by Maryk Lewis
helped by providing news items he could use, gossip about other passengers, their plans, the places they had come from. The first mate, Mr Milburn, gave him details about the running of the ship, and the progress they were making, such as how far the ship had sailed since they had started out. Much of what went in the paper was sheer nonsense, and only put in for fun to give the passengers and crew something to laugh about.
One of the imaginary stories was about a very beautiful young lady passenger, who had won the hearts of all the young men on board. An equally imaginary young man was supposed to have dived overboard during the height of the storm to recover her handkerchief, which had blown out of her hand. According to the story, he dived in from the bowsprit, and just had time to grab the floating handkerchief, before catching a line trailing from the stern to pull himself on board again. The lady had, however, refused to accept the return of her handkerchief, as the young man had allowed it to get all wet. So much for young love.
Jess read the story, and noticed a certain similarity between the description of the supposed lady passenger and her own older sister. The young man as described was not unlike Ken MacGovern, though he was an officer and not a passenger. That Mr Rutherford was teasing her was not lost on Sarah, and from the looks she was getting, she was sure that several other passengers were aware of it.
That story proved very popular with those learning to read, and must have been of great help to them in their learning, as nobody would read it aloud to them, in case reading it embarrassed Sarah. They had to puzzle it out for themselves, because while the newspaper was in the great cabin there was always at least one of Sarah’s friends sitting nearby, even during the times when she was not there herself.
When the last dimly seen hills of Ireland had been left far astern, the ‘Haldia’ bore away to the south. The wind continued strongly from the north, but they were now travelling with the waves, rather than against them, so the motion of the ship became much more comfortable. Within hours the last seasick passenger had recovered, and people were appearing on deck, and in the great cabin, in increasing numbers.
The great cabin could no longer hold all the children who were coming for school, so it was put out of bounds for all steerage passengers apart from Sarah and Jess who had work to do in there, and two others who were to join Jess in the senior class because of their advanced standard of schoolwork.
Not all the children could be taught at once, whether in the great cabin or out of it. On the second morning out from Plymouth the children not good enough for the senior class were divided into a number of other classes, both by standard, and by whether the children were cabin or steerage passengers.
Gil, with Sarah’s help, taught the senior class for the first and the last hour of each working day. In between the seniors worked alone or together on assignments, or helped with the teaching of the junior classes. Jess missed some of that because she was either working in the galley, or waiting on table. Sarah was involved in all the teaching whenever she was not required in the hospital flat, and besides that she helped Gil with Laurie and Phyllis.
On Sundays, the captain himself would conduct an hour of Sunday School on the main deck for all the children, and later a church service for all the Protestants, both passengers and crew. The Roman Catholics held their own prayer meeting on the fore deck. Two Moslem sailors manned the wheel at that time. Those two had the use of the chart room for their prayers, five times a day, every day.
By the end of their first full school day both Sarah and Jess were close to exhaustion. Some hours after sunset, with the ship hissing along before the wind, Sarah helped Jess to wipe down the last benches in the galley, and they found their way to their bunks by the light of the lanterns hanging in the rigging. Never had the coarse blankets looked so warm and inviting.
“You said you would show me how to sign my name,” a nearby woman reminded Jess.
“So I did,” Jess agreed. “I’ll go and ask Mr Inkster if we can borrow some slates.”
“What? Now?” Sarah demanded.
“They’ll never learn any younger,” Jess replied. “Just before bed is supposed to be the best time to learn something.”
“We’re mad,” Sarah snorted, but counted how many wanted to learn anyway, and went with Jess to borrow eighteen slates.
They took nine each, and showed the women how to make the initial letter of their first names. The young women then each drew their own letter over and over again, covering their slates back and front. After checking and correcting them where necessary, Sarah and Jess said time after time, “Right. Now clean your slate, and go and dream about your letter. We’ll see if you can still remember how to make it in the morning.”
“Is that all?” the first woman asked.
