The Pirate Devlin

by Mark Keating

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

An injured French officer struggles along a desolate stretch of West African coastline, desperate to hold on to his secret. Alas for him, his tale is soon ended, and violently, but a young pirate recruit, Patrick Devlin, who happens to speak fluent French, comes away from their encounter with a new pair of boots and a treasure map. From there the adventures of the pirate Devlin, his shipmates, and those who wish them dead move forward without restraint, through broadside barrages and subterfuge and brutal encounters on land and at sea, where nothing is as it appears to be at first glance. In these pages readers will meet Blackbeard and his cohorts, Portuguese colonial governors and French commandants, officials of the East India Company and Royal Naval officers, fresh-faced midshipmen and gnarly, scarred, and drunken pirate crewmen. But none of these is as impressive and memorable as the former servant and newly minted pirate captain Patrick Devlin, unless it's the man he once served on board a British man-of-war, a man now sworn to kill him!

Release date: July 8, 2010

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 346

Sample

The West Coast of Africa, April 1717

The Frenchman’s boots were filling with blood as he cracked his way through the wet coarseness of the undergrowth. As daylight
faded into bladed shadows, the jungle pulled him deeper into its crushing green.

His breaths rasped through the heavy heat, stretching the pain along his side. The pounding of his heart engulfed his body.

Bereft of sword or pistol, his only hope was to push himself ever on, spurred by the shouts of the pirates echoing from the
beach.

Desperately he dodged across the uneven ground. Stumbling upwards in one step, falling the next, grasping for purchase, the
wet jungle slapping his face with every cursing breath.

Without a glance behind, he arrowed away from the triumphant yell that signalled the first sighting of his bloody trail spotting
amongst the waist-tall fronds; his pace slowed with the strange coldness of his own blood seeping down his leg.

Away from the sand and the mud now, he found himself wading through lush boot-high grass and shadowy palms.

Enough of the green flaying him weaker. Enough beating him back. He crouched to draw breath, to slow the beat of his heart
pushing his life from the hole above his hip and staining wine-black the worsted blue of his Marine Royale doublet.

The sweating forest was reminiscent in his near delirium of a mansion house back home in Orly, a maze of corridors and echoes.

Now, passageways of mossy trunks, instead of green flocked halls, opened up into insect-humming, fern-filled rooms, each one
sealed off from the other until he broke through its emerald door.

He crouched in one of these dark chambers, his insides cramping, his own will trying to pull him down into the soft, welcoming
grass. Sleep awhile and hope his pursuers would pass him by, give up, return to the boat.

When the longboat had landed, and all had jumped into the surf to drag her in, he too had leaped clear and seized the moment
of the struggle against the tide to back away and then bolt free, pounding up the beach, clumsy against the sand underfoot.

He had stumbled the short distance to the breach of the wild mass of twisted white branches protecting the jungle, when one
of them had got off a lucky pistol shot that had slammed into his hip, and he found a powerful desire to keep running from
the wicked laugh that followed it.

Now, as he sucked at the moist air, he heard no noise around him save for the chattering of black beetles, the endless chirrup
of the cicadas. The mocking calls and whistles had faded, he was sure. He reached up to a friendly branch and heaved himself
along as quietly as the jungle would allow in its pity.

Staggering through the swathes of enormous leaves fanning his brow, he came into another clearing, as polished as a bowling
green, as peaceful as the hour after mass. In the centre of the dell, disturbed in his foraging by the interloper, a lone
crow bobbed, glistening black against the vitality of the green. There was a moment of judgement as the bird cocked his head
to the sweating Frenchman. He cawed once, softly, to question the intrusion.

The Frenchman hissed to his companion for silence, but the black bird merely chuckled at his impudence then, as punishment,
sprang into the air, with his laughing war cry pealing around the trees like a plague bell. A dozen of his brothers followed
with their admonishment, breaking through the roof of the trees to form a black cloud over his sanctuary.

The shouts of the pirates rose with the cries of the birds, and the jungle danced with the crash of their approach.

The Frenchman pitched forward, drunkenly pliant. The imminence of his own demise gave at least some promise of rest. He collapsed
gratefully into the coolness of the damp grass as the seven brutes came through the green curtains into his world.

