Pain . . . Rolling over onto my good side, away from the ache, I try to put disturbing thoughts of death out of my half-awake mind. Gradually falling back to sleep, I’m drawn through a haze by a beckoning, distant figure . . . myself . . . standing on a gunwale. I point my cutlass down at enraged, screaming men in a smaller ship. Grappling hooks thrown and set. Cannon booming. Acrid smoke from exploding gunpowder fills my nostrils. In mortal fear, I’m screaming too, but can’t hear the sound of my own voice.
    The captain gives the command to board. Calum jumps, and I follow, landing on others bunched up along the rail. Losing balance . . . teetering . . . grasp a shroud to keep from falling. An American seaman misses with a pike thrust; I grab the shaft and swing my cutlass, gashing the side of his head. He drops, and I jump onto the deck. A rebel shoots me. Ahhh-God! Falling. A sword slashes my face. Somebody collapses against me. There’s a lot of blood—Calum’s blood!—gushing from a neck wound. I press my hand on his neck to try to stop the blood—
   Marine Lieutenant Nathaniel Armstrong jolted awake. Groggily, he moved his legs to the edge of the bed, pushed himself up, and sat there rubbing his eyes. He rose unsteadily, walked to the washstand, lowered his head over the basin and poured a pitcher of water over it, supporting himself on a bent arm. Water dripped from his long hair into the basin.
    Damme, why did I dream that again? he asked himself. . . . my first battle and the slow, agonizing death of Calum . . . just eighteen. It must be because I’m home.
    The dawn flamed through the narrow opening between the drawn curtains and cast a long shaft of sunlight across the floor and up the wall. Nathaniel dried his face and hair in a towel and collected his thoughts. After putting on his breeches and a shirt, he walked barefooted from the bedroom, down the hall, and into the parlor, dimly lit by slivers of morning light, to a closed coffin sitting on the dining room table. Opening the lid, he looked at the corpse of his aunt, his surrogate mother, who had raised him from the age of eight. She appeared at peace with a slight smile; even in death at age fifty-nine, her fine-featured face was handsome.
    He had rushed home from London on New Year’s Day 1787, upon receiving a letter that she was gravely ill, but arrived too late—the final evening of her wake. An old friend, Mr. Fiddes, invited him to stay overnight with his family, but Nathaniel declined, wanting to spend a last night in his boyhood home. His aunt’s body held no fear for him, nor ghosts; he had made peace with death’s specter.
    It’s ironic, Nathaniel thought as he looked at his aunt, she’d been worried I’d die first. She tried to keep me from joining my father’s regiment because of the war and her fear that I’d be killed—and I was afraid I was goin’ to miss it! Who would have believed back then that the war with our American colonies would go on for years longer?
    He recalled that she had said, "I told you courageous stories about your father and gave you adventure novels because you were being raised without a father, not to encourage you to follow in his footsteps. You have too much to offer to throw it all away in the marines."
    But her concerns had had no effect on him, an ungrateful youth, who at sixteen joined the marines with his best mate Calum, leaving behind the only person who had stepped forward to raise him. Later, he realized that she wanted him to be around into her old age. A widow without children, she had no one else.
    Feeling guilty, Nathaniel patted her cold hands resting on her Bible. Remembering how she loved poetry and appreciated his poor efforts at writing it, he opened the curtains of the window to let the sun stream in and sat down at her writing table. He would write an elegiac poem for her alone; he would not make a copy. It would express his sorrow and hope that he would see her again to make amends for his selfishness. Writing quickly, he allowed his feelings to flow:

            Death is not the end, but the beginning,
            For one whose goodness has shone.
            The sorrows of this world receding,
            You begin the journey alone.