Concerning Captain Flint

On the plantation, news was something that came rather rarely and was often treated as a bit of an event. Things were organized so that handlers oversaw specific groups, which they directed through the day and disciplined as needed. Once a month, representatives from each group would get to go to a meeting at the main house, and hear the news which they would then bring to their group and share. 

These gatherings were generally quite festive, and for that reason it was a different representative every month, so that everyone had an opportunity to enjoy them. It was a shockingly fair system, but then that was the purpose of the place – to build itself up as a humane method of slavery, but that is a whole other discussion. 

In any case, often times these meetings contained stories of piracy, for they were exciting and easy entertainment for otherwise dull and focused lives. Tales of Flint, by the time they reached Savannah, were broader and more sensationalized than the truth could ever hope to be. 

At no point did Thomas ever consider that the notorious Captain Flint might in fact be his dear James McGraw. Not so much because he believed the lieutenant incapable of cruelty – he was a Naval Officer that capacity came with the territory and Thomas never once doubted in it. Rather, the idea that James McGraw could become a man so fantastical and not do something about Thomas’ predicament was too impossible to believe. 

Even when he learned Flint killed his parents in a targeted attack he did not suspect – his father had many enemies. His own uncles might well have paid for the assassination and it had gone too far, for all he knew. So to learn that Flint and McGraw were one in the same – it was a shock. Though again, that is it’s own tale.