Free My Seaswept Heart by Christine Dorsey Page A

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good.”
    “I see.”
    He looked at her askance, his coppery brows
beetled. “Ye talk strange.”
    “Do I? I mean...” Anne glanced nervously
about her. “I ain’t never been in a battle before.”
    The boy spit on his hands, then rubbed them
together. “Didn’t need to tell me that. Thought you was gonna shit
your pants over there.”
    “I was not.” Throw up perhaps, but certainly
not that.
    “No need to get yourself in a twit. Happens
to everyone their first time.” He leaned a bony elbow on the cannon
by his side. “Ye can put that down here. Probably won’t be needing
it anyways. Don’t expect yonder boat will put up much of a
wrangle.”
    Anne glanced out over the ever-narrowing
expanse of cobalt-blue water that separated the two ships. “How can
you be sure?”
    “Ain’t. But I’ve seen enough ’a this to know
most of them captains don’t care a fig about their cargo. Losin’
one here or there makes no difference to them as long as they’ve
plenty of salt pork to fill their bellies and a soft pillow for
their heads.”
    “So?” Anne pressed into the space beside the
cannon and turned to look out to sea as the captain strode by.
    “So,” the boy repeated looking at her as if
she knew nothing. “We give them a warnin’ and they give up.”
    “Sounds simple enough.”
    “’Tis.” the boy smiled showing a gap where
his front teeth should be and stuck out his hand. “Name’s Joe.
What’s yours?”
    “Anne... dy. Andy.” To Anne’s relief Joe
didn’t seem to notice her near slip. She grabbed his hand and shook
it, then almost jumped overboard as a loud boom shook the
sloop.
    “That would be the warnin’,” Joe said.
    By now a burly pirate with no shirt and
blousy-striped breeches stood by the cannon. He held a long pole
that Joe explained was a rammer. And he waited as the captain
called over to the brig, now within hailing distance. Anne looked
up to where he stood on the quarterdeck. He yelled again and this
time he was answered in a heavy French accent.
    “You have the pleasure of surrendering your
cargo to Captain Jamie MacQuaid and his crew, or of visiting the
bottom of the sea. Which shall it be?”
    There was a pause and then a wild cheer on
board the Lost Cause as the French fleur-de-lis fluttered
slowly down the yardarm.
    “Now there’s work to be done,” Joe said as he
gave Anne’s arm a friendly punch. “But don’t fret, there’ll be an
extra ration of grog this night.”
    Which was hardly wonderful news as far as
Anne was concerned, she thought later. She sat in a V of
deck between a barrel and an untidy tangle of rope. Joe wedged
himself in beside her and after giving her a friendly grin downed a
healthy gulp of liquid from a dented tin cup.
    “Told ye ’twouidn’t be so bad.”
    Anne sipped the grog, trying not to make a
face and nodded. What Joe called not too bad had involved shimmying
across the ropes that tangled the Lost Cause to the French
vessel it captured and tossing kegs of salt pork over her
shoulders. She ached in places that had never whispered a complaint
before, even when she took her turn in the sugar works. Stretching
out her legs she had such a strong longing for a soft bed with
clean sheets that she considered... and just as quickly rejected,
the idea of marching toward the cluster of pirates reveling on the
quarterdeck.
    The captain was there, along with the
blackamoor and the one he called Deacon. Several others lounged
about, but she didn’t know their names as yet. What would they
think... what would the captain think... if she joined their midst
and tore off the knit cap that concealed her hair and itched her
neck? Would they offer her a place to sleep other that any spot on
the crowded deck she could find?
    Probably not unless she was sprawled beneath
Jamie MacQuaid in the captain’s cabin. And she had no intention of
doing that.
    “Weren’t much of a fight today,” Joe said,
bringing Anne’s attention back to the boy. He