"I might never see my home port again, but I did not cry as I left it."
"My father’s dying wish, that was all my brothers would say."
"Misery wrapped itself around me like my sodden cloak."
"God don’t care what face you’ve got, as long as the Glory of God shines in your heart."
"They say that those who go to sea either look forward, or look back."
"A lifetime if need be. I still hold to that promise. Even now."
"Never too young! You’re a handsome young woman, even if you ain’t prepared to make the best of yourself."
"The marriage game had its own rules and etiquette, winners and losers, like any other game of chance."
"I went home with my face aching from so much smiling; my feet and legs sore from standing and dancing all night in thin-soled pumps."
"I thought that there would be time to talk in the interval, but as the last dance ended he told me that he had to go."
"I could do nothing to prevent what was happening to me, so I helped to sort my summer clothes."
"The idea of writing to William gave me hope, and that’s what I needed."
"For a female presence among them would stop their growing rough and grim."
"I would skewer any man who came near you until they were heaped up in piles."
"They call themselves gentlemen of fortune, and some are exactly that."
"The sea was as smooth as an inland lake, the sky overhead clear and intensely blue."
"What a surprising young lady you are, Miss Kington."
"I stared back at the woman until she was just a tiny mound, a speck of black on the bone-white ground."
"The air was cooler here and scented by pine trees."
"We were girls together and of an age, and that is how we behaved, laughing and playing in the water."
"They are human beings. Flesh and blood. Just like us."
"Plantations cannot be run without discipline."
"I never liked being told what to do, my natural inclination being to do precisely the opposite."
"You cannot change things. You will only make difficulties for everybody, including your favourites."
"The great tree in the marketplace was put to use more frequently."
"The sea lay rippling like a cloth of gold, lit by the setting sun."
"You may look for me where the fighting is thickest."
"Jewellery was light to carry and keep close, easy to hide."
"The onward flow of our lives had been diverted, as though by rocks falling into a stream."
"Don't matter what the men think. It's already been decided."
"I do not want anything to happen to threaten this newly discovered happiness."
"I often did not sleep until the early hours of the morning, just as the cocks began crowing, heralding the first light of dawn."
"Your dream is true, he is coming. There is no escaping him."
"You living outside the law. Outlaw folks stick together."
"We’ll be a match for anybody, excepting for the Navy."
"It pays to have a weapon handy on the account."
"We will watch out for each other. We will not be afraid."
"Don't fear tomorrow, till today's done with you."
"Let them come after us! Nothing will catch her in open sea."
"The storm that threatened was beyond common experience, almost beyond human capacity to survive."
"We were surrounded on all sides by great cliffs of black shining water, as if we were being thrown into some pit of the deep never to see sky again."
"We are not far from land, to east or west or south of us."
"Any man would be lucky to have you as a wife. Pirate, or no pirate."
"It felt as if I were drowning. The very air was sucked away, taken by huge waves that then broke over me in torrents of frothing water."
"If any of us had known what fate awaited us, we would have taken our chances on the high seas."
"Most of the men had served under captains who gave them nothing but curses, beatings and haughtiness."
"God’s judgement, so some had called it, on the wickedest place in the world."
"A kind of melancholy, laced with recklessness."
"The light wavered, swinging wildly around, the lanthorn shaking so much in his hand that I feared that it might fall down upon me."
"They don’t take kindly to ships lost, like I say, so after us they’ll stay."
"They slept where they fell, no doubt dreaming of the gold that their captain had promised them."
"But who thinks of that in the thick of battle?"
"You will learn some manners, Madam, or I’ll share you with my crew and then feed you to the fish."
"I’ve been searching for you all over the ship."
"Suddenly it was all over. Low’s ship is ours now."
"They should have made him eat his own ears, that was my opinion."
"I carry the marks to this day: a white crescent under my chin and a line running the length of my upper body like a silver thread."
"You will still have me. You will always have me."
"A pirate ship is its own wooden world where each man depends on the other."
"Keep your back to the sea, that way you’re against the light and are harder to see."
"Gold from every nation. Each one a regular work of art."
"We were supposed to be making for the Portuguese islands at all speed, but as we drifted towards the equator, the weather turned as sullen as the atmosphere on board the ship."
"The ship was called the Flying Dutchman and she was condemned to sail on until the Day of Judgement."
"Pirates are used to being hated and hunted, but to be singled out like this?"
"Perhaps the ship that had been sighted truly was the Flying Dutchman."
"Dawn brought mist with it, rolling across the sea towards us, and soon we were enveloped."
"They’ll know what it means to attack the skull and crossed bones!"
"Life is short. You’ve learned that. And not to be wasted. Not a drop of it."
"You must stop being afraid, Nancy. That is the trouble, isn’t it? You are afraid of leaving me."