Daniel was pointing to something fastened to his headband, a videocam. Liz stared. Wang grabbed her by the arm and Lu clutched the other. The sun on the sea was blinding. The saltwater made their bodies so buoyant they barely had to move to stay afloat. The water behind Daniel swirled with the velocity of a tornado.

"Your device," Daniel shouted to Lulu. "Switch it on!"

Lulu obeyed, and the iPocket showed video of every direction Daniel’s head turned. The sky, the sea, CJ. Three stunned faces. Liz looked up from watching the miniature screen. Daniel intended to enter the spinning mouth of the vortex and he wanted them to follow.

Daniel dived. The vortex swallowed him. Liz was so shocked she forgot to view Lulu’s iPocket until Lu yanked at her hair to make her look.

At first there was only swirling motion and bubbles, then an incredible scene of a port harbour that was clearly eighteenth century. There was a long stretch of shimmering blue water, like the water they were currently floundering in. Between multiple wharves, lining a town’s waterfront, were tall masted ships, brigs, schooners, frigates, and Spanish galleons. Men clustered on the piers dressed like Daniel, only uglier and dirtier. And women, with their hair piled like cotton candy on top of their heads, strolled in long flowing dresses on the arms of gentlemen.

Now they were seeing a stretch of long sandy beach and palm trees and a small canoe. The canoe moved out onto the water and glided stealthily toward a single-masted, twelve-ton sloop. The ship had four guns on her wide, sun-whitened decks, and two swivel guns attached to her rails.

Liz stared at Lu, then at Wang.

It’s a trick," Wang said. "There is no way you are going in there."

Liz took the cord that was attached to CJ’s float. "I don’t want you to come," she said. "CJ will keep me company. Take Lulu back to Cal’s boat, but don’t tell him where I am."

"Are you nuts, Liz?" Wang asked. "You’ll be killed."

"No, I don’t think so. Cal said Tess disappeared. He didn’t say she was killed. He thinks she’s still alive. I know it. I just don’t know why he won’t admit it."

Wang gulped, spat water out of his mouth. "If it was safe, if he thought the vortex, the subaquatic chute, was some kind of time machine, wouldn’t he have gone after Tess himself?"

Liz shook her head, gulping water that was splashing into her face. "You saw him. He’s too much of a coward."

"I’m going with you," Lulu said, swimming closer to Liz.

"Not this time," Liz said.

"You can’t stop me."

"Lu," Liz begged, treading water. "If I don’t make it back, then you’re the only one left."

"I don’t want to be left," Lu said.

"You have to be the one to tell Stevie what happened. You and Wang."

Wang stared, his eyes melting her. "Liz, I can’t let you go. It’s suicide."

"Please, Wang. I have to find out. I think Daniel was telling me the truth."

Lu nodded, started to tread water slower. "Yeah. I think so too. Because otherwise, where did he go?"

"But, where did he go?" Wang asked, his voice rising hysterically.

"He went into the past," Liz said, firmly. "He told me Tess is there too. I have to find out why she won’t or can’t come home. And how her being there can possibly affect the future."

"I can’t believe I’m hearing this," Wang said.

"You were the one who told me Tess believed in time travel."

"I know, but—"

"And you told me you didn’t think she was crazy. Now prove it, Wang, prove it to me."

Wang went silent. They were still treading water. Seagulls were swirling around the vortex. The chute was shrinking.

"Take care of Lu," Liz said.

"Lizabeth." Lu stopped her. She lifted the iPocket from around her neck and looped its cord over Liz’s head. "I don’t know if this gizmo will work there," she said. "But if it does, text me."

"I will." Liz swallowed and kissed Lulu on the cheek.

Liz shut her eyes and dived into the swirling hole in the ocean. CJ squawked, "Man overboard!" before he went tumbling too.

When Liz opened her eyes, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

$$$

She was still in the water, only now the colour of the sea was a dark sapphire blue. It was almost sundown. In front of her was a single-masted sloop. The last rays of the sun made shadows of three figures on the main deck. Two of them fenced unsteadily with swords. It was the same sloop they had seen on Lulu’s iPocket.

The Curlew, Liz thought. But where was Daniel?

Near the rail, a one-eyed gorilla of a man, the ship’s first mate, sucked on a bottle of rum, while he egged the duellers on. Were they crazy? They were all obviously loaded, plastered on rum. Playing with sharp instruments while under the influence was asking for certain death. Or at the very least a severed arm.

Calico Jack, Liz recognized, and—she almost choked—the man the pirate captain was fencing with was Daniel.

"Holy crap," CJ said.

I’ll say, Liz thought. She placed the parrot on her shoulder and swam up to the port side of the ship. The sloop was not large and she could hear every word.

