Bronte stood at the whipstaff, her hand resting comfortably on the warm wood surface as they sailed quietly onward, the bow cutting easily into the silken water. Nothing had hindered their travels this night. The moon hung low in the sky, showing only a bright sliver against an ebony velvet foil. As Bronte stared, she tried to pick out its round outline in the shadow but was unable. The crescent was outlined so crisply, if she didn't know otherwise, she'd swear nothing was concealed—nothing lay hidden by the darkness.

Sam leapt from the ratlines, having just tied off a sail, and leaned against the bulwarks, following his friend's gaze into a blackness that would shortly give way to breaking dawn.

"Winds are fair and seas following; should be another uneventful day," Bronte commented.

It'd been three days since their escape from Bermuda. The current dullness stood in sharp contrast to their recent brush with destruction. The night they escaped she'd returned to the bilge, bringing Sam, and sent Kinney up to keep a watch on the pursuing ship. Together they pumped until their hands blistered and bled and, when they finally returned topside, the ominous ship had disappeared. It hadn't seen them or hadn't cared. Either suited her. Afterward they continued without further mishap and were well on their way.

"Another day just like the last. We'd such a rough start I was thrilled that first day the winds blew favorable, but now...." Sam trailed off as he glanced at the sails, billowing with the perfect fill of wind.

"Now it's gotten a little boring?" she finished for him.

"Yeah. I'd welcome a bit of excitement."

"Welcome to pirate life." Bronte smiled. "Moments of danger and excitement dotted sparingly throughout periods of monotonous nothing."

"Good thing that's not how you made it sound before we left! You mighta found yourself sailing alone," Sam quipped. "I'll admit, I'd a kind of thrill that first night, when you said we were gonna fight. Later, I was glad we didn't."

Bronte turned her head to study her companion. "You don't really regret coming, do you?" she questioned.

"Naw, I was always wanting to be my own man," Sam affirmed, then let out a low chuckle. "Just wasn't expectin' it t'would be like this." He crossed his arms over his chest and turned to look at Bronte. "How'd you come to be a 'gentleman of fortune'?"

Bronte stood quietly watching the brightening horizon as she thought of how best to answer. How much did she really trust him? And how much of the truth did she really want him to know? Finally she sighed softly and said, "I'd nothin' better to do at the time."

"And now?"

"Now it's been my life for so long it's gotten inta my blood. I can't imagine doing anything else."

"How old are you? I thought I had a few years on you. You couldn't'ave been doing it that long." He paused a moment and then asked, "Are you a son of a gun?"

Bronte snorted at his assessment. The term was used loosely to describe a child who'd been born aboard ship. Women brought on for entertainment sometimes became pregnant and there was no telling who the father might be. This fact, combined with the favored place for a private tryst on a crowded ship, between the cannons on the gun deck, birthed the phrase 'son of a gun'. A captain would dutifully enter the child to the manifest under this terminology. But this was not the case for Bronte. "My parents were wed, though I never knew my father. He died of fever when I was a babe." She hoped he wouldn't notice her ignoring the question of age. It brought too many other questions. Ones she wasn't sure she could not answer.

"It must've been a comfort to your father when he passed, knowing he'd a son to care for things," Sam said, trying to be thoughtful.

Bronte furrowed her eyebrows. She'd never thought of that before. Had her sex brought despair rather than comfort? She wished, not for the first time, she really had been born a boy. Maybe she would've never needed to leave her mother.

"Did your ma die, too, then? Is that how you ended up a-rovin'?"

"No," she stopped and chewed her lip a moment. "I left my mother," she finished.

"You left your family? Why?" Sam asked with obvious confusion.

Bronte turned away abruptly. "Doesn't matter," she said harshly. "I did and was happy."

"Mostly," she added in a quieter voice.

"Blazes Bron, I didn't mean to...." Sam winced. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed before he added, "My ma, she died."

"What of your father?"

"Never met him. Ma used to get this look in her eye when I asked about him. Then she'd get real sad and tell me she loved me enough for a ma and a dad; so I stopped askin'."

"Do you think on her often?"

Sam nodded. "Always look for a bright side and everything'll turn out, she'd tell me. Once, she said there was good in everyone; you just needed to look harder for it in some."

"She'd be proud of your attitude, then."

"Maybe. It's easier to be happy. Too much work to stay mad," he said with a grin.

A companionable silence followed while they both gazed at the dawn. The sky transformed from an endless black to a luminescent gray-green. Stars were slowly winking out, washed from the sky.

"Bron..." Sam said quietly.

"Aye?"

"How much will we get?"

"What?"

"You know, when we capture a ship. How much?"

"Depends. Sometimes you find an empty hold with hardly enough supplies to steal. Other times a trader, a merchant ship like ours, might carry £10,000 worth of goods."

Sam whistled. It was no paltry sum for a single prize.

"Remember, we divide that sum between the crew. The more crewman, the easier to take a prize, but the more ways to split," Bronte said.

