Convictions (13 page)

Jennie barely made it back to her bunk when Meadows bellowed, “Everyone on deck!”

“Just in time for a promenade,” said Sarah with a pat on Jen
nie’s shoulder.

Despite a sense of foreboding about Lizzie, when Jennie poked her head out of the hatchway, she felt some relief for the first time in ages. The air was fresh, it wasn’t raining and escaping from the fetid stench of days in the ship’s bowels gave her a nudge of hope.

Chapter Ten

Another week
or two passed, or so Jennie thought
– she’d lost count. The weather was intermittently balmy with temperate breezes and cool with brisk winds sweeping down from the north. The sky always seemed to be overcast, and the water churned grey on the horizon. Although there were some reprieves of sun-smudged days with hot zephyrs off the northwestern tip of the African coast, they never lasted long.

Jennie knew they were heading toward Tenerife, but it seemed to be taking a long time. In a way this was tolerable, as she still hadn’t come up with an escape plan. She, Alice and Fanny nursed Lizzie, and the infected wounds began healing. Hildy and Gladys bickered next to her on a daily basis, often about Flo.

“Flo’s such a lying bilker,” said Gladys. “I don’t know why you always listen to her.”

“As if you’re not a liar too!” Hildy retorted.

“Don’t lump me with the likes of you.” Gladys elbowed Hildy.

Jennie squirmed away from them against the hull.

“I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could toss you.” Hildy shoved Gladys.

“Who do you think you’re pushing around, toady?” Hildy rammed Gladys dangerously close to the edge of the bunk.

“That’s enough you two!” Jennie yelped, as Gladys’ fist swung past her head. “Don’t bring the guards down on us!”

Jennie ducked and curled into a ball as the two women continued tussling and yelling. All at once, they fell off the bunk.

They continued yelling and punching, as the other women egged them on. Jennie slid to the edge of the bunk and peered over. Flo tried to pull them apart and got kicked in the process. She bent over clutching her shin.

“Stop it now!” Sarah grabbed a flailing arm and yanked hard.

She hauled Hildy off Gladys. Hildy drew back as if to strike Sarah, but Sarah slapped her across the face. Hildy jolted back in surprise.

Jennie was shocked too. She hardly noticed that Flo had recovered and dragged Gladys out of the fray.

“I’ll do it again, if you don’t stop this nonsense,” Sarah threatened. Wheezing hard, she glared at Gladys and then at Hildy. Her frizzy hair stuck out like a huge bird’s nest on her head, almost making Jennie laugh, but the harsh expression on Sarah’s face was one that Jennie had never seen before. She kept silent.

“Just like children squabbling over nothing,” Sarah admonished, her face flushed, her eyes blazing.

Gladys and Hildy glared at each other, rubbing at their sore spots and scratches.

“Say your apologies, before the guards come,” Sarah ordered as she glanced down the aisle. “Too late!”

Jennie leaned out for a better look. Three guards stood, conferring at the bottom of the ladder, their conversation drifting toward her.

“Neither of them wins. I keep the wager,” said Scarface.

“Not fair!” said Red Bull. “The fat hag didn’t let them finish their fight.”

Scarface started up the ladder, but Red Bull grabbed his leg. “You got no right to keep it!”

“I told you neither would win. I keep it!” Scarface jerked himself free and bolted up the ladder. Red Bull and Walt followed on his heels, protesting.

Jennie drew back onto the bunk, astonished. The guards had been betting on the outcome of Gladys and Hildy’s fight. Had the bet been a lot of money?

Jennie rolled herself tight to the hull as the three subdued women joined her. She hoped peace would reign for a while now. The three, when they got along, left Jennie out of their conversations, which suited her fine. She stayed clear of them, and from Iris too. Her praying had become louder and included waving her hands in the air in the hopes of getting God’s attention.

When Jennie wasn’t pounding around the deck or carrying out chores, she joined Sarah and Alice, or sometimes Kate, for short, listless chats. But for the most part, she took to her berth to be alone and let her mind drift to fading thoughts of home.