"What kind o’ pirate be you, Daniel, lad?" Rackham mocked.

Daniel swung, Rackham ducked. His tricorn hat went flying, and Daniel’s blade nearly sliced off the head of the Curlew’s first mate.

God almighty, Liz thought. She had witnessed Daniel’s awesome swordplay before, but this was something else.

The first mate chucked his empty rum flask at the young quartermaster, his rolling muscles glistening in the dying light. Rackham jerked his head back in a spooky laugh, then stooped to lift his hat from the deck. He looked down into the water as he rose, and stumbled to the rail. Liz cowered. In her most stupendous shock she hadn’t even thought to hide herself.

"Anne!"

Liz frowned. Oh my God, the pirate thought she was Anne Bonny. She stayed where she was treading water. If he saw her dressed in her neon blue wetsuit, how was she going to explain that?

Jack Rackham reeled out of the furled mainsail’s shadows. His voice slurred as he leaned over the rail. "My God, Anne? Is that you? Sharp now boys, look lively. Me girl needs yer help!"

Daniel ran to the side and looked down. He grinned. Liz threw him a nasty look. How was she supposed to explain what she was doing in the water in a rubber suit?

Daniel stripped off his shirt. "Ho, there. Come aboard, lass, and get ye dry." He nodded to Calico Jack and his first mate who were both too drunk to help hoist her up. Daniel hauled her aboard, wrapped her in his shirt and told his captain he’d fetch her dry clothes. He dragged her aft to the officer’s quarters and into the quartermaster’s berth. CJ stayed with the pirates.

Daniel handed her an armful of smelly clothes. "Here, strip. And look lively. I’ll hide your things under my bunk."

"I am not undressing in front of you," Liz said flatly. "And you can can the pirate talk. We’re alone."

Daniel glanced up toward the deck and let fly a gust of exasperation. "All right then. Do you want to strip in front of him?"

Daniel held a blanket in front of her while she stripped. She put on the pirate clothes he handed to her which apparently belonged to one of the cabin boys, AKA Anne Bonny or Mary Read.

"What now?" Liz said, tightening a purple sash over her black britches. "Listen up, Daniel. I think you’d better start explaining. That drunken oaf thinks I’m his woman."

Daniel nodded and tossed the blanket onto his bunk. He tucked her gear beneath it, then demanded she take off Lu’s iPocket PC.

 "It’s my only link to reality."

 "Your reality is this for now," Daniel said. "That is, if you don’t want to be at the business end of a cutlass."

Liz wet her lips, swallowed. OK, she was convinced. She removed the small handheld device that hung on a cord around her neck and passed it to Daniel.

"As I was saying," Liz continued. "You’ve got some explaining to do. Where’s Tess?"

"She’s in Port Royal," he said, tucking the pocket-sized computer under his bunk with her wetsuit.

"And where are we?"

"Nassau harbour, New Providence."

"I want to see my mother," Liz demanded, planting hands on hips, pirate fashion.

"In time," Daniel said. "But first we’ve got some business to do."

Liz grabbed his arm. He seemed real enough. She wasn’t dreaming. She was in some kind of time warp or else she was on drugs. "I am not going anywhere with you until you tell me what’s going on."

"All right. Sit. But we’ve got to make this fast. Calico Jack is waiting for you, and by that, I don’t mean your parrot."

Liz sat down on the edge of his bunk. Daniel clasped his hands behind his back and paced.

"There’s a complication. I can’t take you to your mother because she’s the cause of all of this. You know that letter she found? Well, she’s brought it here, to the past, and changed the course of events. If the letter isn’t returned to your time—"

Here Liz stopped him. Her time? What about his time? Weren’t they one and the same?

"Elizabeth," Daniel insisted, when she remained frozen with her mouth open. "We are running out of time."

She clamped her mouth shut. Too much exposure to these pirate rogues was turning her into a mouth breather. "Okay, sorry. Continue."

"Your mother refuses to give up the letter because it’s her key to this time zone. But if the letter is not returned to the present as part of the salvage of the Curlew, then you and your mother and your sister will cease to exist."

"What?"

"Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny have been separated by the governor, Woodes Rogers. If they don’t get back together—and it’s this letter that gets them back together—then the future of your family will not exist."

"You mean because we’re their descendants."

"Exactly," Daniel said.

Liz puckered her brow. She narrowed her eyes at him. "And this matters to you . . . why?"

"I can’t tell you that," Daniel said.

"Why not?"

"Because it will change another part of the future."

Liz exhaled. She was getting frustrated and confused and pretty much fed up with Daniel Corker. Who was he?

