Miss Whittier Makes a List

by Carla Kelly

  “Oh, I am sorry,” she said. “Then thee should—you should—not give a girl a gift of scent.”

  “I will give you flowers in London,” he replied, his eyes on the sails. “And diamonds, when you will let me. And children, drat them, and an estate with a view of the ocean.”

  “Sir, that will not happen,” she replied, shy again and wishing he would not speak of such intimate matters.

  “Oh, we shall see, Hannah,” was all he would say.

  The Dissuade moved sluggishly through the mid-Atlantic, weighed down by water in the hold, where the pumps clanked. Mr. Futtrell sent his crew aloft to raise as much sail as they dared, knowing that too much canvas crowded in the upper yards would sink them as surely as the ocean that lapped back and forth in the hold. When he was finally satisfied with the allotment of canvas, he sent the men below deck to the pumps again.

  The shift in the hold changed every two hours, when the men, wet from the waist down, would come on deck and throw themselves down to sleep. Adam, his face drawn with exhaustion, climbed the rigging once to bring her some ship’s biscuit and a flask of moldy water. They sat together in silence, for the most part, shoulders touching, staring out at the water.

  “Hannah, tell me something,” he askedinally. “Does thee love Captain Spark?”

  She brushed off the crumbs from her shirt. “Thee is absurd! Of course not.”

  “He cares for thee.” It was a simple sentence, delivered with Adam’s usual lack of dramatics. “I see him watching thee.”

  Hannah put the telescope to her eye again and scanned the ocean. “He cares for thee.” Adam’s words so quietly spoken drilled into her brain. “Thee knows it is absurd, Adam,” she said as she watched.

  “So is our current situation, Hannah, and yet here we are. Who would have thought it?”

  Without any more talk, Adam returned to the deck. As much as she liked her childhood friend, Hannah was not sorry to see him go. I must think this through, she thought to herself as she watched his blond head get smaller and smaller as he descended. She clasped her knees to her chest and leaned back against the mast, wondering what it was she had done to get the captain so convinced that he was in love.

  Others at home had withstood her charms, she told herself wryly, thinking of the young men who came into the parlor there on Orange Street to sit and stammer and ask her how she did. Papa would talk of business, then leave her alone with one suitor or another, but nothing ever came of it. I must be speaking of the wrong things, she would think, or perhaps it is the way I look. There were no mirrors in the Whittier house so she went to the pond in the back field, and stared into its reflecting depths, wondering what there was about her features to prevent the return, beyond a few visits, of Nantucket’s young men. She could see nothing in the reflection that would disgust a man intent up marriage.

  She finally asked her best friend Abigail Winslow. “It is that twinkle in thy eye,” Abigail had confessed as they sat knitting once. “I suspect they think thee is a rogue at heart, Hannah. Is thee?”

  She smiled at the memory, and her outraged reaction, and then her smile faded. Perhaps I am a rogue, she thought as she scanned the ocean again. I truly would rather be sitting barefoot in trousers in Captain Spark’s lookout, my knees wide apart and my shirt unbuttoned.

  It was more than that, and perhaps there was something to what Abigail Winslow had so artlessly declared. Last night when Captain Spark kissed her, she had not wanted him to stop. She lowered the telescope, wondering why her cheeks burned, even up here where no one could see her. I wonder, she thought, has this man taken my measure? Does he know somehow that I truly am a rogue, and more to the point, does this knowledge not frighten him off, as it did the young men of Nantucket? She rested her chin on the eyepiece of the telescope. “If thee knows these things about me, Daniel,” she whispered softly, “then thee knows me better than I do.”

  She watched all day and into the night, when Mr. Futtrell finally called to her and she came down, weary with watching. Captain Spark had ordered the running lights doused before he went below to snatch a few hours sleep. If only there was some way to stop the noise of the pumps, she thought as she went below deck, shook her head at Cookie’s attempt to feed her salt pork, and collapsed in her hammock. The thought of silent pumps made her sit bolt upright. “Oh, no,” she said. “Let them make all the racket they choose.” Silent pumps would mean that the voyage was over.

