But he stood rooted to the deck as the memory of Hardin lashed to the gunboat’s foredeck, screaming his inhuman shriek, swept over him with a cold chill. Then came Linda’s father, waving to them for help as they sailed away from the shipwrecked survivors on the beach. And Saunders came into his mind, smiling—or was he laughing?—from the deck of the schooner Victoria as she sailed away.
As his men started to sense that something was wrong with their captain and Rork moved closer to shake him out of whatever dream he was in, Wake saw Linda. He saw her in the bed of her quaint little room. He saw her crying in front of the army lieutenant at Fort Taylor, begging for her father’s freedom. He saw her sobbing out the story of her family’s deadly fight with yellow fever. He saw her on their last day together, and her final words echoed through his mind. She overpowered all the other images and floated before his eyes, staring at him.
“Sir, are ye all right?” The tenderness in Rork’s voice came through the fog in Wake’s brain. “You’ve had a bad bit o’ tension, sir, with all the navigatin’ and all. Perhaps ye can go below to rest now, and we’ll heave her to till daylight. Then we can go inshore to the lighthouse. Don’t worry about a thing, Captain. Me and the lads will take her now.”
Wake turned to the man he had become closest to in this mad world of death and danger and spoke for the first time since the ghosts from the past had overcome him. Rork leaned close to hear as Durlon ushered the crew away and back to work.
“Rork, so many men dead. Mistakes made. Things I should’ve done and said. People dead because of my decisions. This year has been a hell of one damned impossible situation after another.”
Wake’s hand traced the scar on the side of his head while his body slumped as though physically assaulted. He looked at his friend, silhouetted against the sun boiling down onto the Florida mainland.
“Peter Wake,” the bosun said quietly, “you have done all that anyone could do. And more. Many men are alive because o’ your decisions. Many more are living through this awful war with some wee bit o’ dignity because o’ your caring. The lads know what you’ve done for them. You’re the kind of man this navy needs. Ye not need to be shamed or doubtful o’ your decisions in the past, sir.
“Ah laddee, your own life has not gone well ashore, I can sense. But know that your life among us has gone well. You’ve stood the test and steered a course made good, against all that’s come our way.”
Wake studied the face of the bosun and found no mockery, only concern. No one was near them now. Even Durlon had given them their space on the deck to talk. Darkness was filling the air around them, and no sound save that of the sea could be heard.
“Rork, I just feel so damned alone, and I wonder if the next time the mistake will be paid for in blood.”
“Aye, Captain Peter Wake. ’Tis the way of a captain. The best kind o’ captain, the kind that cares. An you’re never alone, not as long as you’ve got us lads.”
Wake smiled and realized that the big Irishman was exactly right. His home was here now. He could not go back to the family’s shipping business in New England. The decision to stay in for a career in this navy was the correct one. He knew he could not go back to a dull but safe life.
“Ye’ve got some more of those decisions to make in the morn, Captain Wake. You get some rest, and I’ll get the old girl tacked an’ hove to for the night. Ye know, sir, this old paddy is rightly honored to serve with ye, and I know the future’ll be lookin’ up with the sunrise.”
Wake turned to descend to his cabin, grasping Rork’s leathered hand.
“Sorry for the moment of doubt, Bosun Rork.” His eyes locked onto Rork’s as Wake’s voiced firmed. “In the morning we will go ashore and speak with the light keeper. Perhaps he just may have some vessel for us to hunt. I do believe there’s a fair bit more to do in this war, so there’s no sense in wasting time dreaming about things that aren’t. . . . And Bosun Rork, . . .”
“Sir?”
“The honor is all mine.”
The commander of the United States Naval schooner St. James, a much different man from the one who had been rowed to Rosalie in Key West Harbor a year before, descended to the sanctuary of his private cabin and stretched out on his bunk. Sleep finally came in the darkness, providing a respite from those unsolvable dilemmas that had haunted his mind and taken him to the edge of honor.
Peter Wake’s past was far behind him, and his future was decided. Now it was time to get on and live it.
