Raven’s Revenge

**Also available on iBooks and Kobo!**

A Jim Hawkins Novel

“The Destiny of Jim Hawkins ”and “For the Love of Livian” trace the life of Jim Hawkins after his return home from Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”. These two novels explore his life and adventures in Bristol and London, England and at Haslar Royal Naval Hospital across the bay from Portsmouth, England in the middle 1700’s. As a young surgeon he was confronted him with many life threatening journeys during his trip to the rebellious American colonies and while he worked at the Naval Hospital.

“Raven’s Revenge” is a continuation of that epic saga. Jim’s discovery of fraud and attempted slavery at Haslar hospital earned him a dangerous enemy, Dr. Herman Franks. While at Haslar, Franks and his accomplices kidnapped two Jamaican free-women and tried to murder Jim because Jim had unearthed Frank’s scheme to defraud the hospital. Convicted of kidnapping, Franks vowed vengeance on all who had betrayed him, stole from him, or testified against him.

The cruel English prison system of 1772 turns Franks into even more of a vicious killer than he ever was. Fighting for survival after his conviction, Franks frequently changes his name to avoid detection and to secure his freedom from his slavery as a transported convict to the Americas.

The action in this tale of revenge and blood lust cranks up the tension and doesn’t diminish until the dramatic finish.

Excerpt from the book:

Prison turns a man one way or the other. There is no in between. Either he comes utterly and resolutely submissive to the tyrannical, despotic will of brutal guards or he finds the deepest, darkest evil in his soul and uses it to plot his revenge.
If his soul turns black, he employs that evil, a spirit penetrating evil, and relentlessly plots to escape and seek horrifying revenge on those who abused him, testified against him, betrayed him, sentenced him and placed him in this prison in the rotting stench of a prison hulk and then in slavery in the colonies—this waiting room to hell.

Chapter 1

Franks had nothing to look forward to but a loathsome three months in the bottom of a prison hulk in Portsmouth harbor. These old rotten ships had their masts, iron, and anything else valuable and usable stripped and repurposed, such was the frugality of His Majesty’s Admiralty. All that was left of any of the prison hulk ships were rotting keels and planks. The prison system had been using these old ships as prisons for some time. Since they were available, and cheap, they forestalled the need to build new prisons. Franks had been roughly hauled from the Portsmouth constabulary to the prison hulk, given a wooden bowl and wooden spoon for his daily, thin oatmeal gruel and dropped rudely down the hatch to join his fellow prisoners.

“You’re number twenty-one,” the jailer screamed at him when he opened the hatch and pushed Franks down the eight-foot drop to the hold. “You’re to answer to that if and when we calls you!” the guard snickered and added his aside to a fellow jailer.

“That’s if we do.” And with a laugh, covered the iron hatch.

It didn’t matter to the prison jailers who Franks was. He might have served the Navy as a doctor at Haslar hospital for ten years, saved some sailors’ lives even though he was personally responsible for killing or maiming many other with his bizarre brain surgeries. But to them he was just another criminal to be tossed down in the ship’s hold to await trial in February. Since the “Bloody Code” of English law prevailed, he along with others sitting in the stench of the prison hulk would most likely be hung in the new year so the jailers’ casual, almost brutal indifference to the basic needs of these men came naturally. If one or more died before sentencing, no one in the entire legal system, including the jailers, would face rebuke. They could do whatever they wanted to them, without retribution.

It was everyman for himself in the darkened, minimally ventilated, boarded up hold. Franks only personal possessions were his clothes, a topcoat, and his fancy monogrammed boots.

His boots were his trademark and everyone that knew him at Haslar was aware of this personal vanity. These calf length boots, were specially made for him in London when he made trips to secure payment from LongAcre Supply in his kickback scheme. Made by Faulkner’s luxury boots in London, they were fitted perfectly to his feet, and had special thick three layer soles that raised his medium personal height a full inch. Although normal leather boots would wear out and require replacement every year or earlier, these were of the finest, strongest leather. He had paid close to ten times more than the going rate for a pair of production-line stock, ill-fitting shoes. As an added touch of self-importance, Franks had “HF” embossed on the side of each heel.

In the bottom of the prison hulk, however, his coat and the boots presented an immediate problem. They marked him among his fellow prisoners. Once they saw him in the entrenched darkness of the ship’s hold, they knew from the tailoring of his topcoat and the expensive boots he had money, and they viciously coveted anything Franks had. Franks saw their envious eyes in the dim-lit hold and knew he needed immediate protection. That protection had to come from his own innate savagery, since neither the jailers above nor the prisoners below cared who lived or died in the stench of the prison ship.

During his very first hours in the prison ship, Franks took stock of his situation. There were about twenty men packed against the walls of the smelly hold on this part of the deck, each sitting on an old, wet, rat-eaten, straw mattress. No one he could see had a blanket to ward off the sea-drenched cold of a Portsmouth Bay winter. All anyone had as personal possessions were the clothes on their backs. He had his topcoat, which had to be prized by those sharing these wretched quarters. Franks couldn’t make out the faces of anyone clearly since the only light came from a cross-ironed hatch ten-feet away and eight–feet up to the next deck that provided minimal light and air. All the gun portholes had been solidly boarded up so there was no escape to the sea. These prison hulks were grounded at high tide and were not going anywhere. At low tide, they would be firmly sunk into the river bank. He had to protect himself. Getting a hold of a blade, any blade would have to be a first priority to save himself from being strangled or mauled by any one or more of the prisoners. His coat, his boots –were worth more to these brigands than a life, and he had to act quickly.

Although he couldn’t see much in the darkness, he could hear the grunts, coughing, and deep chest wheezing of some of the men. The raw cold of early November was setting in and in this wet, dank pit, those were unmistakable sounds that some were sure to die even before their trials.