Chapter thirty-two
SmithvilleA weary Joshua Denning, despite doctor’s orders, got out of bed anyway. He was washed up and stripped to the waist, wearing only trousers, exposing the clean, white bandages on his chest and shoulder. It was warm in the room. He sat in a chair by the open window and looked upon the sparkling Cape Fear River, the waterway he had sailed many times. The outdoor air was beginning to revive him. He squinted in the brightness of the crisp, sunny day. By the position of the sun, he knew it had to be about noon. The ebbing tide was beginning to disclose the shore surrounding the islands in Buzzard’s Bay, the weedy and rocky points off Smith Island, and the beaches of Oak Island. He could see the Western Bar Channel and a half dozen Union gunboats on the open water, al