About the Author
Robert N. Macomber writes and lectures on maritime history. He has sea experience on various types of vessels, from the historic U.S.C.G.C. Eagle to modern ships such as the U.S.S. Spruance and U.S.C.G.C. Marlin. He has been on Israeli patrol boats in the Mediterranean Sea, Hungarian patrol boats on the Danube River, and U.S.C.G. patrol boats in the Gulf of Mexico. Macomber has operated locks and tugs in the Panama Canal and been the guest of the senior petty officers of H.M.S. Victory. He became a Shellback in 1982, crossing the equator into the South Atlantic Ocean on the M/V Santa Mariana. Racing offshore sailing vessels in Florida, the Bahamas, and Mexico for many years, he has received over twenty-five trophies and awards.
Macomber lives on a small palm plantation on an island off the coast of lower Florida. At the Edge of Honor is his first in a series of novels on the life of Peter Wake, U.S.N. Learn more about him at www.robertmacomber.com.
Robert N. Macomber’s Honor Series:
At the Edge of Honor. This nationally acclaimed naval Civil War novel, the first in the Honor series of naval fiction, takes the reader into the steamy world of Key West and the Caribbean in 1863 and introduces Peter Wake, the reluctant New England volunteer officer who finds himself battling the enemy on the coasts of Florida, sinister intrigue in Spanish Havana and the British Bahamas, and social taboos in Key West when he falls in love with the daughter of a Confederate zealot.
Point of Honor. Winner of the Florida Historical Society’s 2003 Patrick Smith Award for Best Florida Fiction. In this second book in the Honor series, it is 1864 and Lt. Peter Wake, United States Navy, assisted by his indomitable Irish bosun, Sean Rork, commands the naval schooner St. James. He searches for army deserters in the Dry Tortugas, finds an old nemesis during a standoff with the French Navy on the coast of Mexico, starts a drunken tavern riot in Key West, and confronts incompetent Federal army officers during an invasion of upper Florida.
Honorable Mention. This third book in the Honor series of naval fiction covers the tumultuous end of the Civil War in Florida and the Caribbean. Lt. Peter Wake is now in command of the steamer USS Hunt, and quickly plunges into action, chasing a strange vessel during a tropical storm off Cuba, confronting death to liberate an escaping slave ship, and coming face to face with the enemy’s most powerful ocean warship in Havana’s harbor. Finally, when he tracks down a colony of former Confederates in Puerto Rico, Wake becomes involved in a deadly twist of irony.
A Dishonorable Few. Fourth in the Honor series. It is 1869 and the United States is painfully recovering from the Civil War. Lt. Peter Wake heads to turbulent Central America to deal with a former American naval officer turned renegade mercenary. As the action unfolds in Colombia and Panama, Wake realizes that his most dangerous adversary may be a man on his own ship, forcing Wake to make a decision that will lead to his court-martial in Washington when the mission has finally ended.
An Affair of Honor. Fifth in the Honor series. It’s December 1873 and Lt. Peter Wake is the executive officer of the USS Omaha on patrol in the West Indies, eager to return home. Fate, however, has other plans. He runs afoul of the Royal Navy in Antigua and then is sent off to Europe, where he finds himself embroiled in a Spanish civil war. But his real test comes when he and Sean Rork are sent on a mission in northern Africa.
A Different Kind of Honor. In this sixth novel
in the Honor series, it’s 1879 and Lt. Cmdr. Peter Wake, U.S.N., is on assignment as the American naval observer to the War of the Pacific along the west coast of South America. During this mission Wake will witness history’s first battle between ocean-going ironclads, ride the world’s first deep-diving submarine, face his first machine guns in combat, and run for his life in the Catacombs of the Dead in Lima.
The Honored Dead. Seventh in the series. On what at first appears to be a simple mission for the U.S. president in French Indochina in 1883, naval intelligence officer Lt. Cmdr. Peter Wake encounters opium warlords, Chinese-Malay pirates, and French gangsters.
The Darkest Shade of Honor. Eighth in the series. It’s 1886 and Wake, now of the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence, meets rising politico Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. Wake is assigned to uncover Cuban revolutionary activities between Florida and Cuba. He meets José Martí, finds himself engulfed in the most catastrophic event in Key West history, and must make a decision involving the very darkest shade of honor.
Honor Bound. Ninth in the series. In 1888 Wake, U.S. Navy intelligence agent, meets a woman from his past who begs him to find her missing son. Wake sets off across Florida, through the Bahamian islands, and deep into the dank jungles of Haiti. Overcoming storms, mutiny, and shipwreck, Wake discovers the hidden lair of an anarchist group planning to wreak havoc around the world—unless he stops it.
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