A Ship Through Time

by Bess McBride

  Straightening, I pulled my legs up onto the bunk, pulled them to my chest and laid my head down on a foul-smelling hard pillow. Closing my eyes, I wished and hoped and prayed that I would open them to find myself anywhere but on the French ship...anywhere else at all.

  I must have fallen asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Even before I opened my eyes, I recognized a familiar smell of generic bleached cloth, felt the smooth feel of cotton near my cheek.

  I inhaled deeply and forced open my eyelids to see sunlight peeping in through a crack in the curtains leading to the balcony. The balcony?

  With a gasp, I pushed myself upright. The Century Star! I had traveled through time again!

  I jumped off the bed, staggering as searing pain ripped through my feet. Grabbing on to a chair, I leaned against it as the pain receded, then lifted up on my toes and limped across the cabin toward the curtains. Pulling them aside, I saw not a small island but a sparkling blue sea.

  I turned and surveyed the cabin. Everything was in place. My luggage rested in a corner, a bottle of water sat on the nightstand by the bed, a sheet of paper—no doubt the ship’s daily activities—lay on the floor by the door, as if it had been slipped in.

  I pulled open the balcony door and stepped out, dropping onto one of the two deck chairs.

  I was back! I had fallen asleep on the French ship and traveled back in time. I doubted that my wishing, hoping and praying had been the catalyst. It seemed likely that I traveled through time while on board a ship—a French ship, the Century Star or the Vigilance. But the Vigilance was gone. I had no way to get back to Daniel.

  My throat closed over, and a dull ache seized my chest. Daniel’s face swam before me as I fought against tears. I fought to put his image from my mind for the moment. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something.

  My stomach rumbled distressfully, and I realized it had been hours since I’d eaten. I had no idea how long I had slept—time seemed like such a surreal concept at the moment.

  I pushed myself out of the chair, clung to the door and worked my way into the bathroom by hanging on to the furniture. I stripped off my soiled and tattered dress and pulled the bandages from my feet, and after turning on the water and gathering my soaps, I lowered myself to the shower floor and sat there sobbing while I washed the sea salt and sweat from my body.

  Following an extended shower, I dried off, applied antibiotic ointment to my feet and did my best to cover the cuts and scrapes with the small adhesive strips I’d brought with me. Hardly adequate coverings. I briefly thought about a visit to the ship’s doctor but decided against it. I wasn’t sure if the ship had stopped at a port while I’d been gone—or even sure how long I had been gone—and I didn’t want to incite any curiosity about cuts from coral. A check of my wounds showed no spreading redness, and I thought I was probably safe from infection.

  I contemplated the long painful trip to the nearest restaurant and opted to call room service. After throwing on the ship-provided white cotton robe and wrapping a towel around my wet hair, I climbed back onto the bed, checked the menu and dialed for food.

  While I waited for a sandwich made with fresh bread and properly refrigerated ingredients, I drank the entire bottle of filtered water. Still parched, I eagerly anticipated the pitcher of iced water I had ordered with my meal.

  I eyed my purse on the desktop and reached for it. Dragging my phone out, I studied the face. Two days had passed since I’d left—the hour was 2:00 p.m. I wondered what my cabin steward had thought when he saw my bed unmade for two days. When would a cabin attendant raise a “missing passenger” or “passenger overboard” alarm?

  I shrugged and checked my phone once again. My original purpose in dragging it out was to check the Internet. I hadn’t originally purchased onboard Internet coverage because I felt I didn’t need it. But now I needed to find Daniel in time. I needed to see if there was a reference to him somewhere on the Internet.

  As I attempted to negotiate the ship’s website to purchase an Internet plan, I heard a knock on the door and heard a voice call out “room service.”

  “Come in,” I said.

  A petite young woman pushing a metal cart entered the room.

  “Good afternoon, madam,” she said, dark hair gleaming in a tight bun at the back of her head.

  “Oh, hello!” I said, pathetically grateful to see and speak to someone in the twenty-first century.

