Merrick stepped from the longboat onto the shore of Hispaniola, shook the wobble from his sea legs, and began trudging through the sand. Behind him, twenty men clambered from the boat, weapons in hand, spreading over the shoreline like a plague. Another blast from the Satisfaction's cannons thundered through the midnight sky. An eighteen-pounder tore through the fort's crumbling towers as if they were parchment, sending stone fragments in all directions, and destroying the town's ...