Chapter Nine
Adam regarded the captain in profound silence. Numb, Hannah stared at her hands in her lap, unable to look at anyone in the cabin. The captain stood behind her, resting his hands on the chair back. The very air seemed to crackle with tension.
Finally, Adam sighed.
“Lord, what a muddle,”
he muttered.
“Hannah, what should we do?”
She considered the matter. If, by some miracle, they managed to raise the Azores, the French would see to their release. At the least, they could request passage on a vessel to return them to the Caribbean. She could be in Charleston in a month or less. With any luck, this whole adventure would soon wear into a bad dream, and after all, what did they owe the British?
She looked at the dispatch resting in her lap, wishing it would go away. She thought of the men of the Dissuade, many dead, others wounded, and multiplied that number by the twenty British ships named in the dispatch. If Napoleon continued to be fed traitorous information about the Royal Navy in Caribbean waters, he would know how to harry the British there. Heating up the war in the Caribbean would mean Britain would be stretched even thinner in its blockade of the French and Spanish coasts. She could see only more death, more war. It is against everything I believe, she thought as she leaned back in the chair and felt Spark’s fingers against her back.>
Hannah scooted forward quickly and slapped the dispatch on the table.
“Adam, we cannot be party to more death, and thee knows that would happen if this dispatch fell into French hands. I say we get the document to London.”
Adam looked up at Captain Spark, who had not moved from his position behind Hannah’s chair, and then back at her.
“Hannah, we could be home in a month if we do not,”
he reminded her, his thoughts obviously traveling the same lane as hers.
“And you think we should risk our lives getting this dispatch to London?”
“I do,”
she replied, her voice firm. She noted the skeptical look on his face.
“And do not think for one minute it is because I am persuaded by this rascal standing behind my chair.”
She paused as Mr. Futtrell turned away again to hide a smile.
“I do not feel anything for Captain Spark beyond admiration of his courage. Even you must acknowledge his courage. But I also do not love the idea of more death in the Caribbean. And I do not relish the idea of traitors. What American would?”
Adam was silent a moment more, then he looked at the captain.
“Very well, sir, we will do as thee asks. I do not know how, but we can try.”
Captain Spark reached around Hannah and shook Adam’s hand.
“We can work out the details as we run for the Azores,”
he said. He stuffed the dispatch back in its bag and handed it to Adam.
“I think you and Miss Whittier should memorize this document. It may be destroyed, but one of you ought to get through with the message.”
He took it.
“Very well, sir. Hannah? Shall I have a go at it first?”
She nodded. Adam looked at Captain Spark.
“With thy permission, I will return to the gun deck.”
“Granted, lad. And thank you.”
He left the cabin. Mr. Futtrell cleared his throat.
“As mine is the first watch, I believe I will go to the quarterdeck.”
“Call me in four hours,”
the captain said. He sat down as soon as the door closed.
“Well, Hannah?”
He shook his head at her expression.
“That mulish look on your face tells me that I may have run out my guns prematurely.”
She wished he would sit on the other side of the table, and not practically knee to knee. She squirmed in her chair. Did he have to regard her with those unnerving eyes of his? Why were they so light and memorable? As she returned his unflinching pale stare, she knew that she could go to her grave and years from now and still remember the color of his eyes, and the graceful way he sat watching her. It was enough to try a statue. Thank goodness she did not love him.
“You can’t possibly be in love with me,”
she said at last, when he seemed content merely to memorize her face and remain silent.
He wagged a finger at her.
“I did not say I was in love, but only in serious like.”
“You are absurd,”
she said, smiling in spite of her discomfort.
“You just like the way I make coffee”
There, if she made a joke of his aspirations that should stop him. Instead, he leaned closer until she could have reached out and caressed his face, had she been of such inclination, which she was not.
“I like the way your hips wiggle when you climb the rigging, and your cheerful way of doing things, even when your whole world is arse over teakettle.”
“There you go!”
she said triumphantly.
“Your language is vile and you are a notable blasphemer.”