  “Thank you!” I said as she set down an appealing plate, holding a sandwich and fries, on the desktop, along with a pitcher of ice water and a clean drinking glass.

  “You are welcome, madam,” she said, her English sweetly accented. “Will there be anything else?”

  I reached into my purse for a tip and handed it to her.

  “No, thank you. Wait, yes!” Loath to let her go, I called her back as she turned to push the cart away.

  “Yes, madam?”

  “I...uh...I...”

  She waited patiently.

  “Where are we?”

  “Madam? In your cabin?” She looked down at the room service ticket as if searching for a cabin number.

  “No, I mean...where is the ship?”

  “Ah!” She nodded. “I am not sure. We reach Tahiti tomorrow, I believe? Perhaps the next day. I am not sure.”

  “Oh!” I had forgotten the itinerary. My original trip aboard the Century Star seemed so remote, as if years had passed since I’d boarded the ship. In some ways, they had.

  “Thank you,” I said, still reluctant to let her go but unable to delay her departure any longer. It wasn’t as if I could ask her to sit down with me while I ate. I couldn’t very well share my adventures of the past few days. I couldn’t tell her about Daniel.

  “Good afternoon, madam,” the room service attendant said as she left the room.

  “Bye.”

  I picked up my sandwich and devoured it. Fresh, delicious and most likely untainted, I savored the flavors long after the food hit my stomach. I munched on potato chips and eyed my phone again, opting to wait until I wiped my hands before handling the phone.

  I finished my meal, picked up the phone and stretched back against the soft pillows, luxuriating in the comfort of the bed and cleanliness of the room and my body.

  After some finagling, I managed to sign up for the Internet. The speed of connection was dauntingly slow, and my eyelids fluttered while I waited for a search engine to load. Satiated, warm and comfortable, my body longed for a nap. I struggled to focus on the phone screen. I straightened in the bed and widened my eyes, unwilling to fall asleep. If I fell asleep, I might possibly travel through time again. But to where?

  I pinched myself a couple of times and drank ice-cold water to help stay awake.

  Refocusing on my phone again, I keyed in “Dr. Daniel Hawthorne,” which brought up multiple results. All appeared to be current references to physicians in California, New York and Massachusetts. Nothing seemed remotely historical.

  The ship! The Vigilance. Surely if it sank, there would be a historical article describing the event...and perhaps the fate of the crew.

  I keyed in “Vigilance” and came up with a World War II minesweeper commissioned in 1944. No matter how many different ways I spelled “Vigilance,” I could find no references to a nineteenth-century merchant ship sailing out of San Francisco.

  My eyelids drooped as I fruitlessly scanned my phone. My head bobbed, and I straightened once again. Another sip of ice water did nothing to awaken me. I thought about getting up and walking around the room, but my feet begged me to stay put.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t fight the heavy lethargy that hit me, and I leaned my head back on the pillow.

  Within what seemed like a matter of moments—I was soon to discover hours—I heard the unmistakable sounds of timber creaking. The smell of salt and pitch brought me fully awake, and I bolted upright.

  Through a faint light in a porthole, the tiny shoebox cabin on the French ship material
ized before me. I had fallen asleep and traveled back in time. The insanity of the travel was truly driving me crazy.

  I jumped off the trundle bed, pain searing through my feet. Looking down, I noted with shock that I still wore the ship’s cotton bathrobe. I pulled it tightly around me, wondering how I was going to explain my change of clothes to Jacques, to Captain Sebastian.

  I limped over to the porthole. Dusk had descended in the South Pacific, and I realized I must have slept for hours—whether in the twenty-first century or the nineteenth century, it hardly seemed to matter.

  A faint scratching sound caught my ear, and I whirled around. There on the floor was the bowl of broth and bread that Jacques had brought me. And feasting on the bread was a small rat.

