Bronte stood helplessly on the foredeck as that precious bit of breeze tickling the hair on her neck, died. The sealers' ship, Matilda, stood tauntingly on the horizon. Without wind, neither it nor the Huntress would progress. There was nothing to do but wait for the sea to breathe again.

They used the opportunity to check the sails for damage and see to other maintenance. The crew groaned as Sam assigned cleaning duties.

"Swab the deck. Caulk the seams. Airr, I escaped from the hands of the Royal Navy to avoid the likes of this treatment!" groaned Spade, the gunner.

Bronte turned and faced the man. True, she ran a tighter ship than most pirate vessels, but she wasn't about to let her ship go to ruin merely to satisfy a sluggard. Still, she needed to be sure the attitude didn't spread. She wanted to slap the insolence out of the worthless toad.

"Think you back with the Navy, do you, Spade?" She crossed her arms.

"Aye, that's right. You be handin' out orders left and right. Ain't it true we don't have to listen to your orders ceptin' in battle?" he asked rhetorically, standing toe to toe with her.

It was true. Always, on a pirate ship, following the command of the captain was purely voluntary, save in any situation of battle. But that didn't mean she was powerless.

"Aye, it's true," she agreed. Some of the men paused to listen in. "And since you seem to know the code so well, tell me: isn't it also true the captain has the right, without interference, to shoot any man aboard as he sees fit?"

Spade took a step back.

"But, if you think I'm running the ship so as to be compared with the Royal Navy, perhaps I'll adopt all their practices; for instance, keep aside good liquor for officers. And start ringing those blasted bells every half-hour so you know when to get out of bed, eat, and go to the head. And, if you don't mind them, I'll be sure to get my cat-o-nine-tails, tie you to the mast, and lash you soundly. I could add in a good keelhaulin' every few days as well." Spade's face paled as he was reminded how bad things could be on a Navy ship. "Now, what say you, Spade?"

He looked contrite. "I'd be obliged to put a little sweat into the holystone, Captain," he answered as his eyes flicked to the pistol she'd drawn and begun to polish absently.

"Have done then, ye twopenny sea-monkey!" She made to put it away, but first cast a scowling look at the gaping crewman surrounding them. They quickly scurried back to whatever tasks they'd been drawn from.

"CARTER! ON DECK!" she shouted into the still air, her voice carrying far easier for the lack of breeze.

He appeared through the hatch, looking as if encumbered with all the burdens the world had issued, his feet dragging him toward the foredeck. His shoulders sagged as he stood before her.

"Sir."

"Take young Kinney and scrub the galley. But first, I'll have the status of the larder."

"By your leave, Captain." He turned and shuffled back to the galley, the sun showing his shiny scalp through the thin gray hair plastered to his head.

A bead of sweat rolled from her forehead and she threw off the waistcoat she'd plundered from the Dutch captain. Many of the men threw off their shirts in the sweltering stillness. She envied them.

Sam bounced up the ladder to join her on the foredeck, his own ivory shirt damp with sweat.

"Duties all handed out, Captain." Sam stood at mock attention.

"Pass the word for Black to muck out the livestock pens."

"Ahh, he's probably doing it already. He's partial to the animals. I always find him caring for the things."

"Just as well. They're not frightened of him."

"Crew's gotten used to him, really. Even Cuthbert's stopped saying we're all doomed on his account. Why Black and gunner Sorenson were playin' a game of bones just last night."

Sam made a point of getting acquainted with the crew. He knew who liked which tasks least and kept men working with who they got on well with. Bronte wondered, would she have been able to accomplish the running of the ship without him? Everyone onboard liked Sam and his easy smile. Perhaps she shouldn't worry so much about his pleasant disposition, even if it did belie typical pirate comportment.

Carter's weathered face popped up through the hatch on the main deck. Slowly he made his way across the deck and up the ladder with a scrap of parchment in one hand.

"Ho there, Carter! How fares your day?" Sam greeted him politely.

"Sam, well enough, thank you," Carter returned, and handed the parchment to Bronte.

