The seagulls flew over the silver-sailed ship and let out raucous calls, echoing across the open sea.
"Mmh…" Ambrose opened his eyes and saw the sun's shining light attacking his eyes, forcing him to squint in discomfort.
He slowly sat up, scratching his messy hair, and looked around the deck, where the sleeping pirates were sprawled out, their empty bottles and fallen chairs scattered everywhere.
He let out a loud yawn, then stood up and opened a hatch that led to the lower deck.
After stumbling inside the storage room, he opened one of the wine barrels, and as he dipped a cup into the barrel, he noticed it was empty.
With a furrowed brow, he went through every barrel and noticed that they were all empty.
"We drank it all last night…"
Ambrose tossed the cup away, climbed up the ladder, and stared at the passed-out pirates.
"Wake up, you mongrels!"
With the loud shout, the pirates jolted awake and looked around groggily, with everyone having a pounding headache.
"What is it, captain?"
They asked, half asleep.
"We've run out of supplies!" Ambrose shouted. "Helmsman, come with me!"
The groggy-looking helmsman stumbled to his feet, then followed after Ambrose to his quarters and took a seat there while holding his pounding head in his hands.
"Find the nearest island." Ambrose took a map from the drawer and handed it over to the helmsman. "Our food is also running low."
"Yes, captain…" The helmsman rubbed his eyes and checked out the map.
After a short moment, he tapped on the map at one island particularly.
"A small island about fifty kilometers from here. It shouldn't be near any navy outposts either."
"That will be our next stop then!" Ambrose folded the map and slid it inside his drawer. "You know what to do."
"Yes, captain!" The helmsman saluted, then left the quarters and started barking orders to the drunken pirates.
Lord's Island, evening.
The sun started to dip below the horizon.
Within the island, at the roof of the makeshift tower, a young man looked at the spyglass in his hand and pressed it against his eye to spy the townsfolk going about their business.
"Hmm~" the young man hummed, and with the spyglass, he could see all the way to the edge of town.
"The shoemaker," the young man used the spyglass and saw the shoemaker through a window of his shop working on a new pair of boots.
In that moment, his young attendant came behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek.
She was around the young man's age and clearly wouldn't be the shoemaker's wife, as the age difference was quite sizeable.
"I knew it," the young man wryly smiled. "Shoemaker, shoemaker, does your wife know about your affair, I wonder~"
At that moment, with the spyglass, he noticed a well-dressed woman heading to the shoemaker's shop. She was about to come to the front steps.
"Oh!" The young man exclaimed. 'That's the shoemaker's wife. This is about to become spicy!'
However, instead of just entering the shop uninvited, the shoemaker's wife knocked on the door, and through the window, the young man was able to see that the shoemaker and the young woman quickly dispersed into different rooms.
The shoemaker went to the door, smiled at the sight of his loving wife, and hugged her before entering the shop together.
Through the window, they were discussing something, and then the wife kissed the shoemaker on the cheek before leaving the shop.
'Lucky guy…' the young man thought. 'His wife is gorgeous, yet he is cheating on her.'
The shoemaker's attendant returned from the side room and hugged him lovingly.
'Wait, she is coming back!'
The young man saw with the spyglass that the shoemaker's wife took about five steps from the shop before she started to rummage through her bag and looked like she forgot to give something to her husband.
She turned around, and this time, without knocking on the door, entered the shop, and through the window, the young man was able to see the shoemaker and young woman look pale as a sheet of paper.
The screams were muffled, but he could tell they were coming from the wife.
The wife rushed to the young woman, slapped her, and then slapped the husband. It was chaos, and the townsfolk, who were passing by, glanced at the shop before quickly moving on with their day.
'Haha, deserved,' the young man laughed.
With his very own makeshift tower and the old spyglass, there weren't many things he couldn't see from his perch in the tree.
Spying was frowned upon in many corners of the world, but so far, no one had caught him doing so.
He shrunk the spyglass back down, and slid it inside his pocket as he planned to return home as it was turning quite late.
However, at that moment, he saw a black dot on the horizon. It was clearly a ship.
'A ship? There aren't many visitors usually.'
Out of curiosity, he retrieved his spyglass and looked over to the black dot.
The black dot turned into a full-fledged ship with silver sails and a Jolly Roger flag flying high.
"Ah, ha… ah…" The young man stumbled over his words, then fell backwards from his makeshift tower and landed in a heap on the ground.
The fall was luckily not that serious. He could've broken his neck, but luckily, he only ended up with a few scrapes and bruises.
'Right, that ship. Without a doubt, that is a pirate ship!'
The young man pocketed the spyglass and started running towards the town as fast as he humanly could.
His feet were tapping against the grass ground, his knees moving up and down in rhythmic motion, propelling him forward with an urgency fueled by adrenaline.
"Pirates!" The young man shouted with his hoarse voice. "Pirates on the horizon!"
As he arrived at the small town, he ran through the town's only street, shouting about the pirates.
The shopkeepers and the townsfolk all stopped what they were doing to listen to his warning.
Then, as they all looked towards the open sea, they saw the silver-sailed ship heading in their way.
They all screamed and started running away to the hill—on top of the hill, a lonely-looking church stood tall and foreboding in the setting sun.
They all pushed the church's doors open and hid inside, the town turning empty and silent behind them.