"Of course, Lieutenant. Give a few to the sarge with my compliments."
It was a tired lieutenant who returned to the overlook that evening, having covered fifteen miles on foot in the course of the day. Two hours after sunset, the three lights appeared on the dark lake.
"Thar she blows," Harper quoted, choosing a curious allusion. Valentine was mentally reciting two on the land and three in the sea, and I on the outskirts of Milwaukee will be.
Harper poured his flammable liquid on two piles of wood, twelve feet apart on the lakeside of the overlook wall, and set them ablaze. One light on the boat began winking on and off, as somebody opened and closed a hooded lantern.
"Are you satisfied it's them?" Harper asked.
"Yes," answered Valentine, trying to make out the lines of the little ship.
"Then let's go down to the beach, sir, and deliver the mail," Harper said, kicking out his fires.
The ship bobbed in the small swell of the lake. The waters of Lake Michigan did not roar as they struck the shoreline, but instead gently slapped it. The lake almost seemed playful on this idyllic summer evening, and something about the cool water in the warm evening breeze made Valentine forget the dangers of the night. The men waded out, weighed down with their waterproofed message bags, moccasins tied around their necks.
A tiny dinghy met them, its sides a bare sixteen inches out of the water.
"Climb in sideways," a boy's voice said from the stern. "You'll capsize me if you try to vault in."
The Wolves threw their packs into the dink and rolled into the little boat. It settled in the water appreciably with their added weight.
Valentine looked into the stern, at the figure with the paddle. What he had thought was a young boy was in fact a young woman dressed in shapeless white canvas. She had a round face and merry eyes, looking at her passengers over freckled cheekbones.
"Nice night, eh, boys? Captain Doss sends her compliments to the representatives of the OzarkFreeTerritory and invites you aboard the yawl White Lightning," she said, flashing an impressive set of teeth.
"The what White Lightning?" Valentine asked.
"Yawl," she repeated. "You know nothing of ships, soldier?"
"Not much," Valentine admitted.
"It's a little thing, but seaworthy as a porpoise. A ship not very different from ours made it around the world with only a single man on board. Over a hundred years ago, that was."
"Good to see you again... Teri, is it?" Harper said, contemplating his soaked deerskin breeches.
"I thought you looked familiar. Aaron... no, Randall Harper. Met you twice before, I recall. But I didn't see you this spring."
"I had the overland route. I don't want it again," Harper explained.
"Well, the captain will be glad to see you. So who's this with you?"
"Lt. David Valentine. He hails from Minnesota."
She reached over to shake Valentine's hand. "Pleased to know you, Lieutenant. Teri Silvertongue, first mate of the White Lightning. Will it be possible for you gentlemen to be joining us as guests this lovely evening?"
"I can't think of anything I'd like more, Miss Silver-tongue," Valentine said, imitating her courteous phraseology. He wondered if Silvertongue was a nickname.
"We go by Mr. in the flotilla, man or woman," Silvertongue corrected. "Just as you do in the Wolves. Will you take an oar, sir?"
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Silvertongue. Sergeant Harper here didn't tell me the ship had a female crew, let alone how you expected to be addressed. Likes to keep a good thing to himself, I guess," Valentine explained, shooting a glance at Harper. He paddled for the white blob outside the gentle surf.
"Oh, there's plenty of men in the Flotilla," Silvertongue explained. "The commodore of our fleet just has a soft spot in her heart for any woman with a sad tale. It's the only soft spot she has; the woman has steel in her backbone and flint in her heart in all other matters excepting her 'poor foundlings," as she calls us. But yes, it's three women on the Lightning. But it beats life on land. The Capos just want us for breeding stock, and their gunbelt lackeys seem to think they have the right to get the job started on any girl who tickles their fancy."
"Capos?" Valentine asked.
"That's what we call the Reapers out east, handsome boy."
The dinghy reached the ship, and Valentine got a good look at the White Lightning. Her lines had kind of an off-balanced beauty, with an oversize central mast set well forward and a smaller, secondary mast projecting from far astern.