Captain Adam (8 page)

What was he being asked to tote—the crown jewels?

In any event, and rocked though he was, Adam had not the slightest intention of refusing the offer. The money would be his, not to be shared with any of the crew or with the owners; for this sort of service, by clear agreement, was one of the skipper's prerogatives.

"It'll be enough," he said casually.

"It would be more convenient to pay you here, leaving it to your honor, in case delivery could not be made, to return the money."

He was not buttering Adam. He did trust him, though until a few hours earlier, when Adam had put into this little cove on the north side of Jamaica, these two men had never before seen one another.

"I'll deliver it all right."

"This is a passenger," Treadway said.

"Oh."

That did not make the matter any clearer. Adam assumed that it was a slave he was to transport—a courtesy gift, somebody with some special talent for making something, or doing something, which would appeal to the New York acquaintance. Well, he could be put into the hold, where the incoming molasses would not take up as much room as the outgoing eels had. But what black in all this world would any man be ready to pay one hundred pounds transportation for?

"I have every confidence, though," Treadway added, "that you will get her there."

"Her?"

"Yes," said Treadway.

Now here was something out of a different bag entirely. Sure, it still could be some fat old black hag who happened to be an expert seamstress, say, or a celebrated cook; but something told Adam that the passenger was younger. A cast-off doxy? Some seductive coffee-colored mustee or mustefino whom it was advisable for private reasons to get plumb out of this part of the world? It sounded like that.

Not that for one hundred pounds Adam Long would have refused to carry her if she had been Satan's own sister, complete with horns and tail. It was the matter of discipline he was thinking of. Excepting Seth Selden, the hands, he believed, were of tolerably good character; but all the same, a loose woman in the listless heat of the horse latitudes—

"Is she in good condition? Reason I ask, it might be advisable to keep her below and have the hatch battened down, the whole trip."

"The person we are talking about," said Horace Treadway, "is my cousin, the Honorable Maisie de Lynn Treadvvay-Paul."

In those days politeness was not obligatory, but it was advisable. Adam leapt to his feet.

"Say, I'm sorrier'n all outside I—"

Treadway tossed a languid handkerchief.

"It is nothing." He rose. "Ah, here she comes now."

And Adam turned, and saw her, and his heart stopped.

It was not only that the lady was lovely: it was that she was alive. Most of the white females you saw here in Jamaica looked as if the climate had them licked. They looked pale, drawn, like persons who are suffering inwardly. Nothing stood out about them, everything drooped. The sheen of sweat on their upper lips and on the backs of their hands might have been unavoidable, granted, but assuredly it was not becoming. In short, you felt sorry for them but not impelled toward them. Likely enough they hadn't been any great punkins to start with.

This lady now was as alive as lightning, darned near as dazzling, too. She had a roundish face, perhaps slightly thick across the cheekbones for the most precious taste, but good, a clean face, and exquisitely tinted. She had a small nose washed with faint freckles. Her eyes were light brown with specks of green in them. Most dizzying of all was her hair. It was not powdered, though it was piled high in the formal fashion and surmounted by a huge "commode," a tower made up of rows of plaited muslin stiffened with wire, one above the other. The hair was dark red. It danced. It glistered. Never for an instant was it still, for its colors shifted constantly, so that it fascinated you like a fire in the fireplace, or the sea.

"I'm sure you two will get along well together," the planter said.

Maisie Treadway smiled; and the sun stood still a moment, ashamed.

"Oh, I'm sure we will," she said.

PART THREE

Dangerous Waters

nShe interfered with his prayers. Adam Long was not one of your foul-weather suppHcators. He preferred to pray whenever he just happened to feel like it and got the chance. He liked to pray alone, prayers made up as he went along: set prayers he regarded as Romish, and anyway how could you expect the Lord to listen when all you did was recite words somebody else had written down for you? Adam would pray in adversity but he preferred to pray in prosperity, where maybe it meant more. By himself he prayed somewhat as a Quaker might; and it was true that he'd long had a sneaking admiration for that sect; but he was seldom moved to pray aloud, in public places. He would join in the Amens at meeting house but he was not a faithful goer. He insisted upon the service each morning on deck rather for the sake of the immortal souls of the others than for any personal spiritual benefit. Regularity in prayer might well have a good effect on the men, he thought. His own greatest satisfaction was derived from prayers that no one else heard, about matters just between himself and his Maker.

