by Jody Hedlund
Her father stopped and faced her. “Polly.” His voice was gentle and knowing.
She reached for Pete, who’d come out to greet her, his long fluffy tail twitching in anticipation of a treat. He was no longer the wiry kitten John had rescued from the tree, but she still thought of him as such anyway. She scratched his head, attempting to ignore her father’s probing eyes.
“The navy won’t release John,” he said. “You’ll need to resign yourself to the fact that he’s there to stay.”
She rubbed Pete’s back and received a head bump against her leg as a result. Why did father always have to be so honest? Why couldn’t he give her platitudes? Or even a tiny thread of hope to cling to?
“I like John,” her father continued, “but I’m afraid that he’s lacking some qualities that I would want in a suitor for you.”
Flames seemed to leap into her face at the bluntness of his words. She supposed her father was referring to the kiss she’d shared with John. She was every bit as much to blame for it as he was. Surely her parents couldn’t fault him alone.
“Of course I don’t approve of his forwardness with you,” her father said, as though reading her mind. “But in spite of his indiscretion, I noticed a general lack of ambition and responsibility on his part.”
“He just doesn’t know what he wants to do yet.” She felt as though she owed him some defense.
“That might be true. However, he should take measures to define the course of his life and have the means to provide before pursuing a woman.”
She couldn’t disagree with her father. Even if John didn’t have much to offer her, he still needed to have something. Although he’d teased her enough about their relationship, they’d never spoken of him becoming a suitor. But after he’d kissed her, she couldn’t remain naive to the fact that the bantering and friendship was no longer a safe boundary. More existed between them, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
As though sensing her distress, Pete rubbed his whole body against her. She scratched his neck, and the rumble of his purr reverberated against her fingers.
“What concerns me most,” her father said, his voice growing more serious, “is that I don’t know the condition of John’s faith. Right now, he seems to be troubled and straying off course.”
“He’s shared his struggles,” she replied. During their composing for his mother’s hymns, he’d hinted at his doubts about God’s love. She sensed that he didn’t want to be irreverent to the memory of his mother, but at the same time, he’d treated the words more like pretty poetry than truth.
Father shifted the horse’s reins and then squeezed her shoulder gently. “As hard as it is to watch John taken away in chains, I can’t help but think that maybe this is God’s way of protecting you from a potentially difficult situation.”
She wanted to shake her head in denial. Surely John wasn’t a threat she needed protecting from. But even as she tried to deny her father, her own conscience reminded her of her previous misgivings regarding him. Even if he could eventually provide for her, she couldn’t consider becoming unequally yoked.
“I’m sorry, Polly. But I think it’s best for you not to get your heart set on John.” He waited quietly a moment, and as much as she wanted to ignore him, she couldn’t disrespect or contradict him, no matter how much her heart protested his opinion of John.
She finally nodded.
After a moment’s hesitation, her father led the horse toward the stable, his footsteps slower and heavier than before.
She absently scratched Pete’s back as he arched into her fingers. Her heart ached with the knowledge that she not only wouldn’t see John today or anytime soon, but also that if she truly wanted to obey her father, she would need to put John out of her mind altogether.
But how could she possibly put him out of her thoughts when he was woven there as surely as fine silken embroidery threads? How could she rip him out? And did she even want to?
September 1744
“All loaded!” roared a nearby master gunner as his loader finished inserting the cartridge, a wool bag of black powder.
Newton ducked under a beam of the lower deck and peered out the nearest gunport. The French ship Solide was still in the line of battle and had been for nearly two hours. The foremast had split in half, the stern was afire from a direct hit, and the mizzen topgallant sail was hanging into the North Sea. Even though she was badly crippled, the French man-of-war kept fighting.
Devil take her. Would she ever give up?
