"I never thought it would." Katherine impulsively reached down and ripped off a portion of her skirt. Then she grabbed the flask and pulled back his arm. While Serina held his shoulder forward, she doused the wound with a stream of the brown liquor, then began to swab away the encrusted blood with the cloth. His skin felt like soft leather, supple to the touch, with hard ripples of muscles beneath.
The sting of the brandy brought an involuntary jerk. Atiba's eyes opened and he peered, startled, through the gloom.
"Don't try to move." Quickly Serina bent over him, whispering softly into his ear. "You are safe. You are on the branco's ship."
He started to speak, but at that moment another wave crashed against the stern and the ship lurched sideways. Atiba's eyes flooded with alarm, and his lips formed a word.
"Dara . . ."
Serina laid her face next to his. "Don't talk. Please. Just rest now." She tried to give him a drink of the brandy, but his eyes refused it. Then more words came, faint and lost in the roar of the wind and the groaning of the ancient boards of the Defiance. Finally his breath seemed to dissolve as unconsciousness again drifted over him.
Katherine watched as Serina gently laid his head against the cushion on the bunk, then fell to her knees and began to pray, mumbling foreign words . . . not Portuguese. She found herself growing more and more uneasy; something about the two of them was troubling, almost unnatural. Finally she rose and moved to watch the sea through the stern windows. Though the waves outside slammed ever more menacingly against the quartergallery, as the storm was worsening noticeably, she still longed for the wind in her face. Again she recalled her first night here with Hugh, when they had looked out through this very window together, in each other's arms. What would it be like to watch the sea from this gallery now, she wondered, when the ocean and winds were wild? She sighed and pulled open the latch.
What she saw took her breath away.
Off the portside, bearing down on them, was the outline of a tallmasted English warship with two gun decks.
Before she could move, there were shouts from the quarterdeck above, then the trampling of feet down the companionway leading to the waist of the ship. He'd seen it too, and ordered his gun crews to station.