Bride of the Baja Read Online Free PDF

When he started to put his arm about her comfortingly, Alitha glanced up sharply and stepped away with a glint of fear in her eyes.
    "I—" Malloy began, wanting to soothe her fears, to show his sympathy. Why didn't he know what to say? Why wouldn't the right words come? He stepped toward her.
    "I'm sure you have a great deal to do," she said. Before he could answer, she turned from him, walking to the companionway and going below.
    Damn her to hell, he thought. She thinks she's too good for me because I never had book learning, because I had to fight my way up from the gutter. Old Nehemiah Bradford spoiled her and now she thinks she's better than the rest of us mortals. She needs to be humbled, that one.
    The ship rolled drunkenly in the trough of a wave, forcing Malloy to steady the wheel. Signaling the helmsman to return to his post, he strode to the rail above the quarterdeck. "Bosun," he called, seeing Jonathan Linton making for the galley. He had to hail the man a second, then a third time before Linton heard him above the pounding of the sea and came aft.
    "The captain's dead of the cholera," Malloy told him, nodding to the body huddled on the deck.
    "May God rest his soul," the bosun said. "And may God have mercy on us all."
    "See he's made ready for a Christian burial. English George as well."
    "Aye ..." Linton hesitated for an instant before he added, "Captain."
    Captain! After all these years, after all his back-breaking toil for a pittance of a wage, the taking of orders, the constant "Aye aye, sir," the groveling before men who knew less of the sea than he, at last he had a ship of his own. A plague ship.
    "I've studied the charts," Malloy told the bosun. "Our latitude's 33 degrees 45 minutes north, so we're north of San Diego in Alta California. As for our longitude ..." He paused for a fraction of a second, then wondered if Linton had noticed. Malloy had never been good with figures--angles and interpolations confused him. He was both slow and impatient yet wise enough to recognize this as a dangerous combination of traits.
    "By my dead reckoning," he went on hastily, "I judge we're some four hundred miles off the coast."
    Linton's eyebrows went up ever so slightly. "I'd 'spect we'd be closer than that," he said, his fingers massaging his grizzled chin. "There's been gulls following us for the last day or so, and this morning I saw a cloud to starboard. A cloud that didn't move with the wind, like fog sitting offshore."
    Malloy nodded. He respected Linton's judgment, knowing the bosun had been to sea for more years than he, Malloy, had lived. Linton was probably one of those seamen who, when they reached the age of, say, fifty-four, accidentally signed on their next ship as forty-five and started anew from there.
    "Keep a lookout at the fore topmast," Malloy ordered, "as long as the weather allows."
    "Anything else, sir?"
    "No, bosun. See to the burials. See to them now."
    After he spoke Malloy realized that he had imitated Captain Bradford's way of giving commands and, catching the amused curl of the bosun's mouth, knew he'd been caught out. As Linton went forward to organize a burial crew, Malloy silently cursed himself.
    Within an hour the two bodies had been committed to the deep and, as though appeased by this human sacrifice, the storm held off. The seas ran high, yet the wind, though still strong, diminished, and the clouds to the south held their distance as the Yankee fled north.
    Only after the sun had set behind sullen clouds did Malloy finally go below. He was tired, satisfied with his first day as captain, yet still uneasy. The bosun's warning of the possible nearness of land had nagged him into going to the chart room and laboriously recalculating the ship's position. When he had finished, he nodded to himself. They were a good three hundred miles from shore, approaching the coast at an angle that would keep them out of sight of land for at least two more days. Pushing down the last of his doubts,