“That’s only the first bit,” Sarah told her. “So long as you keep getting it right, we’ll teach one more letter each night, until you can sign your whole name in one go.”
“Roll on Lyttelton,” said Jess, as she finally sank thankfully into her bunk.
“Perhaps,” said Sarah thoughtfully. “Perhaps.”
Seventeen
Two days later Sarah was helping Laurie to spread his breakfast toast with marmalade, when there was a loud crack from high overhead, followed by screaming and shouting, and a sickening thump on the cabin roof. The officers were half-way to the door even before the thump.
“I knew it! I knew it!” Captain Hedley was crying in a taut voice.
The two stewards blocked the doorway, stopping the passengers from following the officers out onto the deck, but they let Sarah through. She found several crewmen clustered around a still figure spread-eagled on the deck-house roof.
“Right from the cross trees,” a sailor said in an awed tone. “The topgallant mast’s adrift at the bindings. He fell all the way, he did.”
Sarah tilted her head right back. High overhead the top section of the mizzen mast was leaning outward at a drunken angle. The topgallant sail and the skysail above it were flapping loose, having already been set free by sailors who had cut the sheets. Andy was up there trying to whip a sheet end around the leaning mast section. The boatswain was on his way up the ratlines with a length of stronger rope.
Doctor Reade arrived, and pushed through the crowd to kneel by the injured seaman, a Scottish youth named David Selkirk. The matron joined him there, and some of the seamen stood back to make way for Sarah.
“Breathing and heartbeat will do,” the doctor said. “We’ll deal with his compound fracture, while the poor fellow’s still unconscious. Goodness only knows what else he’s done to himself.”
All the while he was talking, the doctor was feeling around David Selkirk’s unconscious body, searching for broken bones, and testing for nerve reactions to see if the spine had been broken or damaged. There was a huge, inflamed welt across the youth’s chest, showing where he had hit a rope on the way down.
“That probably saved his life,” Doctor Reade commented, indicating the angry red mark. “The rope broke his fall.”
“It seems to have broken some ribs as well,” the matron pointed out.
“They’ll mend,” the doctor predicted. “He’s a healthy young buck.”
Sarah was sent off to the doctor’s cabin for splints and bandages, while Captain Hedley fetched a bottle of his own best brandy. When they returned one of the sailor’s trouser legs had been cut away to leave his leg bare. The brandy was poured liberally over an open wound in the sailor’s right thigh, where a broken end of bone was showing.
“Strong spirits will wash the poisons out of a wound where nothing else will,” Doctor Reade explained. “At sea we can sometimes save a limb, when it would just not be possible with the same wound on land. There are poisons in the soil. The sea is remarkably free of them.”
“What happens if the wound won’t wash clean?” a sailor asked suspiciously.
“The leg will have to come off, and he’ll have to try again with a fresh stump,” Doctor Reade answered shortly. He was n
o more pleased with the thought than anybody else. He handed the brandy bottle to Sarah.
“When we turn him over,” he instructed, “you keep dribbling this over the wound in his thigh.”
He then chose three of the seamen, and told them to take a turn of a rope around the foot of the broken leg, and brace themselves to pull it straight. He explained that it would require the full strength of three of them, as they would have to hold the leg stretched, while David Selkirk’s very strong thigh muscles would be trying to pull the other way against them.
Two other seamen were chosen to take an arm each, while they carefully turned the patient over. They had to be wary of his broken ribs, and Doctor Reade kept his hands spread over the chest wall to support them all through the movement.
Sarah followed the turn dripping brandy into the open wound. It made her feel sick just to look at it.
“Now keep his shoulders pinned to the deck,” the doctor commanded. “They’re not to move an inch.”
Then he wrapped some leather patches around the broken leg everywhere but over the wound. Next he positioned a pair of splints one each side of the leg, and passed several lengths of bandage loosely over and under around both the splints and the leg together.
“Right now you men,” he cautioned when everything was ready. “Pull...”
While at one end the pair of sailors held David