He folded his hands behind his back and retreated a step as she looked it over.

She appreciated the respect the old man gave. It'd be nice if he could vary the meals, but that was probably beyond his ability. Most consisted of hard tack, a small thin biscuit baked hard; salted beef or pork he boiled in water and called stew; or oatmeal, cooked until you could use it to caulk the ship. Chickens kept onboard provided fresh eggs and Bronte was glad of that. It's hard to ruin an egg, though he'd come close many a time. The men complained often and loudly, but it did no good; he was the cook and it was either eat or go hungry.

After she reviewed the list she raised her eyes and studied Carter. He stood quietly and patiently, eyes on his own feet. He must've known she'd be unhappy with the report.

With a small sigh she read aloud. "Two buttes of beer, one barrel of oatmeal, three barrels of hard tack and half a hogshead of beef."

He said nothing.

"What of water and rum?" she asked.

"Casks of water to last for a good while, at least till it goes stale, for we've no rum. There's plenty of Madeira, however," he answered.

Sam, standing at the rail a pace behind her, seemed alarmed by the report and took an anxious step toward Carter. Without turning to face him Bronte held her hand up to hold him off. "Steady, Sam." Then addressing Carter, "Explain to me why the stores are so low. Did we not seize several barrels of salted meat from the last ship we plundered, and plenty of dried goods as well? Has someone been stealing from the larder, Carter? " she demanded. She thought they were set for food, given the stores from the Dutch trader. They'd gotten the livestock from that ship as well.

"Much of the meat has gone rotten, and yes, in a manner of speaking, someone has been stealing from the larder."

Standing with hand on hips, Sam listened carefully to the exchange. If anything was more dear to his heart than food Bronte didn't know it. "Name the thief, Carter!" the young pirate demanded, taking another step toward the old man.

Carter met his gaze. The punishment for stealing from the company was clear in the Articles. They'd have their nose and ears slit, then be marooned on the nearest civilized island; civilized, but not necessarily friendly.

"Rats," he pronounced finally.

Sam and Bronte looked at each other, confusion mirrored in their faces. Together they repeated, "Rats?"

"Aye, hundreds of rats," he spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

"Hundreds?" Bronte asked rhetorically.

"Hundreds," he reiterated.

A long pause followed in which the three stared at each other, digesting the information.

"I hate rats," Bronte said. "Cursed Dutchmen," she added, thinking they were the source for the additional livestock. Another short pause followed while she considered what should be done. "Cut rations by half. What's left of livestock?" she asked.

Sam pulled his hands over his face and through his hair. He turned his back to them and walked to rail. Bronte glanced back at him and noticed he was gripping the rail so hard his knuckles were white. Her head began to throb as the hot Caribbean sun pounded down on it relentlessly, reinforcing their dire situation.

"A half dozen hens still laying and a pair of pi—" Carter was interrupted—practically bowled over—by a crazed Cuthbert.

"Don't say it!! Don't say that word! It'll bring the devil on us!" Cuthbert pleaded, one hand over Carter's mouth.

Carter extracted himself indignantly from the agitated sailor and brushed disgustedly at his rumpled clothes.

"Don't say what?" Bronte asked the distraught Cuthbert, more confused than annoyed. Sam turned his head to catch the conversation.

"What 'e was about ter say. You being the captain ought to know better, it being yer job to take 'im back." Cuthbert shook his finger in her face, not knowing how close to danger he'd come with that particular action.

She grabbed his wrist and closed on him until they were toe to toe. As she looked into his face he realized he had erred somehow and smiled, giving a nervous giggle.

"Make clear what you're spouting about, Cuthbert," she demanded in a low voice.

Just above a whisper he answered, "Mr. Dennis."

Sam stepped close behind Bronte to better see the quaking Cuthbert. "Who's he? There's none aboard by that name."

Bronte knew what he meant, however. "I believe he's referring to the—hog."

Cuthbert nodded, his eyes wide.

