By Fickle Winds Blown

by Maryk Lewis

until tomorrow when it will be bent on to the foot of the sky-sail,” Andy explained. “That will make it the starboard sky-sail sheet.”

  “Will make what the starboard sky-sail sheet?” Jess asked, puzzled. “I can’t see any sheet.”

  “This rope, you landlubber,” Andy replied with a superior air. “The ropes that control sails from underneath are called sheets. The ones that pull them up at the top are called halyards. This one gets its name because its going to be attached to the bottom of the sky-sail on the starboard side.”

  “So every rope on the ship has its own special name?”

  “Every last one of them,” he confirmed with a pleased grin. “We might make a sailor of you yet.”

  A roar from the boatswain caused Andy to jump guiltily, and he darted away with his cord to secure another sheet to the other end of the same spar.

  “Come on, Jess,” Sarah said, “we’re holding up the work.”

  “He called me a landlubber,” Jess complained, as they headed for the great cabin looking for Dr Reade.

  “You’re lucky,” Sarah smiled knowingly. “My first beau called me a muttonhead.”

  “My first beau?” Jess wondered. “He was trying to impress you, like they all do.”

  “He was talking to you, little sister. You wait and see what other things he manages to call you. You wanted an admirer. You’ve got one.”

  Four

  “Oh, he can’t be. You’re mistaken,” Jess denied, but all the same, she felt a strange glow creeping through her. “How old do you think he is?”

  “He’s thirteen,” Angus MacGillivray answered unexpectedly, popping out of his galley, and overhearing her as she approached. “You watch that young fellow. He has big ideas for himself.”

  Jess’s eyes popped. She was embarrassed, appalled. Nobody else was supposed to hear what she had asked Sarah, and she had still to learn that very little could be kept private on a ship. The cook didn’t seem to notice her discomfiture, however, and he invited them into his galley where he had hot soup and doorsteps of fresh steaming bread for them.

  After their luncheon, Jess was set to peeling potatoes, and scrubbing carrots for the evening meal, while Sarah went off to help Gil Inkster check the medical stores as they were delivered on board. The surgeon and the matron had gone ashore again, and were not expected back that day. They had passengers and crew to examine at the owners’ offices in the city.

  “How will we know what stores there should be, and whether we’re getting the right ones?” Sarah asked.

  “There are lists of what there should be,” Gil said, “and we’ll just have to hope that everything’s labelled correctly.”

  Much of the work involved being shut away together in the doctor’s cabin counting out pills, and jars of ointments and potions. Laurie made himself useful fetching and carrying the smaller parcels as they came aboard at the gangway. Phyllis simply curled up on the doctor’s bunk, and went to sleep. The little girl relaxed whenever she could be near Sarah, finding comfort in her mere presence.

  Sarah, in her turn, found the somewhat reserved and proper schoolteacher a very reassuring person to be with. He made her feel safe in a rather uncertain world, and she loved his two little ones. She loved being a substitute mother for them.

  All afternoon, and in the evening, the ship reverberated to the banging of hammers below decks. Shore-based carpenters were aboard, and were converting the ship’s upper holds into passenger accommodation for all those with steerage tickets. The lower holds were already loaded with heavy cargo such as roofing slates, earthenware tiles, and pigs of iron. Tiers of bunks, three high, were going against the hull on each side, and other tiers formed an island in the middle. A shallow hold toward the rear of the ship, known as the ‘tween decks aft, was being fitted out for the single women. The single men would go into the forward hold, just behind the forecastle where the common sailors lived, and the married couples and their younger children would go in the main hold.

  Officers and cabin passengers were accommodated in the deck housing, in cabins hardly bigger than cupboards. What in a warship would have been the captain’s cabin, right away aft under the poop deck, was the hospital flat which Sarah and Jess had scrubbed out. That was being fitted with bunks two high.

  “Will I go in the single women’s quarters?” Jess asked Angus MacGillivray.

  “Oh, no, little lady, you’re not old enough. You’ve only paid half fare,” he replied.

  “Do I go in the married quarters then?”

  “Oh, no, we couldn’t have you in there, not without your parents.”

  “Then where do I go?”

  “They’re just building your little home now,” he told her. “It’s right away forward on the fo’c’sle.”

