[img]https://i.imgur.com/dqxvvBN.jpeg[/img]

[i]“Met the love of mine, aye a lad so fine
Oh away in the salty Antilee!
I was tied down below on an old ship of the line
You and me Polly and Abaddon makes three
On the cold and billowing sea!”[/i]


The crew of the Pendragon hauled on the main brace cables, trimming her squaresails to the offshore breeze. The trim little vessel began to heal over and gather speed. The sailors pulled the ropes tighter, sheeting the sails as firmly as they could before belaying the lines. Now that they were clear of the headlands the winds were building and the Pendragon shaped to it, her fine prow slicing though the cerulean waves a ‘bone in her teeth’ as the cutwater churned white.


Camilla leaned over the bulwark watching as a trio of dolphins skipped and played in the churning wake. It was a good sign at the beginning of an adventure she had been told but somehow it didn’t cheer her. It seemed like she had spent an eternity in Free Sail, even if it had only been a few days, and after months at sea she felt no closer to her goal.


“Dove sei Aneillio?” she asked the ocean which, characteristically, provided no answer beyond the chuckling gurgle against the hull.

“Ah Bon Giorno Signoritta,” Sir Edmund said in horribly accented Mercian. Camilla smiled charmed both by the man’s effort at her language and by how quickly the veneer of civilization seemed to have slid from the aristocrat. Gone was the lace frock coat and cocked hat, now he wore a white cotton shirt with a red silk coat and a rather piratical looking bicorn. He looked like a buccaneer and adventurer of the old school and Camilla felt that Red Ed was much closer to the man’s soul than Captain, The Honorable, Sir Edmund,  Lord South Quay was. Camilla found she liked him for it.


“My lord, shall I pipe than hands below?” Hastings asked formally, his expression seeming irritated she was still managing to stand on the deck. No matter what strange alchemy the sea worked, Hastings, it seemed, remained Hastings. Edmund looked up at the commissioning pendant and considered it.

“No, though I’d admire we harden up another point to the wind, we are bound to hit the full southerly once we clear the island’s lee and I don’t want to have to tack if the wind comes sou’sou-east as the bastard thing is like to do after noon in these latitudes,” he replied, then gave Camilla an apologetic look.

“If you will pardon the nautical parlance My Lady,” he grinned.

“Camilla please, My Lady was mia madre, and you do not know enough languages to scandalize me,” she teased and he touched the brim of his hat in acknowledgement.

“Now what the devil is that about?” Edmund asked, drawing his spy glass from his belt and peering back towards the shore. Camilla followed his gaze to see another ship exiting the harbor. It was larger than the Pendragon and rode more heavily in the water, seeming to smash it’s way through the waves where the Pendragon sliced.  Camilla was no expert but the billowing tan sails looked distinctly amateurish compared to Sir Edmund’s crews efforts.


“Another ship, nothing unusual surely?” Camilla noted.


“Not heavily loaded, and I don’t recognise her, looks more like a sixth rate man of war than a trader, though she lacks the gunports for it,” Edmund mused.

“Is she one of …. how do you say it… your cruising fleet?” Camilla asked. Edmund guaffed loudly.

“Lord no, the mess she is making of her stays any Albion captain would have shot himself out of sheer embarrassment, maybe a Don or a damned Val Dor, God bless the luckless bastards," Edmund snickered.

“But she flies no national colors and I don’t care to look at her, see the long nines on her foredeck, heavy chase guns for a merchant,” Edmund mused. Camilla did not see, but she suspected she would if she knew more about naval matters or had a spy glass.

“Could she be a pirate, there were Black Fleet in the taverns,” Camilla worried.

“Aye could be that, might explain why everything is such a mess if they set off after us in a hurry. All their standing rigging slack and their sails in harbor gaskets,” Edmund mused.
“They are chasing us you think?” she asked, her alarm growing.

“Mmmm… maybe,” Edmund replied, his face darkening. “I didn’t exactly keep my expedition a secret but it seemed unlikely to attract the attention of the powers that be.”
“You don’t seemed to worried about them, they seem a bigger ship than ours, more guns?”

“Many more, probably eighteen twelve pounders, more if they are Dons, the silly buggers will overload a ship, breaks the backs of the ship within a decade you know.”

“So why aren’t you worried?” Camilla demanded. A wolfish grin split Edmund’s face and Camilla was sure she had been right about the man's true nature.

“Because my dear lady… they will have to catch us first.”