In The Belly Of The Bloodhound (50 page)

It occurs to me then that, however oddly beautiful the scene of the[_ Bloodhound_] sailing down to oblivion, I’d better be getting the hell out of there, considering that blood is curling out of my own dear leg. With regret, I drop the sword Persephone and see her sink, and hope that perhaps her namesake will pick her up when she reaches the lower depths of Hades, and then,[_ Good God, one’s comin’ up at me!_]

I forget idle thoughts and scramble for the surface. My head breaks through and I look around for the boat.

“There she is!” shouts someone, and I twist in the water and see the boat and start pulling for it. Oh,[_ please, God, not me legs!_]

I reach the boat and Dolley puts an oar toward me in the water and I fairly scramble up the length of the oar and into the boat.

Just as I do, a huge black form, topped by a triangular fin, surges out of the water next to the oar, its back easily as broad as our boat. I frantically reach down and find that my feet are still there.

Thank you, God, oh, thank you.

“Set course 290 degrees,” I gasp when I’ve recovered my breath.

“Aye, aye, Sir,” says Cathy Lowell, mocking me a bit and looking down at the compass she holds in her hand. I had taken it from my seabag and given it to her this morning. She puts the tiller over.

The course takes us close to the crew’s boat, which is a hive of activity. The Dianas take up guard positions to make sure the crew doesn’t try anything. But they needn’t have worried. All is confusion and despair on that boat. They’ve already discovered that I removed their rudder, most of their oars, and that all their running gear has been chopped up into useless lengths. The sails are in tatters. There is a squeal from one of them as he discovers the bloodred footprints. I’m sure the Legend of the Black Ghost will not fade quickly from their minds. It will certainly ruin their sleep tonight.

There are hissing bubbles burbling up between our two lifeboats, those bubbles being the last dying breaths of the[_ Bloodhound_] as it slips even farther down into the dark at the bottom of the sea.

“Cheer up, lads,” I say as we sail up to them, all shipshape and Bristol fashion, our sail tight as a drum. “You are clever fellows. You’ll rig up something. I’ve even left you with one oar to maybe rig as a rudder. You might even survive long enough to be picked up by a passing ship. Who knows, you might even live to tell the tale of how you were bested by a bunch of little girls. But I doubt you’ll tell that tale, even if you do survive. G’bye, Mick. G’bye, Keefe. G’bye, Cookie. I do hope you make it, I really do. But there’s one thing I want you to do for me, in payment for all I’ve done for you.”

They look at me stupidly.

“When it comes right down to it and things are bad, as bad as you know they can get when you’re cast adrift at sea, do this for me…[_ eat Nettles first!”_]

Every head on the boat swivels to look at Sammy Nettles, who has recovered enough to gaze about at all the faces staring at him to say, “Wot?”

“You must admit,” I say in parting, “it’s tradition.”

We pull away and we see the crew of the[_ Bloodhound_] no more.

I hoped that Hughie’s wound would be superficial, but alas, it is not. I wished that Sin-Kay’s bullet had gone through the meat on his side, but when I open Hughie’s shirt, I find that it had not—it had gone straight into his chest and stayed there. A little bit of blood has already trickled out of the side of his mouth. Oh,[_ Hughie, no…_]

I pull his shirt back down and sit on the seat and pull his head over into my lap and stroke his hair. He sighs, contentedly. I don’t think he’s in a lot of pain, and that’s good. The girls near us in the boat have seen what has happened to Hughie, and Sally puts her hand on his shoulder to lend him solace. Others do the same, murmuring comforting words.

“Tell me another story, Mary,” he says. “About the gang and all…”

“All right, Hughie,” I say. “Once upon a time there was a boy named Hugh the Grand and he was in a gang and one day he saved his whole gang, yes, he did, and he kept them from harm, ‘cause he was the biggest, bravest boy there ever was…”

“A good one, Mary,” he says. “I know I’m gonna like it…” And then he relaxes, lets out his last breath, and dies.

I put my face down in his curly locks and let the tears flow.[_ Good-bye, Hughie. I hope they have pretty little horses where you are going. You were always just the best boy…_]

After a while I say those words I have heard so many times before—We[_ commend his body to the sea, and his soul to_] God—and we gently put him over the side. The last I see of Hugh the Grand is his white shirt twinkling down through the clear blue-green water as he sinks.