"So, we get a small crew?" Sam asked.

"No, a big crew, and go after big money."

"Big money?"

"Spanish Treasure Galleons."

"What would one of them carry?"

"Enough to retire on if you get the right one. There's a legendary galleon went down in a hurricane some fifty years ago. She sunk carrying 40 tons of gold and silver. That's about two and a half million pounds!" Bronte told him wistfully.

Sam swallowed. "Fellow could down a lot of rum with that."

A small dark shape zipped alongside the ship. They watched it swim to a small isle filled with more of its counterparts.

"Monk seals. They gather this time of year to mate."

"Playful things, aren't they?" Sam smiled as a half-dozen dark brown seals dived and danced through the water, showing their pale lemon bellies as they turned tricks beneath the translucent blue-green waves.

They breached the surface and looked at their audience with liquid black eyes, as if waiting for applause.

"Don't they say these fellows escorted ol' Columbus when he discovered this paradise?" Sam asked.

"Columbus. Hmpf. The seals are lucky they don't have to fight over it with the bloody Spaniards! Spain still thinks because they found it the rest of the world has no right to it!" Bronte grumbled. "Then again, so long as they continue to plague us we can continue to plunder them!" she reasoned.

"Look, what's that?" Sam pointed off the starboard bow into the golden horizon. A blazing flash sparked, followed by a low booming.

"Cannons!" Bronte said as she quickly grabbed a spyglass. "A ship's under attack! I recognize that barque. We need to disappear! Take in sail and we'll hide awhile in the lee of this isle."

"Who is it?" Sam asked as he hurried to help her reef the sails while little Kinney, rubbing sleep from his eyes, took up post at the whipstaff.

"Pirate by the name of Roche Brasiliano. 'Rock the Brazilian'."

"Who's he?"

"Only one of the most ruthless men sailing the seven seas, and not someone we want to tangle with." Bronte said with disgust she couldn't hide.

The ship under attack, flying a Spanish flag, returned impressive salvos of twenty guns, all falling several feet short of their mark.

"You said ships wouldn't fight back!" Sam said as another cannon exchange fired. Holes blossomed in the sails of the Spanish ship, but it was difficult to see what other damage was wrought from their perspective.

"Sea-wolves are using bar shot," she noted offhandedly as she paused to take another look at the ships from aloft. "In this case, Spaniards are better off fighting, and looks to me they know it. They must recognize his colors." Bronte dropped the glass. "Most pirates are only wanting cargo and loot. Sailors don't raise a fuss and their lives are spared. But, especially when it comes to the Spanish, there's some what don't care for mercy."

"And the Brazilian is one of those?" Sam dropped back to the deck.

"Aye. He's well known in Jamaica and off the coast of Campeche as a ruthless shark. He takes pleasure in torture, like roasting Spanish prisoners alive, spitted like hogs."

Cannons boomed, this time sounding more like drums in a death march than the bells of battle.

"They'd do well to fight to their last breath and die in the battles fury," Bronte said with disgust as she dropped beside him.

"I thought you didn't like the Spanish?" Sam asked apprehensively.

Bronte sighed. "In truth, ruthlessness both hurts and helps the rest of us pirates. It's well and good they fear for their lives, otherwise they'd just have themselves a laugh while sailing on their merry way when we raised Jolly Roger. But if no mercy will be granted for surrender, they'll fight till there's more blood than salt in the ocean."

"Spanish do no better! They'd send us to the bottom for no other reason than being English! And the tales of torture...."

"And so the great game goes on and on...." Bronte said sardonically.

"When we take a ship...?" Sam asked abruptly with a look of concern.

"We'll grant quarter. I spill no blood lightly, Spanish or otherwise."

The sun rising behind the ships changed to a bloody red-orange color and threw the two ships into sharp relief. One last volley of cannon came from the barque and then all lay quiet. Sam raised the spyglass in time to see the barque rake the deck of the Spanish vessel with its swivel guns as it drifted past. It'd been filled with the dark outlines of seamen with hands in the air. Sam lowered the glass. Monk seals barked balefully as if they knew the horror taking place beyond them. The pirate ship came about for another pass.

As it completed its turn the Huntress snuck stealthily on, leaving the unfortunate vessel and its captures in its wake. A quiet fell on her scanty crew as they thought of the undertaking that lay before them.

They continued to sail south until they approached the Lesser Antilles. Sam was standing again at the tiller, while Bronte pursued her favorite pastime, sketching coastlines from the crow's nest, when a promising island appeared off the port bow.

"This's it! The Huntress's new home!" she exclaimed with delight.

Sam whooped as he threw his hands in the air. His whoop changed to an expletive when the ship lurched slightly. He put his hands back on the whipstaff, his face showing a hint of panic. He looked up and gave Bronte a sheepish smile.

Bronte shook her head as she watched her incorrigible friend and grinned back. Muscles she hadn't realized were tense, relaxed. Their escape was complete, and for a time they'd be safe. Then they could really begin their adventures.