The Affectionate Adversary Read Free Page A

unsheathing his knife, Charles called to the ship’s boy. “Danny, ’tis Locke here! Take my knife!”
    “Mr. Locke! Look well behind ye, sir!” Danny screeched the words as the pirate took aim at Charles.
    Having only the two pistols remaining—and thus only two shots—Charles dropped to the deck and scrambled toward the capstan. A massive device used to heave the main topsail aloft, its long wooden bars provided little protection. As the pirate fired, a ball ripped through Charles’s sleeve, nicking his arm.
    “Danny!” He tossed the knife to the boy at the very moment that another beefy buccaneer began to hack at the coil of rope with an ax.
    A second ball hit the back of Charles’s leg, and he fell. Drawing his pistols, he rolled and fired. One shot went wide, but the pirate took the second in his right knee. With a snarl of pain, the man snatched another pair of pistols from the sling on his chest. Urging Danny to save his own life, Charles ducked behind the rope coil and began to crawl across the deck, his useless leg trailing behind him.
    He would die now, he realized. This was how his life would end. His fingers gripped the wet wood as he pulled himself toward the rail in a hopeless attempt to escape the pirate. If he went overboard, he would drown. The ocean was too wide. Too deep.
    One death or another.
    His father’s gold would go into a pirate’s treasury. To hedonism and lust and drunkenness. All was lost.
    Charles grasped the ship’s rail and tried to heave himself into a standing position. But as his head cleared the wooden bar, the pirate lighted a granado and tossed it at him. The hollow iron orb filled with black powder glanced off the stump of the mainmast and burst into deadly pieces. One ripped through Charles’s arm. Another cut across his shoulder. The shock wave deafened him, lifted him from the rail, and tossed him into the sea.
    Water swept into his nostrils and poured down his throat. As he sank, Charles looked up toward the surface of the water. For an instant, he thought he saw heaven.

   Two   
     
    “These poor souls …” The captain of the Queen Elinor walked across the deck. “All dead. All lost.”
    Sarah held her handkerchief in a clenched fist as she watched the man survey the devastation of the English clipper Tintagel . Too late, the rescue vessel had arrived upon the scene of the sea battle. By the time the Queen Elinor sailed into position near the beleaguered ship, the pirates had killed nearly every man aboard, stripped everything valuable, and sailed north toward the Malabar Coast.
    Hoping to save those few yet living, the captain had chosen not to go in pursuit of the pillagers. Instead, his sailors had boarded the foundering clipper, put out fires, transferred the dead and dying, and salvaged what remained of the captain’s logs and journals. Those men who had survived the pirate attack were taken to the Queen Elinor’ s mess hall, where a small hospital had been hastily set up. Tables became beds; every passenger donated blankets and bedding. The ship’s physician hurried from one patient to the next, occasionally shaking his head in dismay.
    Sarah Carlyle had assisted in the recovery, first tending to the living who were brought aboard and then laboring with the other women to stitch a pair of cannon balls into each length of canvas that must become a dead man’s shroud. Once the captain had conducted the brief funeral service, the canvas would be sewn into place, starting at the feet.
    The afternoon had flown by in a race against time and heat, and at last no more could be done. The Tintagel was left to its inevitable sinking as the Queen Elinor drew away to a safe distance. In preparation for the burials, the captain ordered the sails adjusted so that some were full of wind while others were laid back, thus rendering the ship motionless. The top gallant yards were set acockbill to signify both death and burial, and list lines were put out of trim to