Read Online My Name is Resolute by Nancy E. Turner - Free Book Online

Please take heart. We shall find a way to get home.” Even as I spoke, I doubted we could. I thought of what August had said about escape. I thought of Ma, looking out to sea from the widow’s walk, day after day, waiting for us. I put my arm around Patey’s waist to comfort her.
    She flung my arm from her as if it had been a snake, hurting my shoulder. “Keep still!”
    I pulled back a little. “Where did you go? Why did they not bring you with the rest of us? Tell me what happened. Why are you carrying that?”
    “Leave me alone, Resolute. Leave me.”
    I was not sure if she had not finished her words or if she meant more than a wish for me to keep shushed and meant me to leave away from her side. I said, “You did not have to hurt my arm. I merely reached to pat your side.”
    “Simply do not touch me.”
    “Fine, then.”
    She lay a-weeping then, moaning sometimes, and as it was dark and I was fed, I slept to the sound of her sobbing, an old familiar tune. When the woman asked for her pallet again, Patience sat next to me on the wale. She reached under her skirt and loosened a tie, then pulled off the petticoat Ma had made for her. She raised it over our heads and made for us a little tent. She held my hands, and when I started to make a sound, shook them. She opened the parcel she had brought. Into my hands she placed a boiled turtle egg and half an orange. The need for food was ever awake in me and I crammed the egg into my mouth, whole. The fruit had dried, but once I bit through the hard part, the juice was sweet and tart on my tongue.
    “Do not smack,” she whispered. “I have one for each of us.”
    “Oh, this is excellent. How did you get these?”
    “Just eat it. Eat all of it, too. Even the rind will keep us from scurvy.”
    “Someone will smell these.” But no one did, or if they did they had no idea whence it came, and so we crouched in our dark corner huddled together and ate. Although I might at one time have been loath to eat an orange rind, my hunger spoke over the bitter tang on my tongue. I stuck the orange rind in my cheek and sucked at it until it dissolved. It left a raw place on my tongue and I rubbed the spot against my teeth.
    The next day passed with no sign of August or a Spanish galleon filled with gold. I felt renewed enough to feel both thankful to Patience and irritated at our situation, and I complained to anyone who would listen. That evening before I closed my eyes, I hoped for another stolen morsel from Patience, but she stayed at my side all the time and so was not able to collect anything extra. I believed she would do what she could for both of us, just as Ma would have done. It gave me some peace to know that.
    At dawn calls from above awoke us. “Strike colors! Take the whip! At the guns! Man the sweeps!” This was followed by the sounds of hurried action, and from my tiny peephole I saw a set of oars thrust from our ship’s sides begin to move in tandem to a chant of “Yo-hope!” We turned sharply; the ship listed hard to one side until it rose upon the surface of the water. Our vessel cut through waves helped by sail and oar alike. Some woman of our group cried, “We’re going keel over!” and someone else hushed her.
    Cannons bellowed off our port side and shook the ribs of the ship and all mine, too. I screamed and clasped my ears at the unexpected roar of them. They levied a full broadside and all of a sudden everyone on this deck lurched and fell as the ship turned into the wind, jerking and hauling with shouts from the oarsmen as it started moving full astern. We swayed again, falling upon each other, and felt the concussion of another full broadside from our ranks of starboard cannon.
    In the midst of it I heard, “Run up the colors! Man the canoe!” I had no idea what the canoe was, but I knew the colors would either strike terror or a challenge in the souls of our prey. They would either surrender or begin a terrible battle in which we prisoners