THE HOORN MERCHANTMAN was struggling in heavy weather, and Mary Read was trying to sleep.
It was her time below, a well-earned rest after an exhausting day’s work, followed by another four hours on watch as she and her fellows were lashed by the building storm. The North Sea in winter. Mary was no stranger to it, but she had forgotten what an unmitigated misery it could be.
She lay in her bunk, all the way forward, wedged between her seabag on the one side and the hull of the ship on the other, jammed in as tight as she could get to keep from being tossed from the bunk. She was still wearing all her clothes and her oilskins as well. No point in taking them off.
The Hoorn heaved, pitched, and rolled in the mounting seas. The single lantern illuminating the forecastle swung in great irregular arcs, making fast-moving shadows and patches of dull light across the table and bunks.
The small space was filled with sound—the smash of the seas against the hull, the creak and groan of the ship’s timbers, the scream of the wind in the masts as it was carried by the rigging to the vessel’s fabric, the slosh of the water running inches deep on the forecastle deck.
Mary felt the ship rise on a wave, pause, and then go down, down, rolling as she went, rolling over on her beam ends, further and further. She gripped the edge of the bunk, thought, Dear Lord, come up, come up . . . And then just when it seemed the ship would roll clean over, she paused, lurched, and righted herself again, coming up with a shudder as she shed the tons of water that had crashed over her decks.
It is a peculiar thing . . . she mused. Her spirit was weary of life, ready to be shed of it. And yet her flesh could only react as all living things did, with a desperate need to keep on living.
She could hear the sound of the wind rising in pitch, could feel the increased laboring of the vessel. When she had come below, an hour before, they had been struggling on with just the barest amount of sail showing—fore and main topsails, deep reefed—but soon even that little bit of canvas would be too much. She did not think her rest, such as it was, would last long.
The hatch opened overhead and Mary heard the roar of the wind, felt the blast of cold, clean air as it whirled through the close, fetid atmosphere of the forecastle. She tensed again, knew what was coming.
“All hands! All hands!” Waalwijk, the mate, shouted down into the forecastle. The words were loud even over the howling storm, and Mary could hear the fear in his voice.
Bloody coward . . . Mary rolled out of her bunk, sat for a second with her legs hanging over the edge. Waited while the ship rolled away and then stood as the ship rolled back and nearly tossed her across the forecastle with the momentum, as if to say, Up, up, and attend to me!
She staggered along with her hands on the table for balance. She paused as Hans Franeker, the youngest on her watch, struggled from his bunk, wide-eyed, confused, and she wondered if he had actually been sleeping.
She grabbed Hans by the collar, helped pull him to his feet. “Hans!” she said, yelling to be heard over the din of the storm, even below decks. “On deck!”
Hans nodded and Mary nodded and she pushed past him. Fore and aft the rest of the men from her watch groped their way from their bunks, staggered aft, each as wet, as miserable, and as frightened as she.
They moved as fast as they could along the heaving deck, struggled up the ladder.
Mary stepped through the hatch into a foot of water that ran over the deck, cascading off combings and rails and shooting into the air like breaking surf. The night was black, the air filled with water from the spray that broke over the bow and the great surges of green water coming aboard and the rain that drove down in sheets. The scream of the wind in the rigging was inhuman.
Mary moved out of the way, making room for her fellows to gain the deck. She grabbed hold of the foremast fife rail and a big sea surged over the bow and ran down the deck, nearly up to her waist. The water pulled at her legs, filled her boots, crashed against her chest. She sucked in breath as her clothes, which had warmed up somewhat during her time below, were soaked with the icy water once more.
She held tight as the flood tried to pry her from the rail, tried to whirl her away along the deck and toss her over the bulwark and into the sea. They had lost a man already that way, two days before.
Waalwijk loomed up, gripping the lifelines run fore and aft. In his right hand he clutched a knotted rope end, but he held it more like a talisman than a weapon.
When the last of the watch was up from below he shouted, “The storm gets worse! We must lie to, reefed mainsail, backed foresail hung in the brails! Van een goed wind, een kwaden maken, make a bad wind out of a good one! You men, take in the main topsail!” His voice was hoarse from swallowing salt water when he shouted.
