Voyage of Plunder Read Free Page A

sick. I clenched my teeth.
    Half an hour …
    An hour …
    Again the running of feet. Commands barked through the trumpet. A slight change in course.
    A nearby
boom!
    My heart lurched.
Cannon! So it
is
pirates! It has to be! Why else would someone fire upon a merchant ship?
    Then it seemed everyone was running and yelling at once— a thunder of feet above my head. I could not tell what was happening. Were we preparing to fire our cannon? Were the pirates aboard and attacking us all? Meanwhile, Faith was sitting up, reaching for me. “What's happening? Daniel, oh dear God, what's happening? My husband—my dear husband—”
    Another boom.
    Whump!
    A crunch of wood.
    “Dear God! Daniel! Tell me what's—” But before Faith could finish her sentence, she was vomiting again.
    And then I heard them. The pirates. A clash of screams pierced the air, mixed with a screeching wail of trumpets, violins, drums, flutes. Hair prickled on the back of my neck. Panicked, I glanced about the captain's quarters. I needed some sort of weapon to defend us.
    The captain's desk. I opened it. Logbook, papers, quills, ink pots, maps …
    The screams were beside us now. The ships collided with a crunch, throwing me to my knees. The
Gray Pearl
leaned slightly, her timbers groaning. I tasted fear, my heart wild as a galloping horse.
    “Daniel!” Faith had crawled out of bed and now clutched my arm. “Pray tell me. I must know.”
    “It's—it's pirates.” I continued rifling madly through the desk. There. A dagger of some kind, rusted and bent. It would have to do. I stuffed it in the waist of my breeches.
    So there we stood, Faith and I, waiting. Listening to the shrieks and the thumps and the explosions. Watching the door. Dreading when it would smash open and a huge pirate would fill the gap. I glanced at her, wondering if I looked as scared as she did. Her hair was wild. The whites showed all around her pink-rimmed eyes. Tears hovered. Her chest heaved with panting.
    Suddenly I felt sorry for her, witch or not. I would not want to be a woman when pirates attacked. For that matter, I would not want to be a boy either. Much as I hated to admit it, in that moment I was very much a boy—a frightened fourteen-year-old boy with a bent dagger in his waistband.
    Suddenly everything turned quiet. Deathly quiet.
    Then I smelled it. The stench of smoke. The nightmare of every sailor. My voice shook, “The ship is afire. We can't stay down here or we'll burn alive.”
    She nodded. A tear slid down her cheek.
    I said a quick prayer as we left the cabin, her hand locked in mine.

aith and I stumbled onto the upper deck. The smoke was thick and black. I coughed and gagged, pulling Faith along. Behind us was the roar of fire.
    I could not see where I was going; I knew only that we had to get off the ship. But the
Gray Pearl
appeared deserted.
Where is everybody?
“Father!” My voice choked.
    Then I heard voices ahead. A grunt of pain. “This way” I said to Faith, hurrying in the direction of the voices. The smoke began to thin. I picked my way past the mainmast, then past the main hatch. We stepped out of the swirling smoke and into a nightmare.
    A band of pirates surrounded my father. I could see him kneeling in the center. As I watched, frozen with horror, one of the piratesplaced his pistol to the back of my father's head and pulled the trigger.
    My father jerked, then fell in a heap.
    Faith screamed.
    I realized that I too was screaming. “Father!” That I was running toward the pirates, dagger in my hand, screaming, screaming. They turned in surprise, as if not knowing anyone else was aboard. Hands grabbed me. I think I cut one of them; I'm not sure. I was flailing. Screaming and flailing.
    “Father!”
    He lay in a pool of blood, his wig blown away.
    “Father!”
    They pinned me down. I could no longer move. Still screaming …
    Screaming…
    One of them calling my name. Over and over again.
    “Daniel…
Daniel, my boy …
”
    And I knew