Free Victory by Susan Cooper

three of the other boys were good to me, and gently spooned water into my mouth so that I should not totally parch, but I was wretched beyond belief. I felt there was no hope in life; that I was doomed to the Navy and its injustices forever. I thought seriously of throwing myself into the sea, where I should drown very fast because I could not swim.
    I crawled into a corner of the gundeck alone, in despair, and I wept.
    And there my uncle found me. In all the weeks since we were pressed, we had seen each other only for brief moments, through the demands of his work and my own, and though he knew of the bad state I was in, there was nothing he could do about it. This time, though, as helooked into my dirty distorted face, there was an angry set to his mouth that I had never seen before.
    â€œI know what led to this, Sam,” he said. “One of my mates was watching. I think I can do something. Have faith—by tomorrow there may be help.”
    With a damp rag he wiped my chin clear of the blood that kept trickling down from where the metal cut into my lips. Then looking angrier still, he hurried away.
    At the end of the next day, when we were slinging our hammocks, with Stephen helping me because I was so weak at the knees after working without food, big William Pope came up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. I stopped still, wary, and then I felt his fingers at the back of my head, untying the tight yarn. He turned me to face him, and eased the iron bolt carefully out of my mouth. One of my teeth came with it; knocked loose when the bolt was put in, it had been held in place only by the bolt itself.
    Our Scottish boy Colin Turner was there too, watching wide-eyed, with two wooden mugs in his hands. William sat me down on a cask, took one of the mugs from Colin and held it to my mouth.
    I said thickly, “What is it?”
    â€œDrink,” said William. “Go on. Little sips.”
    So I did. It was warm, and seemed to spread comfort through my whole body as it trickled down my throat.
    â€œPortable soup,” Colin said, “to make you better.” And I remembered that he was boy to the surgeons’ mates, and guessed that he had begged or stolen this from their store.Portable soup was a kind of dried jelly that became a thin beef broth when added to hot water; it was given to patients in the sick bay to strengthen them.
    When I had drunk it all down, sitting there on the cask like a limp bundle of rags, I looked at the others and found tears coming out of my eyes, not of misery this time but of gratitude and relief. “Thank you,” I said. “Oh thank you.”
    â€œBosun’s orders, the first I ever was glad to get,” William said. “And they are changing your mess, putting you with the ropers and sailmakers. Stephen is to take your place eating with the cook.”
    Stephen made a wry face, but grinned at me. “It will be no worse than the pigs,” he said.
    William put the other mug into my hand. “Grog, to help you sleep,” he said. “Drink it down quick before someone catches us.”
    So I slept that night like a baby, perhaps for the first time since I had been one. And the next day, though I had thought it impossible, my life changed once more.

Molly

I N C ONNECTICUT
    Molly wakes up the next morning out of a dream that she cannot remember, with a sound ringing through her head: the double stroke of a bell, repeated. Bong-bong, bong-bong, bong-bong . . . She feels she has heard it before, but she doesn’t know where.
    Sunshine is spilling around the edges of the blinds into the cheery yellow-white bedroom. It’s early morning: six-thirty, her alarm clock tells her. She lies there on her back for a little while, looking at the picture on the wall at the foot of her bed: a framed photograph of her mother and father on a beach somewhere. They are laughing, and in her father’s arms is a chubby smiling baby. The baby is Molly,