Dreams of Savannah Read online

  Chapter Two

  OFF THE ISLE OF PINES, CUBA

  JULY 3, 1861

  Day had long since faded. The sun’s fire was extinguished in the water to the west, and clouds obscured the heavens where moon and stars should abide. Phineas Dunn stepped into the heavy, humid darkness and sighed. Behind him, his best friend edged onto the deck too.

  “Not exactly what I thought it would be,” Spencer said, his voice barely a rumble against the Caribbean breeze. A pulse of humid silence beat between them, and then Spence elbowed him in the side. “You’ll have to exaggerate aplenty to turn this into a tale for your sweetheart.”

  Phin breathed a laugh, not sure yet how he’d take the events of the afternoon and make them anything worth telling Delia about. He’d come up with something, though, just as he’d been doing every week—not that he had any idea when his letters might reach her. Regardless, he sent them as often as he could, ignoring the teasing of the other men of the crew. They didn’t tease because he had a girl to write to—no, they teased because he hadn’t had the good sense to marry her or at least propose before he left. A dang fool, Spencer had labeled him the first time Phin had drawn Delia’s photograph out, before the Sumter had even left port in New Orleans.

  If only it had been a simple matter of choice. Though now he’d best push all thoughts of Delia aside and focus on the task at hand. “I’ll report to Hudgins.”

  “Good. He likes you better.” With a laugh, Spencer turned toward a few other members of the prize crew, who were pushing trunks toward the starboard rail. “I’ll give them a hand.”

  Phineas nodded and strode toward the officer in charge. Hudgins turned at his approach and offered him a smile. “Anything of interest below, Dunn?”

  “The hold’s empty, sir. I daresay the sail and rigging are the only things worthwhile we’ll find on her.” Still, he cast a glance over the lantern-lit deck of the Golden Rocket. She was a fine merchant vessel, one not unlike his uncle’s, where he had learned all things maritime.

  Hudgins nodded. “Would you report that to Commander Semmes and get his instructions on what we ought to do with her?”

  “Aye, sir.” When he spun away, his glance snagged on the Union flag that was carefully folded nearby. He had watched the ship strike her colors a couple hours before, had known pride and relief when she raised a white flag in its place.

  The first prey of the CSS Sumter. The first victory of the Confederacy’s first cruiser. And hopefully the first blow to the Yankees. There must be a way to focus on that in his letter to Delia. Make it seem a glorious conquest instead of the anticlimax it had been.

  Phin headed for the rowboat that would take him from the Golden Rocket to the Sumter. A wisp of the blowing trade wind caught the Stars and Bars that waved over his ship and cooled the perspiration that had gathered under his collar in the Rocket’s hold. He climbed over the rail and down the rope ladder to the boat.

  He ignored the twist in his chest.

  This was not Uncle Beau’s ship. It was an enemy vessel. And the long-faced commander was certainly not his uncle, the man who had instilled in him the love for the sea that had led him to New Orleans and the cruiser, when all his friends from Savannah were happy to join one of the many Georgia militias.

  Phin dropped into the rowboat and settled in, grabbing the oars. He’d become friends with the rest of the crew quickly, especially Spencer. They understood him like his Savannah friends never had—heard the sea’s siren song, felt the need to feel a ship’s deck rocking beneath their feet, knew the satisfaction of seeing the world on a chart and reading the map of the stars. Perhaps the crew were almost all merchant sailors, not military, but they all shared that love of the sea. And being the very first Confederate sailing crew had bonded them together quickly. He knew well that these men would be his brothers for life.

  No moonlight illumined his watery path, but the lanterns aboard the Sumter led the way. He cut through the water quickly. A few minutes and he was scrambling up to the teeming deck of his floating home. His gaze searched out Commander Semmes and found him at the rail, watching the Golden Rocket with hands clasped behind his back.

  Saluting, Phin stopped at his side. “Evening, Commander.”

  “Dunn.” Semmes turned his way, lantern light catching the white of his teeth as he smiled. “How fares the prize crew? Anything to report?”

