Roger was deep into the action on deck. He ducked, and parried, killing and moving. It was a confusing time, when it became difficult to tell the difference between friend and foe, in the darkness before dawn. A few times he spotted a bronzed skin demon of a woman fighting the pirates, though he knew she was not on the crew manifest, nor one of the passengers. She rose like a killing specter, and then she was gone.

Roger found himself fighting a massively muscled man, with a cutlass. The man's skin was covered in dark tattoos. As the sun started to rise, he could see that tattoos showed an obscene and grizzly tableau. The man grinned at him and tried to cleave his head from his shoulders with a blow of his cutlass. Roger barely managed to duck, when the man's booted foot shot out, kicking him in the shin. Stumbling, Roger backed up, his saber raised. He managed to deflect another blow or two, before he regained his composure. The man made a grab for him. He knew that if the bigger man was able to grab him, it would all be over. Finally, he saw an opening, and managed to stick his saber point into the man's stomach. The blow was not immediately fatal, and the man fought on like a bull, but it signaled the end. Soon Roger was standing over the man's corpse, wiping his blade on the man's doublet.

All around him were wounded and dying men and women, sailors and pirates alike. The pirate sloop was running now, as the guns of the merchant man chased it off with chain shot. The chain shot whipped up through the sails of the sloop, ripping holes in their white expanse. He spotted the bronze skinned woman standing at the railing. She turned and their eyes met, before she started to collapse. With his remaining strength, Roger ran forward and caught her. He lowered her gently to the deck, not bothering to take her to sick bay. The doctor would be busy digging out lead slugs and hacking off mangled limbs.

He felt for the woman's femoral artery. Her pulse was nice and strong, so he did not worry overly much. He took off his torn green coat and laid it under her head as a pillow, before getting a bucket of water and a rag, to mop her forehead. She had some visible injuries, but none that looked dire.

The sailors were finishing off the badly injured pirates and then dropping their bodies into a watery grave. A few that weren't as injured were in chains, waiting to be taken to port to be hanged. It was a bloody, but necessary business. Roger wanted no part of it. He had survived to the aftermath of many battles, and did not relish the cleanup. He stayed with the woman instead, wondering who she was and where she had come from.