Free Voyage of Midnight by Michele Torrey Page A

me, sluicing off the gunwales,spattering the deck. Despite my shelter, I was drenched—at least from the waist down. I’d been caught in a downpour once in New Orleans, on my way back from a delivery clear across town. I’d opened the shop door, shivering. Bells jangled. Then Mrs. Gallagher was there, tut-tutting, whisking me upstairs, and drying my hair with a towel, meanwhile drawing me a bubbly bath that steamed the windows.
    I miss you, Mrs. Gallagher
, I realized. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of the Gallaghers since embarking upon my voyage, but it
was
the first time I did so while an ache grew in my belly—quite apart from the usual sickness. Rather like a cold, heavy stone settling deep inside.
    The sky rumbled.
    The wind intensified.
    I was thinking about corned beef and cabbage just like what Mrs. Gallagher often cooked—thinking I could actually smell it, taste it, perhaps—when suddenly a bone-jarring bolt of lightning ripped the sky asunder. And in that split second I saw a ship, almost abreast with the
Formidable
. And even after the light vanished, the images remained, seared onto my eyeballs. Our gunners, crouched like tigers beside the long guns. A young man aboard the American vessel, blond and mustached, staring open-mouthed at us. Hat upon his head. Rain pouring off the hat’s gunwales. The American warship no longer listing to its side, but level in the water. Gunports black and gaping. Sharpshooters positioned in the shrouds.
    An earsplitting crack of thunder pounded the darkness that followed.
    My hair stood on end.
    Uncle screamed, “Blast them to hell!”
    The
Formidable
discharged her cannon just as lightningblazed and thunder roared. At the same time, musket balls punched the deck like hail. I dove for cover behind the mainmast, the blood surging to my head.
    Beneath me, the hold erupted with banging and screams of terror. Again lightning flashed and thunder crackled. The air sizzled with a burning stench.
    By the deuce, I’m about to be killed!
    And suddenly Jonas was there, wheezing, a bottle of brandy in his hand. “They must’ve been waiting for us!”
    In the next flash of light, to my horror, men leaped from the other vessel onto our ship. “They’re boarding us, Jonas! Do—do they hang us now or later?”
    Jonas didn’t answer, instead tipping back his bottle and guzzling.
    I closed my eyes and pressed back against the mainmast alongside Jonas, ignoring the splinters and dampness, the chills racing up my spine, the clatter of my teeth. In the darkness I heard the clash of cutlasses. A grunt. Pistols fired. Thunder crashed.
    “Fire at will!” The timbers of the
Formidable
shook again.
    Someone screamed in agony. I peered about the mainmast, swiping the rain from my eyes. In the thunderous flashes of light, I saw one of our crew clutching his belly. Crimson mushroomed on his shirt. He sank to his knees, then fell to his face. “One of our men is down!” I cried.
    Except for his coughing and wheezing, Jonas didn’t move.
    I shook him. “I said, one of our men is down! He could be dying!”
    Jonas stirred. “Then what are you waiting for, you stupid boy? Go and fetch him. Do your duty.”
    Me? Fetch him? Under enemy fire? But what if I’m hit?
    These were my thoughts even as I shoved away from Jonas and dashed through the darkness toward where I’d last seen the wounded fellow. Forward, near the foremast.
    Lightning branded the sky. In that instant my breath caught. A sword glittered in its sweep toward my neck. Behind the sword was a man, his face hard and murderous. I ducked and dropped to the deck just as darkness swallowed us, just as the sword swished through nothingness. I crawled away, knees thumping, water sloshing, hearing someone’s frightened panting and realizing it was my own.
    Oh God! Save me!
    Crawling, crawling, expecting at any second to have my head parted forever from my body, I bumped into something. Something warm, wet, and hairy. And with