By Fickle Winds Blown

by Maryk Lewis

It was his watch below.

  Sarah was coming out of the hospital flat. She shook her head dolefully when she saw Jess.

  “How are things in there?” Jess asked.

  “Little Matilda Earnshaw is very poorly,” Sarah reported. “She’ll hardly suckle at all. It’s very worrying. I’ve just given Mrs Earnshaw some broth saved out of last night’s stew. At least she’s keeping it down.”

  “And the other two?”

  “Sound asleep. They’ll be fine now. Matron says they can go back to the main hold once they wake.”

  “So what’s next for us then?”

  “Counting passengers. You can help me, if you like. Mr Milburn wants to know if we’ve still got them all, and how many are still badly seasick. Midshipman Smettley will check the forehold. You could do the ‘tween decks aft.”

  They found their lists among the baggage stowed neatly at the end of Sarah’s bunk, and Jess began to go around marking off the single women as she found them. Most were easily accounted for. They were still in their bunks, and had little intention of leaving them for a while. None were too sick any more, but Jess made a note of the worst cases.

  Those not in their bunks were gathered in small chattering groups, sitting on chests and boxes, leaning against bulkheads, getting to know one another, talking about the ship, and the crew, and their plans for the future. Jess had to approach each group and ask for the names of the individuals in it. They watched her closely as she found each name in alphabetical order, and put a mark against it.

  “Yer can read them names, can yer?” a heavy-set lass asked in a north country accent.

  “Yes miss,” Jess answered carefully, aware of the envy in the question.

  “Lucky devil. If I ever have any kids, they’re gonna have book-learnin’, even if I have ter belt ‘em black an’ blue ter git it into ‘em.”

  There was a chorus of assent from the other young women gathered about.

  “Perhaps you could learn during the voyage,” Jess suggested. “We’ve got three months or more to fill in.”

  “Garn, I couldn’ learn nuthin’ no matter how long we got. I hadda make me mark fer me ticket. It doesn’t ‘alf make yer feel a ninny, when all them fellers look at yer like that ‘cause yer can’t write yer name.”

  “I could show you how to do that much anyway,” Jess offered. “I know how to. We’ve got the school slates to practice on. I’m sure Mr Inkster would let us use them if I asked him.”

  “I ain’t got no money fer that.”

  “It wouldn’t cost you anything.”

  “Could I learn?” several others asked the same question all at the same time. Jess was overwhelmed. There were far more wanting to learn than she’d expected.

  “We’ll have to see what we can fit in,” she gulped. “I’ll ask Mr Inkster what we can do.”

  Up on the poop deck she took her completed lists to Mr Milburn, and told him that all the single women were present and accounted for. Then she went down to the great cabin in search of Gil Inkster, whom she found writing up a series of school slates on the long table. He was filling in a slate at a time, and stacking them in the griddle squares on the table to hold them from sliding onto the deck.

  “You’ve your own schooling to be concerned with,” he said after listening to her request on behalf of the illiterates among the single women. “However, it’s a good idea to do what we can for these others. It will be good practice for you, for one thing, and will give a lot of people something to occupy them during the voyage. What are you doing now?”

  “I seem to be out of a job for the moment,” she admitted.

  “Right,” he told her, “I’ll start with you then. We’ll do your arithmetic first. I have to establish the standard reached for every child on the ship. I’ll do the same with reading and writing later.”

  “Standard?” she queried doubtfully.

  “Yes, how much you know; what class you should be in.”

  “I’m in the fifth class,” Jess claimed.

  “That could mean anything at all,” Gil smiled. “Every school is different. Your fifth class could be years ahead of somebody else’s, or years behind. What I need to do here, is find out where everybody is actually up to, and teach them whatever comes next after that.”

  “What do I have to do then?” she asked.

  “Start with the sums on those slates,” he said. “As you finish each slate, put it there for me to mark. When you come to some you can’t do, tell me.”

