Part 25 (1/2)

I calls down: ”Captain! Stop your men. Call them back down. I have my s.h.i.+v on the main topgallant stay. I can cut through it in a flash. In front of me are the fore royal braces and aft of me are the main royal braces and the main topgallant braces. I can reach them all and cut through them before your men reach me, and you will be a week fixing the damage and I know you're supposed to leave today. What will the Admiralty say when you come in a week late? Is it worth one pressed seaman?”

The two men stop about fifteen feet below me and look back down at the Captain, who's lookin' up at me with pure hatred writ all over his crimson face. I move the knife to another line and say, ”But let's watch the main royal sail fall to the deck first, shall we?” and I pretend to saw away.

”Stop!” roars the Captain, and I stop.

”Look at the pilings on the pier, Captain, and you'll see the tide is ebbing. The same tide you're supposed to be sailing on, Sir,” says I. ”You must hurry or you will miss it. What will the First Lord say?”

”All right. Let him go,” says the Captain, not taking his furious eyes off me.

They take their hands off Gully and he jumps to his feet and runs all gangly down the gangway and across the pier and disappears around a building. Gully is saved. Our act is saved. But now, who will save poor Jacky?

”Tell your men to go back down,” I says. I've still got my knife poised on the stay. The Captain nods and the feet of the two men quickly thump on the deck. Why bother chasing me, they're figurin'-I got to come down sometime. I put my s.h.i.+v securely back in my vest and tighten down the vest's laces, and I start down.

They make a circle about the deck in the place where I must come down so that I won't be able to make a dash for it. The men are hugely enjoying this, of course-what a story it will make, and who cares about one more seaman on board, more or less? Ah, but the Captain, he is not so amused. He mutters something to a sailor next to him and the sailor leaves and comes back with the Cat. He slaps the Cat's nine tails against his palm and grins up at me. The Bo'sun, for certain.

When I get down to the topsail yard, I wails, ”Surely that Cat's not meant for me, Sir!” They don't say nothin'. They just waits.

I put my foot in the ratlines that lead down to the maintop, the ratlines on the pier side, to throw them off. I climbs down to the maintop platform, blubberin' and cryin' like I'm afraid I'm about to be whipped, but when my foot touches the main yard, I yelps, ”Ha, ha!” and runs the length of it toward the seaward side of the Excalibur, and now they're startin' to shout in alarm, but it's too late, Mates, you can't catch me now.

I'm at the end of the yard, hangin' out over the water. I turns and grins and dives off.

I tries to make the dive as graceful as possible, havin' an audience and all, and I hits the water right neatly, just like I practiced back in my lagoon down in the Caribbean. Just like the Caribbean. Except for the cold.

The day's warmth had charmed me into thinkin' that the water would be as warm as the air. It ain't. The water grabs my chest like an iron fist of cold that means to squeeze all the air out of me forever. I fights the panic that wells up in me and opens me eyes and looks about. It ain't near as clear as the water in my lagoon, but I can make out the looming hull of the Excalibur in the murk and I makes myself swim toward her, underwater.

I comes up gasping next to the rudder and I moves next to the pintle where I know they won't be able to see me and hangs there, tryin' to make my chest stop shudderin' and shakin'. While I collects myself, I listens to them shoutin' up above.

”Stupid girl! Drowned for sure!”

And...

”'Twarn't our fault. G.o.d knows, it 'twarn't our fault!”

And...

”Oh, the poor thing! She'll haunt us for sure!”

And...

”We've got the wind and the tide! Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here! We can't hang about for a G.o.ddamed inquest! d.a.m.n that girl!”

That from the Captain.

”All hands aloft to make sail! Cast off lines One, Two, and Four!”

I take a breath and go back under and swim over under the pier. My feet touch the muddy bottom and I stand and wrap my arms about myself. Teeth chattering, I hear the swoosh of the sails dropping and filling and the bow of the s.h.i.+p begins to swing out from the dock.

”Cast off Three and Five! Take a strain on Six!”

The Captain is in a hurry, taking his s.h.i.+p out without using small boats full of rowers to carefully warp her out of the harbor.

”Take in Six! s.h.i.+ft Colors!”

The Excalibur is under way, free of the land. I swim over to where the water comes up under the dock. I had hoped to find one of those ladders that go down in the water for the loading of small boats, but no such luck and I have to slog through the muck to the sh.o.r.e. There's over a hundred years of harbor filth in that mud, but I got to crawl through it. I am lucky that there ain't no sharp stuff buried there and so I don't get cut. I stay away from the barnacles on the pilings themselves, 'cause I know they'll cut me deep if I so much as brush up against them.

I'm about to gain the sh.o.r.e when I slip and go down, up to my elbows in the slop and my hair flops down in it and I have to kneel in the glop to free my hands but I do, and I figure it's all better than a whipping.

I get to the head of the dock and see that the Excalibur is about twenty-five yards from the pier, too far out in the channel to come back to get me, so I strolls out to the end of the dock. I can't let them think that I'm dead, as it would ruin their voyage. I'm sure the most superst.i.tious of the sailors have already seen my ghost, and great portents of bad luck and disaster have already been cast 'cause of the death of poor me. I can't let them sail out under the shadow of something like that.

I put my fists on my hips and bellows out, ”Good sailing, Mates!” I waves and they are not so far out that I can't see the heads snap around and the smiles of relief on their faces when they see me standing here filthy but alive and waving and grinning from ear to ear. I hear whistles and cheers and I see some thumbs held up.

I can see the Captain, too, as he rushes to the rail to glare at me, mouth open in curses I can barely hear. The legend of this day will not go easy on him and I think he knows it. He snaps his jaw shut and gives me a gesture with his finger that I take to mean something nasty. I resists the temptation to turn about and drop my drawers and give him a good look at my bare and muddy backside, but I quells the urge. After all, I am a lady. Sort of.

I have to put my skirt back on over my muddy drawers cause I'll be arrested if I don't, so I do it. Then I go and fetch the faithful Gretchen, who is waiting for me at the end of the dock and whose nostrils quiver as she gets a whiff of me, but she is good and forgives me and lets me lead her to the Pig, where I find Gully stuffing a bag with his things and I ask him what he's doing.

”Och. I'm leavin' this town, Moneymaker. Too hot for old Gully, the Hero o' Culloden Moor. There's more o' King George's s.h.i.+ps due in and one of 'em '11 get me, soon enough!”

”Leaving!” I says, standin' there stinkin' and drippin' on the floor and not believin' any of this. ”But what about our act? We was doin' so well! You can't break up the act!”

”I got to go, Missy. Don't ask me to take you with me 'cause I can't-got to travel light to keep ahead of the King's minions.”

”But I wouldn't have saved you if I'd knowed you was gonna cut and run!”

”Saved me?” he snorts. ”Ah, nay, I was just about to bust loose from them blaggards when you come up. All you did was prevent me from hurtin' some o' them.”

Gully slings the Lady Lenore around his shoulder and heads for the door. ”I'd kiss ye good-bye, Moneymaker, but ye stinks too bad.”

And he is gone.

I get up on Gretchen and ride slowly back to the school. I'm lucky there ain't many people about to wonder at my condition and I get into the Common where it don't matter, so I pokes along, thinkin' about things.