  “Fo’c’sle?”

  “Forecastle. The high part up the sharp end.”

  As soon as she had finished preparing the vegetables, Jess asked to be excused, and went off to the front end of the ship to see what the carpenters were building for her. Along the main deck she went, past the forward hatch, and up a ladder on the port side leading to the little triangle of deck over the forecastle. It was very cluttered up there, what with the butt end of the bowsprit clamped into the fore part, a capstan for raising and lowering the anchors taking up the middle, and enormous chains laid out to the hawseholes where the anchors hung. The only space left was right up against the gunwales at the sides, and there a series of boxes had been built, each about four feet high, four feet wide, and six feet long.

  “Is there a place being built here for me?” Jess asked one of the carpenters.

  “For you?” he asked, blinking at her. “What would your name be then?”

  She told him, and he turned to the railing facing the main deck, and bellowed, “Which one of these is for Jessica Gordon?”

  Jess felt very uncomfortable, because men all over the ship stopped work, and looked at her. There were sailors away up in the rigging, carpenters’ heads popping up out of the holds, and even the first mate, Mr Milburn, stuck his head out of the chartroom door.

  “Number three port,” a voice yelled from somewhere down in the holds.

  “Thank you,” the carpenter called back, and turned to poor, very embarrassed little Jess. “Number three port. That will be this one over here.”

  Jess looked at it; just a box, a rough box of pit-sawn lumber.

  “There’s no door,” she noted, her voice just a little squeaky.

  “You climb in over the top,” the carpenter replied firmly. “You wouldn’t want a door that might be sprung open when the big waves come aboard.”

  Big waves?

  “There’s no roof,” Jess gulped.

  “The sailors will rig a tarpaulin over the top. Won’t be a drop of water get in, except what washes along the deck.”

  “And no bunk...”

  “We’ll put in a big pile of straw, all snug and shipshape, you’ll see. Be as warm as toast, till you get down among the icebergs in the Southern Ocean.”

  Jess thanked him, and returned very thoughtfully to the main deck.

  “Ah, there you are,” she was greeted by the boatswain. “You can make up the bunks in the hospital flat now. Bales of straw are just about to come aboard, so you can stuff the palliasses, and put one on each bunk.”

  The palliasses were long bags made of striped mattress ticking, into which Jess had to push handfuls of straw until it formed a pad about a handbreadth thick. One, as she was told, went on to each bunk, and smaller ones fitted into cots for the babies. There was also a straw- filled pillow to go on each bunk or cot as well. Then all the loose straw she had spilled had to be carefully swept up.

  “Where shall I put it?” she asked when the boatswain came past again.

  “In the pens on the fo’c’sle,” he threw over his shoulder without stopping.

  Pens, she thought. That’s a good name for them. They’re hardly proper cabins.

  In her absence somebody had dropped a couple of
bales of straw into each of the pens, so she pulled the strings off them, and spread them out. It made a nice thick layer, and she’d slept in the hay before, when she’d gone to a cousin’s wedding, and her whole family had slept in a barn. Perhaps it might not be too bad. Perhaps...

  When Mrs Greeley came back aboard later in the day Jess had nearly finished making up each of the hospital bunks with blankets.

  “That looks better,” Mrs Greeley approved. “All nice and shipshape.”

  “Do you think I’d be able to sleep in here?” Jess asked, seeing that the matron seemed to be in a good mood.

  “Oh, not once we get under way,” she was told. “You’ll have your own place, my dear. You’ll be quite comfortable there.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen it,” Jess replied, and somehow Mrs Greeley, on hearing her tone, didn’t look quite so pleased any more.

  “I’m told you can read and write,” she said doubtfully.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And figure?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “All right. There’s some chests of the surgeon’s comforts coming in here. Special foods, and little treats for the sick folk. Here’s a list of what should be in each chest, and here are the keys. You can make sure there’s nothing missing.”

  That kept Jess busy for the rest of the afternoon, weighing and counting out bags of rice, tapioca, and sugar; ticking off jars of marmalade, tins of molasses, and heaps of all kinds of luxuries she had seldom seen at home. She worked with the surgeon’s set of balances, and the lists on a clipboard, surrounded by the piles of things she had