! You know I bruise easily! What did you do that for?”
Bill seemed to be on a roll now.
  “You remind me of my own son. My own little William. He’d be around your age now, I think…”
  “If yer quite finished relating your family history?”
Bill flinched. From the shadows, there was a strange sound, the sound of advancing footsteps. Step-thump. Step-thump. As though the man in question had one leg longer than the other, and a tap-shoe on one foot. The squid-faced man was back again. Hope shrunk back from his writhing face as he pushed the rambling man aside and stumped forwards. His right leg, she saw, was that of a crab. Compared to the rest of him, it was nowhere near as ridiculous as it sounded.
His face was down, glowering at them at close range again. Not the best at personal skills, Angela noted.
  “So then, laddie. What’s yer name?”
Angela glanced at Hope, who was still taking in the sight of this, far more monstrous newcomer.
  “Jack.” She said.
  “Jack?”
  “Y-yes sir.”
  “An ill-starred name, if ever I heard one. What of the rest of you? You have names, I take it?”
  “My name’s…” Margaret began.
  “Peter. And I’m Ralph.” Hope butted in.
  “My names not Peter!”
  “What is it then, Laddie?”
  “Peter…kin. It’s short for Peterkin.” Hope garbled, glaring at Margaret.
  “What kind of a name is Peterkin?”
  “I don’t know, Peterkin. I’m not your mother.”
  “Shut it, Ralph.”
  The eyes of the two men met, in silent questioning.
  “Be quiet!” They turned, quivering to their new Captain.
  “What would your name be, sir?” Margaret, or perhaps Peterkin asked.
He looked baffled.
  “Ye haven’t heard of me?”
  “No, sir. I’m sure I would have remembered.”
The eyes narrowed.
  “You’ll do well to remember my name in future, laddie.”
  “What is it, then?”
  “My name is Davy Jones.”
There was a dramatic silence, in which he drew himself up proudly.
  “Er…nope, can’t say I’ve heard of it. Oh…you’re not related to an Ester Jones, by any chance?”
Amelia and Hope looked at one another in horror. Behind Davy, Bill buried his face in his hands.
  “…Lovely lady, did our gardening. Great with vegetables, she used to grow these great big, juicy carrots…” Se trailed off, hands held out to demonstrate a carrot two foot long. She looked into two ice cold eyes.
  “If ye think you can laugh at Davy Jones, ye can think again!” He glowered at her, beard moving like a nest of snakes. “Ye’d better watch that loose tongue of yours, Peter…kin.” His left hand, or rather, a monstrous crabs claw, raised itself to mouth-height. “Or ye might just lose it.” The claw clacked shut in front of her flinching face.     
Her mouth opened again, but Hope had already clapped her hand over it. Davy turned in a damp flurry, stomping away. He turned again, and Angela thought for a moment that it was for a fairly obvious reason: he was facing a bare wall.
  “Get them ready. I’ll have no dallying on deck today. And no patience for newcomers.” He shook his head with a strange, wet snort, and stepped backwards.
  “Did…did he just walk through the wall?” Hope quavered. Her grip on reality was steadily trickling away from her.