Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [38]
The woman nodded, never taking her eyes off the listing ship.
Sarah watched her cousin, who was directing half a dozen fishermen to fire off the Apparatus. Anyone would think their forebears—Anna's and hers—had been naval heroes, not Quaker wool merchants. How well this particular spirit would have hounded Bonaparte's fleet, Sarah thought, if it hadn't had the ill luck to be lodged in the body of a crippled female.
She'd mentioned that one evening, while they were toasting muffins at the fire. But Anna would have none of it. "What earthly use are what ifs?" she'd asked, pulling a golden muffin off her long fork and reaching for the honey. "I was born in the body allotted to me. Of course, if I hadn't been dropped on the stairs at two months, I might have been an elegant dancer today at twenty-seven years old." Her mouth curled up to show Sarah how little that vision impressed her. "But I get by. I may be a crippled old hulk, but I get enough breeze to fill my sail. I can swim and shoot as well as Cousin Fowell, can't I?"
Sarah nodded obediently.
"I can wheel myself to our carriage and go to Meeting"—Anna counted these feats on her fingers—"I can grub around in the literatures of several ancient nations, I can mount petitions on behalf of the emancipation of the slaves, and someday, Sarah"—she threatened her cousin with the blackened fork—"someday before we die, you and I will journey to the Baltic Sea."
Sarah had smiled back at her, foolishly glad.
But today what faced them was not the Baltic Sea but the English Channel, a steely monster that was clawing the foreign ship to bits. Sarah heard a muffled bang from the Apparatus now, and the first rocket went off; the thin woven-hide line snaked out of the basket as the mortar carried its tail high in the sky like a kite. The powder left an after-scorch on the chilly air. Another bang followed, then another—like fireworks on Midsummer Eve, except without the splashes of coloured light. Some of the foreign seamen were waving, Sarah saw; one was at the rail, locked on with one elbow, straining to grab the flying rope so he could make it fast and pull himself in to shore, hand over hand. She felt his panic in her bowels, and had to look away for fear of letting out a moan. She squinted into the gray howling morning, but couldn't see where the mortars had landed. "Did it work?" she called to her cousin.
No answer: evidently not. The men were reeling the mortars back in now, like leaden fish. Anna was almost at the water's edge, her wheels deep in the scored sand, her frantic arms over her head, signalling orders. The wordless fishermen put their backs to the Apparatus and ploughed it right down to where the waves covered their boots. Ah yes, Sarah saw it now with a thrill, that would get the ropes ten yards closer to the seamen. Not much of a distance, except that it might mean life rather than death. Another flash, and this time Sarah could see a mortar soar across the sea maybe three hundred yards—but fall just short of the ship. Twenty-four pounds of iron, dropping like a clay pigeon.
This time when the men hauled the ropes in, two of the lines came all in a rush; their mortars were missing. Ned Sylvester examined one frayed end; Miss Anna waved her fìnger in his face like a desperate schoolmistress. "I told you to soak the ropes at Easter, didn't I? Didn't I warn you they'd break if they were allowed to diy out?"
It seemed to Sarah now that there was an awful slowness to everything, because there was nothing left to do. The little soaked figures on the deck had stopped moving. They were no longer individuals, about to catch the lifeline thrown to them, but a body of strangers watching for their death in every wave.
Next time she looked away from the ship, she saw Anna's chair stranded in half a foot of water, the rim of her skirt dark with water. "What were you thinking?" Sarah scolded her cousin, hauling her back up the beach.
"I was thinking of the seamen," said Anna shortly, her eyes locked onto the ship. "Thousands of souls choke to death on salt water on British