Sweat mingling with soot dripped down his forehead and stung his eyes. His nostrils burned from the acridness of sulfur, and his head ached from the constant blasts from the HMS Harwich’s guns. Even though the two-decker was holding her own against the Solide, he’d heard reports that their rigging had suffered damage too.
“Prime!” the gunner yelled again, instructing the five men manning the cannon to ready it for another shot. One of the men rammed the bag of powder in place, and then the ventsman drove his priming wire down through the vent hole, puncturing the cartridge and exposing some powder.
Up and down the lower deck, each of the twelve cannon crews had been working nonstop. As midshipmen, Newton and another officer had been overseeing their efforts, coordinating their fire, and shouting orders. Another twelve cannons were firing from the middle deck above them. They brought their greatest weight of broadside guns to bear, but Newton wasn’t sure it would be enough to dominate the gun ship of the French, which had sixty-four guns compared to their fifty.
“Get those matches lit,” he called to one of the powder monkeys, a young lad no older than twelve. The whites of the boy’s eyes were wide amid the black soot that covered his face. The long rope shook in his hands, but he managed to light it.
“Good,” Newton called, as he watched the boy blow on it to keep it from going out.
Newton continued his way down the line of cannons. His neck and back ached from his stooped position. Only the powder monkeys and shortest sailors could stand at full height below deck. The ship was built to carry the maximum number of guns and men without sinking or being cumbersome in maneuvering. Comfort was the last thing on the designers’ minds.
Even though the Harwich was close enough to the Solide to exchange the cannon fire, the tossing of the ship made aim difficult. Newton figured it was a miracle every time one of their cannon balls actually hit a target.
He wiped his shirt-sleeve across his eyes. For a September day, it was warm. But below deck, with the heat of the cannon fire, the choking smoke, and the cramped quarters, the conditions were nearly unbearable. Already two men had passed out.
If damage from the heat was the worst of their bodily injuries, he’d be grateful. He’d heard a man on the quarterdeck was hurt when a ball hit their main topsail and the rigging fell, but no one had been killed.
As much as he hated life aboard the naval vessel, they’d been lucky so far. They’d spent most of the spring and summer escorting convoys of merchant vessels. They’d traveled to Scotland, then to Ostend in Belgium, Gothenburg in Sweden, and Helsingør in Denmark. But apparently a run-in with the French had been inevitable.
Daily he cursed the French for persisting in war even though the early spring storm had prevented Prince Charles from his attempt at invasion and reclaiming the throne. Twelve French transport ships had sunk, including seven that went down with all hands. Many were calling it a “Protestant Wind” brought by God to keep the Catholic prince out of England. But of course Newton only scoffed at such superstition. The violent storms were typical of the conditions during the spring equinox in the English Channel and North Sea. Anyone stupid enough to attempt a crossing at that time of year deserved to be battered and lashed.
The French had abandoned plans for a second attempt at invasion, and the majority of the French force had marched to Flanders to fight British allies, the Dutch and the Hanoverians. Nevertheless, in April, the Harwich’s entire ship’s company had gathered on upper decks to hear
Captain Carteret read the declaration of war with France. Only the devil had any idea why England was continuing to fight this war. All Newton knew was that he was trapped. Indefinitely. And that thought fanned a slow hot flame in his gut, fueling his anger more than anything else.
“Aye now, mates, make every shot count!” he yelled at his men, his fury rising once again. “Let’s bring the French she-dogs down once and for all.” Maybe if they blasted every French ship out of the North Sea, they’d finally be set free to return to their normal lives.
The only light afforded to them was what came through the open gunports, which were filled with the cannons and blocked by the men manning them. The haze of smoke left from previous rounds darkened the deck even further.
“Ready!” Newton called, his throat dry and scratchy.
Farther down the deck fellow midshipman Job Lewis was calling orders to the men near him. Newton waved and tried to catch Lewis’s attention so that they could launch their volleys at the same time.
Lewis waved back.
“Light the fuses!” Newton yelled.
