Blood Pact

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The HMS Britannia was Cunard’s newest paddle wheel steamer to make the Atlantic crossing from Boston to Halifax to Liverpool, but she was primarily a mail carrier and not very well suited for her 115 passengers, who were stacked in dark, cramped cabins belowdecks.

Fr. Jacob Ambli, twenty-nine, a man just under six feet, with a broad face and youthful though intelligent dark eyes, emerged from the empty dining room aft of the funnel and went to the rail. He wore loose gabardine trousers and a thick sweater against the evening cold. If trouble were to come this night he wanted fighting room and flexibility.

It was just after eleven and the overcast sky showed no stars. Nothing was visible except for the faint luminescence of the ship’s wake as it tumbled down the eight-foot waves. The horizon had been lost once night fell, lending an even greater sense of isolation than he had felt trekking across the American southwest deserts and mountains searching for Cibola north of the Rio Grande. A search that had been successful.

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