Arabella of Mars(27)

Then she noticed the sensation of warmth spreading down her throat and through her stomach.

At her expression the men all laughed again. “What is in this?” she asked.

“Four parts water, one part good Navy rum, and a bit of lime juice,” said Young. He raised his cup to her and drained it off.

Four to one … this stuff was nearly as strong as Madeira! And her father had only let her have a sip of that at Christmas! “Is there any thing else to drink?”

“You can have it with small beer instead of the water.”

“Oh.”

She would have to be careful. If she allowed herself to become at all tipsy, her secret would surely be undone.

*

After dinner, Arabella was sent to the kitchen, which was called the “galley,” to clean up—a greasy, smelly, backbreaking task. The cook, a one-legged man called Pemiter, took what she felt was entirely too much pleasure in having someone who ranked even lower than himself to order about, and by the time she was finished scrubbing the last wooden plate she was nearly dead with fatigue.

The sun had already set when she emerged from the galley, and the lights of London shimmered in the Thames. Carriages with their lanterns clopped across a bridge nearby.

She took a moment to regard the view before searching for her hammock. London! How she had wondered what that shining capital city might be like, reading a book by the fire before bedtime in the manor house at Woodthrush Woods. And now here she was, about to depart it, having seen practically nothing of it.

She wondered when, or if, she would see it again.

Then, suddenly, she remembered that, despite her best intentions, she had not sent word to her mother about her situation. A sharp pang of guilt ran through her at her preoccupied self-absorption.

Though the deck was nearly deserted, one elderly airman sat quietly nearby, smoking a pipe. “Excuse me, sir,” she said to him, “but might there be any way for me to mail a letter before we depart?”

The man glared from beneath his wild, gray brows, seemingly annoyed at her polite query, and she realized she had forgotten her station and slipped into an inappropriately elevated diction. She would have to take care not to do that again. “Last boat’s already gone,” he grunted, and turned away.

Her eyes threatened to spill over with tears, and she wiped them quickly with her rough sleeve. But now there was nothing to be done about it.

The lights of London suddenly seemed ten thousand miles away.

*

The hammock was right where she had left it, alone on the shelf. She gathered it up and returned belowdecks, which had again transformed itself in her absence. All lights had been extinguished, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the dark she perceived that the space was now filled with dozens of bundles—airmen in their hammocks—slung from the overhead beams. Many snored with great vigor; a few engaged in low, muttered conversation.

Ducking beneath the sleeping men, she made her way to the space she had been told was hers. And, indeed, though the room was too dark to read the numbers, she found a pair of unoccupied hooks in the right place, with nearly a foot and a half of space clear between the snoring bundles to either side. Standing on a barrel, she looped the ropes of her hammock over the hooks.

Getting herself into the hammock was another problem altogether. She found herself nearly glad of the close press of bodies, for without them to lean on she would certainly have tumbled unceremoniously to the floor—or “deck”—below more than once. As it was, she was forced to apologize repeatedly to those she had jostled.

Finally she found herself, fully clothed, settled and stable in the hammock’s tight embrace, and tried to sleep. But, tired though she was, the sound and movement of so many men sleeping nearby, not to mention their warmth and smell and the rocking motion of the ship, were too unfamiliar and sleep refused to come.

Had it really been just five weeks since that horrible black-bordered letter had arrived? The time since then seemed an eternity crowded with dreadful people, hideous food, filth, stink, and endless wearying labor.

And she would never see her beloved father again.

Lying in the swaying, odorous darkness, Arabella wept.





2

IN TRANSIT, 1813





8

DEPARTURE

The next thing Arabella knew, she was being roughly shaken awake. Heart pounding, she immediately sat up, determined to get the better of her assailant.

But it was her hammock that got the better of her. As soon as she sat up, it turned over and dumped her unceremoniously on the hard and filthy deck.

Shaking her head, spitting out sawdust, she struggled to her feet and raised her fists. But there was no assailant. Instead, the pitch-dark deck was crowded with airmen, yawning, stretching, and scratching themselves with vigor.

“Out or down, lads!” came an enthusiastic cry. “Rise and shine! Cosmic tide waits for no man!”

Lamps guttered to life down the length of the hold, helping every one to find his way as he took his hammock down and rolled it into a tight little bundle. Arabella, blinking, did her best to follow their example, but her hammock wound up little more than an untidy tangle of rope and fabric.

Once the hammocks were stowed on deck—it was a chill morning, the sun not yet risen and the city lights mostly extinguished—and most every man had taken his turn at the head, they all returned below and divided into their messes for a breakfast of porridge oats and good strong tea. Famished, Arabella shoveled more than half of her oats into her stomach before she realized they were actually quite tasty.