Bronte stepped back from him as he added, "It be bad luck to call it by the p-p-p-p word." He looked nervously at the cook. "Ya must call 'im Mr. Dennis."

"Luck." Sam snorted. "Nothing could happen that'd bring us worse luck than we're having now."

"Don't say that now, Mr. Davies. I saw an albatross flying off the port bow earlier and ain't nothin' luckier than that!" Cuthbert reassured.

"Step to your duties, Cuthbert. I've heard enough gab of luck," Bronte ordered. "You as well, Carter." The men both turned and retreated.

"Hold, Carter!" she called back and he stopped and turned. "Don't butcher the—," Cuthbert slowed his step, listening, "—Dennis's until I give leave." Carter nodded and continued on. She thought Cuthbert's step lighten a little. There was no use agitating the man further, he was all she could take as it was.

She turned back and met Sam's hungry look. "They'll only be food for a day or two anyway, small as they are, and I'd save 'em long as we've feed for them." She tried to assuage her friend.

"That won't be long if what Carter says about the rats is true," Sam reminded her. "What're we going to do about that?"

"The only thing we can do. Go hunting."

"Hunting?"

"For rats, of course."

As Sam moved off, but not before swearing a few epithets followed by the word 'rum'. She chuckled despite her exasperation at their circumstances.

Fortune bounded up the ladder toward her and the silken cat leapt to the rail, purring.

"And what to do with you, you lazy thing? We can't afford crew derelict in their duties. Shall I hang you from the yard-arm?" she chided as she stroked the animal.

The cat purred in response and stretched out on the rail, with no fear of falling.

Bronte rubbed her temples. "Ahh, if only I'd your confidence."

The rat hunt proved a welcome diversion for the men who were bored with all of the maintenance and cleaning duties.

Man after man came above board, a dozen rats skewered on his cutlass and scraped them off on the rail, sending them splashing into the mirror-like waters below. Cook hadn't exaggerated: the rodents numbered well into the hundreds. The crew made it into a kind of contest, betting how many they could each rid from the ship.

By the time the sun sank she thought she'd be sick if she ever saw another of the vermin. As the light faded she felt it was time to call a halt to the activities below; before someone got hurt.

A pained scream sounded from below.

She was a little late.

Moments later the lookout, Jackson, limped from the hatch leaning on Blake, followed by a nervous-looking Cuthbert. She met the men amidships and marked Jackson's foot, bleeding through a hastily wrapped handkerchief.

"What's here?" she asked, though she could easily guess.

Cuthbert whined from behind, nervously twisting his hands, "I didn't mean it, Cap'n. I didn't mean ter stab 'im."

"Ahh shut yer trap ye numskull," cried Jackson. Then addressing his captain, "That sod fer brains stabbed me foot, 'e did."

"I wouldn't have if ye'd kept the hairy thing out from under me eye!" Cuthbert retorted.

Bronte looked at the man's feet. They were indeed, quite hairy. "Enough. Cuthbert, count his duties among yours until he's able." She'd reached her limit with him.

He scurried away as Blake helped the injured Jackson onto a seat atop an empty barrel.

Bronte looked at the wounded foot, still bleeding heavily through the makeshift bandage.

"Blake, who can patch him?"

Blake appeared hesitant to make a suggestion. Finally he decided to voice his thoughts. "I—heard Carter mention once he knew a bit of medicine."

"Fetch him. And bring up the medicine box from that Dutch ship." At least not everything we found aboard that ship was a bane.

He nodded, turned his back, and stiffly moved off to fulfill the order.

When Carter appeared on deck he looked peevish. "You asked for me?"

"Have a look at Jackson's foot. Do what you can for it."

Carter looked at the man then down at the bleeding foot, standing as if made of granite. Bronte thought he might refuse but he let out a sigh followed by an oath and bent to examine the wound. He rummaged through the box of medical supplies until he found what items he wanted and set to work.

Bronte watched carefully and soon realized, not only did he know exactly what he was doing, but he'd done it many times before. After he tied the foot up neatly he dashed brusquely away brusquely and disappeared down the hatch. His behavior was bordering on peculiar. Bronte decided it was time they had a private talk.

