FALLON SAT IN A CHAIR AT THE STERN OF HIS SHIP NURSING HIS COFFEE and trying not to stretch the tender scar across his body. It had been two weeks since Renegade had returned from Algiers and, during that time, Rascal had gotten her masts in and rigging sent up. He had Lord Keith to thank for the dock yard’s sense of urgency. Thanks to the Admiral, Fallon should be back to Bermuda just in time for his wedding. Thank God for that, thought Fallon.
The sky was a solid blue globe and the sea reflected the color but flecked it with whitecaps. Rascal was racing towards Bermuda, towards an imaginary finish line which was off St. George’s harbor. The wind was coming southeast and was pushing the ship along like it knew speed was important. He glanced across the sparkling water towards Renegade bounding along, as well, keeping pace under reduced sail.
The Vissers were gathered on the starboard rail, still using every moment to catch up with each other’s lives. They would be awhile doing it, for there was much in the details that would be thought of in random moments over time.
Little Eddy skylarked in the rigging with the other ship’s boys, demonstrating the resiliency of youth and the ability to live in the present. He never knew what likely lay in store for him in Algiers and thankfully he never would. Aja watched him with a smile on his face, his arm still in a light sling but almost healed, according to Colquist.
Beauty bantered with Barclay at the binnacle as usual, each giving as good as they got on every topic from weather to waves. She wore her sea dog necklace with more confidence in its powers than ever before. It had been tested.
Down below decks was Caleb Visser’s ransom money, the gold that had been salvaged and never spent. Well, not all of it anyway. Visser had insisted on paying Colonel Bisanz’s soldiers handsomely and Bisanz had at last relented and allowed it. Caleb and Beauty had gone to the garrison to thank him on behalf of the ship and Fallon, and mourn with him the loss of fifteen of his finest men.
Sir William and Lord Keith had come aboard before they’d weighed with the welcome news that the dey was apparently furious with Bonaparte for Honneur’s random act of violence against his nation. Sir William’s sources reported that the fake orders to attack Algiers which Fallon had dictated had quashed any thoughts of believing the capitaine’s quite fantastic story of being duped by the British.
Fallon sat in the sunshine and summoned the past few month’s experiences, one by one, to parade past his mind. Not so much to relive life, for there were too many moments he had no wish to relive, but to put them indelibly in his memory so as not to forget what he’d seen and felt in a world far away and so alien to his own.
He had received help all along this journey, certainly from Davies and, at the last, Jones. But earlier from poor Woodson to Dingle to Truxton and Colonel Bisanz and, of course, the good Friar Orturo who helped him and Aja get into Algiers.
He recalled the Friar’s words about the wisdom of letting life come to you and accepting it without trying to control it. He’d said it was futile to put a howling wind in a box. Fallon could understand the point as a matter of philosophy, but letting life have its way had never been his way. Events weren’t inevitable in his world. If they were, he’d be dead several times over and Wilhelm Visser and Little Eddy would still be slaves in Algiers. He shook his head at the thought.
It was never easy, but sometimes you could let the wind back out of the box. And, as Beauty would say, let the fucker howl.