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glowing green liquid.

       "I like the colour," said Mechatronic. "It seems wonderfully decadent."

       "Excellent. The voyage becomes more civilised by the hour."

       "Don't you think you should use the absinthe for barter?" asked Susanna sharply. She was worried about her brother's drinking habits and there was something inexplicably eerie about the bottles of green alcohol.

       "Liquor is a mocker!" added Pastor White.

       "I only have one vice and I'll be damned if I'll let that one go," replied Hartwell. "Is the ship ready, Mister O'Rourke?"

       "As she'll ever be, but I make no guarantee that she'll last too long," said O'Rourke in a worried tone.

       "We have little choice, so we must take the risk," said Hartwell. "Cast off."

       "Heading, Captain?" asked Madrigal as he took the wheel.

       "Pirate Cove," replied Hartwell.

       Tench gasped. "We can't go there! They'll kill us for sure, given who we are."

       "We can't go back home, either," pointed out Hartwell.

       "But, but, the pirates," stuttered Tench in horror.

       "We cannot get anywhere with only a skeleton crew. We need at least fifty men just to sail a galleon, double that to operate at battle stations and I see only two dozen men, if that. And besides…"

       "Besides what, Captain?"

       Hartwell smiled but without mirth. "We're all pirates now."

       "Even me?" asked Mechatronic.

       "I don't know what you are or what you have done to us, but I do know that I don't trust you because of it." Hartwell turned and stalked away, leaving an expression of anguish on Mechatronic's face, one mirrored on the captain's face though she couldn't see it.

       She turned and walked to the bow of the ship and stood by the figurehead, looking out to sea, alone with her thoughts and unusual feelings.
       To Hartwell, when he risked glancing at her, it was as if the two figures belonged together—both looking out to sea, both immobile, one faded, battered and inert, the other gleaming silver, also battered, but very much alive. He felt a pang that embraced both of them, as though he couldn't bear to lose either and would fight to the death to keep them at his side.

       With his hands clasped behind him and his chin down to his chest in thought, Hartwell descended into the depths of his new ship and new emotions.

bout theuthor

    Arabella Wyatt lives in Upton Upon Severn, Worcestershire, where she gets flooded out a lot, possibly influencing her desire to write about the sea…