Read Online Captured by Beverly Jenkins - Free Book Online

striking the Amsterdam on its port and stern, and exploding with brilliant colors of gold and red.
    “Fire!”
    A second volley barked, this time hitting the deck and toppling the masts down onto already screaming, dying men. Even as the Amsterdam’ s answering cannons continued to boom, fires flared from its bow to its stern and the ship was beginning to take on water, but Dominic was offering no quarter. “Ready the chains! Fire at will!”
    The Marie’ s cannons thundered again, this time sending bar and chain shot hurtling towards the target. The halved cannonballs, held together by an iron bar or lengths of reinforced chain, reached their destination as whirling dervishes of destruction that splintered the Amsterdam’ s remaining mast and ripped the sails and riggings to shreds. Shards of wood, some as long as a man’s arm, pierced limbs, faces, and eyes, plunging the defenders into screaming chaos.
    In the aftermath of such carnage, most ships were ready to surrender, but the Amsterdam seemed to be an exception. No white flag could be seen waving from the burning deck, even though some of her crew were jumping overboard into the chilly ocean water. “Lower the longboats!” Dominic ordered.
    The boats would rescue all who wished it, and Dominic doubted any of them would refuse. With all the blood and turmoil in the water, sharks would be arriving soon.
    The longboats hit the surface, and while the crewmen from the Marie rowed out to rendezvous with the deserters, Dominic called up to his pilot, “Put us closer, Esteban!”
    “Aye!” the pilot replied.
    As the Marie came alongside the crippled vessel, bodies could be seen lying on the burning deck and draped over the splintered, severed masts. Cannonballs were capable of decapitating ten to fifteen men at a time during a battle, and some of the dismembered dead bore evidence of that grim truth.
    “Prepare to board!”
    Token pistol fire was returned by the other side, but grappling hooks sailed from the Marie like nests of metal-headed snakes and held the Amsterdam fast.
    “We have less than an hour before she sinks!” Dominic informed his crew. “Find out what she’s carrying. I’ll find Vanweldt!”
    His men swarmed the burning boat. Armed with short swords, cutlasses, and clubs they took on what remained of the opposing crew. With his linked pistols hanging around his neck and a short sword in his hand. Dominic fought his way through the smoke, stepping over the dead and wounded as he searched for the enemy captain.
    “Where’s Vanweldt!” he barked at an injured man covered with blood and powder lying on the deck.
    The sneering man coughed and spat, “To hell with you, LeVeq.”
    Dominic grabbed him up and stuck a pistol in his mouth. “Shall I send you ahead to reserve a seat for me?”
    The man’s eyes widened with fear.
    Dominic drew the weapon free. “Where’s your captain!”
    “His quarters,” he snarled. “Below deck.”
    Tossing the man aside, Dominic angrily strode away.
    He met no resistance below decks, and when he reached the door, he didn’t bother to knock. He kicked it in, shattering the wood and the lock that was supposed to keep intruders like him out.
    Upon his entrance, the fear and surprise in the eyes of the two men inside put a sharklike smile on Dominic’s face. Pistols turned ominously their way, he asked, “Going somewhere, Vanweldt?” Trunks and valises were set out on the bed. Dominic had interrupted the slavers’ attempts to fill them all with gold and other booty. The man beside him was the mute giant Yves, the captain’s bodyguard. At six feet, eight inches tall and over three hundred pounds, Yves was no smarter than the average flounder, but could tear a man apart as easily as most people tore apart a chicken wing.
    “Bastard!” the Dutchman swore. “I should have killed you the last time we met.”
    “But you were too busy throwing children to the sharks, then slinking away like the cur you are