Chapter 43

“Fight!”

I’m lounging about up in the foretop with Ravi and Josephine, feeding her little bits of johnnycake from my fingertips, when I hear the fuss below.

I pop my head over the edge and look down. Violetta Atkins and Jane Wheelden have squared off against each other. Since I have recently started up a chorus, picking the best voices from all three Crews, I’ve become friendly with some of the members, so I know this Janey, who is a Tartan. She’s a pretty good sort of person.

“You keep yer dirty hands off my Willie or I’ll tear every hair outta yer filthy head, ya little slut!”

Christ! Fightin over a man, of course . . .

“Oo are ye callin’ a slut, now, ya bloody piece o’ baggage!”

I can tell this ain’t gonna be no simple exchange of curses, slurs, and threats. No, this is gonna be a screeching, hair-pulling, face-scratching, all-outb rawl.

“Baggage, am I? Take this!”

Sure enough, the battle heats up.

I fly down to the deck and throw myself between the two combatants, both of whom have their fists clenched around the hair of the other, snarling.

“Stop it, you two! Right now!” I cry, putting a stiff arm on each chest and forcing them apart. “You’ll be whipped!”

My restraining arms notwithstanding, the fight goes on, each girl glaring into the enraged eyes of the other. My feet lose purchase and we all collapse into a heap on the deck, fists and fingernails still inflicting damage.

“Please, girls! This is against the rules!” I gasp from underneath the heaving bulk of the two.“You’ll be punished!”

Turns out they ain’t the only ones to be punished.

Uh-oh . . .

First Mate Ruger has appeared on the battleground. With a certain amount of dread, I look over at his shiny boots standing within an inch of my nose.

“Bo’sun! Tear them apart and then bring them up before me on the quarterdeck! All three!” he roars.

I feel Bo’sun Roberts’s hand clamp around my neck as I am put to my feet and dragged up before the one man on this ship who I know for certain bears me no goodwill.

“Fighting is not allowed on this ship!” Mr. Ruger roars. “You know the penalty!”

Janey, who stands on my right and who has obviously gotten the worst from the fight, says nothing, but only sucks in her breath in great gasps. Violetta, hauled up on my left, looks defiant. She has felt the rod before and does not fear it. But then her look of defiance fades as she hears Ruger’s next words.

“It is apparent that a mere application of the rod is not sufficient to prevent this sort of altercation, as it has been tried in the past and been found wanting.”

He pauses, peering down upon us with some satisfaction, as if he has been waiting for such a moment. Then he continues.

“Therefore, we must choose an alternate form of punishment. Bo’sun Roberts, rig up the dunking stool! Each shall get ten seconds under!”

“What? What does he mean?” gasps Janey.

“It means we are to get very wet, dear,” I say.

There is a bustle of activity as the Bo’sun’s Mate prepares the apparatus. A chair is taken and ropes are attached to it such that it can be hoisted on the end of a line that is fed through a winch, and then swung over the side and lowered. It is the kind of gear used when a sailor must work at a repair to the ship’s hull when under way—a Bo’sun’s Chair, it is sometimes called. That will not be the use to which this chair will be put today.

“What are they doing, Jacky?” asks the now quite subdued Violetta.

“We are to be dunked in the water, dear,” I say.

Violetta makes a mewling sound, echoed by Jane. Both grab at my arms.

Had I any clothing on other than the light shirt and trousers of my Powder Monkey rig, I would be shedding it right now, but I do not. Oh, well, doesn’t matter. Everything dries real fast in this heat, and I will, too. I stand and wait.

All this noise rouses Captain Laughton from his afternoon nap and he lumbers out on deck, rather grumpy, it appears.

“Do you mind telling me just what’s going on, Mr. Ruger?” he asks, scratching his belly, blinking in the sunlight and gazing at the three of us standing there—two trembling, one not.

“Good afternoon, Captain,” says Ruger with a certain smugness. “We have three malcontents here who are facing punishment for fighting. Since the rod was not sufficient deterrent, I have rigged the dunking stool to see how they like the taste of salt.”

“Um,” replies the Captain, not happy with this at all.

Looking at Janey’s face, terror writ large upon it, I speak up.

“Captain, these girls are terrified. They’ve probably never had their heads underwater in their whole lives. If they go under for the ten seconds so decreed by Mr. Ruger, they’ll panic and suck in a chestful of water. Then they’ll die; and you will be out ten pounds six for each. Being dunked in the water is nothing to me, as you know, but not so for them.”

Higgins has appeared on deck as well, looking mightily concerned.

It is apparent that the Captain is thinking furiously how to get out of this. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to lose valuable bits of cargo; but on the other, he really can’t countermand his First Officer’s order. It would disrupt the way of things on the ship. So Ruger has put him in a tight spot, and I know he does not like it.