  Each day passed into another one, similar and unrelenting, and broken only by the smallest of incidents that would have been soon forgotten, except that Hannah planned to remember the last, desperate cruise of the Dissuade for her whole life. She brought coffee every morning to the captain, hiding her alarm at his hggard expression and the exhaustion that seemed to seep out of his pores. One morning he handed her a boat cloak. “It’s Mr. Lansing’s. I see you shivering every morning until the sun climbs higher.”

  She took it, grateful for the warmth, remembering its owner. Another morning, there were two more bodies shrouded in their hammocks, which Captain Spark tipped over the side without a prayer. When she looked at him, a question in her eyes, he merely said. “I can’t address the Almighty right now, Hannah. I wonder if he cares.” Two days later, the forward pump broke, and all hands rushed to its repair. She watched from the lookout, wondering what was happening below, and then sighed with relief when the clanging began again.

  Adam finished memorizing the dispatch, and it was her turn. She read over and over the letter in English from the governor of Antigua, with its traitorous catalog of ships and supplies of the Royal Navy in the Caribbean, destined for Napoleon. She knew it by heart at the end of a long day in the lookout, and returned it to Captain Spark when she saw him come on deck for the second night watch.

  “Recite it for me, Hannah,” he said, and she did, striking a pose with her hands behind her back, much as when she had attended dame school at home and had recited whole chapters from the Bible for Dame Oldroyd.

  “Very good, my dear Lady Amber,” he said when she finished, and applauded when she curtsied. “Now go get some sleep before you topple.”

  There was nothing of the lover in his voice anymore. That was gone after the first week of watch and watch about, replaced now by a dogged determination to see the thing through that shone in his pale eyes. He rarely spoke to anyone now, beyond the necessary commands, as though trying to preserve his flagging energy.

  “You’re the one who’s going to topple,” she protested. “I wish I could help.”

  He surprised her with a reply, instead the usual noncommittal grunt that had become his latest mode of communication. “You can. Come on deck after Futtrell’s watch. I have a hard time staying awake for that particular watch, and you can entertain me with stories of Nantucket.”

  “Very well, sir, except that nothing exciting ever happens at home,” she said.

  “Let me be the judge of that profound bit of infantile wisdom. Until then, Lady Amber. Or perhaps I should brush up on my rusty French and say à bientôt.”

  She came on deck in the early watch, when the stars seemed to be hanging just above the masts and there was no hint of welcome dawn on the horizon. The helmsman, his eyes bleary but his hands firm on the wheel, nodded to her as she tiptoed quietly to the quarterdeck and assumed her customary position.

  “No, no. Come on deck, my dear.”

  Captain Spark stood in the shadow of the weather side, hanging on to the rigging, keeping himself upright by sheer force of will.

  “You’re wearing Lansing’s cloak, I see. Good. Good. I am definitely feeling the chilly winds of Europe,” he said as he motioned her closer.

  She came to his side, and he put his arm around her, gathering her into his cloak and leaning on her a little until he regained his balance. He let go of the rigging and they stood, hip to hip, arms about each other’s waists. It seemed too close to Hannah, but the captain shivered, and she moved in closer.

  “I swear I’m col
d right to the bone,” he said, sticking his thumb into her waistband to anchor her more firmly to him. “Hannah, you’re better than a hot water bottle.”

  Hannah chuckled. “Mama wraps a rock in a towel for me at home. She doesn’t know, but sometimes I sneak in Hosea’s old dog, especially in January when everything freezes.”

  “Tell me about your brothers, Hannah. Would I like them?”

  “You would like Matthew,” she said after considering the matter a moment. “He is a whaler.” She laughed softly. “He and my sister-in-law have three children, each one born eight and a half months into his next voyage.” She stopped when he laughed. ‘Oh, but I should not talk about things like that, should I?”

  “It will keep me awake,” he replied with just a trace of good humor in his voice. “But why would I like Matthew?”

  Hannah sighed and leaned against the captain, gratified that she fit just right under his arm. “He is devoted to the sea.” She looked up at his face shyly. “I’ve watched you from the lookout, and sometimes you have such a dreamy expression as you watch the water.”

