Chapter Nine #3
The moment they step outside, Jib comes bounding from behind the stables.
Isabel stops to stroke the dog’s head, then runs to catch up with Jack.
She takes three steps for his every two while he asks her about the information she got from Lieutenant Sowerby.
The wind yanks at her dress, making it flap around her legs as she walks.
After the run from Helford, she feels every step pull in her calves.
A lengthy march along the edge of the cliff, made more difficult by the pelting rain, takes them to a point at which the sea cuts into the land, creating a wide cove.
Jack leads the way to a path so steep it’s hard to imagine the donkeys they use to carry the contraband could make the descent without breaking their legs.
The high cliff wraps around the cove, and at the center of it lies the Rapide, a brown-hulled mass of rigging and red furled sails.
A rowboat sits on the beach, waiting to carry them to the ship.
Even in the shelter of the cove the waves are such that the Rapide is swaying at anchor like a colt ready to leap.
Jack stands next to her. “Isn’t she marvelous?”
In spite of her worries about keeping her distance, the sight of the ship thrills her. The innkeeper of the Crown, Jack being a smuggler—none of it matters. Here is a ship to carry her to sea, and such a ship. She says, “She’s everything a ship should be.”
Jack grins back at her. “She is, isn’t she? She’s a good little ship. Fast, too, with wind like this.” He turns to Oppy, who emerges from the path below. “Are we fully loaded?”
“Aye, Captain. We’re ready to sail when the sun sets. John Spargo sends word, asking whether you want a headsail set. He worries about breaking the sheer while stowing the anchor.”
Jack looks hard at the ship, gauging the wind. “I’m inclined to agree, but I’ll go aboard directly—I’ll speak with him myself.”
“Aye, Captain,” Oppy says. “Choppy out there.”
Jack nods. “We’ll have to tack out of the cove, but then we can catch the northeasterly. What do you reckon, Oppy, shall we set a record for speed?”
“May make as much as fourteen knots, Captain.”
“Just so,” Jack says happily as Oppy goes ahead of them. She half expected Oppy to say something about women on ships.
“What cargo do you carry?” Isabel asks Jack as he crouches at the top of the cliff.
“Tin. They pay a decent penny for it in France.”
“And what will you bring back?”
“All sorts,” Jack says, turning to face the cliff as he climbs down. “Here, give me your hand. You don’t want to misstep on this rock here.”
As they half walk, half climb down, Jack says over his shoulder, “The bulk of the cargo will be made up of brandy if I can get the price I want. But we’ll carry much besides. Cocoa, lace, silks, tea, coffee.”
“So much?” she says.
“We’d take more if we had space for it. I hope to spend a year or two sailing in the Rapide and then have a hundred-ton ship built. Another cutter or maybe a lugger.”
Down on the wet sand, they’re sheltered from the wind, but not from the rain.
“Will!” Jack calls to a tall, lanky youth, who comes running over, red knit cap in hand.
Up close, she sees his breeches have several patches on them.
They’re too short as well and too wide at the top, where he has tied them around his waist with a length of rope.
Jack says, “Have you got the fish?” and the boy nods.
“A herring, Captain.” He hands the small reed basket he carries to Jack, who opens it and whistles appreciatively.
“A fine specimen.”
“Caught only this midday, sir.”
“Well done, Will. It’s a shame not to eat it, but I shall make the offering now.”
“The Bucca will enjoy it, sir,” the boy says seriously, and Jack smiles and says he is certain the old merman will.
Will puts his cap back on and looks at Isabel. “Who are you, then?”
“Mind your manners,” Jack says. “This is Mrs. Isabel Henley, a widow of Trafalgar, and a particular friend of mine. She is to come along on our voyage and help me with the books.” The way he says it almost sounds as if he speaks in jest. Did he mean it when he told her she could be his bookkeeper for the duration of the voyage or was he merely humoring her?
“A widow of Trafalgar?” the boy says, fumbling with his cap and nearly dropping it. He makes an awkward bow. “Will Pengelly, madam, at your service.”
Isabel inclines her head. “I’m pleased to meet you, Will Pengelly.”
Jack says, “Will here has sailed with us since he lost his father at the age of twelve, four years ago. You won’t see a man climb the rigging faster.”
“Dick is faster than me, sir,” says Will, glowing. “Mrs. Henley, would you tell me of your husband? I long to hear about Trafalgar. Pray, what ship was he on?”
“The Neptune.”
“Under Captain Fremantle! I wonder if your husband met Lord Nelson?”
“He did,” Isabel says. “I shall tell you about it on our way to France, if you like.”
Oppy says, “She’s not just a widow of Trafalgar, Will. She’s the daughter of the Sea Bucca.”
“You’re the Sea Bucca’s child they’re talking about?” Will wrings his cap.
“I’m not really,” she says, stepping away from the others to watch Jack, who has taken the basket with the fish to the bottom of the cliff, where a cave pushes deep into the rock. He places the fish on a stone at the entrance and says something she cannot hear over the wind.
When he returns, she says under her breath, “You don’t really believe the Sea Bucca will take that fish.”
Jack says, “It’s a lucky gull that gets it, most likely. It doesn’t matter whether I believe it or not. My crew believes it.”
“That’s why you do it? Because your men are superstitious?”
“I wouldn’t call it superstitious. Cautious, rather. But yes, that’s why I do it—that and the off chance there may be a way to gain fair winds from the Bucca after all.”
