Wet Saint

"So…" Felipe chuckled as he looked at the scenery.

A beautiful beach and a steep mountain with dense vegetation no long after.

He got dark eyebags below his eyes as he had been up for the last 10 hours in a very rough condition; they had weathered a hurricane. Though the ship is no longer sea-worthy or any water body worthy, it has served enough purpose for them; they are alive after all.

"Lord Luciano." A soldier completely wet with salt water yelled as he made his way up to someone rescue Felipe and his father.

"First, my child," Luciano said as he picked Felipe; as he was only 5 years old and slowly lowered for the soldier that was rescuing him.

They didn't speak anymore and just kept going as they didn't have time to say they were rescuing everyone on the ship.

Around 10 sailors have survived.

There was no problem as they all finally arrived at the dry beach. There most of them just collapsed as they let the warm sand envelop them; it would typically be too hot, but ht fact was, they were too cold. Felipe could feel it. He was about entered hypothermia if he had waited for a bit more.

A few seconds passed before a soldier got up and drew his sword at the minor child of the group. "If it wasn't for you, we would not have been here! Michael would not have died."

Felipe was still trying to process everything that was happening, he had just gotten out of shock, and now he was looking at a very incoherent soldier with a sword centimetres away from his face.

"Jackson, stop. What are you doing?" Another soldier got up as he saw the whole situation going south.

"Don't you see, we are only here in the Caribbean because of them? They are responsible for everything that has happened.

Everyone was up as the situation was already too complex. The soldier Jackson was psychologically unravelling and breaking down. Luciano was particularly stressed, looking at the sword pointing at his child's chest, thinking if he could intercept it.

"You have no honour, do you. Pointing your sword to a weak 5 years old." Felipe said as his voice tone showed mockery to the desperate soldier.

"Come on, Jackson, he is just a child." One soldier said, so he turned his head towards the soldier. At that time, Felipe took a small handful of sand and quickly swung it. Not too much success tho, but still successful.

Jackson felt how not much sand but just a few grains of sand entered his eyes after looking back at his hostage. He closed his eyes as the discomfort was too much. At that time, he felt a shock of pain through his right arm; one soldier had used all his force while swinging down a sheathed sword on Jackson's sword.

The soldier Jackson was unarmed. Right after that, he felt the most potent sucker punch that Luciano would have ever thrown. Being a noble, he would be very unathletic. Nonetheless, he was a human male. He packed a punch.

'AAgghhh.' Felipe fell on the sand as he sighed heavily, feeling his life passing through his eyes and doing his best to make a serious face; he was terrified.

Father and son looked at the other soldiers. They were looking at what the soldiers will do next and if any of them had the same thoughts as Jackson.

Suddenly a tiny child's shadow covered most of them due to the different heights they were standing.

All of them looked at him; 8 years old, African descendant, with rags for clothes and a curious look to him.

Not long before, the child realized all the eyes were on him and instantly began sprinting back from where he came from, just like when a wild deer saw a human.

There was a consensus between them; they must ask the child for help.

"Child!" One of the soldiers yelled in English; he thought he was already in the Virgin Islands.

4 Other soldiers followed the adventurous one while Luciano looked a Felipe before jumping in alongside his son to pursue the child.

"Child!"

Felipe was already exhausted, and with his tiny body, he quickly lost track of the adults.

"Uff ufff." He realized he was so weak that he couldn't follow the adults and was utterly exhausted.

The pursuit lasted a few minutes before they finally saw signs of civilization. It was a small village, all black people, relatively poor nonetheless.

Still, even while poor, a few adults came out of the poorly built houses, and with machetes, they all came quite excited to engage the white men as if they had just found something to kill.

Their defensive stature quickly prompted the unsheathing of the British soldier's swords and created a standoff while most of them were talking in clearly no English over each other.

Felipe arrived there and felt once again he was in deep shit; he was going from one bad situation to another and from one lousy situation to another.

The villagers were not stopping their yelling as if trying to disarm them with just words.

"Arret, arret." Felipe quickly realized where the fuck they were. They are not in the British Virgin Islands. They are in Fucking Haiti.

Haiti was the country where the number of slaves overran the slaves' owner, thus making themselves the first country to abolish slavery, plus the first country run by former slaves. After all, they slaughtered the French Colonizers and withheld the port against Napoleon, which was trying to reinstate slavery in the colony.

Felipe thought for a while, and he realized that, at the time, Haiti should be a divided country. On the north should be the Kingdom of Haiti, and in the South, the Republic of Haiti. The King of the North and the leader of the South were both exceptional members of the Haitian revolution; thus, they became de facto rulers.

Nevertheless, the island on which Haiti exists is the island of Hispaniola, the first actual island to become a colony. Their gold was plundered, and all their natives were slaughtered. The island became dead weight for Spain, so the French took it. Still, Spain Wanted it Back and separated it into the modern world of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Saint Domingo is the name of the Spanish Colony in Hispaniola, which would later become the Dominican Republic. Nevertheless, Luciano and Felipe are denounced criminals by the declining Spanish Empire.

Felipe realized that if they had landed in Saint Domingo, his father and himself would be in cuffs in no time. Plus, Saint Domingo is actually on the island's east side, meaning, it was closer to them than Haiti is, yet, by chance, they were able to arrive there.

"Arret, Arret!"

He knows French, but the thing is, the Haitians don't speak French, at least not all of them. Plus, he is a small child, and his screams are drowned by the shouts of the locals.

Being mostly former slaves and their masters being French created a unique Haitian Creole language. So close to the French that it could be considered a Latin romantic language, just like the Spanish and French.

"Baissez vos machettes." Felipe used a window of quietness for his small voice to be heard.

Everyone turned silent as the limelight was stolen by the white 5 years old boy, still wet and covered in sand—all the white men there looked miserable.

"Nous avons besoin d'aide" (We need help.)

"Our ship… there was a big storm; we were washed here. Please, help us." Felipe said slowly, as he was not that proficient with his French.

"Kid, who are you?" A middle age black man asked in French as he lowered his Machete. "Spaniards? Or British?"

The funny thing is that the British and the Spaniards' soldiers were early similar and nicknamed: [Red Coats.]

Though his French was choppy, Felipe was able to figure it out.

"British, British." Felipe quickly said; The British abolished slavery around 9 years ago, in 1806, but the Spaniards have not.

They all looked at each other and talked in Haitian.

"Is this all your people?"

"5 more survived… everyone else is dead… this is the Kingdom or the Republic?" Felipe asked at the end as he felt weary.

The Kingdom of Haiti has better diplomatic relationships with the world than the Republic of Haiti due to the world rejecting Napoleonic ideals.

"Kingdom."

"Can we talk with your king? An Audience? I am sure he would want to talk to us."

The man laughed as he translated it to his people and told the others about what he said—they all laughed.

"Why would you think…."

"I am Prince of the New Granada… my father is King of New Granada!" Felipe said as he went into bluff mode.

"How can you prove that?" The man looked skeptical as he narrowed his eyes.

"I speak French, while my soldiers don't speak it, only a prince has enough education at my age to speak two languages… God has touched my father and me! He saved us in a storm." Felipe tried to sound as fluent as possible without stuttering.

The man looked back to his people and translated into Haitian Creole. Suddenly, they all became silent before one Haitian approached, prompting a British officer's reaction.

"It's okay," Felipe said as he let the person touch his cheek; Felipe could smell that man's hand and feel how rough his hands were.

Suddenly everyone wanted to touch him, almost like a prophet had come from the sky; in the translation from French to Haitian, the man made it so he was a saint, a king of kings and touched by God himself.