Enemy Ship! by Anthony Barton

Author:Anthony Barton [Barton, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bulmer Press, St. John's
Published: 2018-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

THE EXPEDITION took to the boats.

The ship’s jollyboat and launch set off into black billows upon which danced the reflections of the bright stars of Orion’s belt, flashing and flickering like pulsing fireflies.

Looking up at the night sky, Corrie was dazzled by the sight of more than two thousand pinpricks of light shining down on her from the heavens. Only at sea and at war, when the lamps of your ship have been extinguished and you venture forth in a small boat before the moon rises, are you rewarded by a vision of a cosmos that stays with you for the rest of your life. Corrie thought of the stars as candles glowing in the windows of the city of God. She had been told that Cassiopeia, the wife of Phoenix, was holding one of those flickering candles, while Virgo, Persephone’s mother, was holding another.

That made her think.

I’m glad there are women up there, looking down on us. I hope I impress them tonight as I strut my piece upon the boards down here on Earth. My life must seem like a play to them.

Corrie was puzzled by a great belt of misty light that stretched all the way across the sky from one horizon to the other. She had no idea what that belt might be, but there was no time to ponder the matter further, for she had to row.

Her muffled oar, its pins wrapped in oakum to keep them from squealing, was a brute to handle, and she had to keep rigorous time with the rower seated on the thwart before her, and she had to remember to feather her oar at the right moment. If she made one mistake with her oar she might make splashes that would alert the enemy as to their coming, and that could prove fatal.

She had read in one of her father’s books that surprise was half the battle when falling upon an enemy ship at night.

Corrie pulled on her oar.

In a few moments I shall have to fight. I wish I knew more about fighting. I wish I’d paid more attention to my fencing master, Mister MacGregor, back in St. John’s. I do remember him telling me to keep my fencing arm bent slightly at the elbow. I’m not sure that is going to help much.

She pulled on her oar again.

I’m in a strange situation. Captain Redburn is a handsome fellow but he thinks I’m a spy, my master-at-arms is a homicidal lunatic who has tried to drown me, my brother is a confused and angry young man whose brains have been addled by a blow to his head, and, as for me, I’m just a crazy young woman who has joined the navy to fight the French, a daughter who barely knows her own father, so often has been absent at sea.

She pulled on her oar over and over again.

Would she ever see her father again? Had he been hurt when the Queen Charlotte went up in flames? Where

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