by Poppy
"Am I to believe that, sir?" Poppy laughed, feeling better.
"No." Maurice laughed back at her. "Have you friends in San Francisco?"
Remembering the Cornish smith, Poppy felt quite virtuous as she said, "We know a person or two."
"And your plan?"
"Jack's for the gold fields."
"We'll arrive at the right season, as I understand it. When the winter thaws and rains have freshened the streams that carry down the gold. And you?"
"I hear so many different things. I don't know yet."
"If you wish employment, do not forget me," Maurice said and then with deliberate comic dismay, "Not as a player. But a gambler meets many people and hears many things."
"I won't forget."
Maurice looked deep into her eyes. "Your company would give me great pleasure. Do not forget that, either." And he was gone with a jaunty wave of his hand.
Poppy drew her coat closer against the chilling breeze, Maurice might like and admire her; he might spend some of his nights with Amalie; but he had only one true love, Lady Luck. Still, she had always liked gamblers. She understood their code. Win or lose, do it with style.
Andy was not in the cabin. He must be eating at the crowded cabin table and leaving her to fend for herself. But she was not hungry for the salt pork and moldy bread.
She trimmed and lit the lamp, then tried to fluff the one hard pillow. Then she stared at the bits of fiber' on her hands and caught her breath sharply. She jumped into the bunk and pressed against the bulkhead, peering down to see the backs of the netted trunks stacked beside it. When she straightened, her face was white.
Jack did not come to the cabin until the next morning, bringing hot water for tea. She pointed wordlessly, and he shifted the trunks while she made the tea.
"Neat work," Jack said. "The netting's cut in the Poppy back and on the top, too, so that it doesn't show, but it would only take a minute to get them down and open."
"Not neat enough. I found bits of cuttings on my bunk."
"Somebody limber, with small hands to reach back in that space."
"Josie, of course."
"Maybe she thought we were putting in at Buenos Aires so she could claim somebody came aboard and robbed you."
"Aren't we?"
"No. It's far up a river, and the Captain's taken a freak to get to California as fast as possible. In this hulk. Let's hope he doesn't try the Strait." He held out a cup so she could pour the tea. "That settles it. I'll get some canvas and make money belts. The weather's worsening, so you'll be spending whole days in the cabin, and nobody will question it."
"Question what?"
"What you're doing in here. I'll open the trunks one by one so it won't be noticed. You're going to pick out the stitches so you can remove the gold from those clothes and transfer it to the belts. Then you can sew your clothes together again." He grinned. "Happy sewing, sweet."
"Buffoon," Poppy said without spirit.
The weather worsened rapidly as they sailed down the coast of South America. Even when Poppy ventured on deck to sit with Madame, as often as not a flying squall would send all hands racing aloft to take in the sails and send the passengers scurrying to their cabins.
So she got out the fine gilt embroidery scissors and ripped recklessly through Delphine's fine stitches. She sewed back, though not so finely, because she felt there might be little time once they landed. The two top trunks filled Jack's money belt so heavily she wondered he could wear it and still climb and cling to the tall masts. He only grinned and produced a small belt for Andy. She filled that, but in the brief times Andy spent in the cabin, except to sleep, he was in such a fractious mood she did not feel like confiding in him. She hid that belt in the bottom of a trunk and went on working.
Finally she made a knitting bag out of the roll of linen. She embroidered it with bright pink and red thread and lined it with red silk she took from the end of a sash. Then she gathered it with a pink ribbon she drew from the neck of a morning robe. She took it to show Madame.
"I would not have expected you to do such neat handwork," Madame complimented. She picked it up and stared with surprise as it slipped through her fingers and thudded on the deck. She cried, "What do you have in there?"
Poppy ducked her head. "I made a little space in the bottom for a necklace and a couple of rings."
"So? Perhaps that is wise, if you always carry it with you," Madame approved dubiously with a glance at the promenading passengers watching them. She said loudly, "Yes, the scissors and the darning hoops, they are heavy."
"Clever Madame," Poppy murmured, and then jumped to her feet, eyes wide with fear.
That sound, like the distant roar of a thousand locomotives approaching. "A squall," someone shrieked. "Run. Run." Poppy ran. Before she could reach the cabin, the storm hit. The ship trembled from stem to stem, the massive masts shaking like young saplings. Hurled against the rail, Poppy clung on desperately as the ship tilted again to the other side, leaving her dangling in the spray-drenched air. Then it fell back with a thud that knocked the breath out of her. Gasping and choking, she saw the crew swarming up the rigging like a gang of monkeys, fighting the wind to reef the heavy, soaked canvas on the whirling heights.
She drew in a breath, filled her lungs with air, and realized she could move. She dived into the cabin, drenched to the skin, hair ripped from its pins, and skin stung raw from the salt spray. She was bruised, but nothing worse.