What's more, he did not like to have anybody see him when he prayed. He was not one to mutter a hasty Our Father behind his teeth in a moment of danger. He didn't even like to pray while lying flat in his bunk. He liked to get right down on his knees, the way a man should.

In the cabin this had been easy. He and Forbes kept it clean, and not often had they both been there at the same time.

In the forecastle, matters were different. It was a small forecastle in the first place, and Jethro Gardner, Eb Waters, John Bond, Carl Peterson, Abel Rellison, and Eliphalet Mellish had filled it before the unexpected arrival of Seth Selden. Now Captain Long and Mate Forbes were added to this company.

True, Peterson and Waters for the time being were on deck, for that's where the irons were; but even so, their chests remained in the forecastle.

The men took it well, at first. They even seemed amused by the spectacle of skipper and mate turned out of their quarters.

It was all a lark for the lady, and she sought to win the hands to her by circulating and smiling among them; and for a while she did.

Most of them had never seen anything like her, no more than had Adam Long. Her hair, the flecks of green in her brown eyes, the swift-striking warmth of her smile, the clothes she wore—these, even without her affability, would have dizzied the hands. She was obviously eager to please them, an attitude that flattered. "Lady Maisie" they called her. It could be that a shadow of gawkiness about her, as though she had not yet got used to the length of her own legs, touched their hearts. It certainly touched Adam's. What was she doing here? What was the matter with her friends, that they let her go off to a strange wild land alone? Why did Horace Treadway ofi:er such a thumping sum when he booked passage for her on a small smuggling vessel whose skipper he had only just met? Now and then Adam would catch her when she was not smiling at anybody, not chatting, or even conscious that she was being watched: she'd stare out across the sea, not necessarily toward England, not back over the way she had come, but anywhere, and there would be an expression of unutterable loneliness in her face. She'd look so lost! She shouldn't be here. She ought to be back in London, dancing at a rout, pirouetting, flirting, not zigzagging in the company of colonial louts through some of the most dangerous waters in the world.

Treadway had come aboard to speak his farewell to her, but it was formal enough. The two had kissed, of course; and they had called one another "cousin"; but Adam, who had steeled himself to witness a tearful leavetaking, thought the business downright brusque. Nor had she stayed at the taffrail, waving an idiotic small handkerchief, for more than the few minutes it took to row Treadway ashore; and then she had gone promptly below, where her boxes, baskets, hampers, chests, bottles, bedrolls, and bundles had been put.

Perhaps an hour later the slide went back and the Honorable Maisie de Lynn Treadway-Paul's head appeared. She tossed Adam a smile.

"La, Captain! Would you be good enough to dispatch the valet de chamhre to me, pray?"

He bowed—in part to hide his face.

"Sure will, ma'am."

The head disappeared, the slide was closed. Adam and the man at the wheel looked at one another.

"What in Hell's a valet de chamhre?"

"There's no need for profanity," Adam said. "It— It's a kind of servant, I think."

"Didn't know she had a servant with her."

"Hasn't. Reckon it's up to us to supply one."

Thoughtful, he went forward. Goodwill carried no regular cook. Just

abaft the foremast there was a sandbox made of bricks, and anybody who wanted to could cook anything he drew from the larder at any time he wished—subject, naturally, to regulations the captain might announce from time to time. It worked out well enough. Salt pork and Poor John and jerked beef, with bread when they could get it, and fish when they could catch any, made up most of their diet; and these things don't call for a fancy kitchen. It was understood that the skipper, mate and bosun did not have to cook their own food but could order anybody else to do so at any time; but in fact each of these officers took a hand now and then as circumstances suggested. There were no set meal times. They ate when they got hungry, that's all.