‘Well, well, Froggy,’ panted the quartermaster, Peter Sam, standing over him, sweat running off his shaven head, filtering
through his red beard. ‘That’s quite a run you gave us there, boy.’ Throwing his cutlass aside, he joined Philippe Ducos,
the unfortunate young man from the Marine Royale, and sat in the grass, his chest heaving.

The other half-dozen gathered round their prisoner, who stared straight up, gasping his last breaths to the blue sky breaking
through the lacy canopy of trees.

Hugh Harris gave a swift kick that belied the daintiness of the red and white silk shoes he had taken from the French sloop
only the week before, now soaked and salt-stained.

‘So, there’s no pig farm on this island, then? Eh, Froggy?’ Another kick to the black wound.

‘What’ll we do with him, Peter?’ William Magnes, the old man of their group at forty-five, put his hanger away, never willing
to be the killer.

‘We’ll do for him sure enough.’ Peter reached for his cutlass, stood up and wiped his head with a dirty kerchief. ‘Makes no
sense to take him back. But we’ll not go back empty.’ He snapped his fingers to a young pock-faced lad. ‘Davies, go with Hugh
and Will. Back to the boat. Get the muskets. See if you can scout down some goat. The ground’s right for pigs at least.’

‘Aye, Peter.’ The lad and the old standers went off with slaps and swearing.

‘You two.’ He pointed to Patrick Devlin and Sam Fletcher, who were new hands, weeks new, a couple of navy ‘waisters’ still
learning the sweet trade. ‘Go through the Frog’s pockets for yourselves, lads, then end him. I’m going to scour for fruit.
I wants his jacket as a sack. Gets it off him, then come and gets me with it.’ He grabbed the arm of the remaining pirate,
a young, black-haired, moon-faced lad. ‘Thomas, come with me.’

Devlin, Fletcher and the Frenchman were now alone in the gloom.

Philippe Ducos’s eyes were closed. He had been drifting away to Peter’s growling voice. Now he jumped awake as he felt the
quick hands of the pirates running through the pockets of the blue tunic his wife had lined two years before.

‘Stop squirming, Frog!’ Fletcher cackled. ‘Aye, Pat? Don’t it make more sense to shoot him first then relieve him?’

‘Maybe,’ Devlin murmured, his face lowered to avoid the pleading eyes of Philippe Ducos.

Fletcher had been a deserter, had leaped into his pirate life with glee a month before Patrick Devlin had been dragged aboard.

To Devlin, who had spent years amongst the king’s ships, manservant to Captain John Coxon, the pirate ship was but a passing
inconvenience. He had signed their articles without protest and kept his distance from the ones he had beaten back and striped
with blade when they had chanced upon the Noble in the North African straits.

Of all the officers and sailors of the Noble, the pirates marvelled how it was the tall, black-haired servant who had carved a circle of defiance in front of the cabin
as the others ran and the deck burned.

They had laughed as he stood before them in his shabby, ill-fitting suit and danced, against Peter Sam no less, who had strode
forward and twisted the sword from Devlin’s hand as if plucking it from a child.

He would bide his time. Keep low. He did not mind the men themselves, for some of his old days amongst the fishermen of St
Malo had fringed along the blade of the ‘écumeur des mers’, skimming off the surface of the sea rather than underneath it. But this was not his life. Merry enough, but too short for
his liking.

From Ducos’s pockets they pulled out an empty tobacco tin, a small flint wrapped in a strip of white leather, a thimble, a
handkerchief and just the bowl piece of a clay pipe.

The Frenchman resisted more as he realised that death was closing. He began to struggle. Garbling French at them. His little
English useless now as panic crept over him.

More words, pleading words, came babbling from him. At some hushed sound Devlin stopped and listened hard as the soft accent
repeated itself.

Devlin’s hands clamped against the Frenchman’s shoulders. Their eyes locked as he grabbed the Frenchman’s shirt, pulling him
up, Sam Fletcher flung aside.

The Frenchman met his stare and almost smiled as he knew that this one at least understood his promise. Philippe Ducos nodded
desperately to the serious, dark face and swore to God.

Fletcher watched, perplexed, at the two almost embracing in some confidence. His simple grasp of humanity had noted that an
oath of some kind had passed between the two, and all Fletcher knew of oaths was that the very next words from the desk would
be ‘… and that will be half a guinea.’