The Captain eyes the cowering Lizzie and Tartan and then addresses me. “You think that they might not survive?”

I nod. “Ten seconds up here is not long. Down there it can be an eternity.”

“Hmm. Suppose you would take their punishment upon yourself? There are some who think you have not suffered enough for causing us to be booted out of Bombay. Will you do it?”

I pause, as if thinking, and then answer, “I will.”

Of course I will—what’s thirty seconds underwater to a mermaid?

“Very well, let’s see this done, then,” orders the Captain. So I go over to seat myself in the chair.

As my arms are strapped on to the chair and my legs fixed below, I hear Ravi whimpering, so I call out, “Maggie, see to Ravi, please. Make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.”

I am secured and the Captain says, “Are you ready?”

I nod, and I am jerked upward on the crane and then swung way out over the water, a good ten feet from the side. The water roils beneath me.

“Down!” is the command, and down I go. I suck in a big breath just before I hit.

The water is pleasantly warm and a nice shade of blue-green, I reflect, and then start counting out the seconds.

One, one hundred; two one hundred; three one hundred . . .

I can see the hull of my Lorelei Lee off to my left, but not much else. Oh, well, I should not have expected a show, as we are in very deep water.

Ten, one hundred; eleven, one hundred; twelve, one hundred . . .

At least I see no sharks, which is good, as my feet are rather exposed.

Twenty, one hundred, twenty-one, one hundred . . .

I’m thinkin’ poor Ravi must be throwing a fit right now, poor lad . . .

Twenty-nine, one hundred; thirty, one hundred; thirty-one, one hundred . . .

Should be pulling me up about now . . .

Thirty-eight, one hundred; thiry-nine, one hundred; forty, one hundred . . .

Maybe I counted a bit fast. Slow down some . . .

Fifty, one hundred; fifty-one, one hundred; fifty-two, one hundred . . .

What’s going on here? All right, what are you doing up there?

Seventy-three, one hundred; seventy-four, one hundred . . . Oh, the hell with it! It’s over a minute, for chris’sakes! Are you trying to kill me?

I start to strain and buck against my bonds, but it does no good.

No, no, stop that! You’re using too much air! Calm dowm! Don’t panic! If you panic, you’re done! Just wait, they’ll pull you up!

But they don’t pull me up, no. They leave me down here, and it seems it is their intent to kill me. Very well, I commend my body to the sea in which my body sits helpless and my soul to God.

I must breathe in soon; I must, I must. But I cannot, I cannot. If I do, I will die. But I ache to breathe! I do! I do! Please, God, I don’t wanna die . . . I don’t wanna die . . . I gotta breathe . . . I gotta . . . I . . .

. . . suck in the water . . .

Oh, it burns, it burns, Oh, Lord, I am done . . .

 

I come to my senses, stretched out, face-down over a barrel with Higgins pushing down on my heaving back. I spew out through my nose and mouth what seems like gallons of salt-water, and when it looks like I might live, Higgins scoops up my sobbing, gasping form and carries me down to our cabin.

“It seems, Miss,” announces a furious Higgins, as he tosses me into the tub, “that the winch that was to draw you back up was jammed by what appears to be a splinter of some sort. It could have been a natural thing . . . possibly a shaving from a spar . . . Here, let me get that shirt off you . . . Or it could have been a knitting needle . . .”

I shiver as I sit in the empty tub, waiting for the warm water. There are many in the Crews who knit . . . Could they really hate me so?

I dimly sense Keefe and Mick bringing up the hot water, Higgins taking it from them, and then I feel it poured around me.

I lean back in this gentle, soothing, friendly water, and think back to the water outside.

“At least, Higgins, now I know what it’s like to drown.”

“Please try to put that out of your mind, Miss.”

“I will try, Higgins, but—”

There is a light tap on the door. When Higgins opens it, I turn and see Mrs. Barnsley and Mrs. MacDonald standing there, with Mrs. Berry behind.

“Yes?” says Higgins, with a certain coldness. He has seen all three of these women at their knitting, their needles clicking.

“We’ve had our differences with your wife in the past, Mr. Higgins,” says Mrs. Barnsley. “But . . . we thank her for standin’ up for our girls. We just want you to know . . . We didn’t have nothin’ to do with what just happened to her.”

Higgins nods and closes the door and I sink down in the tub.

“Well,” I say.

“That may well be true, Miss, but someone on this ship wanted to take joy in your demise.”

“Umm . . .” I say. “And I think I know who it is.”

“I believe you are right, Miss, and I advise you to be very careful and—”

The door bursts open and Ravi sticks his head in.

“Missy Memsahib! Big Sahib! Two big boats out on the water!”