It was an unpleasant and strange circumstance in which Sarah found herself staring down the barrel of a red-tipped pistol.

The journey across the vast ocean to the New World had been one of business. Her father, a penniless merchant, had become horribly ill the week before he was to depart. He needed to stock up on wares that he would then return with to Europe and sell at raised prices. Sarah, used to his long disappearances, took advantage of his occupation as one of seafaring adventures. As a little girl, she would listen with unflinching awe at his stories of weathering devilish storms and swashbuckling with pirates. Whether or not they were true didn't matter, only that in her eyes her father was a hero. With her only remaining parent now taken suddenly ill, and having no other siblings to shoulder the burden, it was up to the twenty-five year old to go on the journey herself. If she and her father were to stay out of trouble and poverty, it was the course that had to be taken.