Captain's Surrender Read Online Free PDF

tried to come to her defense against the captain and responsible that he had lost so much countenance in failing. But she wondered, nevertheless, quite where a bastard stood in the scheme of things. She was not wholly sure she was not one of "these people" herself.
Thoroughly unsettled, and in the absence of other women to whom she could honestly open her mind, she decided to visit the ship's boys where she would at least have the comfort of being an adult among children. "Father, I've been having lessons with the midshipmen. The science of navigation has become my fascination. Oh, and Hawkes wishes to show me his pet rat—he says it is the size of a kitten—may I go?"
Her father smiled one of his sly, statesmanlike smiles—the one that indicated he already knew all her thoughts and approved, but could not, for reasons of good government, possibly say so aloud. "You will do whatever you please, my dear. As you always do. And I ... I think I need breakfast, and after that the nearest thing to a bath that can be arranged."
He returned to the cabin, and Emily went down into the warm, dark fug in the belly of the ship, wondering about Kenyon.
"Toadying" Captain Walker had said, and though she had no great respect for his opinions, this one had some plausibility. There was good reason for a man of ambition to toady to her father. If that was so, he had certainly succeeded in taking her father in, but he would find her a harder nut to crack.
She had been Summersgill's "ward" now for all of three months, but that time had been long enough to introduce her to the novel idea that she had become highly desirable in the marriage market. Men who had not looked at her twice when she was plain "Miss Jones from the milliners" positively fawned on Miss Summersgill-Jones. It had been flattering, at first, but that had worn off sometime after the second ball, when she realized that none of them were seeing her at all.
It probably was ridiculous of her to want to marry for love, but it was not ridiculous to want to marry someone who would treat her well and make her happy. This man, with his easy brutality and cold, shuttered eyes would do neither, and with his plausible manners he would deny her even the sympathy of her friends. True, he had not importuned her yet, but there had been an anxiousness in his look, and she felt sure it was only a matter of time.
As she opened the flimsy partition door into the gunroom and made admiring noises over the rat, she touched the damp, working sides of the ship and thought that in this matter she, too, was a man-of-war, readying herself for the onslaught of the enemy.
Summersgill, a distant, but an affectionate and dutiful father, had evidently decided it was now time to make sure his daughter was settled with a man who would offer her the life to which Summersgill felt she was entitled. She was sensible enough to be grateful for that. But when the time came, she fully intended to give herself to the man of her choice, not to be taken as a prize, whatever her father and his neighbors' children might have to say about it.
    Chapter 4
"Mr. Hawkes, let us suppose it is heavy weather, the fog is so thick that you cannot see the other ships of the fleet. What is the admiral's signal to bring to and lie by, with head-sails to the mast, with the starboard tack aboard?"
"Um..."
Mr. Hawkes was a boy who greatly resembled his rat, Summersgill thought as he sat in the gunroom reading his predecessor's reports of French privateers about the shores of Bermuda, his fears of an invasion by American forces, and the roaring illegal trade in weapons smuggled to those same forces for huge amounts of money in defiance of all self interest and principle.
Across the table from him Bess, now recovered, darned stockings and kept her head down. Emily was sitting in front of a slate, in common with five of the rapscallions known as "young gentlemen". Boys who looked to Summersgill scarcely old enough to be in breeches.
"Mr.