  The first slate was filled with easy addition sums, the next with subtraction, and then came multiplication and division. The fifth slate was addition again, but much bigger sums, and so it went, slate after slate. After a time Charles Rutherford put in a pale and shaky appearance, and was set to work on the first slate, from which Jess’s correct answers had been erased. He worked so quickly, Jess was concerned that he might catch up on her, and she began to hurry.

  That slate, of course, was passed back to her with an error to be done again. Charles pulled a face at her, but kept his head down, so that Gil would not see. Jess pressed on, but more carefully, and not long afterward Sarah came in, and began to help Gil by preparing more slates. When the time came to stop for lunch, Jess was stuck on the long calculation of a square root. The answer she got by division did not get her back to the original number when she multiplied. Charles was just one slate behind her.

  The break enabled her to clear her mind, while she was busy taking cups of tea around to the people who were still in their bunks. The stewards, by then looking much happier, stacked the school slates out of the way, and served lunch on the long table.

  When they started again after lunch, Jess was delayed for a time by the washing up, and returned to the great cabin to find that Gil had made another copy of the slate she had been working on, and Charles was engaged with the same square root calculation that had her stuck. There were also nine other young people sufficiently recovered from their seasickness to be able to start, and Sarah was busy copying slates for them.

  Jess frowned, and looked at her square root calculation again. She had to have started wrongly, and there was only one thing she could have done...set out her number in the wrong pairings. When she tried it again, her proof came out correctly. She passed her slate to Gil, and looked to see how Charles was faring. She had to smile. He had made the same mistake that she had, and was puzzling over why he couldn’t prove his answer.

  She started on some geometry Gil gave her next, and finished the slate while Charles was still stuck on the square root calculation. On her next slate, algebra, she ran into problems once more. Charles was doggedly checking yet again all his figures, but had still not thought to look at his pairing.

  He glanced up, and saw that she was lost. For a moment his expression softened, a fellow feeling for her overcoming his need to show his superiority. She shifted her arm to let him see where she was stuck.

  “I think you should reverse that sign,” he suggested, leaning over and pointing.

  “You’ve split your pairs in the wrong places,” she returned. “That’s what I did the first time.”

  “So I have,” he agreed after a moment’s thought, and smiled at her, a smile that lit up his face, and showed in him the possibility of a much more pleasant person.

  Gil Inkster had been following their exchange. “I think that’s about the level for both of you,” he said, marking off their names on his list. “I’d like you both now to help Miss Gordon to prepare more slates, please.”

  For the rest of the afternoon, as more and more recovered children came to join the school, Jess and Charles sat together at the long table copying one slate after another. Sometimes, when Gil was rushed, and Sarah was away to check on the sick baby in the hospital flat, they were given other children’s work to mark. Sometimes Gil told them to take a break for a few minutes by going for a walk around the decks.

  By the time Jess had to go and help with the evening meal preparation in the galley, they
had developed an easy and comfortable working relationship. By the fourth day, as the ship beat up toward Plymouth, they had taken to standing together at the rail in the early evening talking; discussing their essay assignments, the books they were given to read, discussing too the other ships they saw passing up and down the channel. They looked at the stars coming out, the lights on shore burning up one by one, the flickering reflections of the lights on the passing ships. There was much for them to talk about.

  Andy, during one or other of the dog watches each evening, saw them standing there together. There were no books he could talk with her about, no shared lessons...somehow she seemed to be drifting up and away from him, no longer a friend to tease and laugh with. What did an ignorant boy sailor have to offer?

  Fifteen

  At Plymouth the ‘Haldia’ dropped anchor in the outer roads, and Mr Milburn took the ship’s boat in to meet the owners’ local agent. When he returned he brought two more sailors to make up the ship’s complement, and a load of passengers’ baggage. One of the sailors was a brown man with purple loops and spirals carved into the skin all over his face. He smiled, close-lipped, when he saw all the amazed people staring down at him from the ship’s gunwales. Even smiling, he looked ferocious.

  “What about a purser?” Captain Hedley demanded, leaning over the ship’s side as he watched the baggage being swung aboard.

  “There was one appointed, but he hasn’t