A sound came from outside and the door to the quartermaster’s berth was opened. A gruff voice called in. "Lassie, me Anne, where are you?" It was Rackham, drunk as a skunk.

"Come on, let’s go," Daniel said. "Or he’ll think I’m up to some hanky-panky with you and I would like to keep my head."

Liz followed Daniel through the door and onto the main deck behind Rackham.

The pirate captain grinned like an idiot. "Ah, Anne, me sweet soul. For a second there, I thought I was seein’ a phantom. You escaped! I knew ye couldn’t be held me feisty little wildcat. A gal who’d stab a serving wench for the misfortune of trampling her dress couldn’t be held by mere mortal men."

Rackham hoisted a half-drunken bottle of rum from his leather baldric where a pistol should have been, and blinked stupidly at the bright orange bikini top that showed beneath the white pirate shirt Liz was wearing. He quaffed a slug of rum and wiped his lips with his knuckles.

If he was drunk enough to think she was Anne Bonny, was he drunk enough to buy it if she told him she’d come from the future? That would be the fastest way to reunite them.

"Well never you mind," Rackham said, rubbing his grubby hand on his calico shirt. He threw his arms out to hug her and Liz dodged him. "What’s this here, now? I ain’t so foul, am I love? Me and my shipmates here, we was only nippin’ a bit into the rum. Isn’t that right, Black Patch, me lad?"

The first mate grinned wickedly and Rackham thumped him on the shoulder. Rackham turned back to Liz and tried to grope her again. She ducked.

He frowned, took a swig of the rum, corked it, then slowly replaced the bottle in his baldric. He stared boldly at her pirate costume, and suddenly became sober.

He signalled the first mate to hand over his own cutlass. When he did, Rackham tossed Black Patch’s cutlass to Liz.

"Spar," he said.

Fortunately Liz’s best sport was fencing. But drunk or not, she was no match for a genuine pirate. He advanced with his cutlass and swung. She parried and jabbed. He blocked her. She glared at Daniel. Why wasn’t he helping her?

"What plagues thee luv?" Rackham teased. "Too much o’ the primping in the governor’s house? You’re losing yer touch."

"Not enough practice," Liz said through clenched teeth.

Rackham backed off and allowed Liz to collect her footing. He lunged forward, crossed blades with her and repelled her strike. Then in a masterful move, he swung his blade out from under hers, raising it high, and stopped just short of her throat.

He swung down, nicking her below the left jaw. Then, with a violent strike, he knocked the cutlass out of her hand. It crashed to the deck in a metallic clatter. Liz clamped her stinging hand to her neck and felt the cut under her jaw smart. When she removed her hand she saw a trace of blood on her fingers.

"Anne would ne’er have lost to me," Rackham said, retrieving the sword. "Not with me full o’ the drink." He shoved his blade into his baldric and tossed the other to his first mate. "Avast, then, who be you?"

Liz glanced at the first mate and Daniel.

"Who be you, lass? You look exactly like my Anne. But ye neither speaks like her nor fights like her."

"But if I look like her, I must be her," Liz said, innocently.

"Drunk as all that, I is not," Rackham answered, hotly.

He took Liz by the arm and pulled her to him, turning her face to the dying light. The sun cast a haunting shadow over his face. Over his shoulder, Liz noticed for the first time that the ship was anchored in a narrow bay. On the horizon was a large bean-shaped island, stark against the orange sky.

"Enough o’ yer dilly-dallying about. Where d’ye come from, wench?"

"It’s not the first time you’ve had female crewmates on your ship," she said defiantly.

Rackham’s face purpled. Daniel stiffened. And the first mate gave his captain an uneasy stare.

Pirate code strictly banned the presence of women aboard ship. Only Calico Jack dared defy that code. He had carefully protected his lover Anne Bonny’s disguise as one of the ship’s boys.

Daniel moved a hand to his sword grip. Rackham noticed. "To yer quarters" he ordered, waving a dagger at Daniel and the first mate. "The both of ye."

When Liz and Rackham were alone he turned back to her, his dagger’s blade catching the last rays of the sun. He thrust the knife into his baldric and went to light a lantern that hung from the main boom over their heads. He picked up his rum and offered it to her. Okay, why not? If she drank with him it would keep him drinking. And if he was drunk he wouldn’t question who she was.

She rubbed the lip of the bottle with the sleeve of her shirt before taking a sip. She gagged. His deep blue eyes twinkled under his tricorn hat.

She decided to go for bust. "I come from the future," she said. "My name is Elizabeth Latimer."

He laughed. "I told ye, I is not that drunk. But if yer passes me that rum I could get drunker."

Liz looked at the brand name blown into the glass. Rum bound for England. This was probably booty from the last merchant ship the pirates had looted. She remembered seeing something like this in one of her mother’s salvage collections.