“You’re mad,” she whispers. “All of you are mad.”
He chuckles. “And you choose to sail with us.”
The surf washes over her leather slippers as she steps into the rowboat.
There’s water in the bottom, which Dick bails out with a bucket before they push off from the beach.
The sky is dark as if it’s already dusk.
Rain whips her face, but through the rain curtain, a pale, fuzzy sun is visible, low above the headland, or is it the moon, risen early?
Waves rock the boat. The men pull on their oars, muscles straining under their shirts.
“We’ll have to tack out of the cove,” Jack says, “before we can get the wind behind us.” The ship is much taller than it looks from the beach.
Getting into it from the rowboat will be like climbing to the roof of the cottage with the cottage jerking about like a fish on a line.
A Jacob’s ladder dangles down the hull, leading up to the deck.
“I’ll go behind you,” Jack says, steadying her as she reaches for the ladder.
The gap between the boat and the ship yaws.
Her stomach lurches, her hands slip on the rope, and then she’s across, scrambling up the slick, wet side of the ship.
Two pairs of hands grab her under the arms and lift her onto the deck, and for a moment she’s on her knees, catching her breath, her hands flat on the deck, searching for something to hold on to.
“Welcome aboard,” Jack says, helping her up. “You’ll want to clap a hand on there. You’ll get your sea legs fast in this weather.”
Her stomach continues to lurch as she stands. If it’s this bad in the cove, she cannot imagine what the sea will be like outside the shelter of the cliffs. Maybe this was a mistake.
Jack disappears the moment she’s on her feet.
She hardly sees him during the next two hours as the men prepare the Rapide for departure.
Night folds over the cove, stealing away the clouds.
As the rain abates, the three-quarter moon casts a silver path on the seething water.
Once the anchor is weighed, Jack calls a series of commands: “Stations for making sail! Lay aloft sail loosers!” Followed by, “Lay out and let loose!” once Will and a red-haired man called George Cox are aloft.
When everyone’s ready, his voice booms across the shriek of the wind: “Stand by! Let fall sheet!” And, to a boy not much older than Will, “Look alive there, Betham!”
The wind blows hard into the north part of the cove and it takes the crew a full hour to tack out of it.
At last, the Rapide clears the arms of the cliff.
The ship jerks, and then they aren’t sailing but flying along the headland, the moon riding high and the waves black around the hull.
Isabel wants more than anything to savor this moment, but the nausea simmering in her rises so sharply into her throat she barely makes it to the edge of the deck in time, gripping the ropes strung there for safety with both hands as she loses the biscuit she had for lunch to the heaving sea.
A cold sweat drips down her face and the nape of her neck, running into her stays.
The smell of wood and rope and tar is in her nose, mixing with that of the ocean and the bile in her mouth.
The ribbons of her bonnet have come loose and she has not the strength to retie them, so she clutches the hat with one hand while gripping the rope with the other.
Spray hits her in the face and she shivers as she retches again, spitting. The wind whips the sea into a frenzy. It goes on forever. Eventually, the sickness subsides enough she lies down on the deck, still holding the rope, the pitching sea just beneath her.
After what feels like a small eternity, she crawls back to the center of the ship, and as suddenly as if someone has snuffed out a candle, the nausea is gone.
Wiping her mouth with the sleeve of her cloak, she rises to her feet and, gripping the lines, makes her way along the slippery deck to the rear of the ship, where Jack stands next to Oppy, who holds the wheel.
“How are you holding up?” Jack calls when he spots her. His woolen jacket drips water. He’s clutching his hat, a black tall felt affair with a narrow brim, in one hand. His hair whips around his face. “Fair bit of wind, isn’t it? We’re making fifteen knots!”
“Is that good?” she asks, pushing the wet hair out of her eyes as she reties her bonnet. She must’ve lost several hairpins.
“Good? It’s bloody amazing! I’ve not seen her go faster. Have you, Oppy?”
“I haven’t, Captain.”
Jack says, “Does your constitution agree with sailing a heavy sea, Isabel? You looked a bit peaky earlier.”
“Losing my lunch seems to have cured me,” she says, holding on to the nearest line with both hands. “Though the same can’t be said for some of your crew. I saw at least three others cling to the rope with their heads over the edge.”
“This wind doesn’t make it easy, but they always find their sea legs in the end.
” He glances at her and says, “You do look quite recovered. Remarkable. Well. You had best get down below. It’s going to get rougher, still.
” He indicates the boiling sky. A low, rolling thunder sounds in the distance.
“It’s all hands on deck for the rest of us tonight. ”
She says, “You’re three men short on a crew of twelve.”
“I hope for not much longer. What of it?”
“I can help.”
He takes a long look at her, then glances up at the sky again. The ship pitches forward and Isabel grips the line harder. After a moment he says, “I can’t deny I could use the extra pair of hands, but you’d be safer down below.”
She remembers his bemused look when he mentioned the bookkeeping earlier.
His comments, too, about how he’d expect her to work the same as the other men—he was jesting, wasn’t he?
And she, in her excitement, had taken him at his word.
But she can work the same as the men, and this is her chance to prove it to him. “What can I do?” she says.
He looks so torn she almost wants to take back the words, to tell him of course she’ll go belowdecks, where she’ll be safe. But this is her chance. “Jack,” she says. “I can help.”
“Keep her steady, Oppy,” Jack says. “South by south-west.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Turning to Isabel, Jack says, “I’ll take you to Harry. He’ll put you to work.”