by Carla Kelly
She ignored his comment as his cheek just brushed hers. She knew she should scold him, but there was something so comforting in having him close by as she fought down her nausea and tried to make sense of the pictures that floated before her.
“Just take a good sweep of the entire horizon every so often, my dear, and that should suffice,” he concluded, closing the book. “You’ll probably wonder if you are really seeing things, after a while. And if you are not sure if it is a French ship, call down to the deck anyway.”
“And if it is?” she asked, finally releasing her grip on his leg.
“Whthen, we fight,” he said, almost surprised at her question.
“You’ll let me come down from the mast first, won’t you?” she asked, her eyes anxious.
He laughed out loud. “No, you silly chit! I’ll keep you here and make you direct the laying of the guns! Of course you’ll come down, and lively, too.”
He started down the rigging and stopped when he was eye level with the platform. “Do you think you can occupy your time? It gets tedious.”
She did not want him to go and leave her there, swaying in the wind. “What did you do to pass the time here when you were a midshipman?” she asked to detain his departure.
“I? It’s been so long,” he murmured, resting his hand on the platform. “I seem to recall singing ribald songs that I will never teach you, and memorizing the theorems of Pythagoras for navigational purposes.” He started to pat her leg, then withdrew his hand. “Perhaps thee can use this time to recall improving scriptures,” he teased. “Good day, Lady Amber. Remember, if you see a French ship, it’s tally-ho.”
She watched him descend, the wind tossing about his curly hair. Thee needs a haircut in the worst way, she thought, then pulled out the telescope and opened it. She discovered that by resting her elbows on the platform railing, she could hold the glass steady enough to scan the horizon. She looked all around, careful to balance herself, and then collapsed the telescope and used her eyes only. There was no other ship on the ocean. She sighed, feeling an emotion close to reverence. They were sailing quite alone on a wide sea, pushed ever closer to >Europe by winds than had blown in that direction since the Lord Almighty had decreed it in Genesis. “ ‘The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork,’ ” she murmured, and scanned the horizon again.
By the time the watch ended, Hannah was ready to come down. The sun had probably imprinted the black-and-white checks into the tanned skin of her sorely tried back, and she was thirsty. She resolved never to look in a mirror again, convinced that she would see that her freckles had multiplied like a many-headed Hydra. She had unbuttoned her shirt as far as she dared and rolled her trouser legs above her knees, but she felt like a duck basting under Mama’s direction at First Day dinner.
“Miss Whittier!” It was Mr. Futtrell, calling to her with the speaking trumpet. “You may stand down now.”
“Aye,” she called down. She buttoned her shirt and knotted it securely before dropping the captain’s glass down the front. I must procure a belt from somewhere, she thought as she carefully edged off the platform, onto the rigging, and then down to the main deck.
Captain Spark was waiting for her with his watch open. “Next time, come down faster,” he ordered. “Your life may depend on it.”
“Aye, sir,” she said and reached into her shirt for the telescope, which she laid in his hand.
He took it with a smile. “It’s been many places, Miss Whittier, but never there. I think Trist can locate you a belt,” he said, then turned on his heel to return to the quarterdeck. “Thank you, ma’am. May I send you up again at four bells?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Of course.” Stiff with sitting so long, she hurried to the scuttlebutt for a drink, wishing that she dared take more than one dipperful, but mindful of the Friday floggings. I am so thirsty, she thought as she went below to flop on her hammock.
Her tiny cabin was stifling with heat and thick with the polluted atmosphere that filled the lower decks, but she looked at the hammock gratefully. She glanced at the little sea chest, and smiled. There was the battered silver carafe and elegant stemmed Waterford crystal goblet from last night’s dinner.
“Thank thee, Captain Spark,” she said as she picked up the carafe and drank directly from it. In another moment she was asleep in the swaying hammock.
Hannah’s late afternoon watch was relieved by one false alarm. She shouted, “Sail-ho!” to the main deck and Mr. Futtrell came charging up the rigging. He stood beside her on the tiny platform, and grabbed the glass. For a long moment he surveyed the place where she pointed, then lowered the glass with a grin.
