by Maryk Lewis
line a quick tug,” Andy told her, “and if you feel it pull back, haul the line in quickly.”
Jess took up the line, feeling it quivering like a live thing against her fingers. She jerked. The line immediately jerked back, and then she could feel the fish down there flicking and twisting as it tried to dislodge the hook.
“Haul in!” Andy directed.
She did, and up came a flapping, wriggling fish, glinting in the lantern light.
Andy banged it smartly on the head with a belaying pin, and then worked the hook out of its mouth. The bait was still firmly attached.
“Is it dead?” Jess asked, concerned.
“It is now,” Andy assured her.
“Did we hurt it?”
“Nah, fish don’t feel things like we do,” he replied. “They don’t have the nerves to feel with. Dr Reade told me that. Getting caught and killed is what happens to fish naturally. You want to see what fish do to each other.”
“You killed it pretty quickly...before you took the hook out even.”
“Ah, well, that’s different,” Andy admitted. “Fish can’t breath out of water, and that does hurt them, so you kill them quickly, so they don’t get time to feel it.”
Somewhat mollified, Jess dropped the line back over the side.
One of the lines further out in the river produced the next fish, and Andy allowed Jess to haul that one in too.
“Let me throw the line out again,” Jess begged. “Like you did.”
To Andy’s instructions, she gripped the line a few feet from the end, watching that she didn’t snag herself on either of the two hooks, and with her hand over her head, started the sinker swinging in a circle around her body. Faster and faster she swung it, and higher and higher rose the lead, until it was flying almost level with her hand.
“Now as it comes round...” Andy called.
At the right moment she let go, and the sinker whipped away, trailing line, until it dropped into the water half-way to the shore.
“Good one,” Andy praised her.
When the line closest to shore brought in a fish, Jess wanted to re-set that one two.
This time she knew she had to swing the lead even harder, to get it flying higher and faster, before she released it. Being afraid she might clip Andy with the lead, she stepped a couple of paces further along the deck to get clear, and of course moved too close to the mizzen mast shrouds. The lead, and the last few inches of line, promptly wrapped themselves around the tarred rope.
“Bother,” said Jess, and gave a sharp tug. The lead spun back the other way, and before Jess was quite expecting it, dropped free.
She staggered, slipped, hit the gunwale, and before she could save herself, tumbled over the ship’s side.
“Man overboard!” she heard Andy yell, as she plummeted headlong, splash into the river.
Andy shouted again, and then dived after her.
The water, down deep, was dark and cold. Jess struggled with her petticoats dragging her down still further. A glow showed where their fishing lantern was hanging near the water, marking the surface. She kicked and clawed upward, trying to reach it, but it seemed too far away. She would never make it.
Then fingers clamped in her hair, pulling and tugging, hurting her, but very welcome nonetheless. Andy was a dark shape, limbs flailing, in the water above her.
Suddenly her face was above the surface, out in the air, and she coughed and spluttered.
“Kick, Jess! Kick!” Andy panted.
She was! She was kicking with all her might, fighting against the killing weight of all her clothing. Andy shifted his grip to under her armpit, and helped to hold her head up.
Fortunately, there was as yet very little movement in the tide, and they had not drifted far from the ship. A rope’s end splashed down right near them. Andy grasped it with his free hand, and allowed the folk on deck to pull them even closer.
A second rope came down, one with a large loop fashioned in the end. Andy helped her pull the loop over her head, and down around her body.
“Sit yourself in the bight; get the rope under your bottom,” Andy told her, puffing. He reached down, and helped her get it into position.
“Haul away!” he called then, and the next moment she was bumping and scraping up the ship’s side, and sprawling higgledy-piggledy into the waiting arms of her sister.
“Gah! You’re all wet,” Sarah complained.
“One tends to get like that while taking a dip in the river,” Gil Inkster’s voice came out of the darkness.
“Andy?” Jess gulped. “Is anybody helping Andy?”
“Coming right up,” Captain Hedley told her, just as Andy popped like a Jack-in-the-box over the rail.
“Oh, you’re safe,” Jess cried, going to hug him wetly.