The powder monkeys handed off the slow burning ropes that they’d already lit. The nimblest and most quick-footed of the men crouched and simultaneously touched the fuses on the cannons with the burning ropes.
Newton braced himself. The rocking force and the deafening roar came a moment later. He, along with the rest of the men, attempted to peer past the smoky openings as the coconut-sized balls flew across the water toward the Solide.
The first ball hit the broadside of the middle deck followed by a burst of light and explosion. It was dead on target, and Newton let out a whoop with the others at the fire that leapt into the air. From what he could tell, another of the balls had rammed into the forecastle and caused a brief explosion.
A distant boom alerted them to the volley now headed their way. The gunners rapidly moved the cannons back out of harm’s way before crouching a safe distance from the gunports along the side of the ship. Several of the men began the futile act of praying out loud.
An explosion sounded far above causing the ship to sway. Newton guessed that a ball had hit one of their masts, adding to the wreckage among the sails and rigging. But better the rigging than the decks. After a moment of silence, he rose with the others, relieved that another round of the battle was over. Had it been enough to make the French ship finally give up?
Before he could straighten, a crash came from the aft gunport, followed by the splintering of wood and an explosive blast. Shouts and screams of agony mingled together.
Newton bumped his head against the overhead beam, but he was too concerned about the destruction at the last gunport to care about himself. He stumbled toward the destruction, trailing behind Lewis, who was praying fervently.
“You’re just muttering nonsense to make yourself feel better.” Newton called to Lewis whose fair hair and shirt were plastered to his body as surely as if he’d dunked himself in the water barrel. “Save your breath for something that really matters.”
Lewis didn’t respond, his attention focused on an unmoving form on the deck ahead. Several other men were down too, moaning and cradling injured body parts. Jagged pieces of wood littered the floor, and as Newton passed by one injured gunner, he could see a splinter protruding from the man’s arm.
“Someone go after the surgeon,” Newton called toward the foredeck. “We have injured men that need tending.”
Without waiting to see if his order was obeyed, Newton knelt next to the unmoving form sprawled on the deck amidst the wreckage. The light coming in from the gap in the broadside illuminated the victim’s face. It was the powder monkey he’d spoken to only minutes ago. Now the boy’s face and eyes were devoid of fear or even pain. The boy didn’t move, not even to blink an eye. And when Newton glanced down, he saw why. A sharp slab of wood penetrated the boy’s chest at his heart. Blood already soaked his shirt and formed a pool beneath his body. He was dead. Likely killed instantly.
Lewis, who was kneeling on the other side, closed the boy’s eyelids, unable to hide the tremor in his fingers or to conceal the anguish in his face.
Swift fierce anger swelled in Newton’s chest, and he clenched his hands to keep from smacking something. “Where was God when this boy needed him?” Newton whispered harshly.
Lewis didn’t respond. He simply sat back on his heels and looked at the boy with utter and complete despair. At the cries of the wounded around them, Newton could only shake his head and curse fate and God.
The Solide was too battered to escape. Seven of the French crew had been killed and twenty seriously injured, including the captain, who’d had his leg blown off. The Harwich captured the severely damaged ship and took the French crew as prisoners of war.
Newton had hoped that the Harwich was crippled enough that they would have to go in for repairs to one of the Royal Dockyards, preferably Chatham. But the ship’s carpenter and his crew made the repairs, and all chances of a landing fell away, leaving Newton more dismayed than ever.
As one of ten midshipmen, his work was relatively easy. Mostly he exercised authority over the sailors on the lower deck. Because of his previous experience, he had the task of teaching some of the newer recruits how to climb the rigging, furl and unfurl the sails, haul the capstan, and all of the other duties that sailors needed to know.
His position also gave him more privileges than an able-bodied seaman. He’d been assigned to sleep and mess in the quarterdeck at the stern, which afforded him more space and better food than the three hundred other sailors who hung their hammocks and ate wherever they could find room in the dark, crowded lower and middle decks.
