Arabella of Mars(28)

Arabella again drew clean-up duty in the galley. Though the one enormous pot was heavily encrusted with oats, cleaning it or “hogging it out” was not nearly as bad as the previous night’s cabbage and horsemeat. And the cook let her have a small portion of raisins left over from the officers’ breakfast.

As she came out on deck, munching her raisins and watching the eastern horizon begin to lighten, Arabella mused that perhaps this life was not as bad as all that.

*

“Ahoy the boat!” came a cry to Arabella’s left. From across the water came the reply, “Furnace-men!” She turned to see, making its way across the Thames in the pale light of the rising sun, a most extraordinary sight.

A huge boat, very wide and shallow, was being rowed toward Diana from the riverbank by two dozen grunting, heaving men. At the center of the boat, swiveling atop a sort of plinth, was a barrel the size of a hogshead, closed with a lid at one end, and at the other …

An enormous canvas tube, three or four feet in diameter, stretched from the bottom of the barrel down to the water on the far side of the boat. From that point the tube, bulging and trembling as though it were stuffed with fidgeting mice, floated on the Thames from the boat all the way back to the bank, where it entered a gaping door in the sea-wall. Above that door loomed a square brick building, atop which four huge chimneys belched out vast quantities of smoke.

Arabella gaped at the extraordinary craft. The laboring oarsmen were all black with coal-dust, and the grime on their faces was streaked with sweat though the morning air was quite chill.

She understood why as the boat drew alongside and was made fast to Diana with stout cables. Once the boat was secured, the oarsmen unscrewed the lid from the barrel … and a great wind, hotter than the sultriest August day and smelling of coal-smoke, roared from it with tremendous force. The canvas tube wilted slightly, yet so great was the rush of air that it remained mostly inflated. Arabella, fifty feet or more away, had to hold her cap on to her head with both hands.

Two men leapt down from Diana, bearing a similar canvas tube with them, and attached it to the open end of the barrel. At once the tube from the ship snapped taut, and the roar of wind from the open barrel was replaced by a thrumming through the deck beneath Arabella’s feet.

A rough hand smacked Arabella’s shoulder. It was Faunt, his expression stern. “Bear a hand, man!” he said.

“Aye, aye, sir!” she said without thinking.

The enormous box, the size of a carriage, into which the balloon envelopes had been stowed the previous day had been opened again, and from its top emerged a gradually inflating mass of Venusian silk. Glowing in the light of the rising sun, the three huge balloons resembled white fluffy clouds drifting in over some far horizon.

But they were not clouds, they were not fluffy, and they were not far. They were gigantic masses of fabric, as huge and ungainly as a thousand wet bed-sheets, and as the furnace-hot air began to fill them it took every bit of the entire crew’s strength and skill to keep them from tangling with each other and with the net of silk ropes that caged them and tethered them to the ship. Light and smooth though the Venusian silk was, tugging and hauling on it soon left Arabella’s hands red and sore and blistered.

*

An hour later, Arabella lay panting on the deck, watching the balloons as they firmed up and grew taut so high above her. The sun was well up now, and the bright white Venusian silk gleamed like a trio of full moons brought down to Earth. Unlike the previous day—when, she knew now, they had been filled only with cold air, to test for leaks—the balloons not only swelled against the constraining nets, but strained upwards as though desperate to reach the sky. The ship, too, seemed to feel the upward pull, riding high in the water and rocking in a new and unsteady motion bearing more kinship to the wind than the wave.

“Trim ballast and prepare to cast off!” came a command from the quarterdeck. It was Kerrigan, the chief mate, and was echoed, reechoed, and amplified down the length of the ship. Airmen sprang into action, many hurrying below, others hauling on ropes. Arabella had no idea what to do, but her messmate Young sat unmoving on the deck, so she did the same.

The ship began to shudder and lurch as Kerrigan called out command after incomprehensible command. Each one was repeated, or expanded into a series of other commands, by lesser officers, who relayed it to the airmen designated “captains” of the waist, the fo’c’sle, and other parts of the ship, who in turn directed their men to perform whatever task was desired. This Arabella knew in theory … in practice, it meant that she did whatever Faunt, the captain of the waist, told her to. And when, as was so often the case, she had no idea what his aerial gibberish meant, she could only watch the other members of her mess and try to do the same.

The captain stood beside Kerrigan, arms folded behind his back, the calm in the center of the storm of activity. He watched every thing, though, and from time to time he would mutter softly to Kerrigan, a word or two immediately translated into a fusillade of shouted commands.

He had not spoken to Arabella once after handing her off to Kerrigan. She hoped he had not forgotten her.

Now Kerrigan cried “Cast off the furnace-gut!” and the already feverish activity of the men grew still more agitated. Young poked her elbow. “This’ll be a sight,” he said, and moved to the rail. She followed, and with him she looked down at the gray Thames where it lapped Diana’s hull. The ship was riding much higher now, five feet or more of dripping khoresh-wood showing above the waterline.