“You’re both safe,” Captain Hedley said. “That was smart work, young man. As for you, young lady, I would prefer in future that you should wait for me to give the order before abandoning ship.”
Seven
“We’re lucky we can spare the fresh water,” Dr Reade commented, as Jess and Andy stood shivering on the deck, poor bedraggled little creatures, while buckets were emptied over their heads. “There’s a nasty miasma in that river water. People are often sick after contact with it, but it helps if we wash it away quickly, and get you out of those wet clothes.”
Jess was hurried away below, where Sarah gave her a good towelling, before helping her into fresh underclothing. Gradually her shivering stopped, and Jess would have finished dressing and gone back to her fishing, if Sarah had not insisted that she go straight to bed.
“But what about our lines, and our fish?” Jess wailed.
“Gil is taking care of all that,” Sarah informed her. “He knows all about fishing. Shetlanders do.”
So Jess did not see Andy again, to thank him, until the morning. In the meantime, Sarah took all Jess’s wet things, and hung them in the galley, where the warmth of the stove would dry them overnight. She knew that her younger sister would need the petticoats to wear again in the morning, for she owned little else suitable for working in while on the ship.
Jess was woken close upon daylight by a bumping against the ship’s hull, and went on deck to find a new flag at the masthead, and sailors taking in the mooring lines of a Thames water barge that had come to fill their tanks ready for the voyage. Andy was one of the crew fixing a gangway between the two vessels. She had to wait until he was free, before she could talk to him.
“I see we’ve got a new flag,” she said, pointing to it flapping in the breeze. It was a blue flag with a white oblong in the centre.”
“Yes, that’s the New Zealand flag, because we’re going to New Zealand.” Andy informed her. “The white is for all the snow on the mountains in the middle of the country, and the blue is for the sea all around it. If you’re going to be a New Zealander, you’ll have to salute that flag every time you come on deck.”
“Really?” said Jess. “What about you?”
“I don’t have to. I’m not a New Zealander.”
“Neither am I yet.”
“No, but you’re going to be, if you survive the voyage.”
She laughed, and poked her tongue out at him.
“You were brave,” she said, “diving straight in after me like that.”
“I’d have had to be even braver to let you drown,” he answered. “Do you know what the crew would have done to me for letting you fall in?”
“Still, it was a brave thing to do,” she repeated, and in the shadow of the forecastle kissed him, a quick peck on the cheek.
“Oo, er,” said Andy.
“Here, none of that there here,” the boatswain spoke up promptly. “You’ll put the lad off his work. Go on, you young tyke, get that hose laid out.”
Andy fled. Jess too wasted no time in taking herself away smartly to the galley.
“Enjoy your bathing party, did you?” asked the cook, who had missed all the excitement through going to bed early. He had cleane
d and gutted their fish, and had them sprinkled with flour, and smeared with butter, ready to bake in the oven. “We’ll do these for you,” he said, “when young Andy finishes his stint on the water barge.”
“What do they have to do?” Jess asked, while she stirred the rolled oats for the morning porridge.
“Man the pumps, and just keep turning the handles, until all the water has been shifted from the barge to our tanks. We’ll get no more, but what we can catch in our sails, until we get to New Zealand.”
“I thought ships could get water out of the sea now,” Jess queried.
“They can if they’ve got a condenser installed,” Angus MacGillivray agreed, “but we haven’t got one. The ship’s too old, and we’ve no place to put one.”
When Sarah served Captain Hedley his breakfast, he gave her a crown. Two shillings of it was what she and Jess had earned for their work so far, and the other three were an advance on what they would earn during the voyage.
“You’ll need that,” he told her. “It can be your contribution to the passengers’ comfort fund.”
“Oh, that is a relief,” Sarah thanked him. “What to do about the comfort fund has been no end of a worry.”
This comfort fund was money for special treats along the way, a party when they crossed the equator, and prizes for games and competitions every now and then. Things of that nature didn’t come out of ship’s rations. The passengers always put together before the voyage and provided their own, usually a pound from each of the adult cabin passengers, and five shillings from those in steerage. Children were not expected to contribute, but they, of course, would get most of what was given