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Back Voyage of the Sparrowhawk Save as PDF
Chapters (47)
  1. Cover
  2. PROLOGUE
  3. PROLOGUE
  4. PART I
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. PART II
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Chapter Nineteen
  25. Chapter Twenty
  26. Chapter Twenty-One
  27. PART III
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. PART IV
  34. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  35. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  36. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  37. Chapter Thirty
  38. Chapter Thirty-One
  39. Chapter Thirty-Two
  40. Chapter Thirty-Three
  41. Chapter Thirty-Four
  42. PART V
  43. Chapter Thirty-Five
  44. Chapter Thirty-Six
  45. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  46. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  47. EPILOGUE

But Moune’s letters stopped when Lotti went to school. The war went on, and there were no holidays in France. There were, in fact, no holidays at all for Lotti. Her life, which had been so rich and full of love, was reduced almost exclusively to the grounds of her school, where she remained for the next four and a half years, homesick, lonely and absolutely friendless.

Then, in the spring of 1919, she got herself expelled.

Which is where our story begins.

PART I

Chapter One

It was the first April since the war. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the scent of blossoms wafted on the breeze. Birds sang, and the people of Great Barton smiled at each other in the street.

A cheerful day, then, with the world waking up to the possibility that all was not cold and dark and fighting. As Ben ran across the meadows toward the canal with his dog, Elsie, at his heels and a rucksack on his back, he felt almost happy.

It was just over eight months since Nathan had gone to France, to visit Sam in the army hospital where he was being treated for a head wound. Eight months almost to the day since the letter came from the farmer with whom Nathan had been staying, to say that the hospital had been bombed and that Nathan had been killed. Just under eight months since the telegram came from the War Office saying Sam was missing. The longest, hardest eight months of Ben’s life, but today things were changing.

Today, Ben was back in charge.

When Nathan went to France, rather than leave Ben and Elsie alone on the Sparrowhawk as Ben had wanted, he had trusted them to the care of a local woman, Mercy Jenkins. Mercy had been kind. After Nathan died, rather than put Ben in the care of the local authorities, who would have taken Elsie away and sent Ben back to an orphanage, she let him stay on with her.

“Just until we hear what’s happened to his brother,” she wrote to her husband away at the front. But then Mercy’s husband had also been killed, and a few months later she decided to leave Great Barton to go and live with her sister on a farm in Wales.

“You can come with me, if you like,” she had said to Ben. “We’ll need a hard-working lad.”

But Ben had no intention of going with Mercy. What Ben wanted was to live on the Sparrowhawk and wait for Sam to come home.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll stay.”

“You can’t stay on your boat alone, Ben, you’re too young.”

“I won’t be alone!” Ben smiled, as widely as he could. “I was about to tell you! I got a letter from the War Office.”

Mercy frowned. “I didn’t see no letter.”