Every once in a while, guilt pricked him and reminded him that he’d shown no gratitude to his father for making the arrangements for his promotion on board the Harwich. His life could have been a whole lot more miserable. Even so most of the time he let his anger fester, anger that he’d been impressed, anger at Captain Carteret for sending out the press gang to begin with, anger that he couldn’t control his own life and was always under the heavy hand of someone else.
Although he’d done what he could in battle for the sake of those over whom he had charge, he found himself slipping into a melancholy that not even the rowdiest game of cards and round of drinking could penetrate, at least not for long. As autumn passed into winter, he began to drink more, oversleep, and doze on his watch; one night he missed his watch altogether. His superiors rebuked him, but he couldn’t find the will to care. He even thought that if he made himself detestable, mayhap they’d cast him from the ship.
“You’re headed for trouble,” Lewis warned him one December evening as the cold north wind blew off the sea through the caulking and boards.
Newton took a sip of the rum he’d located in Reverend Topham’s cabin. The chaplain had more than enough rum and wouldn’t notice the disappearance of a bottle or two now and then. The captain had already disciplined the devout man of the cloth once for his drunkenness and would probably need to again.
“Aye. But just one look at Polly and I’d be right again,” Newton remarked. He pulled out the white lacy handkerchief she’d given him long ago and brought it to his nose. He dragged in a deep breath, trying to recapture the scent of her that had disappeared from the delicate linen.
Lewis and several other junior officers sat at the table. The sway of the oil lantern above them cast ghoulish shadows around the tiny room. Lewis was in the process of polishing the brass buttons on his coat as he did every evening. And the others were playing their usual game of cards with stakes.
“If you miss her so blasted much,” said one of the midshipmen taking in his pathetic pining over her handkerchief, “then why don’t you take a day’s leave and go see her?”
“Because I don’t know how to swim to shore.” And because after the way things had ended, he had no idea if Mr. and Mrs. Catlett would welcome him back even if he should have the chance to visit. Newton tucked the handkerchief back into his po
cket where he kept it at all times. His mates had ribbed him often enough about Polly, and he wasn’t in the mood for any teasing tonight. “Smite my timbers, if I could swim, I’d have jumped ship long ago.”
“I hear we’re anchoring soon in the Downs,” said Mitchell, the captain’s clerk. “At Deal in Kent.”
The bottle of rum froze midway between the table and Newton’s mouth. “How far is Deal from Chatham?” His mind was too hazy to do the calculations for himself.
“It’s a few hours’ hard ride,” one of the men said as he laid down a card. “If you hustle, you might be able to make it there and back in one day.”
“It’s more likely a half day’s ride,” Lewis cautioned. “And you can’t forget to take into account the time it’ll take for the tender to row him to shore and the time necessary to locate a horse. After all that, he wouldn’t have much time left to spend with Polly before he’d have to turn right back around and leave. Even then he’d likely be riding back to Deal in the wee hours of the night.”
Newton slammed the rum down to the table causing the amber liquid to splash out. “I don’t care how much time I’d have with her. Even if I can only see her for a few minutes, it would be worth it.”
“Several of the other senior officers are taking a leave for Christmas,” Mitchell said, tossing a card onto the pile at the center of the table. “The captain won’t give you as much time away as them. But he might give you a day.”
Lewis shook his head at Newton warily. “You won’t make it in a day—”
“You should know by now that John Newton can do whatever he sets his mind to doing.” Newton pushed back from the table, his head reeling both with anticipation of seeing Polly and irritation at Lewis. “I’m not a man who needs a mythical Being’s help. I’m man enough to get by in my own strength.”
Newton wouldn’t begrudge a woman like Polly or Mrs. Catlett or even his mother her superstitions and the dependencies that came from relying on faith. But Newton couldn’t resist sparring with Lewis, who took his faith much too seriously.