***

Later that evening the crew gathered at the bow of the ship, comparing numbers of vermin they'd squelched and having a good time, despite the low rations. Fiddles and a flute warbled as men bellowed shanties they knew by heart. In general, the company was amiable and Bronte was glad of it. Sam sat among them singing in a fine tenor voice. Carter sat near the gathering's edge.

She touched him on the shoulder. "Come aft with me, Carter. I'd like a word."

With a resigned look he followed her to the stern.

"That was a nice bit of doctoring you did for Jackson."

He looked sharply at her, his face lit easily by the full moon. "T'was nothin' anyone else couldn't have done."

"I disagree. In fact, I say your hands have performed tasks like that more often than they've baked biscuits."

He was silent.

"Come now, out with it. Are you a surgeon, then?"

He hung his head. "Aye, that I am. Or was."

"Was? That's not the sort of thing you forget how to do, I'm thinking. Why pretend to be a cook? You must've know physicians are coveted persons a'sail."

"My reasons are my own. And for that matter, I'm not the only one aboard this ship pretending to be something I'm not."

Bronte studied him a long moment, but his aged face gave nothing away. Could he be referring to another shipmate? Possible. She decided if he wasn't going to force her hand, she wouldn't force his.

"Very well. Keep your secrets. But you will consent to stop playing cook? You'll receive a bigger share of prizes as surgeon."

"Aye. I suppose it will not let me go, anyway. I'll keep to the galley until you've a replacement."

"Good fellow. A fair night to ya then, Doctor," she dismissed.

As Bronte watched him go she noticed a shadow detached itself near the bulkhead of her cabin. Someone had been listening.

When she returned, the singing had stopped and Jackson was entertaining the men with a tale. "Aye, I was there wadin' my way through swamps filled with snakes, crocodiles, and blood-thirsty ticks droppin' from the sky with Morgan and the rest. We was determined we was a gettin' to Panama. A few days in, we'd hardly a dent in the journey, the jungle being impassable, and we was all but starvin'. A scrap of food weren't ta be had amongst us. Afore long, we comes across a camp, though not a Spanish dog ta be found and nary a scrap of food, no, not a crumb. A man did find leather satchels they'd dropped and our stomachs pained us so much we boiled 'em up and et 'em, jus' so's we could go on."

The men sat enraptured by this tail from Henry Morgan's sack of Panama but Bronte wasn't about to let him go on. She knew how the story ended. The buccaneers endured many days of starvation before they finally reached their destination, and though they sacked the city, the plunder added to only £30,000, to be divided among 1,500 men. It wasn't a story for a crew on sparse rations, and she caught more than one eyeing her leather boots.

"Enough of that nonsense. Morgan was a fool not to set his men hunting the jungle creatures stalking them and have 'em stewed! Someone tell us a good sea tale," she suggested.

"Wait just a moment, Blake went to fetch a book," Sam said as he whittled on a piece of wood.

Bronte sat beside Sam and the stack of wood he'd harvested the last time they were ashore.

"What're you making?" she asked curiously.

"First, a couple of chairs that sit real close the ground and lean way back. Then, with the scraps, I'll fashion traps, in case there should be any more rats in the larder. Oh, and I've shavings of the wood you use to make ink." He indicated a burlap sack.

"Why a chair that doesn't have a strait back? What sense does that make? If you sat in it, all you'd see was the sky."

"Naw, you could see more'n that, but it's not really for seeing things," Sam explained.

"What purpose does it serve, then?" Bronte scoffed.

"It's for relaxing in. You know—reading, napping, kicking back."

"Kicking back?"

"Picture this: you're on the beach and want to listen to the waves crashing for a while as you think over some problem." He would've continued but Bronte interrupted.

"I wouldn't want to sit on the beach."

"Why not?"

"Well, you'd get wet sand everywhere and sand-crabs and critters would crawl all over you!"

