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up, a question in her eyes. “ I have not always been a surgeon in the company of men, ” he said, his voice quiet.
    She thought for a moment that he would say something else, but he did not. “ Everywhere, mind you, ” he reminded her. “ I can always make up more salve. ”
    Hannah nodded, her eyes on her legs again. She dribbled a line of salve from her ankle bone to her knee. “ Sir, do you think the captain will allow me to speak to Adam Winslow? ” she asked. “ I should tell him of his fatherme.> ”
    “ I am sure he will allow that, but it can wait, Hannah Wh ittier. ” He opened the door. “ Bad news can always wait. ”
    He closed the door behind him. When she heard his footsteps receding down the companionway, she raised Captain Spark ’ s shirt for a good look at her hip. The captain was right, she admitted. It was a bruise of enormous proportions , probably a result of her tumble onto the deck of the Molly Claridge at the first broadside from the French.
    Hannah unbuttoned the shi rt , choosing not to think who had buttoned her into it , and stared down at her body. She had been wearing only a chemise when Captain Winslow threw her into the ocean, and she could see the contrast of white on her breasts and stomach, where she had not been burned by the sun. She touched her stomach, thankful that there was one part of her anatomy that did not hurt. “ I will be a wretched specimen when I sta rt to peel, ” she said out loud as she gritted her teeth and slathered on the ointment.
    When she was finished, H ann ah could not bring herself to put on the shirt again. She tugged the sheet up to her chin and lay down again, pulling her long braid away from the ointment and draping it across the pillow. She regarded it for a moment, wondering who had braided her hair so neatly. She remembered the tang le it had b e en in after her days of seasickness, and her own perfunctory attempt at reducing chaos to order. Someone more patient than I, she thought, remembering the gentleness of the surgeon ’ s fingers. He had told her his name, but she could not remember it .
    She lay as still as she could, shivering now and then as her bod y protested its cavalier treatment She took another drink, spilling most of it on the pillow, but not minding the cool wetness on her shoulders. She thought of Adam, and dreaded telling him of his father. “ And now we are both impressed, ” she murmured and looked up at the compass again.
    When she woke, it was morning again. The sun strea med through the porthole as she lay quietly, wondering how painful it would be to move. “ Thee is not dying, Hannah Whittier, ” she said out loud finally, and sat up.
    While the pain still made the hairs rise on her back, she knew she could endure it. She draped the captain ’ s shirt around her bare shoulders and tugged the sheet to her waist. Feeling old and rheumatoid, she managed to pour herself another drink of water from the carafe that must have been refilled during the night. The jar of ointment had been replenished as well. Thoughtfully, she began to apply it to her arms as she looked around the room.
    It was a sleeping cabin, spare and lacking in any creature comforts beyond the berth and a truly comfortable pillow. There was a chai r of uncompromising proportions, and a small writing desk with a pull-down lid. A battered sea chest with SPARK painted in black letters adorned the opposite bulkhead from where she sat . Above it was the only incongruous item in the room, a cross-stitched sampler which read, “ England expects every man to do his duty ” in flowing script. The threads looked as battered as the trunk below and reminded her of similar efforts at home in the parlor on Orange Street . She wondered who thought enough of Captain Sir Daniel Spark to create such a sampler. Surely no woman would ever get close enough to the captain to produce female offspring. It must be a sister. Her own experience with samplers reminded her