TRIANGLE TRADE (2) PREQUEL CONT'D

[Coagula]

Surprise followed by befuddles..the drumming from below surges louder.. or is it a pounding at my temples... Roxanne steers to me direct and opens her arms...(don't give me much choice)..so I open my arms to hug'er ...an' she's warm...very...I feel 'er pulse...fast...very...'er whole body pulses...thru all our clothes...warm..fast..strong, an' loik ''twas yesterday-whispers in m'year "Yo queiro tu cabeza en mi pecho (I want your head against my breast.") (Yoiks) We part and the three of us kinda look here an' there...and there's nothing to say...there's too much to say...So I sez to me boots wot needs shinen'...Let's go Party"...and we make for the stairs...an' we come to pass the pictures again - "Attacking Gibraltar"...I avert my eyes...hates them pictures...hate L'Olonais...save L'Olonais fer last (on SMP)....an' when YOU seey'm thrust and say "That's for Coagula..an' this fer Gibraltar...Well I see you're pausing afore one of the pictures...the drawing on black paper using white and red/brown conte crayon- At the Monastery doors - Pirates shoot from behind monks and nuns. The coward L'Olonais ordered us to protect ourselves with these human shields; for a moment the Spaniards held their fire...But the monks shouted out (and these words are incised into the frame of the picture) "Death to the heretics! Shoot so the Lord will gather us unto him! Kill them! Since for christians death does not exist, but eternal life! Shoot! Shoot! Do not be cowardly!"...It was us that were the cowards. But we were bound by our oath of allegiance, a contract we swore and signed to obey L'Olonais... The monks got their wish ..they were shot down by their own...all of them..the defense became fierce and L'Olonais ordered a retreat.
Now as to the rest of the pictures, they tell the story of how the fools followed us and lost the protection of their buildings. We trounced 'em and swarmed into Gibraltar like hungry wolves. L'Olonais went into a fury of cruelty, submitting the prisoners to tortures you can see in the pictures there and over there. Bloodthirsty..aye..he gives it a new, worst meaning ( I know the true blood-thirst, reader for, if you haven't guessed, I am a vampire, self made by alchemy, yet a vampire never the less.) You can stay here but Ayum not stoppin' to explain these other beastly graphics. I continue down the stairs but pause at the painting of L'Olonais, Roxanne and meself. Roxanne glides past me chuckling...This Ay'm thinking as I slowly follow - The assault on Maracaibo lasted two months... In four days on Aruba we finished totaling up the booty,...We sailed eight days to Ile-a-Vache on Hispaniola to unload and sell alot of what we had taken, the bells from Maracaibos' church, paintings even 500 head of cattle... It took a month to divide up the jewels and 270,000 pieces of eight as agreed in the contract...Then we set sail for Tortuga where merchants, tavern-keepers, gamblers, prostitutes - all who could spread joy- convened to join our celebrations until we were totally fleeced....I left Roxanne in Maracaibo so how did she, "my prisoner," wind up here in Montalbans' secret (err) my secret outpost?

[sparticus]