“Well? Well?” she asked anxiously.
He put the glass to his eye again. “I think it is what you Yankees call a right whale, Miss Whittier,” he said, unable to keep the laughter from his voice. “The Frenchies think they are so clever, but even they cannot spout.”
She sighed with disappointment. “And now you will tease me,” she muttered at last.
“I?” he asked, all innocence. “Oh, never, ma’am. My first ship sighting was an island, as I recall. My fellow midshipman named it the H.M.S. Puerto Rico.”
She smiled up at him charitably and took the glass back. “Very well, sir. I shall do better.”
He started his descent. “You are already doing wonderfully well, Miss Whittier. Are all Yankee girls so useful?”
“As to that, I cannot tell. Mama always told me, ‘Hannah, thee must make a difference.’“ She frowned and then swallowed suddenly, thinking of her mother.
“Well, you have,” he said, then paused and fumbled in his pocket. He took out two large pieces of ship’s biscuit. “From Captain Spark.”
She thanked him and munched the biscuits happily, swinging her feet over the edge of the platform, and wondering why she ever worried about the swaying of the mast, which was now only a pleasant diversion now.
When she descended to the deck again as the sun was setting, she shook her head at Captain Spark’s dinner invitation. “I am too tired to be sparkling company.” she apologized. “Besides that, it will take me an hour or two to unsnarl all these silly curls of mine.”
The captain bowed, and picked up a handful of her hair that spilled in curls around her neck. “I could do that for you sometime, Lady Amber,” he said softly. “I know you do not credit it, but I am a man of infinite patience.”
She stepped away from him in sudden shyness, and he let go of her hair.
“Is patience on your list?” he added, smiling at her confusion.
She nodded and dated below deck, wondering what had ever possessed her to mention that dratted list. Ah, but I have long since removed thee from any consideration since you do not like children, swear to excess, drink too much, are generally blasphemous, and are not engaged in a profession designed to quiet the fears of a wife. And thee is vastly old, thirty at least. So there, sir. She was asleep almost before she climbed the gun.
Hannah watched for days, gradually extending her time aloft until she could manage for most of the day. Captain Spark, while not saying anything about her service, made good use of his midshipmen, sending one below with Mr. Lansing to practice laying the guns onto a target, and sending the other to follow Mr. Futtrell and study the setting of the sails. As she watched from her perch, the second lieutenant drilled his topmen over and over in the prompt reefing of sails to make them battle-ready and less vulnerable to enemy fire.
Captain Spark remained on the quarterdeck with the third midshipman, the two of them shooting the sun with his sextant, and then spreading out the charts to determine landfall. She watched all this with interest from her perch above the deck.
Adam Winslow climbed up once to sit with her. “I am off duty, Hannah,” he explained. “Mr. Lansing released us from the gun deck, and I am glad of it.” He nudged her shoulder. “Hannah, is thee enjoying thyself?”
She smiled at her lifetime friend. “More than
I would admit to thee!”
He nodded. “And why not, I ask? The men talk about thee and wonder if thee is ever out of sorts. I tell them no, that thee was born with a sunny disposition.” He took her hand then. “But we have to get out of here, Hannah.”
“I know,” she agreed, her voice soft. “Thee has to return to school, and I still would like to see Charleston. But how can we do it?”
It was on the afternoon of the fourth day that she sighted the French frigate. She was idly scanning the horizon, to the north and east when she spotted the ship. She held her breath to further still the movement of the telescope, and trained it on the top mast of the distant ship where the pennant flew.
“Drat!” she whispered to herself. The day was calm and the pennant drooped limply from the topgallant. “Blow, winds,” she ordered, and to her extreme gratification the wind picked up and the pennant streamed out straight as an arrow from the mast. She took a deep breath. It was the tricolor of Napoleon’s France.
