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Hi, folks!
Thought I'd post just the first page of Chapter One of The Price of Freedom here, for your delectation. Hope you enjoy reading it!
CHAPTER ONE: FAIR WINDS AND BLACK SAILS
Jack Sparrow, first mate of the East India Trading Company merchant vessel Fair Wind, stood on the quarterdeck, glaring down at most of his hastily assembled crew. Beside him rested a large cask. It sloshed faintly as the brig glided over the topaz waters of the Caribbean Sea, three days out from Port Royal, Jamaica. Jack drummed his fingers on the top of the half-empty cask. “This rum,” he said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the creaking of the sails, the slap of the sea, and the rush of the wind, “is half gone. WHY is the rum gone?”
The weatherbeaten faces that had been regarding him quizzically suddenly vanished as each crewman looked down, twisting his cap in hands scored by years of hard, dangerous work at sea. The men shuffled their feet on the holystoned planks of the Fair Wind’s weather deck. No one ventured a reply.
Jack hadn’t really expected any of the culprits to confess, and “peaching” on a mate was regarded as lowest of the low among the men, so the lack of a reply didn’t surprise him. He actually sympathized with the culprits. After all, the stolen substance was RUM. Jack liked rum as well as any man. Well, to be truthful, better than most. But this rum was not, technically speaking, rum. It was cargo. He let his temper, until now held in check, rise.
“I will TELL you why the rum is gone,” Jack roared. He thumped the top of the container. “This half-empty cask, which as of last night was full of rum bound for England, rum entrusted to this vessel to be carried in her hold until we reach our destination, rum intended to be sold to the taverns and cellars of England, to slake English thirsts is gone because,” he paused for effect, “several members of this crew that stands before me, this same crew of misbegotten scurvy sea dogs, crept down into the hold and GUZZLED it!”
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