But the babbling Frog was still going on, and Peter had asked for the jacket, and Peter had asked for the death, and that
bloody Frog was still going on and on and Patrick was listening to it, for Christ’s sake. Enough.

Fletcher stood back just far enough to pull his pistol clear and fire into the side of the Frenchman’s skull, all three of
them reeling from the shock of fire and blood, but only the Frenchman falling.

The crows took to the air again, laughing over the wicked court of men, as the explosion ripped away Ducos’s final pleas.

Fletcher spat at the trembling corpse, the Frenchman still lisping some pointless utterance.

Devlin could taste the bitter blood of the man on his lips from the spatter. Fletcher laughed as the Irishman wiped the blood
away with the dead man’s linen.

He started to pull off the jacket, still maniacally chuckling at Devlin’s bloodied face. Devlin cursed him as he knelt down
and started to pull at the Frenchman’s brown leather boots. The boots were old, probably the man’s father’s before him, but
they were good.

‘What you doing, Pat?’

‘This Frog might have feet as big as mine, for a change. My shoes have had it. These’ll do.’

‘Aye. Perhaps the stench will be better and all. What was all that Frog-talk he was jawing about? You get any of that, Pat?’
Fletcher had freed the coat from the limp body and then fingered through the scant effects, not listening for an answer and
missing entirely the slow movement Devlin had made to lay his hand to his pistol butt. He touched it, brushed the lock with
his palm, then went back to hauling off the boots.

‘No. Just thought I might try. Seemed like he had something to say.’

‘Aye, well, teaches him for being a Frog, don’t it? I’m having the tobacco tin. Peter said we could takes what we wants.’
Then he added, ‘But don’t tell him, mate. You know what he’s like. He’ll have it himself and leave me the thimble.’ Fletcher
carried up the tunic and skipped away, burying the tin in his waistcoat.

Sitting down, Devlin had put one boot on, and indeed they were as if made for him, despite the dampness of the blood that
his stocking was soaking up.

Pulling the other over his calf, he inched his eyes around the circle of trees. Fletcher had gone. He was alone with the dead.

He felt into the leather. Sure enough, there was a folded parchment inside, just as Philippe Ducos had said there would be.
Devlin allowed one finger to brush the paper, then pulled the rest of the boot on. He made a throwing motion, as if tossing
a small pebble he had found inside. The only one to watch the act was the dead Philippe Ducos.

Devlin stood and looked down at the Frenchman, who had sat huddled below deck with them for the past week. His shy separation
from the crew had mirrored Devlin’s own first days aboard. He thought of old man Kennedy, long dead now, telling him when
he had first escaped to London from a foaming-mouthed magistrate in Ireland, never to give away too much about yourself, not
for pride’s sake: ‘But for lest someone finds a reason to hang you for it, Patrick.’

There had never been a reason to tell his new companions that he spoke French like a corsaire, after the murder of Kennedy had put him to his feet again and to the forts and coasts of Brittany to barely survive as a
fisherman. Forced to learn from his coarse fellows, who laughed at his clumsy Irish vowels, then donning the Marine Royale
tunic himself for a short time, before the protective wing of Captain Coxon had swept over him.

Devlin absently checked the flint in his pistol, screwing it tighter, as he turned to take the long walk back to the shore.

Philippe Ducos lay dead, his blood already matting hard on the grass and being inspected by tropical ants. Mosquitoes flew
in and out of the crack in his head like escaping dreams.

The book that was his short military life had closed with the snap of a pistol from a man who could not write his own name.

The last of the crew of a French sloop that had delivered a fortune of the king’s own gold to a secret island in the Caribbean
now grew cold in the afternoon heat. The location of the gold remained nestled roughly in the boots that were now calmly striding
away. The only sound in the small glade was from the busily curious insects gathering on the fallen Frenchman.



Stepping from the damp closeness of the jungle to the blinding brightness of the beach took a moment of adjustment. Devlin
shielded his eyes from the glare of the sand. He had been given no order other than to assure the death of the Frenchman,
so he took the time to ponder the significance of the parchment hidden in the dead man’s boots.

He moved down to a rocky vantage along the edge of the jungle, every step reminding him of the folded secret rubbing against
his calf.

