King of the Sea

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

for a little longer when you know how much it upsets me?" How many times had he endured such homilies, spoken with all the impregnable sweetness of a woman who knows her mission is to civilize the world? How often had he been faced with tantalizing offers from silken-thighed senoritas and big, pneumatic black women - only to find within himself, and often at the last minute, the moral courage to resist them? And now here was Miss Teresa O'Dee, plaguing him night and day, all because she bore a passing resemblance to ...

Well now that was another odd thing. A few minutes ago, when he'd actually summoned up the courage to address her at last (Captain Troy, terror of the seven seas, having to summon up courage to talk to a chit of a girl!), he hadn't even thought of Jenny Bright. Yet it hadn't changed his feelings for her in the slightest. His innards had still gone. hollow at the sight of her; his hands still longed to caress her; his lips still yearned to feel the touch of hers- but it no longer had any connection with her likeness to his long-dead sweetheart. That might have been the initial spur, the trick that let the thorn of her beauty get under the armour and into his flesh. But now it was the girl herself who captivated him so. And worst of all, he felt no shame.

With the senoritas and the negresses there had always been his shame to hold him back; with Miss O'Dee, on the other hand, there was none. There was prudence, of course; a nice calculation of appearances in front of the officers and men in his command; but morally, inwardly, in the profoundest corners of his soul, not the faintest twinge of conscience held his imagination in check. What on earth was he going to do about it? 

He watched his fingers grasp the pencil and draw a line across the Atlantic chart and he asked them what he was going to do about it. He set his dividers to the distance he estimated

Phoenix would cover in the next twenty-four hours - a little game he liked to play with himself each day. If he got it right, he would allow himself three fingers of whisky on retiring that night; if wrong, only two. Now he pushed the two sharp points into the back of his hand. The pain was not so sharp as he had imagined it would be. Was he losing touch with his senses in more ways than one? He watched the blood form two crimson globules, which congealed almost at once. He had never done such a thing before in his life.

Yes he had. Yes he had at school, to show that bully Bulgin how indifferent he was to pain. The long-buried schoolboy sniggered him a moment and then fell silent, mourning his own death.

"What am I going to do?" the adult Troy repeated aloud, feeling himself at a loss for the first time in almost twenty years.

The boy within pricked up his ears; perhaps death was not quite so permanent as rumour would have it! Together they went back up on deck.

Miss O'Dee was still there.

By now the sky was black from horizon to horizon and the wind a full gale. Boris had reduced canvas yet again and Phoenix was now sailing under a close reefed main-topsail and storm stay-sails only. Troy considered reducing still further and decided to leave things as they were for half an hour or so. The wind had backed a point, which was a good sign, for it suggested the storm was tracking east-west rather than coming straight at them on the usual sou'westerly course. If that were so, they stood a chance of riding round its centre, with the storm growing no worse than this all the way.

"Rogers was just saying, Cap'n," Boris broke into his thoughts, "she handles well before the wind."

Troy nodded. "We'll run west by south for Newfoundland as fast as we dare. With luck we'll miss the worst of it." He checked the pennant at her stern and then ran his eye up the mainmast, directly overhead. "Brace up that yard another three degrees," he said. "We'll get a knot or two more out of her yet."

Boris relayed the order and then followed Troy's eyes down to the foredeck. "All battens tight, sir," he said, though he knew that was not what Troy had on his mind.

The Captain grunted.

The First Officer decided to risk something more direct. "I hope she's not got a fever or anything, Cap'n," he added nodding at Miss O'Dee. "She's been standing there almost an hour now."

To his horror Troy heard himself replying, "There's something about her that I ..." He bit his tongue off and wondered desperately how to finish the sentence. "I feel sure I've met her before," he said brusquely. "D'you remember old Cap'n Bright? Billy Bright. Owned the Hiawatha. Used to ply between Tilbury and the Baltic, mainly. I was cabin boy on her all my first year at sea. Wonderful man. He had a daughter the living image of Miss... whatever her name is down there."

"O'Dee," Boris said, thinking it odd that Troy had known her name yesterday and forgotten it again today when or then again perhaps not so odd, you came to consider it.

The Captain gave Ing heard. "She went down on the Goodwin Sands, the old Hiawatha," he said. "With all hands. And ... Bright's daughter. I'd have sailed with her if I hadn't had the chicken pox."

"Ah!" The First Officer shook his head at the vagaries of fate and refrained from making the obvious comment that Miss O'Dee and Miss Bright could hardly be connected, if that were the case. So why had Troy brought it up at all, he wondered?

"She's not our usual steerage type," he offered. Troy nodded. "She should go below. She'll catch her death out there."

The other spoke rapidly, before his misgivings could restrain him: "I'll bet she can't tolerate the fug down there, especially now we've stoppered the ventilators. It must be unendurable for a woman with any sensibilities... like the Black Hole of Calcutta."

In those superficial levels of his mind where Troy made purely social calculations and looked after his own reputation and self-interest, he knew this was something of a test. The Troy of yesterday, the Troy with whom many of this crew had sailed before, and more than once, the Troy they all knew and feared in their very bones that Troy would never have concerned himself with the comfort of one poor steerage passenger - most especially one who was young, female, and pretty. No more practised hater of women ever paced the quarterdeck. Wasn't it his proudest boast that he was bigamously married to his legal wife - sea! since his first and only bride was the

But such considerations were far too superficial to stop him now; Boris had opened a door for him, and the strength to slam it in the man's face was simply not there. "She may have a fever," he said angrily, clutching at the man's opening words. "Lord, isn't this storm enough to try us! A blasted female down with a fever! See she's isolated in one of the empty cabins aft. Say nothing about fever to the other passengers, of course - just make out she paid the

premium and moved." "Very well, Cap'n. A wise precaution, if I may say so, sir."

"You may not, sir!" Troy snapped. "I am not used to having my decisions commented on by my juniors. What are you waiting for?"

Boris, outwardly calm, inwardly in a muck sweat at his own impudence, cleared his throat delicately and, avoiding his captain's eye, said, "You have the medical books, sir."

Troy turned on his heel. "You look at her," he snapped. "You know as much about it as me, which is damn all. Just get her out of my sight."

He stormed off aft to check the battens on the rear

cargo holds.

"That's more like his old self, sir," the quartermaster commented when Troy was safely out of earshot.

"Very like his old self, Mr Rogers," Boris laid an ambiguous stress on the word, at which the other smiled. Then he went forward to relay the good news to Miss O'Dee.

B UT REALLY, 'CLARE TO GOD, I'm fine," Teresa protested for the third or fourth time as Boris quick, flung open the door to the empty cabin. But the First Officer ignored her assertion, gave a conspiratorial glance all about them, and urged her with a peremptory nod to enter. "Excuse my closing the door, miss," he said as he followed her in, "and don't take it amiss now, but there's a thing or two I ought to tell you. First, don't ever let Cap'n Troy hear you say you haven't a fever. You see this neck?" He thrust his head forward awkwardly.

Taken aback, she stared at his adam's apple and nodded. "Yes."