The next day, while they were sailing close-reefed under only the topsail, the Captain tacked to speak to another ship. The report flew among the passengers that the ship had just rounded the Horn. Its captain reported the weather the worst he had known in a dozen voyages and warned against trying the Strait.
After that, all the days were violent, squalls of rain and hail, fog and snow. The passengers who were not too ill to leave their cabins huddled in the dining corridor and bickered, complained of the food, and grew quarrelsome as they dragged out hoarded bottles of wine and brandy.
Those first terrible days of seasickness had cured Poppy. She read all her books. She even worked on her Spanish lessons. Five days in a row she tried to go out on deck, but found she could barely stand and, with all the rain, hail, and snow, could not look windward. She glimpsed a cold, cheerless, barbarous coast beyond the mountainous seas of white, foaming water. No small boats could survive in that, and if they could, the coast offered no shelter for survival. She could only hope their hulk was less old and fragile than Jack feared.
Then after fifteen days, the word went out that they were around the Horn, although the weather continued dark and squally for another week. But then the weather moderated, and a light, fresh breeze sprang up. The Cape pigeons that had deserted the ship returned. Sharks started following them, and schools of elusive dolphins came and went. One day the sea was alive with a school of cowfish, thousands of them, larger than dolphins. The Yankee, Bill, took up a position in a bobstay and harpooned one, eight feet six inches long, weighing four hundred pounds. That was fresh food for all.
The word they were to have a day ashore at Valparaiso sent all the passengers a little crazy. Like prisoners anticipating freedom, they freshened their clothes, counted their money, and babbled endlessly of their plans.
Poppy stood beside Madame at the rail. They sailed past the long spur of the Andes with the lighthouse on the tip and houses crowded on the long, narrow strip of ground, until they reached the anchorage. Madame drummed her fingers on the railing, poised to run for the first boat ashore.
Poppy wondered. Such eagerness was not like Madame, but she only said, "Jack tells me those three hills there at the south end of town are called Fore, Main, and Mizzen Top. That big handsome house there with the American flag on the pole belongs to their consul."
Madame nodded without interest.
"Jack warned me all those places that seem to be tumbling down the sides of the hills are gambling halls and the retreats of criminals and desperadoes."
/>
"All of them?" Madame sniffed.
"And sailors' boarding houses. The homes of the respectable people are up on the hills."
"I do not concern myself," Madame said grandly. "I wish to see the shops, the public streets. They seem wide and straight. And you?"
"Jack says prices are triple what they should be and to wait. We'll be making another stop."
"You are not going ashore?"
"Andy and I will try to find a respectable hotel to have lunch."
Andy was still sullen, hardly speaking, and the price of the lunch made Poppy gasp. Still, she could not resist hiring a carriage to drive around the public squares. She watched the Chilean women strolling there or driving past in their carriages and felt intolerably crumpled and travel worn. They all seemed so beautiful, with pure complexions and fine black eyes flashing under the thin gauze headdresses thrown over their shining black hair. They behaved more freely than the women in Rio, walking with superb bearing and grace, allowing glimpses of fine ankles in silk stockings as they lifted their skirts to cross a street. If the Spanish women in San Francisco were that handsome, she would need all her fine clothes not to appear the merest drab.
The next day, Madame made clear she also had observed the women closely. "Handsome," Madame admitted as they sat in their corner in the sun. "And very free in their manners. But with these tropical women, the looks do not last. And they have not the eclat."
"No?" Poppy puzzled.
"I am told there are many Chilean women in San Francisco," Madame said. "They come by the hundreds. But they do not command the prices. They do not have the experience, the skills, the discipline. They find some useless man. Their looks fade. They do not have the eclat as those from France."
Poppy flung back her head and laughed. "Oh, Madame, you are the complete woman of business."
"Of course. What else? Yes, I was a little anxious, the reports of these Chileans. Now I have informed myself, it is of no importance."
"None at all," Poppy agreed, eyes sparkling. "And we have only four hundred miles to our last stop, and it's Robinson Crusoe's island."
That news worked a miracle in Andy. Grudge forgotten, he was wild with excitement. He would not listen when Poppy tried to tell him Crusoe was only a character in a book. A man had been marooned on the island, and one of the sailors who had stopped there before said they could take a boat and sail around and see the cave where he had lived. They were stopping for two days, perhaps three. He must see the cave, he must.
"Take him the first day," Jack agreed, watching Andy prancing up and down instead of huddling in the shade of the lifeboat. "And do take a boat. By land, it means a whole day of scrambling over a mountain and back again in this heat."
"You take him," Poppy said. "You won't want to get the reputation of being the sailor who never goes ashore."
"We have to man the water rafts, and there's a woodcutting detail. I'll see."
"I'd as soon wait and go ashore the second day."
Jack gave her a sharp look. "Is Andy wearing his belt?"
"He's been in such a fractious mood, I didn't think it was any time to confide in him," Poppy admitted. "It's in the bottom of a trunk."