Mary nodded. Lie to, that was what she expected. If they had been in the open ocean they could have run before the wind, just let the storm have its way until it blew itself out. But they were not in the open ocean, they were in the North Sea, with its ship-killing coasts on every hand. They did not have the luxury of a thousand miles of open water in which to run, they had at best a couple hundred miles under their lee before they piled up on some shore or other.
To get the Hoorn to lie to they would have to haul up the foresail with the lines on deck, which was relatively easy. They would also have to climb aloft, fifty feet up in the violent night to stow the topsails, which was not easy at all.
Mary worked her way toward the pinrail, joined the clutch of men there struggling with the lines, hauling away to pull the sail up. She reached through the crowd of men who were tugging and swaying on the clewline, got her hands on the rope, added her weight to the effort.
Another big sea came over the bow and rushed waist deep along the deck, knocking the lot of them sideways, but they clung to the clewline like grapes on a vine, pulling, struggling on despite the frigid water that tried to sweep them away. Mary and her fellows hauled on clewlines and buntlines and pulled the topsail up to the yard, the once taut sail now a great flogging bag of canvas, threatening to beat itself to death against the mast.
Mary stepped back, looked aloft, blinking away the spray and the rain. There was the easy part done. Now it needed only for them to climb up and stow the sail, lash it to the yard.
In fair weather, even moderate weather, the seamen would race aloft, taking the ratlines at a running pace and swarming up over the top. But not that night. Now they went step by step, fighting for every foot.
Mary took care with each fresh grip on the shrouds, tested her weight on every ratline as she worked her way up. The ship heeled to leeward and the wind pressed her to the shrouds, and she was able to scramble up a few feet. Then the ship rolled back with a quick snap that tried to throw her from the rigging into the boiling sea below, and she could do no more than cling tight, arms wrapped around the shrouds, and hang on and wait.
Up, up and over the futtock shrouds, up into the topmast shrouds and up again. Slowly, one after another, they moved like weary men at day’s end in a slow-moving paymaster’s line. Then Mary’s waist was level with the main topsail yard, and it was her turn to step onto it.
The sail twisted and banged and whipped around, gleaming wet canvas. Mary could hear nothing beyond the crack of the sail as it filled, collapsed, and filled again. Her whole world, her whole madly tossing, banging, soaked world was reduced to that section of shroud: the yard, the foot-rope, the sail.
She reached over and found a handhold, took a firm grip, and reached out with her foot and set it on the foot-rope. She paused, half on the yard, half on the shrouds, waited for the ship to roll the right way, then stepped across and onto the foot-ropes.
A step out along the yard, then she stopped, turned back. Hans was there, clinging to the shrouds, eyes wide, and Mary was afraid that he had spent all of his courage just getting to that place.
She reached out a hand for Hans and he reached out and took it, and then when the ship pitched forward he used the momentum to step on after her.
Side by side they shuffled out along the yard, bellies pressed against that long wooden pole, feet on the foot-rope slung below it, and fifty feet below them, the ship, rolling and pitching, green water surging over the bows and burying the deck under a foaming blanket.
The sail reared up in front of them—wet, half-frozen canvas, as stiff as a board. It smacked their hands and faces, slammed them in the chest as they clawed their way out, finding what handholds they could as they moved.
At last Mary came shoulder to shoulder with the man just outboard of her and she was as far as she could go. She reached out and began to gather the sail up under her arms, pressing it against the yard in an effort to subdue it. Her wet fingers pulled at the thick canvas, trying to catch enough of a fold that she could grip the cloth and pull it in.
Inch by inch they fisted the sail, working together as best they could, ignoring bleeding hands and torn fingernails and the bitter, bitter cold. They did not think on how perilous their situation was because, if they did, they would not have been able to go on.
And just as they felt they were gaining on the sail, just as they could feel a respectable pile of canvas under their arms, the wind would catch it from behind and billow it out again, and all their clawing and grabbing could not hold it back. And then they would start over again.
