Cap'n Jethro Read Online Free PDF Page A

Piss-Pike who leapt after her. Imelda dived after him, snatched, caught his ankle. The weight dragged her down onto her belly where she hung half on the cliff, half over the precipice.
    Rooted to the spot, Jethro’s heart beat like a ragged volley of cannon fire. Over the sound of the waves came Piss-Pike’s voice, faint and jagged with fear, “I’ve got her, I’ve got her. Pull me up!”
    Full of fury, Matthews swung his cutlass at Imelda’s back, but Frenchie was there. His musket blocked the cutlass stroke with a loud clang. Deftly, he disarmed Matthews of his cutlass. A wiley fighter, Matthews stepped in past the bayonet to close quarters. Before Frenchie could reach for his Naval dirk, he was on him and drove his hook into Frenchie’s wounded shoulder. The colour drained from Frenchie and he flopped onto Imelda. She squealed and inched further over the cliff.
    “ Up! Up!” Piss-Pike screamed. “Not down!”
    Jethro swung his axe at Matthews, but the pirate caught his wrist and swung his hook in a nasty upward arc. Jethro grappled him and held the hook away. As they wrestled face to face, Jethro was aware that, inch by inch, Imelda slipped from the cliff.
    “ I knew it would be just us two in the end, Jethro lad,” Matthews said. With a final cackle he tried to dance them over the cliff.
    “ Wrong, just me and my Treasure.” With the savage desperation of a parent defending a child, he smashed his head into Matthews’ face. There was an audible crack. Matthews’ nose erupted in a crimson spray. He fell back, swung at Jethro with his hook, but Jethro put his palm to his chest and shoved.
    Without even pause to watch Matthews fall, Jethro dived and grabbed at Imelda’s legs as she disappeared over the side. Hands steady, heart frantic, he dragged all three of them back from the drop, onto the safety of solid earth.
    For a second they all lay there, joined by white knuckled grips, a bizarre human ladder, then, as if by consent, they separated.
    Jethro scooped his daughter into his arms, held her close, planted kisses on her forehead. Owlish eyes blinked twice at him, then she wriggled free of his embrace, toddled over to her doll, plonked herself down, picked it up and snuggled it close. “That’s papa,” she told the doll and looked at Jethro uncertainly.
    “ Merde,” Frenchie said. He sat up. “Frenchie has been how you say shot, oui?” He looked at his shoulder, turned impossibly pale, and lay down again.
    Piss-Pike’s stomach growled. On legs that wobbled like a lubber’s in a storm, he staggered over to a discarded pistol, snatched it up and smashed its handle down on one of his coconuts. When it cracked open he slurped down the milk then gnawed at the coconut flesh.
    Imelda surveyed the silken wreckage that used to be her frock. “You owe me a new dress.”
    “ I owe you so much more. All of you,” Jethro said, his gaze fixed firmly on Gracie.
    They sat there in silence. Waves and wind sloshed and whooshed, the only sounds on Dead Man’s Drop.
    “ Help me, Jethro. Help yer old mate.” The voice, just audible, belonged to Matthews. There was no doubting it. Jethro saw the glint of sunlight on his hook. It was embedded in the cliff’s edge. He picked up his axe and strode toward the cliff.
    When he peered over the edge, there dangling by his hook, sea and rocks below him, was Matthews.
    “ Help yer old pal, Jethro. Help us up.” Even as the man wheedled and begged for his life, Jethro saw his free hand reach into his jacket. Grubby fingers grasped the handle of a pistol. “Help old Matty up, lad.”
    Jethro’s axe rose and fell in one fast flick. There was a soft ‘thunk’ followed by a shriek of pain that ended as quick as it started. Then nothing. Just wind, waves, and silence.
    Sunlight glinted off the hook dug into the cliff-top.
    “ That,” Jethro said. “be a fair cut.”

    The End