Free The Saintly Buccaneer by Gilbert Morris Page B

murmured softly, “It’s a good thing thee is doing, Charity Alden—and God will bless thee for it.”
    Her face flushed as he pressed her hand. He was a powerful man, his thick chest and broad shoulders making her feel almost unsubstantial. He had, she realized, a physical strength that was prodigious—but it was the spirit which flared out of his warm brown eyes that she had learned to admire.
    Finally he released her hand and looked off into the distance. “Listen!” Far off some bells were ringing. Church bells, probably, but far away, heard only as a silver tinkling that floated across the white frozen world.
    “Ringing out the old year,” he told her. Then he smiled. “And for thee, Charity Alden, the bells are ringing out a greatdeal. Thee is leaving the old world—coming into something new.”
    There was something almost prophetic in his deep voice, and a quick stab of fear ran through her. Her life had been fixed, and now she was moving out of it, into an unknown and uncertain time. She took a deep breath, and looking across Valley Forge, she whispered, “I think you’re right, Dan—but it’ll be all right.”
    “So help us God!” he murmured as if in a benediction.
    ****
    “What’s the date?”
    Dan looked up at Charity, who had come below to the small cabin used by the first mate, and answered, “The fifteenth, isn’t it?” He rose and the top of his head almost brushed the low ceiling. He had almost beaten his brains out at first aboard the Lady, for the doors were just low enough to catch him right in the center of the forehead. “Look, I can’t make head nor tails of this awful stuff! Now what in the world does this mean?”
    Charity looked down at the problem in navigation that he was wrestling with, and then shook her head. Taking the book from him, she tossed it on the small desk, saying, “You’ve not got the head to make a navigator—but you make a fine foretopman, Dan!”
    “Never mind that!” He grimaced, then forced a grin, thinking of the only time he’d climbed to the top pinnacle of the mainmast. A wind had been rocking the ship at anchor, and he’d made it to the top, but when he looked down, he immediately got sick and froze to the spar. His grip was so powerful that none of the sailors had been able to break his grasp, so Charity had gone aloft and, after a time of soft talking, had persuaded him to turn loose. He’d followed her down and fallen to the deck instantly.
    The crew had laughed, of course, but when the mild-mannered Quaker had refused to be offended, they had beenforced to like the man. He had, after all, proven himself to be the strongest man on board. Years of work on the farm had given his fingers a steel-trap grip; after he had put Stevens, the biggest man among the crew, on his back as if he had been a child, he had gotten along famously.
    Greene had been accepted by William Alden almost at once. Charity’s father was not an educated man, but he had a wisdom that lies deep in seafaring men, and he saw the quality of the husky Quaker almost at once. This had surprised Charity considerably, for she knew her father made up his mind slowly. She was, however, not at all unaware of Daniel Greene’s ability to move among men—an ability she had observed as he gained the respect from the soldiers at Valley Forge.
    Persuading her father to make the voyage had been simple. He had a slow-moving mind, but like a glacier, once in motion, he was difficult to stop. He blamed the British for his son’s death, and had cast about in his mind for some way to repay them. So when he heard it was Washington’s personal request, and was made to understand that the cargo would give the Continental Army what it needed to stand up to the hated English, he agreed at once.
    The Gallant Lady carried a crew of fourteen as a rule, but none of them were told of the mission—with the exception of Alden’s nephew, Thaddeus. Thad Alden was a young man of seventeen, the best