Page 6 of Miss Whittier Makes a List
If this is death, then I have not been very good, Hannah thought to herself. She lay with her eyes tightly closed against the spectacle of a daunting eternity that must stretch before her. She washot, so hot,boiling from too close contact with hell’sfires, surely. Nothing else could possibly account for theheat andpain that was rendering her immobile. Her wickedness must have thrust her straight down to Hades.
Thee has not lived a blameless life, she told herself as she lay there in a crypt that was rocking gently from side to side. But surely the Almighty was more forgiving than this? Was it possible that the sin of wishing a captain of the Royal Navy to the devil had earned her a place in Beelzebub’s kingdom, too? The heat was almost more than she could bear, and rendered more unrelenting by the knowledge that it would be her own burden for eternity. The thought made her groan out loud.
“There now, didn’t I tell you that she was coming round?”
The words registered slowly in her brain. Somehow, it came as no surprise to her that the devil, or at least one of his minions, would have such a pronounced British accent. It seemed fitting that she would betormentedthrough eternity by someone who sounded distressingly like Captain Sir Daniel Spark. She thought it thoroughly unkind of the Lord.
But there was this matter of the pain that throbbed through her body. Still keeping her eyes resolutely closed against her first view of hell, she tried to move her legs, and groaned again. Her skin felt too tight for her body, as though it had been stretched across a drum, and then heated almost past bearing. All that was missing was for some demon to pound on her.
Then she felt a hand resting lightly on her wrist. She flinched and drew it away, yelping in pain. She lay there another moment, gathering her courage, then opened her eyes.
Her first sight of hell was a compass tacked to the deck directly over her head. How odd that Satan should require direction, she thought.She stared as the needle jiggled lazily in the compass box.“East by northeast.”she said out loud.
Satanchuckled.“Aye, miss. At least your eyes work.”
There was that disconcerting voice again. Steeling herself, she turned her head slightly to the right, and then opened her eyes wider.
Captain Sir Daniel Sparksat beside the berth she lay in,watching her with a half smile on his face. The man standing next to him reached for her wrist again, holding his fingers in practiced efficiency against her pulse. As she watched in dumbfounded silence, he raised her wrist,and she saw how sunburned she was. So much for the fires of hell.
She was dressed in a man’s shirtand nothing more. There was no sheet over her legs, bare from the knees down. She closed her eyes in embarrassment, unable to look at the two men so close beside her in the cabin.
The man holding her wrist let it down at her side.“You are too sunburned to be wearing anything, but we weighed that against the proprieties, Miss ... Miss....”
“Hannah Whittier,”she said, barely moving her lips.
“Charmed,”said the man.“And I am Andrew Lease, ship’s surgeon.”He cleared his throat.“I believe you have already met the captain.”
She opened her eyes again and turned her gaze on the man seated beside her.“Oh, yes.”
Although he was not dressed in the full uniform she remembered, but in white canvas trousers and a well-darned shirt, she could never have mistaken Daniel Spark. He perched on the edge of his chair, back straight, as one unaccustomed to the luxury of sitting down often. Again she was impressed by that tightly contained air he possessed, rather like a watch on the edge of being wound too much.His dark hair,which she had not noticed yesterday because of his hat, was curly like her own, and a needed relief to the seriousness of his face, now that his half smile had retreated to wherever it was those things went.
But was it only yesterday she had last seen him? She triedto raise herself up on one elbow and gasped with the pain. She sank down asa series of shivers racked her body, and gritted her teeth against this unexpected additional torment.
“A natural reaction to shock,my dear,”said the surgeon,his voice kind, his eyes full of sympathy.
“Is it possible to feel so cold and hot at the same time?”she managed,even as her teeth chattered.
The captain rose and placed a sheet lightly across her.“There, now,”he said.“Is that better?”
It was. She nodded. In another moment, her convulsions passed, and she was merely hot again.
“How long ...”Even words seemed to take a vast effort. She felt drained and wrung out like laundry on a line.
“We don’t know, MissWhittier,”the captain said.“We fished you off that grating this morning.”
She lay there in silence, vaguely remembering a day spent on the grating, staring out at the empty sea as saltwater washed over her reddening skin. She remembered a night of terror, with sharks or dolphins rubbing against the grating as she sat in the middle, her fingers digging like claws into the lattice. She tried to push her memory farther, but all she could call to mind was lying down finally in resignation and staring up at the stars.
“It was at least a day,”she said,“and then another night.”She turnedherhead on the pillow to look at the captain.“I was so afraid.”
He nodded.“Shipwreck’s not a pleasant event, MissWhittier.”She heard not an ounce of sympathy in his voice, but there was something of understanding, as though he had been shipwrecked before himself.
She thought then of the others.“Did thee find anyone else?”she asked.
Spark shook his head.“We sailed through some debris. That was all.”
She closed her eyes again, feeling hot tears behind her eyelids, appalled at how quickly living, breathing men with wives and children could be reduced to a few barrels and cracker boxes bobbing on a deserted ocean.“I think it was the French,”she said, when she could speak. She yearned to cry for theMollyClaridge, but her body was too dry for tears.
“I am sure it was,”Captain Spark said.“And until yourPresident Madison realizes that neutral ships are safe from neither side, others will suffer the same fate.”
