The Voyage of the Sea Wolf

The swashbuckling sequel to
The Pirate Captain's Daughter.

Catherine and William have been marooned on Pox Island by the murderous crew of the pirate ship
Reprisal
. Their joy at being rescued turns to dismay when they realize the
Sea Wolf
is another pirate ship.

Brought on board they discover that the captain is a woman, the red-haired Captain Medb Moriarity. And it is immediately obvious that the captain is strongly attracted to William.

“Were you… affectionate… with one another? There on that island?” she asks Catherine.

“Yes,” Catherine answers.

It is then, on Captain Moriarity's orders, that Catherine and William are forbidden to see one another on her ship. They must not speak or touch or even look at each other.

Catherine realizes that they have exchanged their island prison for a seagoing one. If she and William have any chance of a future life together they must escape.

The Voyage of the Sea Wolf

By Eve Bunting

PUBLISHED BY SLEEPING BEAR PRESS™

For Tracy Taylor Bunting

I stood with William, knee deep in the water, waving with all the strength I had left, at the brigantine anchored offshore.

“They're coming.” William's hand tightened in mine.

A longboat was being lowered off the ship. Three men jumped into it and began pulling toward shore.

William and I leaned against each other. Even the little waves whispering around our feet had enough power to knock us over.

William whispered against my hair, “We are going to live, my love.” His voice was cracked and almost inaudible.

I looked up into his face, the skin dry and burnt, the lips split and flaked with blood. My heart ached with love for him. We'd been so near to perishing on the island that one more day would have seen us dead in each other's arms. One more day.

The longboat was now only a half mile or so from shore. The morning was so still, so silent, that I could faintly hear the voices of the rowers and the small slaps of their oars against the water.

I moved a little apart from William and willed my voice to stay steady. “When they see that I am a girl they may not want to rescue me.” I had to stop for the breath and strength to go on. “We know how seamen feel about having a woman on board. William, if that happens you must go without me. I could not bear...”

He touched a finger to my lips that were dry and sore as his own.

“Shh!” he whispered. “I'll never leave ye. Never.”

Now the men on the longboat had shipped their oars and were drifting only a few yards from shore.

“Ahoy there!” one of them called. He was dark complected, his hair stringy and straight, bound back with a red scarf. For a moment I though he was a bandit, stepped from the pages of one of my childhood books. I blinked.

“Ahoy!” William croaked.

“We got our orders to pick yez up. Get yerselves out here and climb in if yez don't aim to be left behind.”

“Could yez come a bit nearer,” William began. “We...”

“This be's as far as we goes, matey.”

“We can do it,” I whispered, and clutching each other's hands we splashed through the shallows. My feet barely touched the bottom and I floundered, trying always to keep my precious flute above the surface. It was the only possession I had been allowed to bring with me when we were marooned by the
Reprisal
. The flute had saved our lives when I'd used it to signal the rescue ship. I was not going to let go of it now.

Once I stumbled, and William pulled me up. I was choking on the water I'd swallowed, coughing and spluttering.

“Get on me back,” William ordered. “Put yer arms about my neck. If we sink we'll sink together.”

“No.” I could see that he was a poor swimmer. He was floundering, as I was. “I'll not weigh you down,” I said.

We struggled together, the men watching as we splashed the last few feet to the boat.

I grabbed hold of the gunwale and one of them heaved me up the rest of the way. I fell, sodden and exhausted, at the rower's feet.

I lifted my head. “William?” I gasped. And then I
saw that he was already clambering over the gunwale, collapsing into the boat beside me.

“Are ye all right?” His hand reached out to touch me.

“Aye.” I turned my head and retched, water spewing from my mouth, my empty stomach cramping on itself.

“What ship were yez put off?” the bandit asked.

“The
Reprisal
,” William said.

“Were yez thieves, or cheaters or murderers that they set ye ashore? No matter.” We got a stumpy-toothed smile. “How long was ye marooned?”

“Ten days,” William said.

“That long? Yes did well.” Then, “By heaven she be's a wench,” he shouted. The other two stared. “Prop the girl up, Magruder,” he called out and I was pulled to a place where I could lean against the wooden side of the boat. My flute had skittered across the boards. I crawled toward it and picked it up.

“Shiver me britches, look at the wench!” the one called Magruder said and for the first time I gave thought to how I must appear. So much had happened since my father had brought me on board his ship, disguised as a boy. There was no need to pretend anymore and now it would not be possible. On the island my clothes, little though they were, had torn and ripped. My trousers hung in tatters. I'd wrenched off the bottom of my shirt to make a bandage on the day
that William had gashed his foot on a coral rock. Now it barely covered my bosom. I wrapped my arms across myself.

“Ye'd best leave her be,” the rower at the back of the boat said. “Cap'n wants 'em brought and brought fast.” This was the first time he'd spoken.

“Skelly's right.” Bandit nodded.

“Wait!” Skelly pulled a waterskin from a pouch on his belt. He scrambled toward me, uncapped the skin and held the neck of it to my lips.

Water!

I sucked greedily, water trickling down my chin onto my chest, wasting itself on the bottom of the boat.

“Not too much to start,” he said, pulling it away. “ 'Twill make ye sick.”

His small consideration made me feel less alone.

He crawled to William.

I watched William drink, spilling more than he could swallow.

“That's kindness enough, Skelly,” Bandit said. “Get to the oars or I'll be tellin' Cap'n how 'twas ye that wasted our time.”

