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We are three days out of the Bight of Biafra headed west. The trade winds favor Lady of Mercy and push us along at an easy 12 knots cutting a sharp wake through calm seas. I spend most of my time above decks as the autumn air retains a temperate nature infinitely preferable to the suffocating heat in the crew quarters and hold. I am not the only one, the crew, all 15 of them, are loathe to descend the ladders into the hold unless so ordered, and even then they grouse. Captain Machado runs the ship well, and though this is only my second trip as a First Mate, he conveys an air of authority below his otherwise easy manner. He’s pounded some brute of a deckhand into sniveling and bleeding more than once, but his violence is never excessive or gratuitous. I’ve shipped on other vessels where men were nailed to the deck or thrown to the sharks for the slightest infraction, though this brutality is generally reserved for Dutch traders and French privateers. (more…)

“You good?”

It was a dumb question. Hetch knew the answer, and it started with an N and ended with an O.

Dean lay on the bed, his eyes half open—he had barely been awake for the last few hours, and now, as Hetch was about to go, he had woken, if only briefly. The wound in his side was bandaged as good as Hetch could get it, the patch being a sheet torn length-wise and wrapped around Dean’s midsection. Still, a dark splotch of red had bled through. (more…)