  With a screech, I jumped up onto a small wooden chair. Crouching hurt my feet, so I stood upright, my head almost touching the ceiling. A sound at the door both startled and relieved me. Jacques could get rid of the rodent. I wondered if I would be able to sleep that night. Surely that wasn’t the only rat on the ship.

  The door opened quietly, and a shadowy figure stepped in.

  “Jacques! Help me! A rat!” I pointed.

  I should have realized from the man’s height that it wasn’t Jacques.

  “Hush, Maggie. It is I, Daniel.” He moved toward me and pulled me from the chair to cradle me in his arms.

  “Daniel!” I whispered, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Oh, Daniel! How did you find me? How did you know?”

  “Frederick, apparently unable to sleep, saw you taken. Rather than delay to awaken us and effect a rescue, he followed your captors, then returned to us the following morning to apprise us of your kidnapping.”

  Daniel pulled me closer to him.

  “I will tell you the rest later. We must leave. What is this that you are now clothed in?”

  “I traveled forward in time to the Century Star. It’s a cotton bathrobe. I didn’t know I was going to travel back again, or I would have changed.”

  Daniel turned for the door.

  “So you can still travel through time?”

  “Yes, apparently if I’m on a ship. At least that’s what I think. You can put me down, Daniel. I can try to keep up.”

  “Are your feet miraculously healed by the time travel?” he murmured.

  “No, not quite.”

  “Then I will carry you.” With one hand, he pulled open the door.

  “How did you get the key? Where is Jacques? The captain?”

  “Later,” Daniel whispered. He carried me up onto the deck, which was surprisingly quiet. A glance toward shore showed bonfires burning in the growing darkness. I saw people moving in the village, heard singing and laughter. It seemed as if any visit from the French was a cause for celebration, unless they stole one of the young women.

  The silence aboard the ship suggested that almost everyone was onshore. Where was Jacques? I wanted to ask Daniel again but bit my lip.

  Daniel carried me to the railing and set me down on my feet. I balanced on my toes precariously while I watched him climb over the railing to step onto a rope ladder. He reached for me, and I maneuvered myself over the railing, where Daniel tucked me between his chest and the ladder. We descended the ladder slowly, the rope rungs tearing at the soles of my feet.

  An outrigger canoe awaited us at the waterline, where Frederick took hold of me without a word and settled me onto a bench.

  “Where did you get this?” I whispered to Daniel, who followed me and took up an oar.

  “We stole it,” Daniel said. “Off we go, boys.”

  Frederick thrust an oar against the hull of the ship and pushed away. Samuel, whom I had just noticed, stuck an oar into the water and paddled quietly. Daniel joined them with a third oar. We moved away from the ship and, to my surprise, out to sea.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to our encampment. We have to move away from shore so that we are undetected,” Daniel said. “Following that, I am not certain. We could attempt to move further inland to hide from the Polynesians if the ladies can make that journey. This canoe is too small for all of us to venture out to sea to find another island, and even if we could find another place, there may be more Polynesians who think nothing of kidnapping women. Why did they take you? Why did they hand you over to the French? We watched the exchange from the cliff above the village but could not hear.”

  “The chief, a young man named Kaihau, took me to exchange for his girlfriend—or fiancée—whom he thought had been taken by the French. Little does Kaihau know that Vana left voluntarily with a French sailor and is now living on a nearby island. I’m not sure how Captain Sebastian was going to deal with that. I think the captain thought he was rescuing me. I’m not sure what he planned to do with me, but he seemed a decent enough sort of man. Except I was locked in the cabin, so clearly I couldn’t leave if I wanted. I dared not tell anyone about the rest of you though.”

  “Captain Sebastian?” Daniel repeated. “I have heard of him. You are well away from him. I have heard he does not like to be thwarted.”

  “Really? He seemed very pleasant actually.”

  “Pleasant?” Daniel said in a gruff voice. He looked over his shoulder toward me.

  “Did he release you? Were you not restrained in a locked cabin?” He turned to face forward.