  “What makes you so sure I am thinking about the ocean?” he replied, teasing her.

  “Of course you are,” she insisted, even as his arm tightened about her waist. “Matthew is restless when he is on land too long. But I know it is hard for him to get to know his wife and children all over again, after every whaling voyage.”

  “I suppose,” he said. “Perhaps children would not be so dreadful, if one got to know them.”

  “It will take a much better answer than that to get thee back on my list, Captain Spark,” she said.

  He threw back his head and laughed, and the sound was wonderful to her ears. “You and your bloody list!”

  “Really, Captain!” she admonished. “I wish you would not swear.”

  “Wish in vain, my dear. And who is after Matthew?”

  “Elijah, and he is a doctor near Boston. He is much too serious and treats me like a child.”

  “Well, you are, Hannah,” the captain replied. “I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I told you I loved you.”

  She stepped away from him instinctively, and he reeled her back in. “You ... you told me you were in like only,” she reminded Spark.

  “Oh, yes, how could I forget?” he murmured. “I’m sure that’s all it is. A doctor, eh?”

  “Yes.” She thought of Andrew Lease, sitting patiently on the orlop deck every day, watching his sailors die>“How did you find Andrew Lease after he disappeared?”

  “I never did finish telling you, did I? He found me, rather. We were in Deptford Hard for repairs and revictualing for the blockade. He just showed up one day and told me he was signing on as ship’s surgeon.” The captain shook his head and gathered her closer. “I think I am part of the punishment he has decreed for himself, but God knows I bear him no ill will. People die.” He paused a moment, as though collecting himself. “Even lovely little sisters. Well Hannah, name me another brother,” he continued, determined to change the subject.

  You dear man, she thought, looking up at him. You think nothing of staring into French guns and pounding away at close range until you sink a ship, but you cannot bring yourself to talk about your sister. How sad.

  “William, who is a student at Harvard College.” She leaned closer and whispered. “Mama thinks he is getting much too worldly.”

  The captain looked around at the deck, empty except for the helmsman. “I won’t tell a soul, you silly nod.”

  Hannah blushed and straightened up. “It is a matter of some concern to my mother. Hosea comes before William, and he is a merchant like Papa. He has made it his business to find me a husband in Charleston among the other Friends there. I suppose that is why I saved him for last. He may prove the most vexatious.”

  The captain leaned over suddenly and kissed the top of her head. “Poor Hannah! Someone is always trying to tell you what to do. Do you get tired of it?”

  pan>

  nt>Isn’t there always someone telling us what to do?” she countered. He released her then and turned his back to her, staring out at the water again. “I suppose there is. Sometimes I think I have been working for Napoleon and France these past twenty years.” He turned to her, his hands spread out. “I mean, they move, and I jump to the blockade, or sail the Caribbean, frightened right down to my toes.”

  She was silent a long moment. “At least thee is honest,” she said at last.

  “Only a fool would not be afraid, Hannah, or a madman like Lease. He can’t wait to get killed in the line of duty. I, on the other hand, would like to live a long time yet. At least, long enough to convince you that I am not too old for you.”

  She could think of nothing to say. “Thee knows it would never work, Captain Spark,” she said softly.

  “Why not?” he asked, his voice just as gentle. “I can bend and you can bend. I am sure ....”

  What he was sure of, she never knew. With a cry, the helmsman let go of the wheel and dropped to the deck. Captain Spark rushed to the wheel, which was spinning wildly. His eyes on the sails, he corrected the course and called to Hannah. “See to that poor sod!”

  She hurried to the sailor, who was lying on his back, arms outstretched. She gathered him into her arms, alarmed that he was dead, and then relieved to discover that he merely slept. When she pulled him in closer to her, he opened his eyes in surprise, startled to find himself in the embrace of a woman. He sat up, rubbing his eyes, to see his captain manning the helm. He staggered to his feet, only to drop to his knees again and then his hands. He swayed back and forth on the deck.

