Authors: Susan Cooper
Victory
LIVING CENTURIES APART, BUT JOINED IN AN EPIC BATTLE.
S
am Robbins is a farm boy, kidnapped to serve on HMS Victory, the ship on which Lord Nelson will die a hero's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Molly Jennings is a twenty-first-century English girl transplanted to the United States by her stepfather's job, who's fighting her own battle against loss and loneliness.
Two lives that couldn't be more different, two hundred years apart, are linked by a tiny scrap of fraying cloth, tucked into an old book. It draws Molly into Sam's world, to a moment in time that changed historyâa frightening shared moment that holds the key to secrets from the past and hope for the future.
“A vivid historical tale within the framework of a compelling modern story.” âBooklist,
starred review
“[A] compelling, tautly rigged tale.” âKirkus Reviews,
starred review
ANOTHER PAGE-TURNING, TIME-SHIFTING ADVENTURE FROM SUSAN COOPER
Also by Susan Cooper
T
HE
D
ARK
I
S
R
ISING SEQUENCE
Over Sea, Under Stone
The Dark Is Rising
Newbery Honor
Greenwitch
The Grey King
Newbery Medal
Silver on the Tree
King of Shadows
Boston Globeâ
Horn Book
Honor
The Boggart
The Boggart and the Monster
Dawn of Fear
Seaward
The Magician's Boy
illustrated by Serena Riglietti
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2006 by Susan Cooper
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and related logo are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Also available in a Margaret K. McElderry Books hardcover edition. Designed by Ann Zeak
The text of this book was set in Fournier. First Aladdin Paperbacks edition December 2007
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Cooper, Susan, 1935â Victory / Susan Cooper.â1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A high-seas adventure that follows the stories of an eleven-year-old girl in the present day, and an eleven-year-old boy in 1803 serving in the English Royal Navy aboard the HMS
Victory
, commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1477-8 (hc)
ISBN-10: 1-4169-1477-3 (hc)
1. Great BritainâHistory, Navalâ19th centuryâJuvenile fiction. [1. Great Britainâ History, Navalâ19th centuryâFiction. 2. Victory (Man-of-war). 3. Sea stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.C7878Sd 2006
[Fic]âdc22Â Â Â 2005016747
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1478-5 (pbk)
ISBN-10: 1-4169-1478-1 (pbk)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4424-5897-0 (eBook)
For Dudley
in affectionate memory
and in return for
“Ramage's Diamond”
Chapter 5: Molly In Connecticut
Chapter 9: Molly Aboard HMS Victory
Chapter 10: Sam 21 October 1805
Chapter 13: Molly In Connecticut
Chapter 15: Molly In Connecticut
LORD NELSON
Engraving from a portrait by John Hoppner, 1801, used as a frontispiece in
The Life of Nelson
by Robert Southey. National Portrait Gallery, London
Â
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange. . . .
The Tempest
William Shakespeare
T
he sound of the drums was like the beating of a great slow heart. Muffled drums, they were, with black cloth over them. Everything was muffled that day, even the grey clouded sky. All of England was mourning the death of one man, and all the people of London were out on the streets leading to St. Paul's, and all the air filled with the slow beat of those drums and the unending slow march of thousands of feet.