Dark Before the Rising Sun Read Free Page A

clear, with no meddling partners to interfere. Be your own master, lad.
    But one last word of advice from a man who has seen too much misfortune caused by anger and pride. Ye’ve become a good man. Ye be a decent man, with the respect of this crew. I cannot be faulting ye for being ruthless, for only the pitiless survives to sail into home port. While on board ship, ye’re duty bound to your crew to keep your ship afloat at all costs. But, lad, your inflexibility and determination, when not in battle, should be tempered with compassion.
    I’ve come to fear that ye’re too unforgiving. Ye’ve survived these many years solely to avenge a wrong done ye. I cannot, in all honesty, blame ye for seeking a day of reckoning. I do worry, however, that your desire for vengeance has become an all-consuming fire. Beware, boy. ’Tis too often a sad truth that the price exacted of the person seeking revenge is far greater than the punishment meted out.
    I have found that revenge is not so sweet and, indeed, can leave a terrible bitterness. Ye may lose more than ye win, remember that. And one final word of advice from an old sea dog. Don’t sail too close to the wind, or ye just might find yourself caught between the devil and the deep.
    Have a care, lad,
    Sedgewick Oliver Christopher
    When the Perdita docked, and word of the captain’s death reached the privateer’s owners, the late captain had been proven correct about one of his worries. The Perdita found herself under command of another captain. Dante Leighton sold his share and, the money combined with most of his savings, purchased a sleek little two-masted brigantine just in from the colonies. He christened her Sea Dragon , and had the figurehead of a dragon fixed on the stem just beneath her bowsprit.
    For her first voyage under her new master she had a well-seasoned crew, for many of the Perdita crew chose to sail with Dante. Cobbs, the bos’n, Norfolk bred, had figured it best to be sailing with a man trained by Captain Christopher. MacDonald, the Scots sailmaker, had helped make a sailor out of Dante and knew no one better to sail with. Trevelawny, the ship’s dour-faced Cornish carpenter, reckoned that Cobbs and MacDonald knew what they were about, and he had signed on with them.
    There was one other individual who knew the captain well and was to be found aboard the Sea Dragon ; however, he had a hard time finding his sea legs. During his first few months at sea, it seemed as if he never would. Never had there been so green-visaged a man as Houston Kirby, onetime footman at Merdraco, then personal valet to the old marquis himself, and finally house steward for Dante Leighton, the old marquis’s grandson and heir. That his master was captain of a ship, especially one called the Sea Dragon , meant an uncertain future for them both as far as its newest crew member was concerned.
    For many years a loyal Houston Kirby had bided his time, fervently hoping that his lordship would tire of playing sailor. Alas, he had not, and Kirby had finally come to the unhappy realization that he would have to go to sea if he were to serve his young master again, a duty entrusted to him by the old marquis.
    Kirby and his father and grandfather before him had not served the Leighton family through strife and turmoil to sit idly by while the last of the Leighton line did his damnedest to end up on the bottom of the sea. Remembering the hedonistic young lord that Dante once had been, trepidation had gripped Kirby as he determinedly climbed aboard the Sea Dragon one inhospitable night.
    He had seen nothing of his young master for over eight years, and so could be forgiven for not at first recognizing the captain of the Sea Dragon . The bronze-skinned, broad-shouldered man who had courteously greeted him bore little resemblance to the pale, effete young aristocrat. And the gray eyes Kirby thought he remembered so well had become the impersonal, measuring gaze