••••

One morning
Sarah gently shook Jennie’s hand
that hung over the edge of the bunk. “Ducky, time to go.”

Jennie’s bunkmates were nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t heard the bell or the shipmate’s bellow to assemble for their morning stretch. Nor had she noticed the others leaving. Dazed, Jennie blinked and automatically edged down with her mattress, stumbling in line behind Sarah and Alice. Sarah’s voice and Alice’s chatter seemed to come from some place in the distance.

When she poked her head out of the hatch, the sky was lightening. A silver sheen blanketed the water. As they rounded the stern, she fixed her face toward the sun breaking into streaks of rosy red on the horizon.

“The sky is so pretty,” said Alice close beside her.

Jennie remembered a similar daybreak at her childhood cottage when her father had tiptoed into her room. Finding her awake, he carried her to the window seat where they gazed at the dawn together and listened to the first trill of songbirds.

“Aye, that it is, but with it comes a dire warning,” Kate said, breaking into Jennie’s thoughts. “Red sails at night, sailor’s delight. Red sails in the morning, sailor’s warning.” She peered uneasily over her shoulder and made the sign of the cross.

A sudden whistle of wind rushed over them.

From behind them, Fanny said, “I don’t like the feel of that.”

“Indeed, it’s ominous,” Sarah agreed.

Jennie felt the little hairs lift at the back of her neck.

After only a couple of marching rounds, stronger gusts swept across the deck, flapping the sails and buffeting the prisoners. Meadows was on the bridge with his sextant. Coombs clung to his perch on the masthead as the ship bobbed and dipped.

“Tighten the centreboard winch, hoist the mizzenmast and lower the boom,” Lieutenant Yates bellowed. Then he ordered Coombs down.

Jennie’s chest tightened as the sail whipped around and nearly knocked Coombs off the mast. He clung with one hand until he managed a better hold, and finally made it to the deck.

“Look at the sky now!” Alice pointed to massive dark clouds rolling overhead, blocking out the dawn.

An instant wind sent the sails snapping wildly. Flecks of foam leapt against the ship.

“Look lively!” shouted Lieutenant Yates. “All hands on deck!”

Sailors scrambled to steady the sails, tightening the winches. A flash of lightning split the sky. A roll of thunder and a sudden upsurge of wind sent the sails flapping erratically, and then a torrent of rain bombarded them.

Iris clasped her hands in prayer. Women gathered in tight groups on the rain-splashed deck. In seconds, everyone was drenched. Even Red Bull was too busy wiping the rain out of his eyes to peer at Jennie’s dress plastered to her body. He surprised her even more when he grasped Walt, before the man tumbled with a sudden pitch of the ship, and guided him out of the wind.

Meadows bellowed, “Get the prisoners below deck!”

Nate ran to lift the hatch cover as the warders herded the prisoners below. Again the vessel lurched in the crashing waves. Jennie, for once, was grateful to be heading safely below. Nate saved her from falling when Reverend Brantford thrust past her and pushed aside some of the other women and children. Jeers followed him as he scuttled down first.

Halfway down the wet ladder, Jennie’s foot slipped. She tumbled, landing on a heap of other women who had suffered a similar fate. The hatch door slammed down after the last of them. Jennie shivered down the dark passageway, wiping the rain off her face and wringing her hair. Sarah pulled Jennie into the bottom berth where she, Kate and Alice huddled, teeth chattering. Pockets of women gathered in berths that others had temporarily vacated, all wanting to be with the ones they had befriended.

Iris bunked in with Mary Roberts, who complained loudly, “Where’s your bloody God now, I ask you? Fat lot of good he’s doing any of us!”

“The Lord will preserve us!” Iris croaked, and then she was silent.

The lashing of wind and scraping of timbers went on for hours. In the hold, the livestock bellowed and bawled. There was no sound from the guardroom, nor did the guards venture out to check on them. Jennie and her companions held tightly to the rails of their berths and each other to keep from sliding off.

Kate and several others, struck with sudden bouts of vomiting, lurched down the passageway barely able to stay upright. Many didn’t make it to the privies in time.

