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For several days after the incident with Philo on the tenth of December, Tom had no time to visit Sarah. He was in charge of several details throwing up barricades in the city's streets. The Army's plan was to fight house-by-house for Savannah.
Then, on the fifteenth, Sarah heard a loud knock at the door. In the hallway packing valuable ornaments to be hidden from the Yankees, she responded quickly to the knock. It was Tom.
She greeted him warmly. "I'm so happy to see you! I was worried something had happened. Nobody seems to know what's going on, and everybody's been saying....."
"Sarah," he interrupted, "I bring you...terrible news. Please come into the parlor and sit down. What I have to tell you....."
She followed him. He motioned her to a chair near the warmth of the fire and took up a position in front of the mantelpiece. His face was sad. His eyes looked directly into hers.
"You've heard something about your family in New Orleans, haven't you?" she ventured.
"No, not my family," he said, fidgeting with the hilt of the sword he always wore at his side. "It's not my family, Sarah. It's yours. I mean..."
He winced slightly as if having difficulty with the words, then proceeded: "Miz Ruth...Captain Sam...his crew and all their folks...that Captain Duncan who was here...they're gone, Sarah."
She clasped her hands. "I don't know what you mean," she responded nervously.
"It is so hard...for me to...tell you this," he stumbled on, "but I must. A Federal warship...patrolling the blockade..." - the words now came in a rush - "it chased the Belle of Savannah and turned on it with a tremendous cannonade. The Belle fairly lifted out of the water and then just upended and sank. A privateer weaving through the embargo said he never saw anything happen so fast. Poof! The Belle was gone! They would hardly have known what hit them. The privateer got away. His craft was light and small, too fast for the warship to catch. The privateer knew Captain Sam. He knew the Belle of Savannah. There can't be any doubt."
Trembling, Sarah waved her hands in disbelief. "No, no, it couldn't have been the Belle! She sailed on the night of the tenth. This is the fifteenth. They must be in the Bahamas by now! He's wrong! That privateer made a mistake!"
Tom shook his head. "Sarah, it's hard for you, I know, but you must believe me. It was the Belle. The privateer encountered a passel of Yankee patrollers off McQueens Island on the way into the Savannah River. That was on the eleventh, in the afternoon of the day he had watched the Belle sink in the morning. He had to heel to get away from them and make a run for the open sea. It took him four days to sneak back in because it looks like the whole Federal Navy's out there to make sure no one escapes from Sherman. There is no peradventure, Sarah. The Belle of Savannah went down."
Immobilized when the truth of his news sank in, Sarah made no further response. She sat still as a statue, her mind frozen in limbo.
Shattered to see her like this, Tom threw all discretion to the wind and fell on his knees before her. Taking her small hands in his, he kissed the fingers one by one.
"Sarah, my darling," he whispered, "they didn't suffer. It was over so fast. Don't worry, dearest. I'm here. I'll take care of you. We have each other now."
He looked up at her worshipfully. She did not appear to know that he was there.
He rose to his feet and stood quietly in thought for a moment, then spoke with a sense of resolution: "You may not be able to hear me, but the time has come for me to speak. We are surrounded by a world that is dying. Somehow we are going to survive it, no matter what the odds. You and I are going to find a place in the new one, and we are going to make a new life. I love you, Sarah. I want you for my wife!"
She stared emptily into space and did not answer.
Tom left the house to return to the work of the war.
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