"Wait here," she said. "I’ve got something to show you."

She went aft to Daniel’s quarters. He was pacing his cabin. When he learned her plan, he told her she was nuts.

"He’ll keel haul you," Daniel said. "He’ll think you’re a bloomin’ witch."

Liz shook her head. "I don’t think so. I think he likes me. I remind him of Anne."

She reached under Daniel’s bunk and grabbed Lulu’s handheld computer before Daniel could stop her, and raced outside to the deck. Daniel followed.

Rackham was swaying, waiting for her, muttering some oaths to CJ to which the parrot responded with some cuss words of his own.

"Quiet," Liz said to CJ.

"Arrgh," CJ said.

Daniel grabbed Liz’s arm from behind, but she shook him off. She showed the drunken pirate the wireless electronic iPocket. He stared at it, eyes threatening to fall out of his skull. He made the sign of the cross. Liz laughed. She had been expecting some pagan sign against the evil eye, not the Catholic gesture to ward off demons.

"Look," she said. She displayed a picture of the surviving pieces of the Curlew that Lu had downloaded while they were diving. A view of the upturned keel, some beams and planks. A rusty cannon and anchor. "That’s your ship—or what’s left of your ship in the twenty-first century. "

Rackham almost dropped his rum, glanced at Daniel. "What devilry is this?" he howled. "The Curlew, she be scuttled?"

Daniel opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. He made a gesture of frustrated and total exasperation. Liz ignored him.

"This is the future," Liz said. "What remains of your sloop in the twenty-first century. My mother and her partner dredged the sea bottom and found your ship under a layer of mud. They raised what was left of the ship."

"Hogwash and devilry," Rackham spewed.

The pirate captain swilled a good portion of his rum before he handed the bottle to Daniel. He seized the minicomputer to glare at the excavated Curlew.

"By the bones of Davy Jones’s locker, I must be drunker than I thinks," Rackham said. "And the only cure for drunken apparitions is to get drunker."

"Aye." Daniel agreed. He returned Rackham his bottle of rum, and retrieved the iPocket from the staggering captain. Daniel would have tossed it overboard but Liz snatched it out of his hand. Daniel gave her a nasty face. She sneered.

Rackham tipped the bottle again. It was three-quarters empty now. He swayed unsteadily on his feet as he sized her up. "Let’s say, my pretty poppet, that I believes you and that you are not some spectre of the drink. Why would a wench from the future seek the ship of Calico Jack?"

Liz paused. She decided to tell him the truth. "I came here to find my mother."

Rackham reached out to touch a long lock of hair that had blown across her eyes. He tugged at her hair. "If you be real, and ye seems to be solid enough, then ye speaks of witchery."

"I’m a descendent of yours and Anne’s," she said, without moving a muscle.

That stopped Rackham in his tracks.

Liz pulled her head away as Rackham dropped his hand from her hair. "By the bones, that’s why you’re the spittin’ likeness o’ her! Except for the colour o’ yer hair. Hers is not so cacao-like. But why do ye sport your hair so indecently, like a lad? Though I must say, I like it."

Rackham took another slug of rum, his eyes fixed onto hers. Suddenly, he laughed out loud. "Tis a bonny dream I must say. And now it is time for me to wake up."

"It’s no dream," Liz said. "I know it sounds incredible. But pictures don’t lie."

"Pictures," Rackham repeated. "That is another thing. These pictures. How are they made?"

Liz hesitated.

"Aye, so the phantom has no answer for that. Then answer me this. If yer comes from the future then yer must know how I die."

Liz was absolutely quiet now. Everything she’d ever learned about paradoxes and time travel came rushing at her. In Star Trek, Captain Kirk would never tell someone in the past how they were going to die. Knowledge of their own death would make a person try to change it.

Jack Rackham’s shadow bounced, long and sharp. He turned his face aside to show a thin, slightly hooked nose. In the dim light, he looked like something out of a movie.

Grimy calico covered him from neck to shin. He wore a yellow calico shirt, bright red cravat and tan britches, and a matching red sash of silk around his waist, and a dark blue calico jacket. They didn’t call him Calico Jack for nothing. Over all hung a leather baldric that crossed his shoulders and chest with holsters to carry his pistol, dagger, boarding axe and cutlass.

Rackham’s thick brown hair fell over his face in ragged curls as he tipped his tricorn hat in a mock salute. He raised his eyes and brushed a thumb along his full lips.

"Take her to the brig," Rackham said to Daniel. "I says no to harbourin’ a witch."

Liz made to grab his dagger. Rackham seized her hand. "Make another of yer fast moves, chick, and I will slit the veins of yer arms and use yer blood to warm my rum."