She kept the glass trained on the ship and watched in growing excitement as the frigate swung gracefully about. The Dissuade had been spotted at that moment, too. “Oh, God.” she breathed, and slammed the telescope together, clipping it onto one of Captain Spark’s extra belts that wrapped around her waist twice.
“Sail-ho,” she screamed to the deck. “It is France!”
Futtrell, scarcely breathing heavy, was beside her in a moment’s time, carrying his own glass. He looked where she pointed. “By God, Miss Whittier, it is the Bergeron, that gave us such trouble in the Windward Islands.”
He leaned over the railing. “Bergeron, sir, damn them!” he called to Captain Spark, who stood in the quarterdeck riggings already, his midshipman’s glass pointed to the northeast.
“All hands!” Spark roared to the bosun. “Beat to quarters.”
“Come, Miss Whittier,” ordered Futtrell, his face alive with excitement as the Marine drummer boy began to pound his urgent message.
“You first,” she said. “I think you need to get to the deck first.”
“I do,” he said, already descending. “I’ll be sending up my topmen on these lines. They’ll run right over you, but don’t be afraid. Hurry down, miss.”
Her heart in her throat, she began her descent as the sailors were coming up the rigging. “Pardon, miss,” each man said as he raced past her to a position on the footropes. When the last man had passed her she scrambled to the deck and made herself small against the aft hatch.
She looked below her to the gun deck, which was full of sailors. Everyone had a job and did it swiftly and silently. Mr. Lansing looked up at her and grinned once, then redirected his attention to the powder monkeys, who were already running to each gun with their first charges. She heard other men tearing down the bulkheads that divided the remaining cabins from the rest of the gun deck. Soon Captain Spark’s furniture from the great cabin was carried on deck and lowered overboard into a dinghy tied to the stern, where it would ride out the battle.
She stayed where she was, fascinated by the urgency that swirled around her, and too afraid to leave her perch and get in anyone’s way. Marines hurried past her and climbed the rigging with their muskets. Others, their faces steely, hauled up a swivel gun.
“Hannah!” She looked up to see Captain Spark striding toward her.
He was dressed in his best uniform, his fore-and-aft hat anchored firmly on his head, which set off something in her brain.
“Why don’t you pin on all your medals, too?” she asked as he reached her side. “Then you would be an even better target, sir!”
“I always go into battle dressed in my best,” he said. “It’s such an insult, ma’am.” He took her by the arm, and none too gently. “You are to go below to the cable tier and remain there until I come for you, and not one moment before.”
“But it’s dark there,” she said, unable to keep the fear from her voice.
“Do it, Hannah,” he ordered, lifting her off her feet with his hands clamped on her arms. He released his grip, but still held her there on the afterhatch. “You are going to hear the worst sounds you will ever hear down there,” he said, his voice low, for her ears only. “When the guns run in and out, it sounds like the ship is tearing apart. You will also hear the screams of the wounded. I can’t help what you will hear, but I can assure you that you will never again hear anything as bad, or be more afraid than you are right now.”
She nodded, unable to tear her gaze away from his eyes. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “I was ten years old when I went into battle for the first time. Nothing scares me now. Go below, Hannah, and don’t disobey me.”
Still she hesitated. Without another word he grasped her hands and swung her over into the gun deck, calling to Adam Winslow.
“You there, take her to the cable tier!”
Adam caught her and grabbed her hand, tugging her down two more decks until she was in the depths of the ship, and made her sit on the great cables that lay, wet with bilge, in the hold. “Do what the captain said, Hannah.”
She nodded, afraid to trust her voice. In another moment he was gone, and she was alone. She shivered in the stinking darkness, listening to the rats that squeaked around her. Her mind was blank of all petitions to the Almighty. She locked herself into a tight ball and crouched on the cable, waiting for the battle to begin.
The first broadside sent her reeling off the cable and into the bilge when the ship heeled, righted itself, then swung quickly around for the port guns to bear. She screamed and leaped back onto the cable as the guns were pulled in, screeching on their tracks, reloaded, and then run out again, directly over her head. Through the heavy planking, she heard Mr. Lansing roaring at the crews to be lively now, but wait for the guns to bear again.
