Free Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett

the decks and rigging of passing ships like bees. Others havereported spring and autumn sightings of swallows in Andalusia and over the Strait of Gibraltar. “Clearly,” Collinson says, “they must be birds of passage.”
    Which is what Sarah Anne believes. She opens her mouth and proposes a simple experiment to the men. “The swallow must breathe during winter,” she says, between the soup and the roasted veal. “Respiration and circulation must somehow continue, in some degree. And how is that possible if the birds are under water for so long? Could one not settle this by catching some swallows at the time of their autumn disappearance and confining them under water in a tub for a time? If they are taken out alive, then Linnaeus’s theory is proved. But if not…”
    â€œA reasonable test,” Collinson says. “How would you catch the birds?”
    â€œAt night,” she tells him impatiently. Oh, he is so old; he has dribbled more gravy on his waistcoat. How is that he can no longer imagine leaving his world of books and talk for the world outside? Anyone might gather a handful of birds. “With nets, while they roost in the reeds.”
    Collinson says, “If they survived, we might dissect one and look for whatever internal structure made possible their underwater sojourn.”
    He seems to be waiting for Sarah Anne’s response, but Christopher is glaring at her. She knows what he’s thinking: in his new, middle-aged stodginess, assumed unnecessarily early and worn like a borrowed coat, he judges her harshly. She’s been forward in entering the conversation, unladylike in offering an opinion that contradicts some of her guests, indelicate in suggesting that she might pursue a flock of birds with a net.
    What has gotten into him? That pulse she hears inside her ear, the steady swish and hum of her blood, is the sound of time passing. Each minute whirling past her before she can wring any life from it; hours shattered and lost while she defers to her brother’s sense of propriety.
    Upstairs, finally. Dismissed while the men, in the library below, drink Christopher’s excellent wine and avail themselves of the chamberpot in the sideboard. Her brother’s friends are grateful for her hospitality, appreciative of her well-run household; but most grateful and appreciative when she disappears.
    Her room is dark, the night is cool, the breeze flows through her windows. She sits in her high-ceilinged room, at the fragile desk in the three-windowed bay facing west, over the garden. If it were not dark, she could see the acres leading down to the lake and the low stretch of rushes and willows along the banks.
    Her desk is very small, meant to hold a few letters and a vase of flowers: useless for any real work. The books she’s taken from the library spill from it to the floor. Gorgeous books, expensive books. Her brother’s books. But her brother doesn’t use them the way she does. She’s been rooting around in them and composing a letter to Linnaeus, in Uppsala, about the evening’s dinner conversation. Christopher need never know what she writes alone in this room.
    Some years ago, after Peter Kalm’s visit, Sarah Anne’s father and Linnaeus corresponded for a while; after expressing admiration for the great doctor’s achievements this visit is what she first mentions. Some flattery, some common ground. She discusses the weather, which has been unusual; she passes on the news of Collinson’s latest botanical acquisitions. Only then does she introduce the subject of the swallows. She writes:
Toward the end of September, I have observed swallows gathering in the reeds along the Thames. And yet, although these reeds are cut down annually, no one has ever discovered swallows sleeping in their roots, nor has any fisherman ever found, in the winter months, swallows sleeping in the water. If all the great flocks seen in the