Page 25 of Miss Whittier Makes a List
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 hisattention 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!”
“Ialways go into battle dressed in my best,”he said.“It’s such an insult, ma’am.”He took her by thearm,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.
“Doit,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 tenyearsold 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 tobear. 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 theBergeron,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 theBergeronsent 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 firingat will as the ship swung about,tacking to keep the weather gauge and continue a relentless pounding of theBergeron.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.
Theshrieking 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 thegroans and screams of the wounded until it was too crowded for her.
Hannah got to her feet and begantofeel 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 hisarm. The surgeon looked up from his calm contemplation of the ruin before him and nodded to her.
“Ah, my dear MissWhittier. 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 theMolly Claridge.
“Wager, sir?”she asked,embarrassedthat 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 hertost.“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 bottleofJamaicarum. 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’lltake. That’s a good girl. Now, look away, please.”
