Oatcakes and Courage (9 page)

By nightfall, six of the settlers took to their bunks with dysentery. Four of them were children.

Mothers sat by their sick children, sponging their faces with water. The hold was quiet. Everyone spoke in whispers. The loudest sounds were the moans and cries of the sick, and the sympathetic creaks and groans of the
Hector
.

The stench in the hold was unbearable. Although the women laboured to keep the buckets clean, the putrid smell of illness hung in the air like a heavy curtain.

The first one to die was poor little George MacLeod. The smallpox took him late at night while his parents sat helplessly holding his limp fingers. James wordlessly bent and kissed his son's cold forehead. Then he wrapped George's body in his blanket, covering the harsh pox-marked skin. James silently walked from the hold. Mary stayed at her child's side, weeping, her face in her hands.

James climbed woodenly to the deck. He found the captain at the bow, a sextant in his hands, checking their course.

James MacLeod said dispiritedly, “Captain, my son is dead.”

Captain Spiers put a hand on the settler's shoulder. “I am sorry, Mr. MacLeod.”

James nodded once. “Would you be good enough to perform the service…?”

The captain said, “Yes, yes. Of course.” He did not wish to upset this good man needlessly, but Captain Spiers knew that
having the body remain on the ship any longer than absolutely necessary was a risk he could not take. “At dawn, perhaps?”

James MacLeod looked ready to protest for a moment. Then he simply dropped his eyes to the deck and murmured, “Yes, at dawn.”

As James turned to go back to his grieving wife, the captain heard him whisper, “What did I ever come on this cursed journey for?”

As a gray dawn lit the eastern sky, John MacKay assembled everyone upon the deck with the call of the bagpipes. Lily Sutherland's wiry husband, John, and John Stewart helped James carry his son's body on deck. Mary followed, bent with grief, Lily Sutherland at her elbow for support.

The men rested George's body upon the deck, wrapped in a blanket and woolen cloak. When they set the body down, Mary's knees buckled. She collapsed and threw her arms around the shrouded child. She wept, her tears falling on the cloak she had lovingly woven and sewn for him.

Captain Spiers read the funeral service on that still morning in a voice that carried easily over the ship and its passengers. When it was time to commit the body to the sea, James had to lift his sobbing wife from her dead child and hold her tightly. John Sutherland and John Stewart gently picked up the body and allowed it to slip from their arms into the waiting waves.

Mary screamed as George's body hit the water. Then she crumpled in a faint. James held her in his arms, dejectedly watching as the cloaked body of his boy bobbed on the water for a long while before it finally tipped under a wave and disappeared from view.

Three or four of the women wailed loudly. The rest cried quietly into their handkerchiefs. The men, though unaccustomed to revealing tears, had wet streaks lining their faces, soaking their beards.

John MacKay solemnly played the pipes as the settlers and crew gradually slipped away from the grieving mother and father.

Captain Spiers approached Mary and James. Mary had regained consciousness but was stupefied with grief. The captain gave his condolences, then went aft to his cabin.

There was no place for the couple to be alone on the crowded ship to cope with their sorrow, although the other settlers did their best to allow them some privacy, if only by avoiding their place along the railing as they wept.

The MacLeod's loss heightened everyone's sense of dread.

Katherine was nearly beside herself with worry. “Oh, Anne, what am I to do?” she exclaimed.

Anne felt the cold clutch of panic, and fought to keep her voice calm. “The girls seem fine, do they not?”

Katherine nodded. “I think so. But every time one of them coughs, or does not seem hungry, I go cold. I look at poor Mary, and I think that I could not bear what has happened to her.”

“I know,” Anne murmured. “I know.”

In less than a week, that which they feared most descended on them. Five more children were taken sick with smallpox. One of those was Katherine's nephew, Donald, Elspie's youngest boy. Katherine felt a terrible moral dilemma. She felt it was her duty to help nurse her nephew. Would she not expect Elspie's help if their situations were reversed? But she was frozen by the fear that she would spread the disease to her own girls.

At last Hugh said to her, “It is not like you to turn your back on family in a time of need.”

