The Captain's Daughter by Leah Fleming Read Free Book Online Page A

after her,’ Celeste insisted. ‘She’s got a baby in the water. For God’s sake, stop and find it.’
    ‘Shut that bloody woman up, will you!’ said a voice from under a shawl.
    ‘We’ll never get away if we keep picking up waifs and strays! They’ll capsize us all!’ the woman with the dog ranted once again.
    ‘You shut up, you selfish bitch! Call yourself a Christian? Don’t be so cruel,’ Celeste barked back with such confidence and vehemence she surprised herself. ‘This poor soul’s lost everything and you just sit there with your pet dog on your lap. We must go back and find more of them.’
    ‘I’m sorry ma’am, this is as far as we can go. The ship’s going down now and we don’t want to be sucked down with it,’ the crewman was shouting. ‘We’ve found some. How this one managed to survive so long beats me, but enough’s enough. I can’t risk the rest of us. Row on!’
    The girl was shivering, crying as Celeste wrapped another blanket around her. ‘Sit tight, now . . . Be British, be brave, you’re safe here.’ The warmth of human touch in the darkness was all she could offer. ‘We must all stay calm.’
    It was while she was nursing the girl that there came another commotion from the water and an arm stretched out, dumping a sodden blanket into the lap of a shaking boy. ‘Take the child!’ a gruff voice shouted. Celeste thought she caught sight of a white beard in the lantern light.
    ‘It’s the captain . . . Sir! Captain Smith. We can take you aboard,’ yelled a sailor, reaching out to the man in the water.
    The arm hovered for a second and then withdrew. ‘Good luck, lads, do your duty.’
    Silence followed.
    ‘Give the bairn to its ma,’ the sailor shouted, and suddenly the bundle was passed down the boat into the girl’s arms, swathed in dry blankets. The girl clung to the baby with relief, suddenly roused from her stupor, groping in the darkness for the baby’s face, fingering her frozen cheek, listening for every breath. She cried with relief on hearing the baby whimper.
    God in His mercy had reunited them! Celeste thought. What a wonderful thing to see amidst the horrors of the night. What if this had been Roddy? Thank goodness she had not brought him on her travels. For once Grover was right to withhold his consent. How could she ever have lived with herself if he had been lost?
    Celeste strained to see in the darkness, leaning over the boat’s side, knowing so many babies and their families were in the icy water. How many more would survive the night? One thing was sure, after this terrifying ordeal, after what she had just seen, life would never be the same for her again.

13
    May clutched her baby for dear life, barely able to believe, through her stupor, that such a miracle had happened. Now, relief jolted her back into life, the numbness replaced by a stinging pain. In the darkness she could feel the baby was warm, alive, her breathing soft as she slept. If only she could peel back the layers and kiss her downy cheek, but the chill off the Atlantic was too raw for her safely to disturb the blankets.
    She smelled of the sea, oil, salt. She looked up to see stars shooting across the midnight-blue sky and thanked God her darling girl had been saved. There was mercy after all.
    ‘How can such a terrible thing be happening on such a beautiful night?’ whispered the girl by her side, her auburn hair trailing under her black hat. Together they watched the ship rising up in its death throes, silhouetted against the sky like a black finger accusing the heavens of a great treachery. Then came more terrible screams as passengers threw themselves off the vessel, swimming, thrashing, drowning, crying for their mothers, to God, to the saints for mercy. May knew she’d be hearing those voices for as long as she lived.
    ‘Go back, please, go back!’ the women both cried. ‘My husband’s in the sea . . .’ May insisted.
    ‘So is half the ship,’ yelled one of their crew.