The next broadside was answered by the Bergeron, as the shot hurled into the gun deck above her. She clapped her hands over her ears and moaned aloud at the sound of the wounded and dying, and then the screech of the gun trucks again. Rats leaped about her, their fear as great as her own as they raced up and down the cable, seeking escape where there was none.
The third broadside from the Bergeron sent two balls crashing below the waterline. She held her breath in terror as the water began to rise toward the cable, and then let it out slowly when sailors with a lantern hurried below to patch the leaks with planking hastily retrieved from the carpenter’s shop, and the everlasting oakum. She shivered on the cable and watched them. When they finished, they raced away. In another moment, she heard the clanging of the pumps.
And then the guns were firing at will as the ship swung about, tacking to keep the weather gauge and continue a relentless pounding of the Bergeron. The guns boomed, the men screamed. Mr. Lansing was silent now, but still the guns roared. They stopped momentarily with the cracking and collapse of the mizzenmast over her head. She strained her ears to hear Captain Spark roaring orders. The guns boomed again.
The shrieking of the wounded grew louder, and she realized with a start that they were being carried below. She thought of the surgeon, and wondered how he could possibly manage such carnage.
The roaring of the guns was a continual thunder that filled her brain to bursting and threatened to send her screaming along the cable with the rats. The water was still rising, but much more slowly, now that the leaks were patched and the pumps working. Soon the air space itself seemed filled with the groans and screams of the wounded until it was too crowded for her.
Hannah got to her feet and began to feel her way out of the cable tier. I cannot sit here in the dark while people are dying around me, she thought, and the thought gave her courage. I must help. She thought briefly of her promise to Captain Spark to remain where she was, and quickly discarded it. Thee was an idiot to ask it of me, she thought.
She followed the sounds of the wounded to the orlop deck, where there was light from battle lanterns. She looked down. The deck was clotted with bloody sand and footprints. She took a deep breath and came closer
.
Fragments of men lay all around, some living, the lucky ones dead. After her initial shock that sent her reeling back against the bulkhead, she trained her mind onto Andrew Lease, who stood over a table made of midshipmens’ sea chests. A man lay on the makeshift table, clutching what remained of his arm. The surgeon looked up from his calm contemplation of the ruin before him and nodded to her.
“Ah, my dear Miss Whittier. I can see I have lost my wager,” he murmured, his voice scarcely audible over the moans of the wounded.
She hurried to his side, slipping once on the bloody deck, but hanging on to his calm words like she had once clung to the grating of the Molly Claridge.
“Wager, sir?” she asked, embarrassed that her voice quavered. She took hold of the writhing man on the table.
“Yes, hold him.” Swiftly Lease bound a leather strap around the sailor’s upper arm, then took her hand and clamped it over the screw apparatus attached to the strap. “Tighten when I tell you, and keep on until I tell you to stop.”
She did as he said. The sailor screamed and tried to rise off the table. He entreated her to st. “I am making him scream more, sir!” she pleaded.
“I will scream if you stop,” Lease said, his voice still mild, his eyes on his patient. “Keep tightening. That’s right. Yes. I lost the bet,” he said companionably, as though they chatted between country dances. Amazed at his demeanor, she slowly screwed down the tourniquet.
“I bet Daniel you would remain in the cable tier until the all clear, and then join me here. He said you would disobey his orders and be in here before the battle was over. Obviously, I have lost a perfectly good bottle of Jamaica rum. There. Stop.”
He reached across her to the tub of warm water that held his saws. He indicated the bottle of rum beside the sailor’s head. “Pour some of that down the beggar’s throat. As much as he’ll take. That’s a good girl. Now, look away, please.”
Hannah stared at the surgeon’s saw, and pressed her hands to the sailor’s chest as the man clawed at her shirt, popping the buttons. The saw scraped on the bone.
