"I've told you twenty times, now: no, you can't go out! Look at the weather, Jake: it's pouring outside!"

"Well, I can put my wellies on, an' a mac! It's boring staying in, there's nothing on TV to watch, I've nothing to read, all my mates will be out: their Mums won't stop them .. !"

Jake's mum bit her tongue; the temptation to scream at her son was overwhelming, but for the sake of her sanity and peace of mind she was determined to make the effort. After all, it was only the first weekend of the school holidays, and she was already starting

to look forward to the next school term .........

"If you've nothing better to do, you could always tidy up your room a bit: it looks a worse mess than ever today!"

Feeling she had scored a moral victory (even if a touch unethical) Mrs. Marshall stacked the debris from her son's lunch onto a tray and made what she considered a dignified and dramatic exit from his bedroom. Outside, the heavy summer storm was wreaking havoc with the few hardy roses which remained in the front garden.

When his mother marched out, closing the door behind her, Jake flung himself dramatically onto his bed - though there was no audience to play for - and sobbed bitterly, clutching for comfort one of his favourite toys, a Duplo pirate figure. His salt tears ran unchecked, and would have cauterised every scratch, cut and open wound on even the toughest pirate's skin.

Realising that his mother was not going to be moved on this matter, his sobs gradually subsided and he began to feel somewhat more positive - though not yet completely resigned to spending the rest of the day indoors. Feeling a little foolish, he threw the pirate figure aside in a final empty gesture of frustration and pique at being unable to have his own way. It landed on the window ledge, skidding to a halt with one boot just touching the edge of a growing puddle formed by rain blown in through the part-open window.

Jake raised himself from lying prone on the bed to a sitting position. The sudden effort made him feel dizzy, and he had to grasp the iron bed frame to steady himself. The storm must be getting worse, he thought: the curtains were blowing about wildly, as if the wind was beginning to blow much harder. Perhaps he ought to close the window....... .. ..and why was it suddenly so dark, all of a sudden? After all, it was only mid-afternoon......

"Belay the sheet, boy! D'you want to kill us all?"

Jake reacted instinctively, in no doubt that this remark was directed at him, knowing the speaker's voice as well as he knew his own, fully aware of what he was being ordered to do, and also how to do it. Shinning several feet up the mast before him, he selected the correct rope from a choice of several running the length of the mast, and kicked himself off into mid-air, using his full body weight to start the sail unfurling as he dropped like a stone back towards the deck.

As always, he'd judged it nicely, landing lightly on his feet a split-second after the weight of the sail being raised had cancelled out the momentum of his fall.

He sensed rather than saw other crew members fall in behind him and help to take the strain. Swiftly the sail rose and filled with the wind, and the unsteady rolling and pitching of the vessel began to smooth out.

"Neat trick, Jake: who taught you that one?"

Jake turned to face the speaker, knowing instinctively that the bo'sun, Sam Barnacle, was a fair man and a good sailor, even if some thought him a bit rough on youngsters.

"Got to sort the dreamers from the men" was Sam's argument. " .... There's no cabins for passengers on a pirate ship, nor room for anyone not prepared to pull his full weight! "

Being lightly built, Jake had begun to use this ‘leap-and-grab' technique to start the sails on a mast moving for the first few crucial feet, after which it always got easier to keep the momentum going. Sam had noticed this, and had tacitly approved of Jake's solution to a task which could be difficult. However, it was not in his nature to shower praise on anyone - least of all a young kid on his first trip. On the other hand, he decided that it would be as well to pass comment, at least: if only to give him the opportunity to refer to the occasion at some future date, if he ever had cause to rebuke or discipline young Jake.

"It's not anything anyone ever suggested" Jake replied, frowning in concentration as he thought about it. "It just seemed - right, I suppose, an easy way to get the sail moving."

"Aye, well, it worked: and as long as you don't fall and land on some poor sod who wasn't expecting to be felled by a flying pirate, I don't suppose there's anything agin it: but have a care you don't fall and injure a shipmate!"