“By God’s wounds, I certainly am. Some things you’ll just have to take. And I will have to get used to constant good cheer, which can be a trial at times. Are you even cheerful when you wake up? I can’t wait to find out, Lady Amber.”
“That is none of your business, and don’t call me that!”
“Well, may I call you Hannah? Seems to me we have progressed to that stage.”
“We have not!”
she declared. Then she softened the blow by adding.
“But since you have already been doing so, you might as well continue.”
“And it is my desire to hear Daniel on your lips,” he said.
“You want Mr. Futtrell to stand on the quarterdeck and yell ‘Ship’s discipline’?”
she asked, unable to keep back the good humor that bubbled up in her.
“I do not, sir.”
He laughed.
“Very well! Call me Captain Spark.”
She stod up to leave and he rose, too, walking her to the door.
“Really, these are paltry objections, my dear. I would have thought someone with your brains could do better.”
“Of course I can,”
she said crisply, her hand on the knob.
“You are an Englishman and much too old for me.”
He leaned his hand against the door as she tried to turn the handle.
“Those are weighty objections, Hannah,”
he agreed.
“I’ll always be an Englishman, but I assure you that no part of me is decrepit. Let me repeat a previous demonstration and add something more.”
Before she could stop him, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. His lips were as warm as she remembered from their first meeting on the deck of the Molly Claridge. The ship yawed them and she grabbed him around the waist to stay on her feet. He pulled her closer until their bodies touched, murmuring something in her ear that made no sense. As she tried to regain her balance, he took her earlobe in his teeth, then ran his tongue inside her ear. The shivers that raced down her back made her moan a little, but only a very little. She wished he would stop, but when he did, she felt absurd tears tickling her eyelids. She wondered how her fingers could ever dig so into his back, and she hoped she had not scratched him.
He released her then, and turned away to the chart table.
“Go to bed, Hannah,”
he said, his voice a bit dazed, “and don’t try to improve on perfection.”
She hurried from the cabin, her face flaming, grateful for the darkness of the companionway. The solitude of her cabin was a blessed relief, she decided as she closed the door behind her, and then sighed with exasperation. Captain Spark’s boat cloak was still draped over the hammock.
“I will not return it tonight!”
she said out loud.
“I would have to be crazy!”
She climbed the gun and crawled into her hammock, wrapping the cloak tightly about her, and gradually sinking into sleep. There is so much to worry about, she thought, her eyes hey as she listened to the endless clanking of the pumps forward. We are sinking, the Azores are still so far away, the French are lurking somewhere, and I have to memorize a dratted document. She snuggled deeper into the cloak, which smelled of mildew, like everything else on board, and Captain Spark. Thank goodness I do not love him, or this voyage could become a real trial. And thank goodness Mama warned me about sailors.
She brought him coffee at first light, setting it as usual on the quarterdeck and assuming her customary position on the rung of the ladder. He crouched beside her as usual, his eyes weary, and sipped the coffee as he watched her face.
“I was wishing you would come on deck sooner,”
he said when he finished and handed back the mug.
“I can bring your coffee sooner, if you wish,”
she replied.
He smiled.
“I am not so sure I want coffee as much as I need conversation. It would keep me awake better, I think.”
He looked at the riggings, and then back at the jury-rigged mizzenmast.
“Another night has passed, Lady Amber, and we are still afloat and somewhat closer to the Azores.”
“Will we make it, do you think?”
she asked.
He shrugged.
“If you do not sight any French vessels, if the wind freshens, if the men can keep the pumps going. I don’t hold out an optimistic report.”
He touched her shoulder then.
“But don’t worry, I’ll see you into one of the little boats.”
“I wasn’t worried,”
she said as she got up to leave.
“I don’t know why I should trust you, but I do.”
T="+0">t hoaptain merely smiled and resumed his position on the quarterdeck, his eyes on the ocean. She went below deck again, retrieved Spark’s boat cloak, and placed it on the quarterdeck before climbing the riggings for another day of watching. He nodded to her and wrapped himself in it.
“Smells of almond extract now,”
he commented.
“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 bient?t.”
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 cold 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?”
e="+0">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.”