Dunham

Chapter 5

5

“I shall wring that woman’s neck when I catch up to her,” Elliott snarled to himself as he wheeled the Silver Shilling hard to starboard. “What was she thinking?”

The Mad Hangman, too, but the Hollander was known for his … well, madness.

“Hellfire,” he muttered as another volley of cannon fire rocked the Silver Shilling, the master gunner giving the orders to fire at the last patrol ship that chased the Indigo—his crew so well-trained they could deliver a sixteen-gun broadside every minute.

“The last patrol is down, Sir. The remaining two are chasing the Mad Hangman.”

Elliott merely nodded as he kept course, heading straight into a cove he knew as well as he knew his ship. They were free of the line, having left behind five first- and second-rate frigates burning, four patrol ships and (unfortunately) one privateer sunk, and assisted seven more privateers on their way out to sea. They’d even helped an American ally evade capture. The Hollander would sink the last two patrols when it suited him to do so.

Likewise, without them, Elliott would never have been able to breach that line by himself. All in all, a good night’s work for the lot of them.

“That was the most lackwit thing I have ever witnessed,” said Yeardley from beside him.

“Aye,” Elliott agreed heartily, still seeing the Thunderstorm’s stern catch fire and still angry about it.

“I would expect that from the Hollander, but Fury is not known for recklessness.”

“She is a female sailing as a female. That is reckless.”

Yeardley didn’t answer for a moment, but clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “There are rumors. One hardly knows what to believe, they are so incredible.”

Elliott waited.

Yeardley reeled off the most common rumors, ones Elliott already knew:

She was the protégée of James Dunham, captain of the corsair vessel Iron Maiden that plied the Barbary Coast, one of the Crown’s useful brigands whose occasional misdeeds against the East India Company went unremarked and unpunished. He was also the last male bearing the name of a noble Scottish clan disenfranchised over the last duke’s regrettable inclination to form bad alliances.

“I know the history,” Elliott said tersely when Yeardley would have expounded. “Dunham lands march mine and Laird Dunham was a good friend to my grandfather. So Dunham’s bitter. As am I. ’Tis the usual story. What more of her?”

She had been trained as a navigator in Portugal by master navigator and astronomer Dr. Rafael Covarrubias, the captain of the Spanish vessel they had just assisted.

She had sailed with Dunham as an officer for a time after she’d left university until, it was rumored, she had openly defied him and been flogged for her insolence. Yet Elliott and his crew could testify of their loyalty to each other.

“All cannot be sweetness between them,” Elliott muttered. “Was there not some trouble ’twixt the two in Sint Eustatius? What of that?”

“Dunham attempted to abduct one of Fury’s women.”

Elliott huffed. “Women aboard cause nothing but trouble.”

“I’d not be averse to testing that superstition,” Yeardley grumbled.

That surprised a grin out of Elliott. “Oh ho! So I am not the only one on this ship with a prick invested in the Thunderstorm.”

“You are far from the only one. The old tars want nothing to do with women aboard, but after having seen that a ship captained by a woman will not sink—one with a couple dozen women aboard, to boot—well, it has the young ones’ imaginations aflutter.”