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I'm pleased to announce that Sea Witch is now re-available

 as an e-book and a paperback - the new editions look super!

and don't forget this one... available as an e-book

The young, sixteen-year-old Jesamiah

How he became a pirate...

#Excerpt
(from an unedited file)

With Barbados well behind them, the light winds became lighter, the calm seas calmer. Mermaid had been sailing sweetly, life aboard was pleasant and enjoyable, but with each hour as the day grew nearer noon their progress slowed. From her scudding through the great crests of white-capped rollers Mermaid now ambled along, apparently unenthusiastic about reaching the Azores. Even with every sail set, forming a pyramid of canvas from the largest to the smallest, even with the occasional drenching with buckets of seawater to stir a breeze among the spread of sail, Mermaid made snail’s-pace progress north-eastward. Yet the windless days were no great alarm. They had water, even if it was green and brackish, and food aplenty: eggs from the hens – or meat if one shirked her daily duty too often – milk, cheese and butter from the three nanny goats, Betty, Dolores and Fanny-Anne. Fish in the sea to catch.

Nor were they idle days for Jesamiah. He had Malachias Taylor’s maps and charts sorted and stored, and studied, the piles of paperwork and documentation orderly, with the Great Cabin itself following a semblance of tidiness, although pristine condition was a forlorn hope where Taylor’s housekeeping carelessness was concerned. And Taylor also taught Jesamiah how to fight. Not the fancy footwork of the rapier schoolroom, but how to fight to win, to save your skin and life. How to fight dirty if needed. Jesamiah had lessons with cutlass, sword and rapier; with a long-bladed knife and short-bladed dagger, fist and feet. Swordplay, dagger play, wrestling. Day after day, practice and practice, with Taylor himself and the other men, until Jesamiah was as good as any one of them. 

Their sessions were at dawn and dusk, when the heat was not so invasive when the sails dripped with dew and the calm blue sea was as smooth as a looking glass. There was nothing better, Jesamiah had discovered, when a vigorous sparring session was over, their semi-naked bodies slick, sticky and stinking with sweat, for he and Taylor to strip off their breeches and dive from the rail into that blue, blue sea, shattering the Mermaid’s almost-perfect reflection and the quiet stillness with their splashing and laughter. Among the men aboard, they were the only two who could swim. The others thought them a pistol short of powder, barking mad for enjoying the feel of the cold sea on their hot skin. Most seamen preferred to keep their bare feet firmly on deck. Who knew what was lurking beneath that deceptive calm?

When the wind did pick up enough to usher them forward with a slight curve to the sails and a faint cream of froth along the hull, they encountered floating mats of gold-coloured seaweed that enthralled Jesamiah. He had never seen anything like it.

“The Sargasso Sea stretches for several thousand nautical miles long, by several hundred wide,” Taylor said as they leaned over the rail, staring at nature’s spectacle.

“Will we get trapped in it?” Jesamiah asked, anxious. “Like a ship in ice?”

Taylor laughed, patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Nay, lad, the weed floats and parts before the bow as easily as does the sea. We will be fine, as long as we have a wind.” He added the last with a frown, pleased to feel a slight caress of breeze on his cheek.

Here, in the Sargasso, the sea was even bluer, even clearer. Looking over the side one afternoon, Mermaid braced aback and hove to for the men to haul in a turtle caught for fresh meat, Jesamiah could see his own face staring back at him: black hair plaited into an unruly queue, the fuzz of a beard along his jaw, an embryonic moustache trailing each side of his mouth. Frivolous, he waved at himself and laughed as the reflection returned the gesture. He could see down and down into the depth well below Mermaid’s keel, one, two hundred feet? Fishes swam there, shoals flashed by full of swirling colour and movement. 

Then he drew back, his trance-like interest shattered by the shouts of his shipmates as they brought the hapless turtle aboard and called for Jesamiah to lend a hand to get it down into the stagnant water of the bilge. He was grateful for the distraction. He would not be looking, fascinated, down into the clear Sargasso Sea again. Would not be swimming in it.

His had not been the only face staring up at him from that depth of water, or the only hand waving. Pale skin, blue eyes – as blue as the sea – fair hair as gold as the Sargasso weed, a fish’s tail that shimmered as if covered in a million jewels.

The mermaid.

© Helen Hollick