In The Belly Of The Bloodhound (34 page)

“Uh,” says Katy, “one thing…That girl Elspeth. She went up, too, and she ain’t been back.”

I suck in my breath.[_ Damn!_]

I can’t go back the way I came, ‘cause I can’t take the time to fiddle with the latch. Straight out of the Pit and across the Stage and up the hatchway is the only answer, and I do it, pushing my way up past the girls who are being shoved back down the stairs. When I reach the top, I see Keefe holding a struggling Barbara Samuelson and I slide past him, avoiding the grip of another sailor who tries to catch me. Momentarily free, I look frantically about me and…[_ There!_] On the port quarter! She’s got one leg over and is looking down into the water. She lifts the other leg to bring it over. There is no expression on her face.

I rush to go there, but I am grabbed by a seaman I do not know.

“Keefe!” I shriek. “Drop that one! Go get the girl back there!” I’ve managed to free one arm from the sailor’s grasp to point at Elspeth, teetering on the rail. “She’s gonna jump!”

Keefe looks, drops Barbara, and bounds across the deck. He reaches his right arm around Elspeth’s waist just as she launches herself off. He swings her back aboard and gathers her up.

He puts her into the hatchway just as I am thrown there by my own guardian sailor. I put my arm on her shoulder and reach up to Keefe and squeeze his hand and say, “Thank you, Keefe! You’ve just lessened your time in Hell for that!” I strain my neck upward and plant a kiss upon his bristly cheek, and then I am forced down into the Hold with the rest.

The inspection line is still being formed under Dolley’s supervision. I put Elspeth in her place and go to find Constance Howell. Sullen and seething, she is standing to the side and brushing off her arms as if they are unclean. “I have never before been handled in such a way,[_ never!”_]

“Well, offer it up, Connie, and consider that you have done your duty,” I say, but I ain’t done with her yet. I reach over and take her by the arm and pull her along with me, ignoring her protests.

“What are you doing?” she cries, and tries to wriggle free, but my grip is too strong.

“You are being assigned another duty, Constance Howell, and this is it.” We have come to stand over Elspeth, who has crumpled to the deck. “I just saw her try to kill herself. We cannot let that happen. You are to counsel this girl. Comfort her.[_ Pray_] over her. You are to teach her that it is a sin in our religion to kill yourself. Will you do that? Will you bring your faith to bear on this matter and save this girl?”

There is tumult all around us. She could jerk her arm away from my hand and go back to her place. But she does not. She merely nods and crouches down and puts her hand on Elspeth’s shoulder.

I look to the others. They jabber happily away with, “I have never been pawed in such a disgraceful way before!” or “It took three of the brutes to corner me!” and “I fetched that one a good kick that he won’t forget!”

Clarissa lies facedown at the edge of the Stage, the knuckles of her left hand between her teeth. She stares off into the Pit. Whether she is thinking about how close she came to death or whether she is remembering the sting of the lash, I don’t know. All I know is her eyes lift and meet mine and an understanding passes between us.

I nod and turn to the others. “All right,” I say. “Is everyone all right?”

They all own that they are, yes, all right and have survived their adventure above decks in good order.

“Is everybody back?”

“Everybody except Rebecca Adams,” answers Dolley quietly. The place falls silent.

Lord.
I head for the hatchway but I know I ain’t gonna be able to get back out. Oh,[_ Rebecca…_]

Just then the outer door opens and Rebecca Adams comes tumbling down the stairs to land on her hands and knees at my feet.

“I got all the way to the top of the highest mast before they got me,” she exults. “And I was the last one caught! So, there!”

It ain’t been three days since the breakout, but things ” are moving right along.

The very night of that riotous day, we were blessed with a spirited gale that set the ship to rocking and the chains to rattling. We worked through the night on the Rat Hole cover, a whole gang of us down there under the Stage, marking off and sawing the boards to fit. As planned, we timed the saw thrusts with the crash of the chains against the sides.[_ Clash/thrust!
] Pause…[
Clash/thrust!
] and so on through the dark hours. Whilst the work was going on, and it was not my turn at the sawing, I crept over to try the storeroom door. Using my shiv and a thin file, I was able to open it easily.[
That’s enough for now,
] I thought, as I closed it back up.[
No sense in rushing things. We must lay some more groundwork in the way of well…the highly developed sense of the superstitious in the common sailor._]

Being able to figure out the workings of the latch and see the layout of the forepart of the ship from the other side of this door made the indignities suffered on that day well worth it. I get with Dolley and Clarissa and plans are made and we begin to carry them out.

