Jolly Roger and Dragons

De: Steven Rowe

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Aboard Satan’s Mistress, it was time to elect a new captain. Terrance Torch had been deposed in the traditional manner and a new man had to take the place of the unlucky pirate leader. Among the sea-artists who made up the lords of the brigantine, there was really only one choice, Carlos “Lucky Carl” Cutler, the cunning navigator who had instigated the fall of Captain Torch. A glib tongue and keen planning had brought the young brigand to the position of command he had been born to hold. Meet his crew, from old, toothless Tom Stone to the stowaway-turned-cabin boy that everyone called Weasel, from pox scarred Handsome Bob to bitter old Doctor Levy, from the muscular, cruel bosun Tiny Tanner to Francis Bunion, the inept cook, as they are seen through the eyes of Jeremiah Guns, who commands the ship’s sharpshooters. Cutthroats, villains, drunkards, brigands and boasters all, from oldest to youngest, and not a one of them ashamed to admit to that and more besides. When his crew celebrated their new captain in their traditional drunken fashion, Captain Cutler brought forth a plan to make them all rich: Sail from the slim picking of the West Indies to the rich waters of the East. With care and craft, they could easily find a plum as ripe as the one picked by the legendary Captain Avery and retire from the sea with gold enough for every man to live a life of ease and comfort. Follow along from the buccaneer stronghold of Tortuga to the savage west coast of Africa where they fight a crew of eager pirate-hunter. Voyage on to the pirate dives of Madagascar in a clandestine search for information, where a single misstep could spell the violent end of them all. Confront the treachery that might make them a target for all the corsairs of the Eastern seas. Sail into bloody sea battles in the Indian Ocean under false colors and into the teeth of the fiercest storm in pursuit of a fortune in gold and jewels. Captain Cutler and his cutthroat crew contend with all the dangers athwart their course in their quest for golden treasure and the freedom that wealth brings, surviving even shipwreck to salvage a king’s ransom in gold and jewels. All that remains is to build a new vessel from the wreckage of the old and return to their old haunts as rich men, each and every one of them. Such a task is made more difficult by the scaly behemoths that infest the uncharted island where they are wrecked, beasts larger and fiercer than any that the legendary Saint George had to contend with. Hungry monsters that can never find enough meat to satisfy them. Creatures that ignore the sting of musket and pistol in their ceaseless hunt for flesh. And then Jeremiah rescues the girl with golden skin, golden hair and almond-shaped eyes of deep emerald green, from hulking savages. From her, the men of Satan’s Mistress learn that there are more dangers than they had dreamt of on that lost island and secrets that had been hidden from the world for ten thousand years. If Rafael Sabatini, master of the romantic swashbuckler, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, his equal as the master of fantastic adventure stories, had worked together, they might have produced a tale to match this. The historical pirates and places are as painted by those who knew them best. The crew of Satan’s Mistress is composed of the same hard-drinking, heroic, noble, cowardly, villainous, dedicated lay-abouts seeking the freedom of the seas and sparkling fortune as were the crew of the Adventure Galley or Queen Anne’s Revenge. Their adventures when they find a land lost to time displays a side of buccaneers that few ever dreamed of. Among the remnant of a civilization out of ancient legends, amid beasts that spawned the oldest legends of dragons, Captain Carlos “Lucky Carl” Cutler, Jeremiah Guns, Tiny Tanner and the other scallywags of Satan’s Mistress struggle for treasure, survival and escape, matching their flintlocks and cutlasses against the dragons of a lost and forgotten land.