It was as if Hugh had slapped her. Katherine squared her shoulders, wiped the tears from her cheeks, and said, “Look after the girls, Hugh.” Then without a backward glance, she went below to aid Elspie with little Donald.

Anne watched her go. She bit her lip and looked for a quiet spot.

Later, Anne swept her sleeve across her face as John Stewart approached with his water bucket and ladle. She saw the hesitation in his step and knew he could tell she had been crying.

“Would you like a sip of water, mistress?” he asked politely.

“I don't have my cup with me,” Anne murmured.

“I have mine, and I have just rinsed it out, nice and clean.” John sat down next to Anne and fished the wooden mug from a pouch tied at his side. He poured, then held the mug out to Anne.

This small gesture of kindness nearly undid her. She blinked back more tears and struggled to keep her face from crumpling. John discreetly looked out over the waves.

Anne regained her composure and sipped the water. John looked down at her face and said, “We didn't really know what we had bargained for, coming aboard, now did we?”

Anne shook her head.

“But then,” John continued, “things have been dismal any road. Me, well, I may have starved come winter. So what were we to do?”

Anne nodded. “I suppose we all came because we thought it was better to have a little hope.”

“Aye. Although things look bleak here and now, we still have a wee bit of hope.”

Anne passed John back his mug. “Thank you, John. For the water. And…”

John shrugged and stood. “My pleasure, mistress.”

When the evening meal was served that night, there was much grumbling. The oatcakes were getting stale, and settlers were finding spots of mold on them. Hugh saw people throwing their oatcakes disgustedly into the ocean.

“Wait!” he cried. He rushed over to the rail, stopping a couple that was about to toss their oatcakes overboard. “What are you doing?”

“The food is spoiled,” the man said. Hugh recognized Alex Cameron, a tall, dark fellow from Inverness-shire.

“Aye,” Alex's reedy wife said, holding up an oatcake to reveal a smudge of green on one edge.

Hugh shook his head. “‘Tis a long voyage,” he said. “I don't think we should be throwing food away.”

“Food!” the wife snorted. Her small, pointed face was pinched in disgust. “This is slops, fit for pigs.”

“Just wait,” Hugh pleaded.

Hugh hurried to where he'd left his girls. The baby was sleeping on a canvas sack. He gently lifted her and set her onto Christina's lap. “Be a good girl and hold Alexa for a minute.” Then he strode back to the Camerons.

Hugh opened the sack and said, “Put your oatcakes in here, if you please, rather than throwing them to the fishes.”

Alex Cameron eyed Hugh for a moment. Then he shrugged and dropped the moldy oatcake into the sack. His wife did as well.

Hugh made the rounds of the ship, collecting as many rejected oatcakes as he could. “Perhaps I'm being foolish,” he thought. “But we've had nothing but trouble on this voyage. And the idea of throwing away food when there is no land in sight makes my skin crawl.”

Collecting spoiled oatcakes became a routine for Hugh. As John Stewart made his rounds with the water, Hugh made his rounds with the sack. Several of the men made snide comments about Hugh's saving ways, but he determinedly carried on.

“If I am wrong, and we do not need this food before all is said and done,” Hugh thought, “I will be the happiest man on this ship.”

The second child to be claimed by smallpox was the infant girl of Adam and Abigail Murray, a fair young couple from Elgin. Abigail clutched her tiny daughter, bundled in a shawl, to her bosom throughout the funeral. As Captain Spiers finished his prayers, and gently took the dead babe to commit her to the sea, Abigail began to wail. Adam held his wife tightly about the shoulders, and tried to soothe her, but her keening went on and on. Captain Spiers at last felt that he must complete his task, and with as much tenderness as was possible under the circumstances, he dropped the little body into the sea.

It was fortunate that the small bundle remained on the surface for a very short time. Abigail would have followed her lost baby to the bottom of the ocean had Adam not had a firm grasp on her. He fought to hold her as she struggled toward the rail.

John Sutherland and the captain helped restrain the grieving mother. Lily hurried to Abigail's side and between her and Adam, they managed to steer Abigail below to her bunk. There she cried for days, eating nothing and speaking to no one.

