The ship’s bell tolls.The bosun’s whip cracks.Haul away there.Brace the yards.Man the guns.Get up.Lay down.Fall in.Fall out…
A never-ending hail of orders, and the bosun’s piercing whistle is the worst of it.
“I’d like to shove that pipe up his arse,” Sammy Roberts always says.
He smirks at Jed from his perch on a cannonade in the forecastle, where they’ve all gathered round to while away a Sunday afternoon in glorious, dreamlike sunshine.“Remember how I allus says that?”
But Sammy is dead.Has been for over a year now.Hit by a falling marlinspike and buried at sea off the Azores.
Jed, with a sick sort of puzzlement in his stomach, studies that jolly face.Blood is trickling down Sammy’s temple but he doesn’t seem to notice.His eyes glitter.
“Keep your stations, men!”the midshipman shouts, and now somehow Sammy is at the mainsheet.“You there, Roberts, haul away.Bosun, start that man!”
Sammy flinches—and then Jed isn’t with him anymore.He’s high in the rigging, the deck below the size of a pocket handkerchief.His hands are slick with blood.Grimly, he tightens his grip on the ratlines.
He can’t tell where the blood came from.He isn’t injured.Indeed the battle seems to be over.Or maybe there never was one.The ship is sailing peacefully across the open, empty sea.Jed is almost disappointed.It’s an ordinary day, and there’s nothing to do but wait.
Waiting.Always waiting.Not allowed to do anything but wait for orders.The wind howls in his ears, too loud for talking, save in a bellow.He’s on the yardarm now, and the next man along is lost in a reverie of his own.
Turn the glass and strike the bell…
Jed woke drenched in sweat.At first he only lay there, heart pounding.Then he struggled into a sitting position.Solomon was a few yards away, up to his knees in water, shovelling at a steady pace.When he saw Jed stir, he stopped work.He dug his shovel into the ground and rested his folded arms on it.
Jed drew in a breath.“Christ, I’m sorry.You should have woken me.”
After they’d eaten, he had lain back to rest his eyes for a second.He must have dozed off.
“You don’t sleep very well,” Solomon observed.
Jed scrubbed at dry eyes.He had slept uneasily every night since he ran, but he’d thought that last night, at least, he’d managed to avoid waking Solomon.
This was getting damned tiresome.In five years at sea, he had always slept like a log.Never troubled by the slightest nightmare.
“Well, you know…” he said with a shrug.“I’ve not grown accustomed to the idea of getting a full night’s sleep.At sea, we could be turned out on deck at any hour of the day or night.”
“I wonder if it’s more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve not had an easy time of it, recently.That’s all.”
Jed had no idea how to respond to that.Finally, he said, “Next time, wake me up.Don’t see why you should labour on alone.”
Solomon accepted this with phlegm.He picked up the other shovel and tossed it to Jed.“Here you are, then.”
The land around the rhyne was noticeably drier now.
“Mrs Farley had the right of it when she said ‘twould take us four or five days,” Jed said, surveying their work.
Solomon grunted, a sound that held more annoyance and impatience than satisfaction.
Jed glanced curiously at him.“When is your friend expecting you?”
Solomon looked startled, as though he hadn’t expected Jed to be paying such close attention to his affairs.“He won’t have begun to worry yet about what has delayed me, I don’t think.He left London only a few weeks before I did.Indeed, he may have been delayed on the road himself.”
“You couldn’t travel together?”
“No.”