He sat on the volcanic outcrop and squinted out to sea. They had landed on the east of the island, which had provided them
the best sounding, and now, as Devlin stared out, he could just make out the coast of Africa herself, stretching like a line
of black ink drawn across the horizon, an enormous blanket of thunderous dark clouds threatening to swallow her. The archipelago
the Frenchman had led them to was more than thirty leagues distant, yet as far as Devlin’s gaze panned, his view was the dark
shore of an enormous other world. He had never walked upon the land of nightmarish beasts and black backs that shouldered
the wealth of the New World, but had seen the remnants of men who had found disease Africa’s only promise. Still, what point
a sailor, if home were all he craved?

In the offing, the Lucy sat. A black-and-white two-mast brigantine. Square-rigged on the foremast, gaff-rigged on the main, with a full set of jibs
and staysails for speed and agility. A young ship, fourteen years out of Chatham, although most of her spars and yards had
been cannibalised from older souls. She had the extravagance of both capstan over windlass and wheel over tiller, and a quarterdeck
that made every sloop of war look twice upon her.

Eighty feet long with only eight six-pounders, she was a baby compared to the French and English frigates that Devlin was
used to, but she could move as swiftly as running your finger across a map.

Stern and bow, the pirates’ stanchion mounted three pairs of swivel guns along the rails. These half-pound falconets, loaded
with grape, could devastate an opposing crew, peppering the shrouds and decks, pulling at flesh like fish hooks. Two further
six-pounders, one placed as a chaser, the other aft, peeped out of the Lucy’s hull through crudely cut ports, but by far the pirates’ most deadly weapons were the men themselves.

Fully armed, weapons kept immaculately clean and dry through wax and tallow strip, each man was formidable with a musket;
even Devlin, a poacher in his youth, an old matchlock his bedside companion, was denied a musket until he came up to their
standard.

In a ‘surprisal’ at sea, groups of them stood in the rigging, firing off rounds, as casually as shelling nuts, down into the
prize, and every shot killed or maimed. Two shots could splice a sheet. Four could bring down a yard. Six men aloft were worth
more than one twelve-pounder, and each man could fire three to the gun’s pitiful one, his only pause to wipe the stinging
powder from his red-rimmed eyes.

The Lucy. Overmanned fit to bursting. The sheer numbers of men sealed most of their victories, with a merchant often shy to defend
his trade against a comparative army of drunken, cursing maniacs bearing down upon him.

To make room amongst the cramped decks, any spare bit of wood that was not necessary to float went overboard. Bulkheads were
ripped out, cabins, doors and tables removed. Men slept on the open deck or close together below, often ‘matelot’ style, sharing
hammocks and blankets and eating meals in the open air upon rugs and sailcloth. Such closeness mocked the fourteen inches
allotted to a sailor upon a king’s ship, and it was for the good of all that you got on with the man you slept, ate and fought
beside. Ever since the old Tortuga buccaneers, this notion of brotherhood had marked the pirates’ success. The ‘Brethren of
the Coast’ both in name and most certainly in number.

Out of Devlin’s long waistcoat came a muslin bag of tobacco. He placed it on the rock, first checking for dampness. Taking
his clay pipe from his pocket, he blew out any lint and filled it with the Virginian blend introduced to a drop of port some
months before.

Lifting his head to check for eyes upon him, aware that his mates could appear at any moment, Devlin pulled out the possession
most prized before Philippe Ducos’s gift.

A small, narrow tube. Hardly four inches long. Silver. A laughing devil engraved on the top. At the slip of a thumbnail, the
devil could be prised up to reveal a dozen narrow pinewood sticks coated in an awful-smelling substance.

Inside the lid, a roughened glassy surface sparked the wood into life, and before Devlin had shaken out the flame and tossed
the wood to the sea, the silver tube was back in his pocket. The tube was a gift from his former master from the Noble, John Coxon. At the time, Captain Coxon was dying of dysentery in Cape Coast Castle and was unaware of making the ‘gift’.

He sucked on his pipe, drawing it into life, avoiding the urge to study the paper that Ducos’s fate had given him. From the
Frenchman’s final, desperate outburst he had only gathered the promise of a map to a king’s fortune, guarded and hidden. A
fortune in gold, stored as a stronghold for the French forces in the Antilles.

Until he looked at the paper he would not know what hand it would deal him. But his worst fate would be to be found studying
a map taken from a dead prisoner for some unknown personal gain. In his contemplation, his eyes had carried back out to sea.
He noticed, reflective, amused, that his exhalations of smoke matched the crashing of the afternoon surf.

