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accused me?”
    Nervous silence greeted his words.
    â€œI have the right to know before I die! Who accused me of this foul crime?”
    â€œEli Smith,” the lieutenant said.
    â€œThen I hope that he meets his just end—I hope that the truth comes out. I hope that he comes to this hanging tree himself, but that, when he dies, he finds no reward, but rather that he rots in hell for eternity. For myself, all that I loved in life is gone, and therefore I go willingly to meet her. I still stand before you an honest man who loved deeply, but did no ill to anyone in that love!”
    He was startled to hear a woman’s tears from the crowd.
    There was a murmur of protest.
    â€œAs per the law and the task with which I am charged!” the lieutenant cried out, and he kicked the box away.
    Dying was quite bizarre, and as he had felt nothing since learning Victoria was dead, he was only vaguely aware of the pain.
    His neck did not break.
    He was suffocated slowly. He tried hard to die with dignity, but he was aware that his body betrayed him, that his limbs twitched and jerked.
    Slowly, too slowly, the blackness began to overwhelm him.
    This was death…
    Suddenly, he was no longer the man swinging from the tree. He was above it all, watching.
    Watching as his limbs ceased to twitch.
    Watching as he hung limp in death.
    Someone walked up to him and stood on the block, and placed their fingers against his throat. “Is there a physician?” he cried.
    There was a doctor in the crowd. He came forward and placed his ear to Bartholomew’s chest, and waited.
    Someone brought a mirror; it was set before his parted lips.
    â€œHe is dead—it is done. So die all pirates!” the lieutenant. He tried to cry out the words with conviction and assurance. His voice squeaked.
    Bartholomew felt as if he was standing behind the crowd, watching.
    As he watched, he felt a hand slip into his.
    He turned.
    Victoria was there. Her beautiful eyes were filled with sadness. She touched his cheek. They were together but invisible to the others. “My love. My poor, dear love,” she whispered. “I tried…I tried to warn you.”
    He stroked her cheek in return. “But you are here. I prefer death with you to any life without you.” he said.
    â€œWe are here, together,” she said.
    â€œWho did this to you?” he asked her.
    â€œSmith,” she said, as if even the saying of the name was loathsome. “Smith! He wanted to take me. He meant to kill everyone on the ship and take me with him. I refused to go with him. I could not! My skin crawled at the thought of it. He said that I could die or have him, and I said that I preferred death. And he said that I was hypnotized by evil—you. He said that we would both pay. And he put his hands around my neck, and strangled me…and I died, and yet I stayed. I was on his ship when it returned, and I heard him shouting that my ship had gone down and that…you had done it.” She began to weep with no tears. “My father heard the words and went mad. He took his pistol, set it in his mouth, fired it and died on the spot.”
    â€œI am so sorry, my poor, dear love.”
    â€œSmith must be made to pay for his crime,” she whispered.
    â€œYes, Smith must pay. And he will do so,” Bartholomew said.
    And so they remained, hand in hand, as the days passed by.
    Then Craig Beckett and his crew returned. Eli Smith must not have known that Bartholomew had sailed with Beckett that day, because he was in the bar, boasting of his prowess at sea and saying as how he’d have taken on the pirate Bartholomew Miller himself had he but had a few guns on his own sloop, when Craig Beckett strode into the room.
    Beckett was incensed.
    â€œLiar! You are the worst, most sniveling bastard of a bloody liar,” Beckett said. “Bartholomew Miller could not have committed the crime as you say, and I know it well, for