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mind to try.” Welles shifted his clay pipe from one side of his mouth to the other, and his expression grew serious.
    “Have you heard more of him, Kit?”
    “Nay, just that first letter from Dr. Manning, and that was only a fortnight after we’d sailed. Too soon to know anything for certain. Months ago, now.” Kit frowned, his green eyes clouding as his thoughts turned to his brother. Two days before the Prosperity had left Portsmouth, a snapped cable had sent his brother tumbling twenty feet to the deck. His right leg had borne the brunt of the fall, an ugly, jagged fracture splintering bone and tearing into muscle. It was the kind of injury that could easily turn putrid and cost a man first his leg, then his life. That fear had haunted Kit in the months since he’d left. Again and again he’d prayed for his brother. Please, God, not Jonathan, too!
    Welles touched Kit lightly on the shoulder.
    “Your brother’s a strong man and too full of spark and rum to let a little fall best him. You’ll find him hobbled, mayhap, but well enough.”
    Kit forced himself to smile.
    “Thank you, Abraham, for both of us. Jonathan couldn’t have sailed the Prosperity better himself.”
    ““Twas nothing I wouldn’t do again for you boys, for your father’s sake, and I ‘spect you know it,” Embarrassed, Welles cleared his throat gruffly and squinted up at the sails, Kit, too, looked away, to the bow. For the first time he noticed a small group of people clustered along the rail, three men, and women and children, too.
    “Ah, Kit, those are the passengers I told you of,”
    said Welles, noting Kit’s interest.
    “Likely having second thoughts about leaving home, from the looks of them.”
    The little group huddled against the wind as they stared back at the last glimpse of their homeland, and Kit felt a surge of Sympathy for them.
    “Immigrants, are they?”
    “Aye, and so desperate for passage they offered me double the fare. One of the women’s with child, and they want to be settled before her time. When Sir Henry pulled out his cargo that way—” Kit’s tone turned chilly as the wind.
    “That could not be helped, Abraham.”
    “I’m not saying it could, Kit, am I? Nay, it just seemed wiser to take a few passengers ‘tween decks than leave the space empty.”
    “I told you before that the decision was a good one, Abraham. You don’t have to justify it to me again.”
    “They won’t be any bother to you, Kit, none at all. They’ll keep to themselves. They’re only on deck now to say farewell, then they’ll go back down. Why, you’ll scarcely know they’re on board!”
    Kit listened curiously. This was at least the fourth time Welles had explained about the passengers, and Kit wondered if perhaps his father’s old friend had accepted that offer of a double fare and kept the difference himself. Not that Kit particularly cared–Welles had done him an enormous favor by replacing Jonathan as captain on such short notice—but Kit hoped that he wouldn’t have to hear about these miserable immigrants for the entire voyage home.
    “More women than men, I see,” said Kit, hoping at least for a different perspective on the same wearisome topic.
    “Any comely daughters to ease my journey?”
    “Two girls of an interesting age, but you keep those thoughts to yourself, Christopher Sparhawk! I swore to their father that this was an honest, Christian ship and his daughters’ virtue would be safe enough. So you leave them be, mind, and the wives, too. Kit laughed.
    “Lord, Abraham, you make me out to be a threat to all womankind!”
    Welles studied him narrowly, working the pipe-stem in his teeth.
    “You know what I mean. You’re too handsome for your own good, you and Jonathan both. The pair of you have the mamas lined up from Falmouth to New Haven, hoping to get a good shot at landing one or the other!”
    “It’s not the mothers I fancy, Abraham.”
    “Young or old, you leave them all a-sighing and