‘Did you not think that you should declare those boots to your quartermaster, then, Patrick?’ He turned with a start to see
Peter Sam standing by his side. The others were following across the white sand, William Magnes carrying a lifeless goat across
his shoulders.

Devlin cursed himself. He had not heard a distant shot to explain for the goat, and coming across the sand the party should
have sounded like carts on cobblestones to his poacher’s ears.

Peter Sam, one eye closed against the glare of the sun, spied Devlin’s new footwear. ‘Pretty nice boots that Frenchman had,
eh? Did you not want to share them?’

Devlin’s composure returned as five pairs of envious and greedy eyes, including Fletcher’s, were turned to his boots.

‘Now be fair, Peter: we’d look pretty foolish wearing a boot between us.’

All, apart from the fiery quartermaster, cackled in agreement, Fletcher, in his ignorance, the loudest.

‘Get that meat to the boat!’ Peter Sam growled with his Bristol drawl through his red beard, glaring at them all as they grumbled
past him. He turned back to Devlin.

He had disliked Devlin from the moment they had relieved him from his duty aboard the Noble. Although clearly a servant, he had been unwilling to join his pirate rescuers who had so easily mauled the English sixth-rate.
Now, Devlin sat before him, grinning behind his pipe, perched on a rock, blood speckled on his linen shirt, the boots in question
similarly dappled.

‘Suppose I want those boots for myself, Patrick? And what else did you gets from that Frog?’

‘If you go back there’ – Devlin indicated to the jungle with his pipe – ‘you’ll find a thimble, a flint and a broken pipe.’
With a flourish he pulled out the handkerchief, also covered in blood. ‘But you’re welcome to this if you want, Peter.’

Peter Sam leaned towards Devlin’s face. ‘I wouldn’t mind trying those boots, Patrick.’

Devlin dropped off the rock, his face levelled to Peter Sam’s, and he passed a look up and down the brute. Unlike most of
the crew, who wore the finest linen and waistcoats, albeit tallow- and pitch-stained, motley as harlequins, Peter Sam wore
goat-leather breeches and a leather jerkin. Gracing his chest was a deadly bandoleer of cartouche boxes and generations of
pistols holstered with leather straps. He was the image of an old-time ‘boucanier’.

‘I took these boots off a dead man. You’ll have to do the same.’ Devlin brushed past and walked to the boat, Peter Sam’s eyes
at his back.

The row back to the Lucy was a quiet one. Thomas Deakins, the young lad whom Peter Sam had led away into the jungle, and never strayed far from, now
wore Philippe Ducos’s blue tunic.

Devlin had become accustomed to the closeness of some of the pirate brethren to each other, and when Peter took the arm of
Thomas on the island, no one had raised a head. In many ways the closeness was of benefit to a ship. Some of the men worked
in pairs like twins, and worked gladly. Every man seemed to be a ‘bosun’ rather than just a mate, running the shrouds and
ratlines as smoothly as painting a wall.

Despite the drunken nature of their days, there was no job neglected or position lacking. That which could not be spliced
or repaired could soon be stolen or bartered, and every sheet hauled or rope reeved was done for the purpose of filling the
coffers of all. Their songs were sung for the joy of the life and not just to bolster the rhythm of the work. They had an
envious camaraderie that Devlin had not seen since his days out of the close-knit ports of St Malo. Peter Sam’s dark gaze
from across the boat, however, suggested there were exceptions.

The boat was belayed to the Lucy, left to loll alongside as the lads all clambered up the tumblehome with a rampant thirst.

The lack of the cochon-marron, the marooned brown pig that the Frenchman had promised with his drawings and mime, was disappointing, but there were goats,
most probably landed by some long-dead Portuguese adventurer as a larder for the world, and an oasis of fruit that might inspire
the captain to stay and supply.

Not that food seemed to be a concern in the company that Devlin now kept. On his first day, the afternoon the Noble had been lost, Devlin and Alastair Lewis, the only prisoners from the English frigate, ate a pork and mango stew with cobbles
of fresh bread and a shilling’s worth of butter, whilst being questioned by the charismatic captain, Seth Toombs, who sliced
corners of cheese and wedges of apples straight into his mouth off the back of an ivory-hilted blade.

