Bride of the Night Read Online Free PDF

business, and speak quickly!”
    â€œIt’s Tara Fox!” she called quickly.
    â€œCome aboard!”
    A rope ladder was thrown down, and Tara leaned over to plant a kiss on Pete’s face. She imagined he might have blushed. “Don’t worry. I will make it home,” she promised him.
    Grabbing her satchel and securing it around her shoulders, she reached for the rope and carefully climbed her way up to the deck. Richard was there to help her on board.
    â€œYou know, you are insane,” he told her huskily.
    â€œJust following the lead of my captain!” she returned. He turned quickly, introducing her to the man on guard.
    â€œTara, I think you know Grant Quimbly here. Lawrence Seville is at the helm, and Gary French is working the steam engine. Make yourself at home in the cabin. We’ll be on our way.”
    â€œThank you, Richard,” she told him.
    He nodded. “Lawrence, let’s get her under way!”
    Tara looked down to the dark sea; she could barely make out Pete’s small boat.
    The darkness seemed overwhelming.
    But just as she thought so, the cloud cover shifted, and a pale glow of starlight filled the sky. She could see the barest sliver of a moon. It was the night of the newmoon, and yet, it almost looked as if, for a moment, it was waxing crescent.
    It almost appeared to be grinning.
    She shivered. It seemed as if even the moon was mocking her.

CHAPTER TWO
    â€œT HEY’RE GOOD—THE BLOCKADE runners around these waters,” Captain John Tremblay told Finn, looking out at the darkness. “They’re very, very good—the men who sail in the night and the darkness. They know when to make their runs. They know how to make use of moonless nights, when cloud cover erases even the stars.” He turned and looked at Finn. “But, of course, you chose the date.”
    The sea and the sky seemed to combine that night, as if they might have been sailing off the earth’s surface into a stygian void of nothingness. Setting out on the captain’s steamer, USS Punisher, they had navigated easily enough; the Key West lighthouse helped ships on both sides avoid calamity on the reefs. But Tremblay and crew were now beyond its glow, heading north, and the moonless, starless night created an eerie realm where even the truth and the horror of the war seemed of another world. The stars, of course, were out there. But cloud cover was blocking even their gentle light. The world was one, water and air merged. Watching the vastness of the ocean at night, Finn could well understand how the medieval population had believed that the world was flat.
    He’d been at sea enough to comprehend winds and tides; he’d kept a small sailboat on the river for years. But here, tonight, the sky was deep velvet and blue-black, and the sea seemed to be a glass sheet as vast as the endless dark heavens above them. Though Calloway had been apprised of his mission, Captain Tremblay had not been told any of the particulars, other than a Pinkerton was seeking a certain man, and he believed that he’d find him in these waters.
    Finn found himself admiring both the Union navy seamen who plied these waters and the blockade runners themselves. Of course, there was money in running the blockade, but at this stage of the war, many of the men willing to risk the noose of the Union navy did so out of a sense of patriotism; money only meant something if you were alive. Of course, there were those reckless would-be pirates who were willing to take a chance at anything, but at this stage of the game, many were also die-hard heroes, continuing to fight a losing battle in the hope of keeping the Confederacy alive long enough for the North to tire of the war before the South was completely decimated.
    â€œWhat makes you think your man is a blockade runner?” Captain Tremblay asked him, handing him the spyglass.
    â€œWe intercepted communications,” Finn said. Helooked