"Precisely!" Sam agreed, holding up a hand and pointing one finger toward the sky. "But if you were sitting aloft of the sand, none of that would bother you!" He smiled with a nod. Then he flourished one hand as if he were presenting a fine specimen to the king, indicating his unfinished chair. "In this!"

Bronte shook her head. He was incorrigible.

Blake finally appeared, carrying a book. Bronte wondered if he'd been below the whole time.

She peeked at the cover. It was the one they'd taken from the Frenchman's locker. "That's in French."

"Aye, that it is, but the selection was a bit scanty."

"You can read it then?"

Blake wriggled a bit on the barrel he'd sat on and dropped his gaze. "Just something I picked up."

"Blake Adams, you are a curiosity, aren't you?"

"How so?" Blake asked.

"An educated man should have better prospects than sailing as a common pirate. If I didn't know better I'd say you were a gentleman. Have you no other place in all the world to be, than aboard my ship?"

His face took on a pinched look as he turned it away.

Despite her curiosity, Bronte did not press him. He, too, could keep his secrets.

"Come then, read us something!" Sam requested.

Blake, looking extremely uncomfortable with the attention, began to translate a witty tale about a beautiful young woman married to a dour, monkish old man. The buccaneers cheered when a debonair corsair 'rescued' her from her bondage of celibacy.

Bronte wondered what other unseemly tales the book might contain, but when they asked him to read another Blake thumbed through it, turned a shade of red, then declined; insisting it was too dark to read any more.

With the men's appetites for a good story wetted, Cuthbert started a tale. "There's a creature what lives in the sea mightier than any other. It fears naught and cannot be 'armed by anyone or anything. 'e swims through the seas as a serpent slithers across the land, destroying anything in it's path."

The crew was listening with rapt attention—to Cuthbert!

"What be it?" someone asked in a hushed tone.

"They call it—the Leviathan," he said in a soft voice.

"Arrg,  that's a fool superstition, like all of yer others," Spade dismissed loudly, breaking the spell.

"It's not. It's in the Bible," Cuthbert defended.

"The Bible don't have no sea monsters in it."

"It's got this one. Created by God hisself. Go look it up if ya want," Cuthbert said, sounding offended.

"Well, now, we don't have us a Bible now, do we? And you be knowin that," Spade accused, standing to his feet. He was looking for a fight.

"Enough!" Bronte intervened. "Everyone not on watch below. You'll need to be rested when the sails are filling again."

The men grumbled and complained, but they shuffled below to their berths. Bronte hoped the wind would return on the morrow. It was going to be hard to keep the men from each other's throats without stout work to tire them.

Bronte wandered back to her own cabin, remembering she did have a Bible. Bellemare left it aboard. She was curious to see if Cuthbert's tales of the Leviathan were true.

As she thumbed through she didn't find the passages about the mysterious Leviathan but her curiosity was peaked. She flipped to the back and was perusing the parables of someone called Jesus when a knock sounded at the door. Sam entered when she beckoned. "You know anything about this fellow they call Jesus?" she asked.

Sam shrugged. "Sure, you haven't heard of Him?"

"I've heard His name a'plenty when people are cursing and swearing, but I didn't know there were stories about Him. Says here He can control the wind and the seas." She looked at Sam who appeared nonplused. "See, right there. It tells a story about how He walked on water and calmed a storm."

"Be nice if he could shake one up about now," Sam commented

"Have you heard the stories?"

"When I was a boy. On the voyage from England there was this woman who told them. Mostly how He wants you to go about doing good and obeying Him. Always sounded like He didn't want a fella to have any fun to me. My mother talked to that woman a lot after she got sick. Once, I saw them holding each other and crying." He made a face. "I figure it's just a bunch of women stuff in there."

Bronte nearly protested the Bible had belonged to a man, but stopped herself. She didn't really know if Bellemare read it. He might only carry it around as a kind of talisman. The thought of equating the robust and dapper Bellemare with someone like Cuthbert made her smile.

But what would this Jesus think about the many unsavory deeds she was guilty of?