  “Only that the Yankee captain was truthful, sir. There was nothing in the hold, nothing at all on board of interest to the Confederacy or to make her worth towing in for the prize. Some provisions, some sail and rigging you may want to keep for repair purposes.” Though they did their best to rely on the Sumter’s steam rather than sail. But if coal ran low . . . “Hudgins sent me over to seek your orders, sir.”

  With a hum directed out at sea, Semmes held his silence for a moment, then nodded. “Burn her.”

  “Aye, sir.” He saluted again, though when he spun away, that twist tightened in his stomach. Not an unusual reaction for a soldier’s first witnessed casualty in war, he supposed. No one would think less of him for considering it a shame to destroy such a finely crafted vessel.

  Still, he didn’t intend to let them see the conflict. While he climbed back into the rowboat, he set his mind on what words he’d put to paper for Delia instead. The ship would have to be twice its actual size, of course. Perhaps captained by a pirate with a beard that reached down to his belt. And instead of them burning it, maybe it would have to explode, the Sumter crew barely escaping with their lives . . .

  Soon the rowboat bumped against the hull of the Golden Rocket, and Phin reached for the ladder, climbed it quickly. He found Hudgins right where he had left him.

  Hudgins greeted him with a lifted brow. “Tow or burn?”

  “Burn.”

  The officer sighed even as he nodded. “Seems a shame, doesn’t it?”

  So he wasn’t the only one. Still, Phin offered a confident smile. “I imagine we’ll find prizes aplenty worth keeping, sir.”

  “I imagine so—if we can find ports into which we can tow them. Well, nothing for it now. Spencer! Gleason!”

  As Spence and another of their friends hurried over to hear the order, Phin took a step back and made himself useful. He lugged another chest of provisions toward the ladder, then gathered the assorted sails and ropes that had been drawn aside to be taken. Spence joined him in time to help lower it all to the rowboat, and Gleason climbed down to welcome the booty into its transport.

  “Think Semmes will give us leave in Cuba if we land to take on coal?” Spencer picked up a rope.

  Phin slanted a grin at his friend. “Well now, I’d say it’s probable. I know we’d all like the chance to post a few letters. Eat a decent meal.”

  “Find some fairer company.” Spencer tied the rope round about the trunk and handed one end of it to Phin, an impish grin on his mouth. “At least those of us who don’t have letters to post to the prettiest girl in all of Georgia. Maybe I can find a pretty señorita to write to, sí?”

  Phin snorted a laugh. “You know very well you’re going to end up married to Mabel. You might as well stop fighting it and declare yourself.”

  Spencer made a face at the mention of the neighbor from home he alternately growled about and thought longingly of. Apparently today was a growl-about day. “And have to listen to her nagging for the rest of my life? No thank you. If I’m going to have a nagging woman, she might as well nag me in Spanish so I have an excuse for ignoring her.”

  Shaking his head with another laugh, Phin took his end of the rope and they eased it over the side, lowering the trunk slowly into the rowboat and Gleason’s waiting arms. “We both know you’re not looking for a señorita to marry.”

  Spencer chuckled. “No, I imagine I’ll marry one of the girls my mother listed as acceptable for me. But she never said I couldn’t enjoy an evening with anyone else.”

  As if Mrs. Spencer—a fine Louisiana lady—would ever speak so crassly. Phin rolled his
eyes. “Just be careful in what you say, will you? You know well Semmes expects gentlemanly behavior from the crew. Especially when in port.”

  Though his expression was shrouded by the shadows of night, Spencer’s snort came through clear enough. “Seems to me he worries too much about how we entertain ourselves in port. With everything else he needs to consider, we should hardly warrant his attention, so long as we don’t get into trouble with the law and report back on time.”

  The trunk settled on the floor of the boat with a thud. Phin loosed his rope and coiled it on top, then reached for another armload. “Semmes is an intelligent fellow. He’s more than capable of worrying about it all.”

  At least the snort held a little laughter this time. “You’ll join me, won’t you? Gleason said he would. He’s been to every major Cuban port before, so he can lead the way.”