After the funeral, I shake my head to clear it of grief—time for that later, and there is work to be done. Rebecca is sick, Clarissa is naked, my leg is bleeding, and the sun is beating down.

I see Rebecca nestled in the crook of Annie’s arm, asleep, so I take care of the Clarissa problem first.

Anyone else on this boat, ‘cept maybe me, would be huddled over, trying to cover her nakedness with crossed arms, but not Clarissa—she leans back, puts her elbows on the gunwale behind her, closes her eyes, and raises her face to the sun and purrs, “Oh, that feels[_ soooo_] good after being in that hellhole for s[_ oooo_] long.”

As I rummage through my seabag for something to cover Clarissa, it occurs to me that there are probably some on this boat that wouldn’t mind terribly being back in the Hold of the[_ Bloodhound,_] for the ocean sure looks a lot bigger when you’re on it in a little boat like this.

“How…how far are we from land, Jacky?” asks Priscilla.

The ocean swells roll under us and they are smooth and slick and calm, but they are big, and this boat is very small.

“I’d say about two thousand miles…” There are more than a few gasps. “But we’re not heading for the land—we’re heading for the sea-lanes, where we hope to be picked up by an honest merchant or warship and returned home.”

I find my old sailor togs and toss them to Clarissa. “Here, Eve, cover thy nakedness, or yea and verily, thy pinkness shalt be fried to a crisp red.” She catches them and puts them on.

“Yo, ho, ho,” she says when she has them on, the white duck pants and white top with blue flap. “I rather like it. I wish I had a mirror.”

“Besides,” I continue, “Captain Bligh of HMS[_ Bounty_] was put in a boat very much like this with eighteen of his loyal men, when he was mutinied against back in ‘89, and he sailed that boat through the South Pacific three thousand eight hundred miles to safety. Maybe we will do as well as old Bligh.”

“It is up to Providence, now,” says Connie. “We shall have to pray.”

“Oh, we will do that, Connie, loud and long, but first we have to take care of some things ourselves,” I say, and dive back into my bag. While my hands search, I say, “We must have every girl learn to sail this boat, and we must do it quickly.” I find what has to be my last piece of paper and the only pencil now and say, “Pass these up to Priscilla if you would. Thanks.”

She takes the paper and waits for instructions.

“Priscilla, if you would set up yet another watch rotation, three girls to a section. Two of them will sail the boat, one on tiller, one on mainsheet, as Cathy and Hyacinth are doing now, while the other one will constantly scan the horizon for any ships. We want to see them before they see us, ‘cause we sure don’t want to be picked up by a nasty pirate after all we’ve been through.” Priscilla puts the paper on the seat next to her and starts writing down names.

“Dorothea, wait…Here.” My hand goes back in my bag and pulls out my long glass. I pass it over to Dorothea.

“It’s best to use it standing with your back to the mast to steady yourself…and, Dorothea, we are looking for ships, not birds.” She smiles and stands and does what I’ve suggested. I know she is delighted to once again have a telescope in her hands. “Dolley, what do we have in the way of water and food?”

It turns out that we have twenty-one wine bottles full of water and two tins of soda crackers, and that is worrisome—we can go maybe two weeks without food, but there’s only enough water for about three days, and that’s giving each girl a scant five ounces a day. Sure hope it rains, but there ain’t a cloud in the sky.

“Now we’ve got to rig this canvas as a cover, so it can get some of us out of the sun, but first—”

“Jacky, your leg…,” says Sylvie.

“I know. In a minute.” I step over to take a look at Rebecca. “How is she?” I ask Annie.

“The same. She was able to crawl through the Rat Hole and then stand, but Sylvie and I had to carry her to the boat,” says Annie. “She’s about out now.”

I put my hand on her forehead—still feverish. I lift her upper lip and look at her gums—they’re healthy and pink, so it ain’t scurvy. I’m thinking jail fever—typhus…[_ Damn._]

“Try to get a little water down her,” I tell Annie, and to the others I say, “and as for the rest of us, I think we should take no water today because we only have enough for a very short time.” There is agreement to that. I go back to my seabag, and once again open it.