Three boards stacked one on top of the other do the trick for the Rat Hole, with two screws on each board end to hold them in place. A crack in one of the massive knees of the ship is a perfect hiding place for the screwdriver, ‘cause we’ll need that close at hand when the time comes. The hidey-hole takes more time, since we’ve got to hide not only my seabag but five longbows and many arrows, as well. We rest much better, though, knowing this has been done.

In the ensuing days, we keep up our strength with a steady supply of freshly roasted millers. Ever since Katy first killed those millers, four more girls—Christina King, Hermione Applegate, Minerva Corbett, and my sturdy Rose Crawford—have shown themselves to be keenly interested in the bows and what they can do, and they are constantly at their new study. We do not lack for freshly killed rats.

I meet once again with Clarissa and Dolley and we talk it over and decide to go directly into the powder magazine from our side rather than through the side of the storeroom, which would have been easier because the wood is thinner there, but there would be more risk of discovery. I have a better, quicker way of getting through than with our old carve-with-my-shiv method, now that we’ve got access to the tools in the storeroom, but we decide to be cautious and make the covering boards before we make a single cut in that direction.

We set a new watch at the edge of the Balcony to alert us if anybody is coming down, so we will have time to get all boards back up should there be a surprise inspection. The girl on watch sits on the stairs to the Stage, keeping an eye on the gate. Should any of the crew unlock that gate and look to be coming through, that girl will loudly wail[_ “Oh, Lord, save us!”_] which would alert the others to start milling about and acting like hysterical females, fainting and falling about and throwing themselves in the way of the approaching intruders. We practice this over and over again till we get it right. It is rather fun, and we get into giggling fits over it. We are getting ready. The time is coming soon.

Last night, after the story, which I’m just about done with, we all settled in, had the hymn of the evening, and those who say ‘em said prayers.

Now I give Rebecca a nudge with my foot and she sits up and loudly recites, “Oh, Jacky! I’m just so scared!”

“Scared of what, dear?” I ask in return.

“I…I think I saw a ghost last night…Down in the Pit!” There is a common gasp from the girls…and a few deeper ones from outside the flaps.

“Come now, Rebecca. We’re all Christian girls here and we do not believe in ghosts.”

“I know, I know…,” she goes on breathlessly. “But I saw it, I really did. It was a little thing, all thin and dark…like a skeleton, only black. It was sitting against the side and it had a chain around its neck and it was moaning…like,[_ ‘Oooooooo…,’
] and it was rocking back and forth and had its face in its hands and kept going,[
‘Ooooooo…‘“_]

“Stop it, Rebecca,” orders Clarissa from across the way. “You’re just upsettin’ everybody. You didn’t see nothin’ of the kind. Just your silly imagination.”

Rebecca starts crying, and I can feel her shoulders shaking. “Noooooo,” she wails. “I’m sure I saw it. It was all black and scary, but it had like a red glow all around it, that’s how I could see it in the dark! And there was a smell…a smell like Hell is supposed to smell! Like sulfur…like brimstone!”

“Now, Rebecca,” I say, as if trying to placate the poor girl.

“No, I saw it. And I just know it’s the poor lost soul of one of those poor slaves who died on the way over in this awful Hold! This awful, awful Hold!”

I put my lips down next to her ear and whisper,[_ “All right, Rebecca, you little hambone, that’s enough. Don’t overdo it.”_]

But she has one more thing to say. “And…and as I watched it, it got up and walked right through the side of the ship! I know it’s trying to find its way back to its home, and it can’t, oh God, it can’t! It’s just so sad!”

There are some cries and whimpers from the other girls, just as we had all planned.

Now, let’s see how[_ that_] sets with the crew.

It’s a very subdued Mick and Keefe who come for the tubs the next morning. I’m sure the ghost story has gone through the ship like grain through a goose, and I’m equally sure they’ve been jumping at the sight of their own shadows, ‘cause I know sailors, and right now this ain’t a happy bunch of swabs, that’s for sure.