"Aye, Bo'sun!" grinned Jake, running off to tackle the next in the never-ending sequence of tasks necessary on a full-rigged three-master such as the Stormsong.

****

"He's a sharp one, that Jake!" was Sam's comment that evening, as he sat with the Captain, Johnny Dupl'eau over a glass of grog and made his report of the day's events.

Johnny Dupl'eau never made notes - nobody could even say for certain whether or not he could read, let alone write - but he was a skilled ship's master and knew instinctively how to get the very best out of his crew.

"It was certainly a smart move to think of using his body weight to help raising the sail!" Johnny replied, drawing a plate of pork pies towards him, quartering one at the edge of the plate, hanging it momentarily on the point of his dirk before tilting his head back, allowing the morsel to drop into his mouth.

"What do we know about Jake?" he asked, as he dusted crumbs from his richly embroidered waistcoat.

Sam stared at him.

"What d'you mean? You must have hired him: I'm sure he was already on the crew when I joined in Southampton!"

Johnny began to laugh: then paused, a frown troubling his brow.

"Perhaps it would be just as well to ask him along for a brief chat ............. "

When questioned, Jake was equally vague in his recollections of when and how he joined the ship. Other than confirming that he remembered Sam joining them at Southampton, however, he was unable to shed much light on the mystery: in many ways, Jake's vagueness complicated things further.

"Well, what if we look at pay records?" suggested Sam.  He turned to Jake.

"We do pay you? For example, when you have some shore leave due?"

Jake shook his head.

"No, sir. Us 'prentices aren't s'posed t' enjoy such finer fings like .... like what shore leave's s'posed t' be like"

He ended the sentence quickly and with an almost palpable air of guilt hanging about him. Johnny and Sam exchanged swift glances above Jake's head. The look implied an understanding of how they remembered violation of the curfew commonly placed upon apprentices in their own younger days. It also carried a tacit agreement to let this particular matter drop - at least, for the present.

 Johnny took time to add his praise to Sam's regarding Jake's initiative in finding a solution to the problem of raising stiff, heavy, furled sails and sent him happy on his way back to whatever mischief he and the other pirate apprentice boys could find to pass the time.

"I feel he tells the truth, sir" said Sam after waiting a few moments in case Johnny wished to speak first.

Johnny seemed to return with a jolt from some faraway place to which his thoughts had led him.

"I felt more as if he told ... as much of the truth as he could remember" Johnny replied, and continued:

"I almost felt that there was something ... preventing him from remembering certain details, in much the same way as us, Sam!"

"Beg pardon, Cap'n?"

"Details, Sam: small but significant details! For example: I thought you'd hired him since Southampton - and it's over three weeks since we weighed anchor there! You, on the other hand, are convinced he was already on the muster before you joined - and even he seems more than a little vague about how long he's been on board!"

"Could he be a spy?"

Johnny gave this idea a few moments' consideration, then shook his head definitively.

"No, Sam: there's more frog in my gran's cesspool than there is in him, and he doesn't have the stink of an Exciseman's hireling, either! I want to believe he's genuine, Sam: I like the lad, and he'll do well as he grows, I'm sure! I just wish we could find out what's so odd about him: I just can't put my finger on it, somehow ....."

Back in steerage with the other 'prentices, Jake knew something wasn't right. Time seemed to have slowed around him. He felt forced to swim through a colourless, tasteless, odourless and intangible ‘goo' in order to get from one moment to the next. There were gaps in his memory, particularly concerning recent events which he ought to be able to recall clearly.

A shrill voice penetrated his thoughts: it belonged to Rufe, one of the younger 'prencices, so called because of his shock of uncontrollable red hair and the inevitable freckled complexion, which almost gave him the appearance of one inflicted with a bad case of the 'pox.

"Jake! Come on, we need you: we're off to scrag those eejits over on the Pig!"

Jake was generally right in the thick of these time-honoured traditional raids on the apprentices of other ships whenever two or more vessels were berthed at the same port, but for once his heart wasn't in it. Slowly, he shook his head.

"Nah, I'm ... not in the mood, Rufe. Think I might be comin' down wi' summat. I don' feel too good: try not t' wake me if y' get back in the mid o' th' nightwatch, okay?"

