This scene of Carlo, the Saker, the eunuch, our host, and myself played in my clouded mind over and over again as I lay on the deck of Milagros. When I awoke the beautiful young nurse, still at my side, was attending to and with some measure of success comforting my pain with various spirits, creams, and ointments. She truly was a beautiful woman. As she bent her head towards me to treat my wounds waves of her thick black hair framed the delicate features of her face and whenever she moved a soft sent of rose or lilac pushed aside the smell of smoke and the taste of gunpowder.

The most skilled playwright could not have conceived a performance so surreal and vivid in contrast. Cayman, the ship off our starboard side, whose caisson had exploded, now sat half submerged at a 45-degree angle. Her stern rested on the harbor floor and her bow, pointed upward, looked as if it was trying to escape the wreckage by springing from the harbor. A number of her crew lay dead or dying on the surface of her deck not yet submerged while others floated motionless alongside the sinking vessel. The harbors waters, a deep blue-green, warm and inviting moments ago were now a human stew. Those who had survived the explosion were having to push bits and pieces of human remains aside as they swam for the harbor's edge. Amongst this carnage filled chaos a beautiful young woman filled with the vigors of life was methodically attending to a ravaged man twice her age and Carlo having quickly contained the ships fire to the galley was directing his men and soon would have their emotions contained and control of his ship.

Softly, by degrees, I regained my vital humours. Sitting up now, allowing perhaps a little too much assistance from the young lass beside me, I could breathe without the fear of searing pain. No extremity seemed damaged beyond repair. The last twenty-four hours challenged much the constitution of a man no longer so young. But I was pleased to find myself not yet too old to endure them. At last -- such are the rigors of real adventure!

"Your name, angel?" I hoped it not too bold, under the circumstances.

"I am Penelope," a broad smile. Not too bold after all.

Leave it to a man that he explore the possibilities of . . . what? Of love? Of something. Something soft and kind and other-worldly in the arms of a young woman, even when all else seems lost and so much uncertain. But perhaps that is the best time of all.

"Ishmael! Get up, man! Leave you for a second and you make way with the first nurse you see!"

Carlo, of course.

"Get below and tend to my father. He asks for you."