5

      The schooner Challenger put out to sea under full sail, with a crew of forty-eight men, instead of the fifty she was supposed to carry. Her captain, coming on board late, was in an exceptionally unpleasant mood, a thunderous frown drawing his black brows together as the first mate, Mr. Benson, bellowed orders and the men scurried to obey them without the usual joking and ribald banter.

      Waiting only until she had cleared the harbor and was ploughing her way through the first rolling breakers of the Atlantic Ocean, Dominic Challenger turned and made his way to his cabin, throwing a curt word of command over his shoulder as he went that caused Mr. Benson and Donald McGuire to exchange guilty, conspiratorial looks as they followed him.

      “Well?” The captain seated himself in a chair behind a desk that held an untidy collection of maps, charts, and other papers, all of which were held in place by a collection of pistols of varying sizes and shapes. “Perhaps you’ll explain why we’re short two hands—and why discipline always seems to go to hell when I’m not aboard this ship! You were to be prepared and in readiness to sail at precisely four this afternoon. Those were my orders four weeks ago.” He stared at Donald, and his grey eyes turned to a metallic steely color in the light that poured in through a large porthole.

      “And you—can it be that you found some reason to dally along the way you took in getting here? I understand that I arrived in port hard on your heels.”

      As his eyes went from one red face to the other, Dominic found himself wondering casually how it was that these two, who had always been each other’s enemy, had suddenly turned into allies. Or so it seemed…

      Benson was a Methodist, a follower of the fiery and controversial preacher John Wesley. And Donald, as he well knew, was an uncompromising Calvinist. Usually the two men argued for hours, almost coming to blows, over various points of doctrine. Today they both seemed filled with brotherhood. He wondered if his own escapades during the time he had spent ashore had united them in the common bonds of disapproval. If so, be damned to them both, with their long faces!

      He waited for them to speak, and seniority took precedence.

      “Sir!” Mr. Benson said gruffly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny neck. “You did not give me time to explain the situation—sir. Begging to report that Parrish went on shore without leave a week ago, and, being in a disgustingly drunken state when he attempted to return, he fell into the water off a pier, and was discovered drowned. And as for young Ames—” here Benson’s face reddened, and he appeared on the verge of apoplexy “—he—ran away, captain. With a woman old enough to be his mother, too! She used to sell fish and fresh fruit in the market place. And then one day she wasn’t there. I sent Jenkins on shore to look for Ames, and he came back with a garbled message….”

      Benson regarded fornication as a crime only slightly less serious than murder and drunkenness. For himself, he never drank and was not interested in shore leave or gambling or any of the other vices that sailors were wont to indulge in. He had planned, at one time, to become a fire-and-brimstone preacher himself, until one day a press gang had caught him. Now, he was just as single-minded in his hatred of the English Navy as he was in his attempts to convert the men under his command.

      Dominic had caught himself wondering more than once if perhaps Benson did not secretly cherish a fondness for young men, but if he did, he was not overt about it, and all that mattered was that he was a good sailor and an excellent mate—cool-headed in times of danger. Young Ames had been something of a protégé of Benson’s—no wonder he was upset.

      Captain Challenger had had far too much wine to drink the previous night, which had something to do with his bad mood. He had literally lost his shirt at cards and had ended up, in spite of all his stern resolutions, in the queen’s own bed. Just as well he had planned to leave Spain today! She was a savage, insatiable lover, and his back still bore the marks of her long, sharp nails.

      There was a dull pounding in his temples, and he craved sleep; and so when Benson began to explain that he had personally hired a new cabin boy, a Spanish orphan who had relatives in France who would be glad to take him in, Dominic merely waved an impatient hand.

      Dry-voiced, he asked, “I suppose the brat doesn’t even speak English! And why wasn’t he on deck when we sailed?”

      “Well—” Looking embarrassed, Benson shuffled his feet. “To tell the truth, the lad’s seasick, sir. But he’ll be useful once he gets over it, I’ll see to that. I gave him the extra bunk in my cabin. I wouldn’t want a lad as young as he is corrupted by the dirty talk and gambling in the fo’c’s’le.”

      Hell—maybe Benson was that kind after all! But as long as he did his job and the new cabin boy knew what was expected of him, what the devil did it matter?

      There was still Donald to be coped with, and Dominic said harshly, “Since we’re short a man, and I don’t have to impress people on shore with the fact that I, too, have my own valet, you can go back to your usual duties, my old friend! I’m sure you’ll be relieved.”

      Catching the fleeting impression of thankfulness on Donald’s face as he and Benson turned to leave, he held up one hand, staying him after the door had closed behind the first mate.

      “Wait a minute. Why are you in such a deuced hurry? I haven’t heard a word out of you yet, and you must admit that’s unusual. Well? Aren’t you going to tell me I’m headed for perdition?”

      Donald sounded unusually solemn.

      “It’s not for me to say, as ye’ve reminded me often, captain. I reckon ye’ll be after finding your own kind of damnation, at that.”

      “I reckon I will!” Dominic Challenger gave a harsh laugh that seemed torn from his throat. The thin white scar that stretched from his temple and across one cheekbone like a crescent gave him a look of the devil—or so Donald always said to himself, seeing the captain in this kind of mood.

      He hoped there would be no more questions, but on the heels of that hope came the curt command to fetch a decanter of wine—since there was no cabin boy in a fit state to perform such small duties.

      “By the way—how did you manage to be rid of the gypsy wench? Were the gold coins I gave you sufficient to compensate for the loss of her virginity and provide her with a dowry?”

      Halfway out of the door already, Donald’s back stiffened, but he did not turn his head.

      “She asked only to be taken to some distant relatives, captain, and it was the least I could promise, wasn’t it, now? She returned your gold to you, too—said she didn’t want payment for what she hadn’t sold.”

      With a look of dour satisfaction on his face, Donald closed the door behind him, ignoring the angrily muttered, explosive curse that was hurled at his heels. Let Benson say what he would—he knew best how to handle the captain in one of his black moods.

      The mood lasted for the whole of the week that followed, along with a spell of bad weather that was almost as ugly.

      It appeared they were carrying secret dispatches to the newly arrived American minister in Paris, and so instead of looking for likely prizes, they were to avoid running into any other ships if they could help it—a highly unusual situation for a notorious privateer. All the same, there were the usual duties to be performed, just in case; the decks had to be kept clean and clear and the guns polished and cleaned for action. The Challenger’s slim, rakish lines were too well known to King George’s Navy to permit any relaxing of their vigilance; and it was well known that in spite of the so-called Peace of Amiens, there were British war frigates skulking off the coast of Portugal and in the Bay of Biscay itself. And so the Challenger kept to a slow zigzag course heading well out to sea before she turned back again to head for the French harbor of Nantes.

      A series of storms plagued them after they had rounded Cape Finisterre—both sea and