A ship's never completely silent, even lying in a quiet, protected harbour. The creak of the rigging, the rub of the mooring ropes against the quayside, noise and movement from the scullery or the jakes, an occasional shout from a crew member: countless small noises all contribute to the living, breathing environment aboard a ship of the line.

Jake lay on his bunk: having quickly established himself as a natural leader amongst his peers, he had earned the privilege of a bunk rather than a hammock. His head throbbed, but he was for the moment unable to relax enough to sleep the worst of it away.

There it was again: that sense of a ‘dead spot' in what ought to be clear, recent memories. Carefully he tried to recapture the thoughts which had drifted across his consciousness over the last few minutes, looking for any clues.

A square window - not round, as was standard on board ships - and with the unheard of extravagance of curtains fluttering in a breeze, from windows that could actually be opened ....

The picture faded, then disappeared abruptly as Rufe and a dozen other 'prentices tumbled down the wooden steps down from the deck to their quarters in steerage, filthy to a man jack and most of them carrying some badge of recent conflict, but all happy and none incapacitated. Jake realised from the darkness and the fact that his shipmates had returned that he must have slept after all. His head no longer throbbed and he felt rested: it must have done him some good.

"You should have been there, Jake: we caught them with their pants down this time, and no mistake!" crowed Rufe over the hubbub and boasts of the other raiders.

Jake found it all a bit too much as his chance to relax had been all too brief, but he was spared a lengthy detailed description by the unexpected arrival of the bo'sun, who lost no time rounding them all up and lashing them to bed with colourful and inventive threats of what he had in mind for the last person to reach his hammock.

"Cap'n wants you, Jake - now!"

This unexpected command caught them all unawares, and for several heartbeats nobody moved. The bo'sun scowled.

"Deaf or stubborn, Jake? I won't say it again!"

Thankful that he hadn't bothered undressing, Jake rolled off his bunk and onto his feet in one easy motion.

"Where did you join the ship, Jake?"

Johnny Du'pleau looked up from the neat hand-written log page he had been studying when the Bo'sun knocked and pushed Jake into the Captain's cabin. 

"Liverpool, sir."

Johnny shook his head.

"Not a chance! Wherever you're from, that's never a Liverpool accent: and I'm sure I remember you being involved in that business in Southampton, even before we sailed for Cardiff or Liverpool!"

"Tell me something about your family: your parents .... ?"

Unprepared for this question, Jake stood open-mouthed. He liked and respected his captain, and wanted to oblige, but it was as if there was a cloud across certain areas of his memory and he was genuinely unable to recall any details of his earlier life.

Suddenly he had an unbidden picture in his mind of a rectangular sash window bordered by colourful curtains flapping in a gentle breeze. Just as quickly it was gone again: glancing at the fixed round portholes (unadorned by curtains or other home furnishings) of Johnny Du'pleau's cabin confirmed that it was indeed late evening, not the early afternoon his brief vision had implied.

Johnny sighed, and closed the almanac.

"Jake, I believe you're telling me the truth, or at least as much of the truth as you understand yourself: but I'm convinced there's something more in this which we've yet to discover! You haven't had a bang on the head, or some injury to cause a loss of memory?"

"Beg pardon, Sir: but if I'd lost my memory from a blow, how could I remember being injured?"

Despite the flippancy of the remark, both Johnny and Sam laughed: in truth, Jake's logic could not be faulted.

"Jake, you're an honest and hard-working lad. I've decided to make you Sam's cabin boy and general ‘gofer' - but before you thank me, you'd better listen carefully to what Sam's going to expect of you: you may find it a thankless task!"

"Sam, without making it too obvious I want you to help Jake whenever you've the chance and see if you can't jog his early memories: it's most unlikely he's forgotten everything that happened to him before he joined the ship!"

"Jake, get your bedroll and take it along to my cabin!" growled Sam, but without real malice. "Your first task following from your promotion will be to find someone to take your place as chief mischief-maker amongst the 'prentices ......... ! "