For half an hour they fought canvas, but they were no further along than they had been when first they worked their way out on the yard, and Mary could feel the strength going from her arms. On either side of her she could see the movements of the others becoming more awkward, slower, as they, too, grew tired, and the numbing cold began to work on their fingers and hands.
The sail blew out, and then collapsed in a fluke of wind, and Mary’s hand shot out and she got a fistful, pulled it toward her and on her right Hans did the same. She reached out, grabbed another, thought There now, we shall get this in . . .
And then a gust hit them, more northerly, a burst of wind and the sail billowed out again. From the corner of her eye Mary saw Hans’s arms knocked aside by the wild canvas. She twisted, saw the young man falling back, arms flailing for something, anything, to grab, fingers clawing in air as he toppled back.
Mary seized a line with her left hand, her right hand shot out. Her fingers scraped down Hans’s oilskin as he fell and then she hooked his belt as his feet came off the foot-ropes and for a horrible instant Mary thought he was going down and she was going with him.
Then everything seemed to stop, the terrible moment frozen. Hans hung by the belt in Mary’s fingers and Mary hung from the line in her left hand, her feet still on the foot-rope, her body half twisted around. She felt the rough fibers of the line across her palm as the wet rope began to slip from her grasp. She wondered how long she could hold on, if Hans’s belt would break, if the line would break, if she and Hans would plunge into the sea or hit the deck.
And then the men on either side turned as well, reached down and hauled Hans up to the yard, grabbed Mary before the line slipped from her hand, before they fell down, down into the sea below.
It had been mere seconds that she had held Hans suspended in air, and that realization surprised her, because it had seemed so much longer. It seemed she had lived her whole life on that yard, like she could not remember a time when she was not out on that cursed yard.
The others set Hans back on the foot-rope and with never a word they fell back to stowing the topsail, beating the canvas with numbed hands, grabbing up folds when they could, holding it under their arms against the yard.
They were at it for another forty minutes before they finally had the cloth subdued, before the foot of the sail came to hand and they had it all against the yard. They passed their gaskets around and around the sail, hauling tight, binding it carefully to the topsail yard so that the wind’s prying fingers would not find a tiny loose bit and pluck away at it, pulling it from its lashings, until it had the sail free once again and had torn it to ribbons and negated all their work and suffering.
At last they headed back to the deck and the going down was far worse than the going up, for now they were exhausted, their arms like rubber, their hands bleeding and numb with cold. They could barely feel the shrouds in their grips and had no faith in their ability to hang on, but one by one they made it down to the lowest ratline and swung inboard and dropped to the flooded deck.
Not a word was said about Hans’s near fall, Mary’s heroic grab. No one ever spoke of such things. It was the way of sailors.
And then the mate, Waalwijk, loomed up among them and shouted, “About bloody goddamned time you were done! Were you buggering each other up there, or what were you?”
The wind had increased in strength, pulling at Mary’s oilskins and the hat which she had lashed firm to her head, but the Hoorn’s motion was easier now, with the ship lying to, riding out the storm like a gull sitting on top of the water.
Mary was wet to her skin, numb, exhausted, battered, and bleeding. The fingernail on her right middle finger had been torn clean away but she could not recall when that had happened. She had wrenched her shoulder in holding Hans by his belt and knew from experience that it would hurt like hell in a few hours.
They were bound away for the West Indies. They had taken their cargo to Stockholm, had carried another to Riga, and now had a hold full of sundry goods they were carrying to Port Royal, Jamaica.
The West Indies. She had never been, but she had heard enough about it.
She had heard about the yellow jack and the bloody flux and the pirates that would be found there, but those things did not concern her. She thought instead of the blue skies, the gentle Trade Winds, the clear, aquamarine water. Palm trees, long, white-sand beaches. Warmth. All year long, warmth. Just the thought of it was comforting.
So, for a while at least, she would be in the West Indies and she would be warm. And then back to Europe, the Baltic, the North Sea. She felt herself sag, physically and emotionally. The thought of reaching paradise and then leaving it again made her spirits sink to a place even lower than they had been.
Mary Read stared down at the black water, rolling and crashing below, the foaming crests reaching up to her, beckoning her, and she wished that she had the courage to just throw herself into that void.