I pull out the oilskin packet I was looking for and open it. Lying there, with the bright colors of their feathers and the brass gleam of their hooks and looking just as resplendent as the day they were made, are my fishing lures. All except for one have a small, twenty-five-foot coil of light but strong line attached to them.[_ Thanks again, Tilly._]

I’m thinking this is a job for the Dianas. I see Katy up toward the bow, her bow still in her hand. I call her name and she makes her way back through the ranks of seated girls.

“Take these, Katy, and get them in the water. Tie the end of each line to a cleat and put a girl on each one, and have her pull on the line and then…”

“I know how to jig for catfish, Jacky,” she says, almost smiling. “Don’t worry. And if we get a big one and he’s givin’ us trouble, well, we still got some arrows left.” She goes to set the lures.

I sit back, feeling a little weak, but I must push on. “Dolley? My shiv, please.” She pulls it from her waistband and gives it back to me. I look at my old shiv—Charlie’s shiv, actually—and the cock’s head I had carved in it long ago in Charlie’s memory, and wonder at the places that knife has been, and the uses to which it has been put. Then I reach down and cut off the left leg of my drawers, high up and close to my crotch, and look at the wound.

It’s a mess, but it could be worse. I take the cutoff pant leg and dip it over the side and start to clean the blood off my leg and,[_ “Yeow!”
] when the salt hits the wound.[
Damn!_]

“Wait. Let me do that,” offers Sylvie. The cut is about two inches long and who knows how deep. The damn thing hurts like hell.

“Did it go all the way through?” I ask, and she reaches around to feel the back of my thigh.

“No, but it looks deep enough.”

Indeed it does. The cut itself is not bleeding all that much, just seeping, really, but the lips of the wound are far apart and I know they will not come together on their own.

“Ruth,” I call. “Do you still have needle and thread?”

“Yes, I do, Jacky,” she replies.

“Then come here, if you would.”

I stuck the wadded-up piece of my drawer leg, which will later serve as a bandage, into my mouth and clamped down hard. Annie and Sylvie each held an arm, and Martha and Dolley each held a leg. Ruth leaned forward with her threaded needle…and the job was done. They were brave—I was the only one to faint.

It was strange to have four o’clock come with no flaps coming down to shut off our light. We got to see our first sunset since our abduction and it was a glorious one—all streaks of pink and white and purple that deepened to red and blue and gold before going dark. We had Connie’s reading, and yes, she somehow managed to get out of the[_ Bloodhound_] with both the Bible and Elspeth, and even a bottle of water. Then, in Chorus, Hepzibah led us in the “Song of the Hebrew Children,” which we sang out in great hopes of a similar deliverance, out over the rolling waters from our tiny little boat right in the middle of the great big sea.

I have always been a quick healer. I bounced back from the beating I got from Bliffil back on the[_ Dolphin,
] my eye recovered when the drunken Gully MacFarland closed it up for me with his fist that time in Boston, and I did not suffer the dreaded infection from that splinter I took in my butt when on my beloved[
Emerald._] Yes, I have been blessed with a hardy constitution and a tough body resistant to the physical ills that have felled others much bigger and stronger than me.

But not this time. Count on that damned Blodgett to have a dirty sword!

On this second day, the wound starts to fester and I begin to feel feverish. I take off the bandage and look at my leg and it has grown fiery red around the wound. Streaks of red course across the whiteness of my thigh. The skin begins to get tight, and it throbs, oh, it throbs and throbs…

On the third day, we are out of water. We have long since eaten the crackers. It has not rained. We have spied no ships. The wind is light and we do not make much progress north. I hurt, oh, I hurt so much…It is hard for me to keep my mind on my duties, but I try, and I try not to cry or whine. I see that the watches are observed and the girls are learning their small-boat seamanship. The lookouts are diligent in their search for ships. Rebecca is still down, and now there is no water. I despair for the child. I despair for myself. I despair for all of us.[_ Have I done wrong in planning all this?_]

The skin on my thigh has become tight as a drumhead and it is now a dull color of purple gray. I have decided I do not want to live without my leg, but that doesn’t matter, ‘cause no one here knows how to take it off, anyway.

On the fourth day, lips are beginning to crack, and the girls have to be warned over and over that drinking the salt water means death, pure and simple, but the temptation is great, I know…All that water, and not a drop to drink…I start drifting in and out of consciousness, and then…there is a cry from up at the bow, which brings me back awake.