Skelly pushed the stopper back in the waterskin. He was small and bald, the top of his head freckled and scarred from the sun. His black-rimmed eyeglasses were tied on his ears with cord. I tried to smile my gratitude at
him as he sat on the bench again and took up his oars.

He did not smile back.

Magruder leaned across and touched my arm. “Soft!” he said.

“Do not touch me,” I said firmly and he recoiled in mock horror.

“Leave her be,” Bandit said. “We needs to get back.”

They bent to the oars and the brigantine came closer and closer.

Dazed as I was, I still felt something amiss. The ship flew an English flag. But these sailors did not wear English sailor uniforms. Now I could see the name, scrolled in gold across the brigantine's side.
Sea Wolf
. I looked again at the English flag drooping from her mainmast. “We flies any flag that suits us,” Red had told me once. He'd winked. Red, my only friend on the
Reprisal
, except for William. The
Sea Wolf
could be out of another country altogether. She might even be a privateer or a pirate vessel in disguise. Perhaps we had escaped from one ship of iniquity to be saved by another.

The men were rowing strongly now.

Magruder looked at me and puckered his lips in a kissing gesture.

I tried unsuccessfully to cover myself.

“By all that's holy we'll be glad to have ye on board the
Wolf
,” he said. “I can't say aught for the cap'n.”

What was he saying? Would the captain want to put me back, alone on the island? Me, a woman, bringing bad luck to his ship? Would he have left me there if he'd seen me to be female when he looked through his spyglass at the two of us, waving, my flute crying for help? I understood nothing but I was cold, cold, cold and filled with fear. The decision to take me or leave me could be put to a vote. My fate would depend on the crew.

When I looked beyond Magruder now I could see the
Sea Wolf
close up. She was beautiful, the kind of ship I'd dreamed of when I'd been longing to go to sea. A mermaid figurehead, green and golden, thrust her garlanded bosom out to the sea ahead. I thought of the red dragon on the
Reprisal
's bow, then turned painfully to where Pox Island was growing smaller and smaller behind us. Now it seemed I had been happy there, happy with William and the love we'd found. I stretched out a hand to touch his hair as yellow as the day I'd first seen him on the beach at Cannon Cove. He'd been helping to provision the
Reprisal
for her journey and the golden gleam of that hair in the sun had taken my eye. The cabin boy, they'd told me.

He seemed to feel my light caress on his hair.

“Catherine,” he whispered. “Whatever is ahead for us, we will face it together. Promise me that?”

“I promise,” I whispered, though I knew our destiny, whether it be together or apart, would not be ours to decide.

Towering over us, the
Sea Wolf
lay beautiful and serene in the blue waters of the Caribbean. Her deck railings were lined with men and there were two figures at the bow. The captain, maybe, and the quartermaster. A rope ladder hung over the side, dangling into our longboat that had been maneuvered under it.

“Get up and climb, young mistress,” Bandit said. He held the bottom of the ladder while I stood, swaying with the motion of the longboat. Rung by rung I began to pull myself up.

“Set yer left foot first on the deck,” Bandit shouted. “Cap'n be's superstitious. 'Tis bad luck to put yer right
foot on the deck afore yer left 'un.”

I had a back thought of the first day I'd climbed onto the deck of the
Reprisal
. My father, the ship's captain, had been already aboard. I remembered, as I climbed, how that first day, I'd been wearing the canvas shoes he'd bought for me, the way he'd cut the toes out of them with his cutlass when he'd discovered he'd bought them a size too small. He'd bought me the canvas trousers that I still wore, torn now and ragged. He'd bought me everything to wear that would disguise me as a boy and allow him to take me aboard his ship.

I clung to the rope ladder, racked with pain that was physical and spiritual, too. If only it were my father I was going to now, my father's ship, my father's loving presence. My own dear father, dead while trying to save me from the cat-o'-nine-tails.

There was a wind, one of the quick sudden wind bursts that blow up on the Caribbean. I clung tight to the ropes under my hands.

“Hurry along,” Magruder yelled from below. I heard the impatience in his voice and he gave the rope ladder a jiggle so that I had to steady myself with my bleeding feet against the side of the ship. My flute, which I had pushed into the torn band of my trousers, poked my stomach and scraped against the hull.

I clenched my teeth and began climbing again.

I was more than halfway up and the men on the deck had started to catcall and shout what might have been encouragement.

“Pull harder, matey!”

“Show a bit o' muscle. Ye climb like a sick crab.”

They called words unintelligible, blown away on the wind, and leaned across the railing, urging me on. One of them spat, the glob missing me and hitting Magruder or Bandit or Skelly below. Whoever it was let out a howl.

The ladder swung away from the hull and back again, almost forcing me to lose my grip. I felt the extra weight on it, the sharp tug, and when I looked below I saw the top of William's head. He had started up.

I had such a need then to climb down again, to be with him. We could jump into the ocean and swim for a while, then drown together.

“Don't be lookin' back, love,” William shouted. “Keep on lookin' up.”

I kept climbing.

They hadn't made me for a girl yet, but I had two more rungs to go before I was over the top. And what then?

Hands grabbed me and lifted me over to belly flop on the deck.

I felt the unbelieving stares of a hundred eyes.

“She be's a girl,” a man yelled at last. “Cap'n. She be's a female.”

There was a hubbub of voices and someone grabbed my torn shirt and ripped it off me. I pressed my naked self against the boards of the deck.

“Oh, aye, she be's a female!”