Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Dead.
Gone.
She’d suffered only feet away, and I’d been helpless to stop it.
The horror that swamped my senses was unlike any that had come before it. My lungs burned with the frantic gasps of my shallow breathing. My jaw clenched so tightly I couldn’t unlock it, and the pain in my chest and throat tried to black out my awareness.
I knew this level of evil existed. I’d glimpsed it beneath the rutting body of the Marquess of Grisdale. I’d felt it in Jobah’s stories of his months aboard a slave ship. Hell, I’d battled it on the high seas in all forms of demons and monsters.
But to drown a dying, defenseless woman without reason or care? My mind couldn’t process it. My soul couldn’t bear it.
I lay in a state of traumatic shock, staring at their lifeless bodies.
And I was next.
Before I reached England’s shore, I would be defiled in so savage a manner I would likely die in consequence of it. Just like those women before me.
Being unaccustomed to wearing irons, I naturally feared that particular infliction as the officers turned their attentions on me. Could I have twisted my arms free, I would’ve gone for the knives on their hips. But I could not, and besides, I still had the ring around my neck to contend with, which they now secured to a hook on the wall and locked with a screw key.
Then, to my surprise and relief, they left.
The door closed, and the stark absence of light swarmed in around me. Within that terrible gloom lay the miasma of sluggish heat, the creaking of an unfamiliar ship, and the bodies of my cellmates.
The odor of decay had lived long in this grave, inhabiting its walls, arising from the deck, and floating in the atmosphere. It was old death, the aroma of it suffocating the confined swelter, making the air unfit for respiration.
Trapped in this forsaken place, sharing this nightmare with three women I would never know… It was inenarrable. Inexpressible. Every inch of me trembled, rattling the chains as my heart screamed in grief.
The women were in a better place now. Wherever that was, it had to be easier than what they’d endured in this pit. Still, I wished they had lived. I would give anything to have them here so I could tell them we would get through this, overpower our captors, and escape this ship of horrors.
I would’ve believed those words for them. I would’ve vowed to save their lives with every breath in my body.
But it was just me, all alone. I didn’t know how to make brave promises for myself.
Although the officers had left me inviolate, I still feared I would be taken by force and raped to the point of death. They had looked and acted as though they were capable of such brutal cruelty. Not just with Africans, whom the English had no compunction over enslaving and abusing. But also with me. I supposed they valued the life of a pirate the same as a slave and would treat me with equivalent savagery.
In the dark, I contorted my body as such to put my face near my hands and feet so that I could use my fingers to work the gag from my mouth. Then I gave into an overwhelming need to wiggle toward my recently departed companion. When I found her in the desolate blackness, I lay my cheek on her still warm hand in the shackles.
And I cried.
These women had been stolen from a place of innocence and freedom and, in a barbarous and heartless manner, conveyed to a state of horror and slavery. They were lost to their dear parents and relations, and they to them. No one knew they were dead except me and the evil that had caused their suffering.
All I could offer them were my tears, and these could not avail, for there was no hope for them anymore.
I felt little hope for myself.
My abandoned thoughts grew murkier as time fell stagnant in the stifling abyss. Had it been hours? Days, perhaps. I’d felt the flagship heave from its mooring long ago and knew we’d already sailed to the coast of Eleuthera.
As an added torture, I thought about how close I was to Jade. I’d sent Reynolds to Harbour Island, which sat on the northern tip of Eleuthera. If the flagship anchored close to the shore, I could make the swim and walk to there. How long would Reynolds wait for me?
How long had we been waiting here for Ashley’s return?
He was hunting the pirate who hunted him. How would that end? While Ashley stormed the brothel in New Providence looking for Priest, would Priest sneak aboard HMS Blitz in the harbor? Would he kill Ashley when he learned I’d been imprisoned elsewhere? Or would he die during the confrontation, surrounded by hundreds of Ashley’s soldiers?