"You've ripped out every bit of that gold?"
"Every napoleon," Poppy said virtuously.
She saw Jack and Andy off the next morning and settled down to watch the ship take on water. The sailors swore it was the best water in the world. From a spring high on the mountainside, a wooden flume ran out into the deep water, so casks placed on rafts could be towed close to the beaches and filled. Some of the crew went into the woods to cut wood for the galley stoves. Almost all the passengers went ashore and returned sunburned and laden with fruit.
Jack reported, with a twinkle in his blue eyes, that the cave was exactly as represented, high on a hill with a full view of the ocean. It was remarkably preserved considering the many years that had passed. Andy said hotly, whether it had been Crusoe or a real man named Alexander Selkirk, he hoped someday he could live in a cave like that.
The next day, Poppy took Andy ashore, and again he was in a lively, prancing state. He must see the other caves, the ones that had sheltered Chile's criminals in the days when the island had been a penal colony. He scampered through them and then helped fill their baskets from the overgrown orchards, also abandoned by the penal colony, but still heavy with fruits. Poppy had never seen anything like these, even in the finest shops in London and Paris. They staggered back on board with their wealth of fruits.
They sailed on the early tide the next day. This was not a pleasure cruise, the Captain barked at the passengers who begged another day ashore. His orders were for San Francisco with all speed. He knew these treacherous Pacific winds, and they did not.
The days grew oppressively warm. As they sailed off the coast of Peru, Poppy saw a thick yellow mist rising perpendicularly from three rocky islands. Then the ship was blanketed with a fine dust, strong with the odor of ammonia, and she choked, sneezing and coughing, her eyes watering until her face was wet.
"What?" Poppy gasped.
Jack ran to her side, whipped out his kerchief, and tied it over her nose and mouth. "Fertilizer. From birds. They've got gangs of prisoners and Chinese coolies over there using picks to dislodge the stuff. Then they put it in wheelbarrows and dump it in a canvas tunnel that leads to launches that take it out to the ships you see anchored off there, waiting to be loaded."
"You mean people breathe this for days?"
"Weeks. Months. These are the Galapolas. One of our seamen says he signed on once for the extra pay. That yellow stuff is wealth for the owners, but he'll starve before he ever does it again."
"I'd die."
"Don't complain yet. Have you unpacked your cool frocks? I don't think we're going to make any quick and easy landfall."
Jack was a sailor. He knew his latitudes and weather signs. But even he had not expected them to be becalmed for a week. The sails hung limp, the unmoving ship was mirrored in a glassy, unbroken surface bounded only by a horizon. A slight undulating swell rolled the vessel lazily from side to side. The sun hung over them like a ball of fire, and the pitch and tar bubbled out of the seams of the vessel until the deck was like a furnace. Even to sit under an awning spread over the deck was torture.
Light breezes finally carried them into the North Pacific, but they were running counter to the prevailing winds. They sailed great distances, but made little progress. Sudden, violent winds threw them back to lose in a few hours the distance they had taken days to gain.
Poppy sat on the deck day after day beside Madame. Madame had grown rather thin and silent, but she sat as straight as ever.
"In this California," Madame said suddenly, "I wonder if there are perhaps small villages where one could have a few fruit trees and a little garden?" .
"I've heard of San Francisco and great ranchos and gold towns. I don't know about villages."
"Perhaps not," Madame said and sighed heavily. "It is a long trip. But I must have my little village."
"Maybe none of us will ever go back," Poppy whispered, awed by the realization. Never see Dex again? Or Daisy? Never walk known streets or open familiar doors? Live always in a wild, foreign place among strangers? "For all our lives."
"But we will arrive," Madame said with determination.
Poppy stirred uneasily. She and Jack had traveled and lived together, had faced danger and hardship for months in perfect amity, Not once had he behaved as less than the great English gentleman he had been born. Not once had he failed in courage, honor, or respect. He had left comfort and position, dear friends and family, behind him. She had brought him jeopardy and trouble, but he had not once reproached her. In return, he had a right to her perfect honesty and confidence, and she had failed him.
The next morning when they were alone in the cabin, Poppy said, "Everybody's saying we'll be sighting land soon, and Andy's so much more himself, I'll show him how to wear the money belt tonight."
/>
"Good. We'll all be glad to get ashore."
"Yes." Poppy hesitated. "You remember the Pearls of the Guillotine? I know Who it is."
"You know?" Jack asked sharply.
"I've known for weeks," Poppy confessed. "But everything was happening at once. And she did only kill one man and that in a passion."
"You've known and didn't tell me? Then it's fortunate you've associated with nobody except Madame."
"It is Madame."
"What?"
"She killed only to keep from being forced into a life on the streets," Poppy cried passionately. "Then when it was over, that was the only life open to her, and she's been in it ever since. All she wants or ever wanted is her little holding in a village with her cow and chickens, garden and orchard."