Arabella of Mars(55)
The carpenter and his men, meanwhile, had managed to cobble together a sort of crossbow from a long, springy plank and several yards of cordage. This they had fastened to the forecastle deck, arranged to fire its projectile just larboard of the figurehead.
Arabella, still stitching as fast as she could, stole an occasional glance over one shoulder as Stross and Higgs packed the drogue into as compact a bundle as possible and placed it in the improvised crossbow’s basket. They then called all available waisters—those not currently occupied with stitching—to the forecastle, while a series of commands from the quarterdeck sent the topmen scurrying aloft.
Only Arabella and a few other waisters were left to continue fashioning drogues. Some of the idlers, including the surgeon and Pemiter the one-legged cook, took the topmen’s places. She helped them to understand what needed to be done, and they set to their sewing with a grim determination entirely unlike any thing Arabella had ever seen on land or in the air. The cook’s technique had only enthusiasm to recommend it, but the surgeon worked with astonishing precision and rapidity, his long pale fingers flying.
While Stross conferred with the waisters gathered in the forecastle, all the sails came down, leaving Diana completely bare-masted for the first time Arabella could recall. Soon a stiff breeze began to ruffle the billows of fabric around her, as the wind current was now able to slip past the ship nearly unimpeded. After so many weeks of near perfect calm on deck, other than when the pulsers were being employed, it was a very strange sensation, which pointed out how very unusual this maneuver would be.
Stross sprang to the masthead. “Listen up, lads!” he called. “If this works, there’ll be a h—l of a jerk. Be prepared to hang on tight!” He then descended to the quarterdeck for a muttered conference with Richardson and the other officers.
Arabella made sure her safety line was snug about her ankle and there was a solid handhold nearby. She kept stitching; the second drogue was nearly complete.
“Crossbow men, haul away!” came the command from the quarterdeck. The waisters in the forecastle, bracing themselves against capstans, masts, and pinrails as best they could, began to haul on a line, drawing the crossbow’s string with the bundled drogue back and back. Soon the line was quivering with tension, the men groaning and sweating with the effort.
“Away drogue!”
The waisters released the line, which whipped hissing along the deck, and with a great deep thudding vibration the crossbow flung the bundled drogue away downwind. The cable behind the drogue paid out rapidly as the package of linen and rattan diminished in the distance.
And then, suddenly, it reached the end of the cable. Immediately the drogue snapped open.
The deck jerked out from beneath Arabella, sending her and the rest of the drogue-makers crashing into the quarterdeck’s forward bulkhead in a great untidy pile of men and rope and linen. With many shouts and curses—and Arabella using her arms to fend away any hands that approached her chest—they began to untangle themselves.
She shook herself free from the imprisoning fabric. A torrent of commands was flowing from the quarterdeck; in the rigging above, topmen scrambled to sheet home sails and bowse up the yards. Soon the force that had propelled her against the bulkhead changed direction, sending her and every other loose man and object sliding to starboard. Unaccustomed winds buffeted her face and threatened to whip the linen away into the blue.
The ship was swinging from the drogue, she knew—swinging like a vast pendulum, moving crosswise to the great current that still carried her forward at a speed of thousands of knots. Arabella hoped the linen, the stitching, the rattan, the cables, the knots would hold. The whole ship thrummed like a bowstring.
Arabella fetched up against a coaming and made herself fast there. As quickly as she could, she found her work and resumed her sewing. The second drogue must be complete, and well made, very soon. At one point she drove the needle all the way through her thumb, but though she cried out from the pain she drew it right out and kept working.
“Cast away drogue!” came the command. A moment later the cable zipped away across the deck; the pressure on Arabella’s back vanished. Even as she floated up into the whipping air she kept stitching.
“Ready drogue number two!” came the cry from the quarterdeck. Nearly done!
Stross appeared above Arabella. “Come on, lad!” he cried, holding out a desperate hand. “We’re falling free!”
She bit off the last stitch. “Here it is, sir!” She wadded up the ungainly package and thrust it at him. He and Higgs carried it away, while Arabella joined the cook in his work on the third drogue.
*
And so it went with the second drogue and the third and the fourth and the fifth. After she handed the final drogue to Stross, who looked as weary as she felt, she could do no more than float nearly insensate near the quarterdeck. The final thrum and jerk, still an impact though no surprise, barely impinged upon her consciousness as she fell heavily against the bulkhead below her. Only a few remaining scraps of linen cushioned her fall. She didn’t care.
For the fifth time the ship swung through the air, hanging impossibly from a great bag of linen. The force on Arabella’s back grew, changed direction, then slacked away.
She opened her eyes. The cable stretching away to the final drogue now pointed well to starboard, no longer taut and straight but slack, a long gentle curve that grew more and more pronounced as the drogue at its end began to fold and tumble like a flower losing its bloom.