  “Well, yes. But he took me back to the ship to get me out of Kaihau’s hands.”

  Daniel spoke over his shoulder. “Yes, this story of the chief, Kaihau, and his woman, Vana. You have only Captain Sebastian’s word that she left voluntarily. In my experience, these women do not leave their families. The husband is expected to join her family.”

  “Oh!” I said. “I believed him. He seemed so—”

  “Honorable?” Daniel asked.

  “I guess,” I murmured.

  “Nonetheless, we have you back now. It is possible that Captain Sebastian may come for you. Or he may not. I do not know. I had to incapacitate a rather rotund redheaded fellow to effect your rescue. Is that the Jacques you asked about?”

  I nodded.

  “This man, Jacques, saw me, so Captain Sebastian may seek revenge or—”

  “I didn’t tell him about you. He wondered if I was alone, but I didn’t tell him about the group.”

  “He will know that you were not alone before long.”

  “I just can’t imagine Captain Sebastian pursuing us,” I murmured.

  “And if he does not, it is possible the Polynesians will return for the rest of us.”

  “Why?”

  “To kill us, I presume,” he said in a grim voice.

  “No!” I sputtered. “No, they wouldn’t. They seem so peaceful, so friendly, with the exception of taking me.”

  “I do not know these particular islanders, Maggie, but I can assure you that Polynesians have killed intruders to protect their homes and their islands. They have been vastly put upon over the years—kidnapped, enslaved, used abominably, even murdered. I am pleased that they treated you well during your time with them, but do not imagine them as pacifists.”

  I fell silent and turned to watch the village bonfires, now fading in the distance as the canoe moved beyond the bay. A bright moon shone down on us, allowing the men to see the coastline to navigate around the island.

  I crawled over to sit beside Daniel as he rowed.

  “Daniel,” I began in a low voice. “If we can’t run, then we have to figure out how to negotiate with Kaihau and his people.”

  “How? We have no assurance that they won’t kill us, Maggie. How did you even manage to communicate with them? Do they speak English?”

  “Kaihau’s sister, Losa, speaks English. I think she learned from a missionary.”

  “Do you mean to say there is an English missionary in the village? That is a hopeful sign.”

  “No, not that I saw. But I could try to talk to Kaihau through Losa, to explain that we’re trapped here on the island—” Then I thought of the French naval ship.

/>   “Wait, Daniel! Are we really trapped? Couldn’t we have hitched a ride with the French to Tahiti or a more populated island?”

  “I would not think the captain would be inclined to do anything for us as a group at this point, since I assaulted his man and spirited you away. He will probably not take kindly to your disappearance. Whether he chooses to pursue us or not is anyone’s guess. We should prepare for such. But to answer your question, no, I do not believe we can ask Captain Sebastian for safe passage.”

  I lowered my voice and leaned near Daniel.

  “Not to mention I would probably travel forward in time again if I fall sleep on the ship.”

  “Under the present circumstances, Maggie, that would be a blessing for you. If I thought you safe, I would return you to the ship at once. Given your belief that you only travel through time on ships, I was surprised that I was able to find you on the French vessel. Surprised though pleased.”

  I nodded.

  “I know! Your timing was perfect. I had just returned.”

  Daniel gave me a sideways glance. “Ah, yes. The robe. What shall we do with that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I suspect the ladies will have something to say about your attire.”

  “Yes, I’m sure they will. I’ll just tell them the French made me wear it.”

  He glanced at me again.

  “I am not certain they will have seen such material, but perhaps they will not notice.”

  “Terry cloth,” I said, fingering the sash of the robe. “It’s terry cloth. Like towels.”

  “Not like any towels that I have ever seen.”

  “No, probably not,” I acknowledged.

  Daniel pulled on his oar and chuckled.

  “It is peculiar that we find ourselves speaking of cloth.”

  “Everything about this is peculiar.”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  Daniel fell silent, and I turned to look over my shoulder. I could see neither the village nor the French ship any longer. We must have rounded the island.