Amid the stench of vomit, damp straw mattresses, wet hair and half-dried clothing, Jennie fought nausea. Occasionally she heard shouts above board between the rumbles of thunder and the pummelling rain. The wind continued to whistle sharply around the ship. Across the passageway, Jennie eyed an extinguished lantern swinging violently. She was about to suggest someone grab it, when it broke off its peg and crashed into the corner of a berth, narrowly missing a small child.

Abruptly, the storm stilled. An eerie silence fell over the prisoners. Jennie’s heart thudded. Was the tempest over at last?

Moments later, loud booms of thunder returned. Crashing waves ripped at the ship as if it was a fragile toy that might break at any second. Jennie’s throat tightened as she tried to swallow. The ship’s timbers screeched.

Alice clung tightly to Jennie, and Sarah squeezed them both. Kate grasped Jennie’s free hand, praying to the blessed saints to save them all. In the next berth, women sang quietly to themselves. Jennie heard them over Iris screaming her
prayers. Jennie prayed too – silently and fervently – expecting any moment that lightning would strike the ship and they’d be consumed by fire as in her early nightmares.

Throughout the night, the ship heaved and thunder roared. Jennie and the others held themselves fast in their bunks. They snatched odd moments of sleep, only to be jolted awake by the intense pitching of the ship.

Jennie figured it must be nearing morning, when suddenly, the ship heaved upright. She reeled against Alice. Sarah cried out as she and Kate ripped through the tattered lee cloths that were supposed to hold them in their bunks and they fell off their berth in a heap. Alice rolled and plunked on top of them. With another plunge of the ship, Jennie landed on the floor beside them.

Moments later, mops, brooms, lanterns and wooden pails broke loose from their moorings and clattered down the passageway. Jennie yelped when a pail hit her on the head. As she pushed it away and righted herself, she heard a horrible groaning sound. Then something smashed against the hull. Several more cracking sounds from within the hold followed with more loud bangs.

“There go the benches and tables!” shrieked someone near the ladder. Women in the hammocks above screamed as they were flung wildly about. Some crashed to the floor when the fastenings let go.

Frantic shouts came from above. “Batten down the hatches!”

Jennie stiffened. Although she didn’t know exactly what that meant, she did know something was horribly wrong. She heard pounding around the hatch and then something being dragged over top of it.

Women and children from the far end of the passageway screamed and cried, as they rushed to the ladder and began pounding on the hatch cover. “They’ve locked us in!”

The guardroom door flew open. A crack of light shone behind Red Bull’s dark bulk clinging to the door frame.

“What the bloody hell!” he hollered.

Behind him Nate braced himself, his face drained and hollow in the shallow light.

Red Bull bellowed a string of profanities, as he plunged down the passageway, pushing the women out of his way. His eyes bulged with fear. He thumped at the hatch cover and bellowed, “Let us out, you bastards!”

“No good,” Walt yelled at him from behind the women who had pushed toward the ladder. “If they open the hatch, the water will come in for sure, and the boat will go down!”

“Stand back, all of you,” ordered Scarface, shoving his way through the crush. “Back to your berths. Lash yourselves in!”

The guards elbowed their way through the convicts and congregated at the base of the ladder, clinging to it tighter with each pitch of the ship. Children howled as people crashed against one another, struggling back to their berths.

“Are we going to drown?” cried Alice, throwing herself at Jennie.

Jennie looked across at Sarah and Kate, rigid with terror. “No,” she told the trembling child in as firm a voice as she could manage. She helped Alice, as Sarah and Kate crawled back into their berth. All of them barely kept from plunging to the floor.

The shrieking of the wind increased. The ship dipped severely to one side, then tilted toward the other. Jennie was panic-stricken. Was all to be lost? Was she going to die?

Chapter Eleven

For hours the ship
plunged and reared
in the raging storm. Jennie and the others held tight in their berths as best they could as the waves and wind battered the ship. Everyone prayed in earnest, even those who vowed never to pray again, though Iris was loudest. Jennie prayed too, for their survival, and to see her family again.