It wasn’t the first time this notorious ship, the Black Joke, had been laid bare. The western coast of Africa was not a place where stores and sails would go to waste what could not be used would be sold or traded by the same people who’d destroyed one of the finest Baltimore clippers ever to sweep across the open sea. Naturally, the ship had been looted first, everything of value removed. If evidence remained of the lives lived on board the now-empty vessel, it went up with the pungent smell of the burning decks, and the acrid scent of charred wood and whitewash accompanied the crack and snap of sparked beams. It was as if the flames consumed not just ship timbers but sound stillness had settled where the breeze of the sea refused to let the smoke rest, despite the crowds of people the blaze had drawn to the harbor. The terrible cacophony of the cargo over which they’d struggled had also gone silent. The screams of sailors and slavers were a memory.
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