  “God, Captain, I am so sorry!”

  “Belay it!” Spark snapped. “You’ll he more use to me if you sleep.” He turned around, his eyes fierce. “And that is an order, Mitchell.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said the helmsman, his voice scarcely audible. He crashed to the deck again and in less than a minute, he was snoring, as though he slept on a feather bed. Hannah stared at him, then covered him with Mr. Lansing’s cloak.

  “Should ... should I call someone?” she asked.

  The captain shook his head. “No, my dear. Just sit on the deck close to me and tell me everything you know.” He looked at the slumbering helmsman. “Sleep—what an innovation. I am resolved to try it sometime.” He took a firmer stance behind the wheel. “Talk about the weather, your brothers, your church, every Bible verse you ever memorized, what you want in life. Keep talking. Keep me awake.”

  Chapter Ten

  She kept him awake through that watch, and through the next night, telling him the same stories over and over until she wanted to cry at his exhaustion. The pumps clanged and sucked, and the seamen dragged themselves from pumps to sails, and then to the carpenter to continue their puny efforts below decks to keep out the rest of the Atlantic.

  And then there was no more use in trying. Mr. Futtrell burst into her cabin one foggy morning and shook her awake. “Miss Whittier!” he hollered as though she stood half a ship’s length away. “We must get into the boats! Captain’s orders!”

  She grabbed Lansing’s cloak and ran topside. They still floated, but as she watched, the Marines carried the wounded onto the deck and lowered them over the side with ropes. Her hand to her mouth, Hannah ran to the ship’s railing and looked down at the water, which was so much closer. Two little boats bobbed there, tied fast to the Dissuade. The surgeon balanced himself in one of them, receiving the wounded. “Come down the rope, Hannah,” be called. “I want you in this other gig.”

  She looked at the quarterdeck, where Captain Spark watched her. “No,” she said. “I won’t, and thee cannot make me.”

  “Do it, Hannah,” Spark said, nothing in his voice of compromise. “I want the wounded and you and Adam in the boats. We’re lowering the launch and the dinghy, too, and you will all be tied to the ship. We will stay together as long as the ship floats, but it’s safer this way.”

  Then Adam was at her side. “It’s the wise
st thing, Hannah. This way, when the ship sinks, we can just cut loose.” He patted her shoulder. “Besides all that, Captain Spark thinks we will raise the Azores when this fog lifts.”

  ‘Thank God,” she murmured, and grasped the rope that the bosun held for her. She was swung down into the other boat with the wounded and settled herself into the bottom, taking one of the men in her arms. He looked at her through eyes cloudy with pain, then closed them again and relaxed against her. Adam was soon beside her in the launch.

  “When this fog lifts, I think the wind will freshen,” he told her, his eyes on the deck above them. “And then I think Captain Spark will finally crowd on all sail.” He grinned at Hannah. “We could be in for a Nantucket sleigh ride. Is thee ready?”

  She nodded, thinking of her brother Matthew and his tales of racing in small boats alongside a harpooned whale. She pulled the wounded sailor closer to her and tucked the blanket around his still form. “Adam, I thought to live a quiet life on Nantucket.”

  Adam laughed. “I never thought thee would, Hannah. Not once. There is something about thee ....” He paused as Captain Spark’s head appeared over the railing, a pouch in his hand.

  “Andrew, take this,” he called to the surgeon busy in the other boat. “Put it in your medicine satchel.” He tossed the captured dispatch in its bag to the surgeon. “If you can keep it, fine, but if it is in danger of discovery, you must destroy it.”

  ‘I’ll not fail you this time. Daniel,” the surgeon said quietly as he put away the dispatch.

  “You’ve never failed me, Andrew,” said the captain. “I wish to God you would not speak so.” He leaned on the railing as though he wanted to say more, but suddenly he raised his head, sniffing the air. “By God, the fog is lifting, and damned if I don’/span>t feel a breeze.” He blew a kiss to Hannah. “Tally-ho, Lady Amber. I’ll see you in Terceira, or be damned.”

  Hannah looked at Adam, a question in her eyes.