Wade waited until the old man was comfortable in his chair before he began to tell him what he was after.
"My name is Captain Wade Docherty. I seek the Cursed Hangman," he began, and Pepper rolled his eyes. Wade should have expected it, really. Not much was known about Dead Man Pepper except that, well, he should have been dead. He was the only man known to have been stranded on the Isle of Changers and lived to talk about it.
When the Cursed Hangman had vanished years ago, every pirate alive had searched for its treasure. Every pirate had tried to find old Mad Drake's ship. Every pirate had aimed to claim that booty for himself.
But as time passed, the searchers stopped looking.
Only Wade Docherty never did.
The Saucy Devil didn't give up that easily.
He had continued seeking after the treasure, traveling far and wide to find it. Now he had a map that showed an alternate route, one he hadn't known about before, one that Mad Drake had attempted to take.
And it passed right by the Isle of Changers.
While he had never given the isle much thought, now Wade wanted to know as much as possible. He had never been this close to finding the treasure. And he was close. He could sense it. He could practically smell it.
"I need to know what you know about the isle," Wade told Pepper. At this, Pepper laughed out loud.
"Do ya now?" He asked, grabbing his glass of whiskey from the table next to him. He took a long swig. Wade waited, quietly, as the pirate closed his eyes. Wade knew that look well. Pepper was trying to decide how much he was going to tell Wade and Julianne. He was going to decide how much of the truth he was going to tell them.
He was going to decide whether the necklace they’d brought him was valuable enough to give them what they needed to know.
And Wade was about to find out if he would ever be able to get past the Isle of Changers and claim his prize.
**
"Please," Wade told him. Julianne shot him a surprised glance. He didn't seem like the begging type, but then, this was obviously important to him. She knew that he had been searching for the ship for a very long time, but something in his voice told her that it wasn't just about recognition for him.
Granted, whoever found the Cursed Hangman would certainly be granted extensive privileges in the pirating world. He would be the most feared, most renowned pirate of all time. Enough men had died searching for the ship that the one who found it would undoubtedly be quite revered.
Dead Man Pepper must have sensed the same need in Wade's tone that Julianne did because he just stared at Wade for a solid moment, sizing him up. Then he nodded and motioned for them to sit on the bench across from him.
"I was a younger pirate then," Pepper told them. "Young, naive, headstrong. You name it."
"Sounds like any new pirate," Wade commented.
"Aye," murmured Pepper. "But even being so young, I was afraid of the sea. I feared it. I loved it, but I feared it."
Wade seemed to understand, but until recently, Julianne wouldn’t have known what they were talking about. She had loved her parents. At least, she had thought she did. When they tried to marry her off, though, she learned that some things are worth fearing. Some things, some people, will harm you even while they claim to have your best interests at heart.
Her days at sea at aged Julianne. She found herself caring less about what was expected of her and more about what she wanted. Pirates knew how to live in the moment, and the feeling thrilled her. It was addictive. It was a rush. She knew it wouldn’t last forever, but while Julianne was a member of the pirate crew, she made the most of each second.
"We were trying to find Dragon Isle," Pepper commented. "Everyone said it was an amazing place, a magical place. We wanted to see it, so we set out with a small crew, just a few of us and our ship. Tomkin, the captain, said he knew how to find it, but he was wrong."
Pepper shuddered at the memory.
"We would have been okay, really, hadn't it been for a strange storm that crept upon us. We couldn't escape it, no matter how hard we tried. It seemed to follow us for days. When we crashed, we didn't know where we had landed at first. We didn't understand the things that were going on. We thought it was just an ordinary beach."
"But it wasn't ordinary," Wade pressed, trying to get the old man to continue talking.
Pepper shook his head.
"Things changed there."
"What do you mean?"
"Everything," Pepper said slowly. "The way we thought. The things we said. Tomkin started talking crazy, saying he was seeing ghosts. Another bloke ran for the water and just started swimming like crazy, going 'til he couldn't go no more, then drownin' while we all watched."
He paused for a moment. His eyes turned wistful, and Julianne knew he was thinking about the things he had lost, thinking about his experiences, thinking about his friends.
"How did you get off the island?" Julianne asked quietly, breaking the silence.
"I stayed two days," Pepper said. "Then a ship was passing and I swam out. They fished me up and brought me back."
"Why didn't that ship encounter trouble on the isle?" Wade questioned. "They didn't have any effects from the island, did they? They didn't see ghosts?"
"They never landed on the isle," Pepper told him. "Seems to me that getting too close to the isle or landing on it is what makes people go crazy." Pepper shrugged. "Just passing by, though, that seems to be the ticket. Don't stop on the beach."
Then he reached for his whiskey again.
“No matter what you see, boy, don’t stop on the beach.”