Skull and Bones

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I am very grateful to those who have given much-valued help and advice in my efforts to write a decent novel. As always I thank my editors Julia Wisdom and Anne O'Brien, for their scholarly reviews, some splendid ideas, and their careful weeding out of my errors. Also I particularly thank my agent, Antony Topping, and my son, who together prevented this novel from turning into a historical documentary on Colonial America, which might have made a nice textbook, but nobody would have bought it for fun.

John Drake

The six-pound shot came aboard with a scream and a hiss, smashing one of the mainmast deadeyes, punching holes through the longboat secured over the waist, taking off the arm and shoulder of a seaman, as neat as a surgeon's knife… and throwing the limb shivering at his feet, as if still alive. The man screamed, and sat down flat with his back to the windward bulwark.

In the horror of the moment, Olivia Rose, sixteen years old and at sea for the first time in her life, turned from her father and clung to the heavy bulk of the lad who'd been doing his best to stand between her and the flying shot.

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