  Phin had been, too, but Uncle Beau had never led him to the particular parts of town that Spencer had in mind, and he’d never sought them out on his own either. The Dunns had their flaws, sure enough, but Father had raised him to embrace the very moral creed that Semmes was insisting on from his men.

  Women were to be treated with respect. Protected at all costs. Not taken advantage of. He’d grown up pretending he was a knight, ready to do battle for the fair damsel’s honor.

  It was no wonder he’d always been charmed by Delia’s stories.

  To Spence, he simply said, “No thanks. I’ll just stay on the commander’s good side and focus on finding a decent meal, if we get shore leave, and—”

  “Everyone in unison now . . .” Everyone was Spencer and, from below them, Gleason, but the two singsonged the rest of Phin’s words, “ . . . post my letters to Delia.”

  If they meant to irritate him, they’d have to try harder. Phineas laughed. “Well, we haven’t had the chance to post anything since we left New Orleans, which means I haven’t sent the one where I exaggerated our narrow escape from the Brooklyn.” He tossed his armload down to Gleason.

  “The only one that wouldn’t have required much exaggerating.” Spencer waited for Gleason to extend his arms again, then tossed down a section of tied-up canvas. “I was beginning to think we’d never see open water and would be stuck in the Mississippi for the duration of the war.”

  Phin picked up the last of the gear. “Better than sitting in the marshes outside Savannah with my cousins. The letter that reached me said the fevers were far more deadly than the Yankees offshore.”

  Hudgins strode up, gaze landing on Phin. “Is that everything?”

  “Aye, sir,” Phin said with a nod.

  “Good. Spencer, join Gleason in the boat, if you will, and be ready to row the second our boots hit the floorboards. Dunn, you’re with me. Time to light this Rocket.” The midshipman spun away with a beckoning motion of his head.

  Phin exchanged a glance with Spencer, just long enough to see a spark of jealousy on his friend’s face—quickly gone as Spence nodded his acknowledgment of the order. They’d been lucky to be chosen for the prize crew from the one hundred and forty sailors on the Sumter. Phin ought to take it as the highest of compliments to be chosen for this, too, the first real action of their maritime war.

  Yet splashing the deck and rigging with the kerosene Hudgins handed him didn’t feel much like a battle. And holding high the torch that would set it ablaze sure lacked that sensation of victory.

  The fumes from the fuel curled around him, burning his nose. He’d known the war would be different out here on open water. Wanted it to be. But it was going to take some getting used to.

  Hudgins motioned him to the rail. Phin took up position to scurry over it even as he reached for the torches. After handing them over, Hudgins opened the lantern and held it out. Phin lit first one torch, then the second.

  Their glances held. Just for a moment, little more than fleeting. But enough to know that the prize crew’s leader once again shared his thoughts. Felt, too, that bare tingle of excitement smothered by a reality not so adventurous, not so romantic.

  Well, as much as it might disappoint Delia if he wrote the naked truth to her, war wasn’t a pretty story. It was just day after day, month after month of doing what had to be done.

  At Hudgins’s nod, Phin hurled the first torch as far as he could toward the aft. A second later, the lantern hit on the fore end of the deck, shattering in a whoosh of expanding flame. Phin launched the remaining torch far starboard, away from them, and turned before he could see where it landed.

  “Over we go!” Hudgins’s voice fought the wind and the quickly mounting thunder of rising flame but still made it to Phin’s receptive ears without trouble.

  He was already halfway down the ladder and soon landed in the rowboat. Even as he took his position, Hudgins landed, too, and shouted, “Row!”

  Spencer and Gleason sliced the water with the oars in a rhythm fast and smooth, propelling them toward the Sumter and away from the Golden Rocket. By the time they bumped against the familiar hull of their ship, the Yankee vessel had ignited into an inferno.

  Phin followed Spencer up the ladder and helped pull up the rowboat so they could unload it. But his gaze, like the hundred others on the deck, held fast to the blaze across the water.

  After all the crew’s talk about the blasted Yankees and how hard they hoped to hit them, after all the laughing dreams of glory and prize money, no revelry sparked the air. No cheers went up. A strange silence held the sailors immobile as the dancing, crackling glow beyond entranced them.