The dysentery and smallpox spread rapidly through the youngsters aboard the ship. Their small, growing bodies had the least resistance.

Funerals became a far too frequent event aboard the
Hector.
Anne thought she would go mad if she had to see one more tiny shrouded body slip over the rail and into the ocean. Within the week, they committed five more youngsters to the deep.

Katherine saw little of her daughters as she helped Elspie with little Donald. Anne believed she was avoiding the girls to prevent carrying the disease to them. Hugh was good to the girls, but they missed being with their mother. Anne tried to help entertain them when she could. She took Christina to visit the Lady of the Ship on the transom each day. Anne noticed that Master Orr paid them no attention. He was far too busy to worry over their minor trespass.

One day, as they stood upon the transom, Christina pointed toward the bow. “Anne, what are those?”

Anne peered forward. At first, all she saw was the spray of the bow wave. Then a lithe, silvery body slipped from the sea, arching above the wave. It dove again alongside the ship. A moment later, another appeared, and then another. They resembled fish and yet there was something almost mystical about them.

Anne and Christina watched, enchanted, as the beautiful creatures played in the bow wave, dipping in and out of the
sunlight. Eventually, they slid beneath the waves and did not reappear.

“They were mermaids,” Christina declared as she and Anne made their way down the ladder.

Anne didn't argue. She would not have been surprised to glimpse lovely maidens' faces on those playful beings.

Sometimes Anne and Christina played with the little rag doll that Christina had brought aboard. The doll often became a mermaid, diving and playing in imaginary waves.

Anne tried to devote some time to the other two girls as well. Janet liked to play that she was a pony, and Anne pranced about the deck with her. She cuddled little Alexa in her arms and made funny faces to make her giggle, and fed her bread soaked in water. Playing with the girls kept Anne from sinking into the dark well of depression that claimed many aboard the
Hector
.

Finally, it seemed that Donald was recovering. His fever broke and he was conscious. Alexander came on deck looking weary to the bone, but with a flicker of hope in his eyes. “He is over the worst now,” he announced softly to Hugh, Ian, and Anne as they sat eating breakfast.

Hugh stood and gave his brother a quick embrace. “Ah, that's good news, lad. You look done in. Have you eaten?”

“Nay. I'm too tired to eat. I'll just find a place to sleep, thank you.”

Once Katherine was quite sure that Donald was recovering, she returned to her family. It was late evening. The sky was a cloudless navy, pinpointed with a million stars. Fine lines etched Katherine's face and black circles rimmed her hazel eyes. She slumped onto the deck and gathered her girls around her, like a hen drawing her chicks under her wings for the night.

“I've missed you,” she whispered. She kissed each little girl on the head, then promptly fell asleep.

After a week, little Donald MacLeod was able to come up on deck. His round face was scarred and pitted from the pox,
and he was so weak, he had to be carried. But the two-year-old did not seem to mind either of these things. He basked in the attention given him by the matrons on board, and he laughed joyfully at the antics of his two older brothers. Elspie beamed at her youngest son.

The next week, three more children died in the hold of the
Hector
and had to be committed to the deep. The week following, the smallpox took two more. It seemed for every small blessing, there was an enormous toll of grief to be paid. The settlers wore the haggard, desperate look of animals in a trap.

Chapter 8

O
NE NIGHT, WHEN THEY
had been voyaging for six weeks, the settlers on deck were awakened by a piercing scream. They sprang to their feet, hearts hammering, eyes wide.

Another scream split the night, followed by a man's voice pleading, “What should I do?”

Settlers rushed forward, and found Janet Fraser and her husband huddled under a scrap of canvas next to the longboat. As men and women crowded about them, Kenneth Fraser whimpered, “It's her time. The babe is coming. What do I do?”

Lily Sutherland pushed forward. “You stop whining like a child for starters, Kenneth. Get Janet some blankets to lie on and to cover her. It's cold.” Lily turned to the assembled crowd. “She does not need all of you around, staring at her. Go on! Anne, stay and give me a hand. John, bring water and clean cloths and a lantern.”

The crowd melted away. John Sutherland led Kenneth off to find blankets and cloaks. Anne knelt down beside Janet and held her shaking hand.