Pirate Code by Helen Hollick Page B

forward and kissing his mouth. A lingering kiss expressing her love, understanding and appreciation. A more pertinent answer than any spoken words could have conveyed.
    Indicating he was to lie down again, she smeared the wounds with a sweet smelling salve, lightly placed a bandage and then mixed laudanum with the generous tot of rum that Rue, waiting in the outer cabin to offer help where he could, had measured into a tankard.
    “This will help you sleep, luvver,” she said, handing it to Jesamiah who sat up awkwardly. “Sleep and time are the best healers of all manner of ills.”
    “And the pleasure of a good poke,” he said, smiling at her, attempting to lift the tension from her face, the tremble from her hands. He well realised she was holding in her tears, that once he was asleep she would go up on deck to the bow where it was private, and weep. “Though I must confess, I don’t feel up for it at this precise moment, darlin’.”
    As he hoped, she laughed outright. “By the height of the mainmast, that, then, must be a first!”
    He grinned back at her, settled himself more comfortable. The rum was already taking effect, the laudanum following rapidly in its wake.
    “Do not let me sleep on the morrow, sweetheart. I have to meet with Rogers.”
    From the day cabin, Rue, pouring himself a rum and Tiola a glass of wine, swore in his native French. He was still seething fury at his impotency to do anything to help either of the two people he admired and loved. “ Merde , like ‘ell you will! Rogers can shove ‘imself up ‘is own derrière !’”
    He caught Tiola’s expression as she accepted the proffered wine and nodded an apology for his crudity, “ Pardon ma chère .”
    She waved her hand, dismissive. “Be as coarse as you like, Rue. I could not have put it better myself.”
    Jesamiah lifted his head, the need to sleep growing stronger, on the brink of overwhelming him. He scowled at his second in command and his woman. “I gave my word I would be there. Be there I will.”

Ten
    Tuesday Morning
    Dawn had sauntered over the eastern horizon, and a feeble sun was attempting to vie with the lingering rain clouds. On foretopsail only, a Royal Navy frigate inched her way over the sandbar and manoeuvred into a position to half block the exit from Nassau harbour. Most of the pirate vessels anchored, higgle-piggle with no order or symmetry, were nothing more than leaking buckets with sprung timbers and riddled by toredo worm. Their keels and rudders were mouldering beneath the cling of barnacles and rotting weed; spars were draped with patched sails that looked more like a careless array of last week’s abandoned laundry.
    A mere handful of ships appeared neat and cared for; Governor Rogers’ small fleet, or so Commodore Edward Vernon assumed from where he stood on the quarterdeck of the Challenger. Through his telescope he inspected a blue-hulled, square-rig resting, immaculate, at anchor; read her name painted in gold lettering along her stern. Sea Witch. Ah. He knew her, many a newspaper had reported the numerous exploits of the degenerate rogue who captained her. Sea Witch was a prime example of the idiocy of Governor Rogers’ experiment of offering an amnesty to cut-throats and thieves. In Commodore Vernon’s frequently expressed opinion, pirates should hang without trial and without question. String them up and make them dance. Acorne, a prime candidate.
    Vernon nodded his head at his first lieutenant and the boom of two cannon belched a salute shattering the quiet of the harbour. Roosting birds screeched into flight and everyone who had been curled asleep and snoring leapt into a frenzy of startled panic.
    The fortress should have responded. His lips thinned further into tight disapproval. Did this godforsaken backwater not know the tradition of the salute? Rogers’ lackadaisical attitude again he supposed. By truth, unless he achieved something glorious this cruise was going to be most obnoxious.