  A few heads shook. A few deep inhales signaled unexpected emotion. A few shuffling feet seemed inclined to leave yet remained rooted to their spots. Until now, most of the crew had served on ships much like the Golden Rocket, with her once-billowing sails.

  Just like Phin. He took a spot shoulder-to-shoulder with his friends of a few months and stared at the flaming ship that seemed, in many ways, more familiar than the Sumter. Maybe he was still green. He had taken well to the military training Semmes had been instilling in them, but the point remained that he wasn’t a naval officer. Just a businessman who loved the sea. And this wasn’t the kind of business he was used to.

  Across the water, a great snap split the air, and the mainmast of the Rocket came crashing down. The ship tilted. For now, the heat from the blaze still touched his face, heightening just slightly the temperature of the balmy Caribbean night. But soon enough it would slip under the concealing waves. Disappear, the heat along with the substance.

  Commander Semmes turned from his spot at the rail. As always, his shoulders were squared, his chin level, his spine straight. “Yonder sinks the testament to our mission, men. May she be the first of many. And may her loss be a blow to all Yankee-doodledom.”

  A chorus of muted agreement rippled through the gathered crowd. Phin whispered his “Hear, hear” along with the others and watched the ocean consume the flames. When the last tongue of orange disappeared beneath the waves, when darkness reigned on the sea once more, he turned and headed down to his hammock.

  Lantern light cast a steady glow over their cramped quarters, the shadows sharp and deep. Phin settled into his hammock, tired but not ready to sleep. So instead he pulled out the book into which he’d placed the photographs he’d brought from home.

  The first was of his parents. They looked staid and somber here, but Phin smiled at the memory of the pride in their eyes when they saw him off. His father had tried to talk him into gathering a regiment and staying near home, but hunkering down in the marshes held no appeal. Instead, he had let his mother pull all the strings her family’s connections gave her to secure this appointment aboard the Confederacy’s first commissioned cruiser.

  The next photo revealed the face of his baby sister, Sassy—Saphrona might not be a baby anymore at seventeen, but she had certainly lived up to his nickname for her. Her parting instruction had been, “Go defeat some Yankees, Phin, and make me proud. I shall die if I have to claim a coward for a brother.”

  He slid those two b
ack into their spots and smiled at the third picture, the one that had come in the first packet of letters he received in New Orleans. The prettiest features in all the Low Country dimpled up from the paper. Even in a photo, her grin conveyed imagined mischief. Her eyes seemed to gleam with that laughing light that was pure Delia.

  Spencer, in the hammock above his, leaned over and grabbed the picture from his hands. “Haven’t you memorized this by now?”

  Phin clamped down on the urge to leap out of his hammock and instead folded his arms behind his head. “Spence, one of these days you’re going to snatch something from the wrong man’s hands and get a fist in your nose.”

  Spencer chuckled, then sighed. “If Mabel looked like this, I’d have married her before I left. Still not sure why you didn’t at least put a ring on her finger.”

  He would have, if he could. Cordelia Owens was everything he’d ever wanted in a wife, and more besides. He’d always liked her, had long considered her the best of his sister’s friends. But when she’d come home from finishing school so beautiful . . . well, every man in Savannah had been vying for her attention, and who was Phin to win it? Sure, their families were friends. The Dunns were respectable. They owned a beautiful house in the city and a plantation on Tybee Island off the coast.

  But some of the other men seeking her favor owned far more—and Mr. Owens had made it quite clear that he intended to approve only the offers for his daughters that would be financially advantageous to him. With no sons to his name, Owens meant to parcel off his own holdings to his daughters, with the goal of their being able to add his land to their husbands’ lands and build an empire. Create some of the biggest, most successful plantations in Georgia.

  Hence the quick marriage between Ginny and Charlie Worth before Charlie went off to war. His plantation in the hill country abutted the Owenses’ rice plantation. Every man in Georgia knew that Cordelia’s dowry would be the indigo plantation her mother had brought to the marriage, nearer to Atlanta. And Lacy would be left with the house in Savannah someday.