Now, Captain Toombs lay sprawled on the deck in front of his open cabin, all limbs outstretched across a red and gold Indian
carpet that, back in London, would have graciously filled any gentleman’s hall, but perhaps not in its current frayed and
rent condition.

It was hours past noon. No course to go for. Every soul on board had supped a draught or two whilst waiting for the longboat’s
return. The captain’s burgundy tricorne lay across his eyes, and he lifted a corner of it to watch Peter Sam as he approached.

‘Ah, Peter,’ Toombs yawned, ‘I gather there be no pig farm on that there island? Seeing as we are now absent of our French
lubber?’ Toombs’s dialect was as far westbound as Peter’s.

‘Aye, Cap’n. No pig farm. But there be plenty of goat if we want to stay. Fruit too. Mangoes, plantains.’

‘Not plantains, please, Peter. Say not plantains! Mate, my guts will turn blue for another!’ He lay back down with a belch.

‘Aye, Cap’n.’ Peter bent down, swooped up the captain’s leather mug and idled over to the half-hog of punch that was permanently
on deck.

Devlin watched the party from the longboat dissipate amidships. The dead goat, his sorry head hanging, was carried below.
The quartermaster had his back to him and was on his second draught. Toombs appeared to be asleep; then the glint of a catlike
eye beneath the cock of his hat betrayed otherwise. A hand beckoned to Devlin.

Devlin came across the wet deck towards Seth Toombs, who was now raised on an elbow and smiling him closer, quite gentrified
in his brown twill coat and scarlet brocade waistcoat. He was as young as Devlin maybe – not yet thirty; but rough drink and
Newfoundland winds had weathered his face and made coarse his blond hair. Toombs, Peter Sam and old William Magnes were the
original three who had stolen a sloop out of Newfoundland two years before.

They were codmen, pressed into freezing their youth away along the harsh North American coast. One winter had been enough,
and the three Bristol men slipped away in the night, just after Peter had slipped away the life of the sloop’s master. The
first man he had killed for Seth Toombs.

A dozen stories later, Toombs was the elected captain of a hundred men, but Devlin had summed him up as all swagger and stagger.
A lucky, dirty soul.

‘Now, Patrick. Mister Devlin, sir.’ Still looking asleep, Toombs spoke on. ‘I have had a wonderful conversation with Mister
Lewis this fine morning.’

‘Captain?’

‘Mister Lewis.’ He rolled himself up to sit. ‘Your former navigator on that burning frigate you frequented? Come closer, man!’

Devlin moved forward to within a step of the captain. All about them, men were laughing in cross-legged groups, sharing mugs
of punch: their diet of rum, water and limes stirred with muscovado sugar.

‘Who has my mug?’ Toombs asked the air about him. ‘Never mind. Sit down, Patrick, and listen to me.’ He patted his carpet
to motion Devlin to him. Devlin shifted his sword and crouched, one knee down, his left hand on the hilt.

‘You have performed well, Patrick. I be proud of your schooling.’ Toombs smiled. ‘On that French sloop you fought like a true
pirate. I’m shining of you, sir, so I am!’ He slapped Devlin heartily. ‘But,’ he whispered, ‘did you not think that those
few men fought rather hard for what little they had to offer? Would you not be of a mind to think that now?’

‘I don’t know, Captain.’

‘Shush, never mind, sir, never mind.’ He patted Devlin’s forearm patriarchally. ‘However, as I say, Mister Lewis and I have
been a-talking.’

Alastair Lewis was the navigator on board the Noble. Like Devlin he had resisted capture. But whereas Devlin gave defence to the ship when the dead no longer could or the living
had fled to the boats, Lewis and Acting Captain Thorn had locked themselves in the Great Cabin. The pirates had broken through
the door just as the blaze got beyond Thorn’s control.

They had used Thorn for target, hanging by his arms across the main’s yardarm, after they discovered he had burned all the
charts, the cause of the fire, and thrown Lewis’s tools to the sea. Then the fire had spread, assuring the pirate’s half-victory,
and the loss of the ship.

When they drank to the tale the day after, the more ‘romantic’ of them told how they had heard the beams of the old girl scream.

‘Come and see what we were talking about.’ He had stood up and gently tugged Devlin into the cabin, or rather the shell of
one.

The doors were missing and every chair. The customary accoutrements that Devlin was used to were ab. . .