the men. The tar and varnish that coated everything had been sparked by the lightning, leaving parts of the bowsprit, forepeak, and forecastle charred. It made one thankful for the storm’s deluge, which had doused the fire before the ship was consumed.
The carpenters and smith, and their respective mates, hammered out new blocks, eyes and fittings, nails, pins, bolts, and pegs. Amid the flurry of splicing, knotting, reeving, and fair weather sails bent, the teeming decks were a virtual snowbank of drying hammocks, clothing, and sails. A constant vigil was maintained on the rigging, lest the masts be wrung. In spite of its covering of pitch, wind-driven rain could saturate a rope, causing it to stretch. Drying rope shrank, damaging her sticks and yards. The smell of tar stoves returned, as the hands furiously toiled to fill the seams loosened by the ship’s working, the rap of caulking mallets a backdrop to every conversation.
“Two feet in the well, sir,” was the carpenter mate’s report to Pryce, “but holding,” came with a sigh of relief.
“At least the scuttlebutts are full,” said Millbridge in his aged pragmatism, as he scanned the ruin. Fresh drinking water was the least of their concerns.
The seas calmed, the wind freshened and steadied, and the mizzen, jury-rigged staysails and royals bellied out. A tops’l breeze, to be sure. The topmasts, however, remained on deck.
“She can’t bear it just now,” Pryce said, casting a concerned but loving eye upward.
A battered queen, the Morganse sailed, her dignity broken, but still regal.
Between mending the ill and injured, and fraying oakum—vast amounts now being in desperate need—Cate was busy. As promised, Kirkland and Millbridge kept her regularly informed of Nathan’s condition, but she was still compelled to see for herself. She found him the same: sleeping as peacefully as a babe, recouping and repairing, just as his ship.
It was after the second dog watch—notable because during that the hands had their first warm meal served in days—that Cate went to check on Nathan, once more. She pushed the curtain aside, careful so as not to rattle the curtain rings. A watch lamp hung, so that he might be readily observed but not disturbed. Careful not to trip on the stool, she crept closer, pressing her skirt to her legs, lest the rustle of the cloth might wake him. A reflexive, useless gesture, for it would have been lost amid the babel from outside.
There was a stillness about the room, the odd tranquility that shrouded the ill when they slept. The riot of noise outside somehow muffled and distant, the most prominent sound was the somnolent rhythm of his breathing, a slight rattle in his throat echoing the ragged of his voice. Looking up at the port, she made note of the need to pass the word for a carpenter’s mate to unseal it, so that the room might be rid of the smell of sickness. The thought was immediately dismissed, until after Nathan had his rest.
Nathan was inherently so animated, it was disquieting to see him so still. Stranger was to see him lying in his own bed, a rarer thing to see him sleep—she still had no idea where he had slept these weeks past. An internal voice demanded that he should drink; another, he should eat. “He should rest” won out. The rictus of pain and delirium gone, his was a peaceful face. His hand, almost mahogany against the blue and yellow quilt, rested on his stomach, a sticking-plaster in place. No swelling. No redness. No smell. He would be whole. She closed her eyes in thankfulness once more.
Cate resisted the urge to straighten the quilt or brush the braid from his chest, and the even stronger ones to clasp his hand or kiss his cheek. Seeing Nathan now, almost angelic, she regretted her earlier indignation and anger. The hurt she suffered at being called Hattie was less readily put aside, but not indispensably entrenched. She shouldn’t like to be held responsible for what she might utter in fever or dreams; neither should anyone else. After all, the unconsciousness wasn’t the realm of reality.
God help me, I love him.
She sat heavily on the stool with the impact. Love: an elixir, which could erase and ease more ills and hurts than any potion or palliative. Either by his charm, the Fates, or whatever controlling powers might be, she had been drawn. She had seen the pit looming and had fallen in; there was now no escape.
She lingered for some while