The whole crew was there this noon. There was a spitted goat Mr. Treadway had given them as a farewell gift. It had been roasted a luscious golden-brown. Yet when Adam was first offered some he shook his head. He was studying these men.

At first he thought of Seth Selden, who, in his middle forties, was, with Jeth Gardner, by far the oldest person aboard. Seth was spry, but no man at that age could nimble it like an ordinary hand. Which is to say, Seth could be spared, except in a blow. But could Seth be trusted in a lady's bedchamber? Probably not. Not off soundings anyway.

Adam then went to the other extreme, his gaze falling upon Abel Rellison, who at thirteen was really a boy and was only being paid a boy's wages, though often enough he did the work of a man. Abel was a good lad, earnest, not flip. Adam stabbed a finger at him.

"You!"

"Aye, sir," and Rellison rose.

'Tou're the valet de chamhre."

"What's that?"

"I don't know. Go to the cabin and find out. Don't forget to knock before you go in. And after that do whatever she tells you to."

"Empty her pottie, I expect," said Seth Selden.

This was in plain truth what Abel was told to do, for Lady Maisie had brought wdth her, among so many other things, a private close-stool, a contraption that folded in an ingenious manner, not looking at all like what it was; but so long as he was there, she had set the lad about other duties as well, helping her ladyship to get the cabin straightened up. When he returned he was agog.

"Never saw so many bottles of perfume! Shelves of 'em! And there's all kinds of jars and bowls of stuff that looks like bear grease, only it don't smell that way. Now she wants the steward. Who's he?"

"You again, I guess," Adam said. "You seem to be doing all right."

"Sure!" And he raced aft.

"Why not take her a handful of goat?" somebody called.

She came up on deck two hours later. How all the unguents and ointments and patches and powder had been disposed, Adam was sure he did not know; for though she did smell sweet—it could have been her natural smell, at that—surely she had not painted her face like the wicked Jezebel, who got thrown out of a window for it. There might have been a smitch of powder, but there was no pigment. Adam looked.

She was dressed in drugget—a flaring bodice, a wide-spreading skirt, the color of salmon—and wore a white petticoat swagged with rosep)oint. She wore dark green doeskin gloves. Her head was bare.

The Rellison boy had been sent away some time before. He was still telling the crew about it. Adam himself was at the tiller, for two reasons. He feared that a seaman stationed there might be tempted to peer down past the scuttle into the cabin, spying out the wonders Abel Rellison had prated of, maybe spying something else, too. The other reason was that Adam Long wanted to peer down there himself and see if he couldn't find out what she had done to his cabin. He believed he could do this without appearing to, but he didn't want any witnesses while he tried.

She had some difficulty getting up, what with the hoop-petticoat, and he helped her. She was wearing dark green stockings and small soft yellow shoes with crimson velvet roses at the instep.

She thanked him cheerily. He did not bow. He had thought this.out. If he bowed every time he encountered his passenger—well, he'd be bowing a good part of the time. And bowing was not so easy when you were bowling along on a careless sea with a tomboyish wind behind you.

He was not accustomed to bare-headed women, and the sight fussed him even more than the sight of her stocking had done.

They stood there for a time, talking of this and that, Adam didn't rightly remember what. She told him that she was sure she was going to be comfortable and that she did hope she wasn't putting them to any inconvenience; and he cried "Oh, no!" She said that this seemed the pleasantest part of the boat, right back here where they were; and Adam said he would rig an awning for her here tomorrow.

Adam raised his eyes, but they encountered the upper part of the lady's bodice, which, very low, was trimmed with muslin, maybe not enough of it; and his temples pounded, and sweat sprang out around his mouth, so that he put his gaze down to the deck again in a hurry.

"The sailors—didn't I hear them singing a while ago?"

"There was a chantey, while they were having the hook up."

"It was a charming little thing. So— So pastorale."

"Well-"

"D'ye suppose they could sing it again?"

They did, and with glee. They sat along the taffrail and kept time with their hands, and for the most part they remembered never to start the verses that were not proper to this occasion, though at least once they slipped.