HMS Athena: A Charles Mullins novel (Sea Command Book 4) by Richard Testrake

but hardly able to speak. Both had been repeatedly raped and otherwise abused. The older woman had many of her teeth knocked out and her nose broken.
    The younger woman seemed to be in better condition, probably because of her age, but she too had been through a horrible ordeal. Since the older woman could not chew her food, Mister Adkins said he was going to ask his fellow wardroom officers to give up one of their chickens for the cook to boil, so the women could have some nourishing broth to sustain them. Mullins immediately offered up any of his own cabin stores that might be useful.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Eleven
     
     
    The women remained in Mullin’s sleeping quarters while he had the carpenter construct a hanging bed in the chart room for himself.  The younger woman, Jane Rawlings, would speak to no one on board save Mister Archer. He had found the two women in their compartment in the sinking schooner and she apparently regarded him as an unthreatening youth.
    The other survivor, Ruth Hancock, after a few hours’ rest and a dose of laudanum, began speaking of their ordeal. Hancock seemed to have the more severe physical injuries but Jane Rawlings seemed to have mental injuries which were not understood. Mullins sat at Hancock’s bedside with the surgeon as she related the attack on the ship ‘President Adams’.
    Hancock had accompanied her niece on a visit to relatives in North Carolina. On the return voyage to their home in New Jersey, they met a pair of ship’s longboats, crammed with men, in the morning’s mist. The master of the Adams, thinking they were seamen in distress, backed his tops’ls to allow them to approach. The men in the boats swarmed aboard and took control of the ship. They later rendezvoused with the schooner in the lee of a barrier island near the mainland. There, the males aboard Adams were slaughtered, while the two women suffered indignities Mrs. Hancock would not speak of.
    Their treatment, harsh enough at the beginning, had progressively became worse as their ordeal continued, and Mrs. Hancock was certain it would have been a matter of days before their throats would have been cut, as had happened to the crew of the Adams.
    Jane had apparently been an attractive woman, before the abuse became so frequent and violent, and the pirate captain had kept her for himself for a few days. Imprisoned in his cabin, as she was, she noticed he marked a chart with their position every day. She took careful note of the chart one day when he went on deck to supervise their entrance to a tiny harbor on the barrier island.
    There was a small hamlet on this island, and the cargo of the Adams was unloaded there, before the ship was taken out to sea to be sunk. Jane Rawlings was no sailor and not familiar with charts or maps, but she had an hour to memorize the shape of this one. There was no name on the chart, but she told her aunt she would recognize the island if she saw it on another chart.
    After the pirate captain tired of her, he turned her over to his crew, to use as they wished. Now, with her mind damaged, the only persons to whom she would speak were her aunt and Mister Archer.
    Mullins was of two minds about his next duty. Of course, he really had no business in pursuing this matter further. The pirate vessel had been taken and the crew killed or captured. On the other hand, he might be able to locate the lair they had been using to receive the pirated goods. Perhaps there might be more pirates remaining there.
    The location of this lair was in United States waters, and there could be international outrage if a Royal Navy ship was discovered administering justice in a North Carolina hamlet. Of course, piracy was a scourge that affected all traffic on the sea, from any nation. Perhaps he could locate this place and then alert United States authorities of the matter. He was only a few days’ travel to the north of the location, and he was under no time