“What’s the matter, Mick? You ain’t your usual jolly self today,” I say as the clean water tub hits the deck. I give ‘em their bit, thinking that we’d better leave soon, as I ain’t got all that much left to show. Clarissa lolls about the Stage in plain view as before and it doesn’t escape the crew’s notice. We’re probably the only bit of joy in their lives right now, I figures.

Mick doesn’t say anything to that. Keefe just grunts.

“Cheer up, lads, the voyage will be over in a couple of weeks and you’ll be either rich…or dead,” chirps I, bouncing on my toes and grinning up at him.

“You stop wi’ that, you,” growls Mick, and the hooks are jerked up and out and the hatch slammed shut.

Well…that was a bit of all right,
I’m thinking with some satisfaction. We had set up Rebecca’s ghost story last night
p. for a couple of reasons: One, to further put the crew on edge, and two, to cover for me when I go out into the ship in my burglar rig. I[_ have_] to go out to do some things, and if I am spotted, I want them to think that I’m the Black Ghost. At least that’s what I’m hoping, because I’ve got to go out there tonight.

But that’s for later. For now, it’s down to the work site.

Measuring the distance from the Rat Hole to the starboard side of the storeroom, we figure out that the back bulkhead of the powder room is centered about eight feet to the right of the Rat Hole. What we are confronted with there is plainly strong, thick slabs of wood set up between massive cross-braces, and it is there that we decide to go through.

After we make the covering boards to cover our mischief, I trace out a two-foot square on the planks with some carpenter’s chalk I had found in the storeroom. Then we take a brace-and-auger with about a half-inch bit and drill a hole in the upper left corner. The good thing about the drill is that it doesn’t make noise like a saw does. Leaning on the back of the brace and turning the auger, I feel it break through at about two and one-half inches.[_ Pretty thick,
] I think,[
but we do have time on our side._] When I pull the bit back out to start the hole in the opposite corner, I notice that there isn’t just sawdust in its grooves—no, there is a blackish powder as well. I quick put my tongue on it, and sure enough, that old familiar smell and taste of sulfur and saltpeter—gunpowder! We are into a bag!

“No more candles when we’re working around here or we’ll all be playing on our harps up in Heaven,” I say to the work party on duty. “No, we’ll have to do this job in the daytime, but it should be quick—we’ll drill a hole in each corner, then halfway between each and then halfway between each of those and so on till we’ve got a bunch of holes with only little bits of wood connecting them, then we’ll run my shiv down and across and that square of wood’ll pop out nice as you please. We’ll keep the same work rotation as before, but you must switch the brace back and forth a lot—it’s easy to get a blister doing this and[_ we_] don’t want that. All right? Let’s go!”

While they’re drilling, I meet with Clarissa and Dolley and tell them, “I figure we’ll be into the powder magazine in a day or two, so I’ve got to get some things done tonight.”

“What is it you have to do out there?” asks Dolley.

“Well, I have to see just how things lie. First, I’d like a look at the stars, to see how far south we are. It’s clear out, so I should be able to get a good notion of that from the height of the North Star above the horizon. Then I need to pace off the entire escape route. And I’ll want a look into the lifeboat we’ll be taking—the one on the starboard side—to see what it’s got in the way of food and water. I suspect none, but we’ve got to know. Also I’ve got to check out its rigging to see how it will be lowered. Hughie is simple so he’s got to be told very plain how to do it when it comes to that. Lastly, we’re going to have to disable the other lifeboat, so they won’t be able to chase us down in that. I won’t disable it now, though, ‘cause it might be discovered. It’ll be one of the last things we do.”

Dolley nods, as does Clarissa. I look over at Clarissa and study her face. She has been quiet in the inspection line lately, as we have encouraged her to be. Sin-Kay has run his inspections very quickly, very sullenly, clearly smarting over the treatment he got on the day of the riot. It is now very clear that he, too, wants this voyage to be over. Clarissa doesn’t talk much about that day, that day when she, too, felt the bite of the lash. She did not complain, she did not cry that day or night, but I noticed that the next day she cut a three-foot length of the bow cord and tied it loosely around her waist, so that it would always be at her hand.