King of the Sea

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Boris licked his finger and drew an imaginary line around it. "He'd sever it there if he heard you say that and you'd be back in steerage without feet touching the deck. D'you want that?" your

"No!" she exclaimed fervently.

"I didn't think so." He gave a self-congratulatory nod. "When I saw you lingering there on the foredeck, despite the storm, I said to myself, she's loth to go back below to that Black Hole of Calcutta. And so, when the Captain asked what the hell you were still doing there pardon my French I used wits my and suggested perhaps you had a fever. That's the only reason you're in this cabin, you know - he wants you isolated."

"Oh." She dropped her pathetic little bundle and leaned against the upright of the bunk. "Was that it?" "What did you suppose?" the man asked.

She shook her head.

"Little you know of Captain Troy," he went on. "When they gave out sympathy he was playing marbles over the hill."

"He was very kind to me," she said stoutly. "When the mate ordered me below, he said I could stand by that staircase and be out of the way. And he spoke very softly to me."

But Boris shook his head. "Don't you be deceived by him. That man hates all women with an intensity you could carve up and sell to a seminary."

"Are you a Catholic?" she asked suddenly.

He ignored the question. "And the prettier they are, the worse it is for them. I've seen him reduce them to tears. And the light of pleasure in his eyes! You'd have to see it to know what I mean." "But he's married," Teresa objected. "Or," she

added more hopefully, "he was, once upon a time." "To the sea," the other confirmed.

"He has a daughter. I heard the bosun say it."

Boris shook his head. "That man's only wife is the sea. I know."

She wanted to press her question to an absolutely unequivocal answer but something restrained her. She had the information she desired more than all the world to hear: Captainn Troy was a widower, just as she had hoped.

"So my point is," the First Officer concluded, "if you want to stay here, you'll develop a fever, or an ague, or an ache or pain of some kind. D'you understand what I'm saying?"

The porthole turned dark green; she had a brief glimpse of a startled fish.

"Or d'you want to go back to steerage?" "Yes." She sighed and squared her shoulders.

He was flabbergasted. "But why?" he asked feebly. "Because he'll come to see how bad it is," she said resignedly. "And he'll know at once I'm lying - and sure I couldn't bear that.

Boris gave a little whistle; the business was deeper and even more intriguing than he had realized. He'd suspected that the girl had somehow got past the Captain's well-known misogyny, but he'd never imagined it might cut both ways. He changed tack at once. "The sentiment does you credit, Miss O'Dee, but see here now." He eyed her cannily. "There's one way he might let you remain on board. Are you willing to risk it?

"And what is that, sir?" she asked. "I needn't tell you, I'd liefer stand on deck all the way than go back into steerage." "T'll tell the man fair and square. He's always

swearing there's no such thing as an honest female.

Let's see what he does when he can't deny it in you."

She slumped onto the edge of the lower bunk. "I have no choice," she agreed glumly. An exultant Boris returned to the bridge as fast

as his dignity would allow. "Permission, sir?" he

asked perfunctorily.

"Well?" Troy barked.

"The ship's log, sir. I doubt we'll get a true reading, the way it is. I think the carpenter should have a look at it but I believe you should see it first."

"Lead on." A curt nod of the man's head sent him down the after companionway, with the Captain hard on his heels.

"What's all this?" Troy snapped the moment they were alone on the afterdeck. "Ship's log? Never heard such flannel in my life."

Boris gave a rueful smile. "I'm sorry, Cap'n. I should have thought of something better, but I didn't want the quartermaster to overhear. The fact is, Miss O'Dee has not the slightest degree of fever and is unwilling to accept the cabin under false colours.

"Well, why didn't you send her straight back to steerage, you fool?" the Captain asked. The officer turned from him at once. "Aye aye sir. I just thought that as the decision to send her there had

been yours..."

"Oh, for God's sake leave the little b***h where she is!" Troy shouted after him. "She'll only moon around on deck and get in the way."

Boris, now more committed to the game than was good for either his skin or his career, took his courage in both hands and said, "I think you'll have to tell her that yourself, sir."

"Damned if I will!"

"She's a highly principled and strong-minded

young lady, Cap'n." "Tell her she's in irons. Tell her anything you like but keep her off my quarterdeck, d'ye hear?"

The officer hesitated just long enough to give Troy the excuse to explode. "Damm your eyes, Mr Boris, but I'll do it myself! I'll give her such a tongue-lashing she won't show her face on deck this side of Boston. But mark'ee now, sir this will with you in my ship's log." go ill

Boris responded with an embarrassed shrug. "I'm sorry, Cap'n. I seem to have made a mess of this from start to finish. I can only offer my sincerest apologies, sir."

"Humph!" Troy strode exultantly past him to the after deckhouse and the companionway down to the second-class quarters.

This was the decisive moment, Boris told himself. If Troy turned and hurled more a***e at him, he was genuine. If not ...

The Captain reached the bulkhead, opened it, turned, saw his First Officer still standing there, looked somewhat surprised - maybe a little abashed - and vanished below without a word.

To his surprise, Boris felt the unaccustomed pressure of tears, the merest incipient tears, but tears nonetheless, behind his eyelids. "Dear God!" he murmured. "You stupid... magnificent ... old man

Frank's knock was hesitant, almost boyish; when Teresa cried, "Come in!" she half expected to see a deferential youth there, twisting his cap in his hands. What she actually saw was Captain Troy, doing a sort of spiritual impersonation of such a lad. His outer manner was as and brusque as ever, but that was the habit of a lifetime, a matter of bodily momentum that owed nothing to his spirit at that particular moment. It was the eyes that gave him away: wary, respectful, awkward.

"Miss O'Dee," he thundered quietly and strode directly to the porthole. He wiped a finger beneath it, tested it for wetness, and nodded with satisfaction. His manner now suggested he'd accomplished the main purpose of his visit and what followed was mere social obligation. "You're comfortable, I trust?" he asked as offhandedly as he could.

"Indeed and I'm not, Captain," she replied. "I am most uncomfortable at being favoured in this way. I'm here under false pretences and hardly like to ask why."

His eye scanned the bulkhead above, as if the answer might be written there as a kind of crib. "It distressed the men to see you standing there in the cold like that."

"Captain!" she said with weary asperity. "And Mr Boris. distressed him, too."

He loves me! The words popped suddenly into her mind, out of nowhere. All this while she'd thought only of her own feelings about him, mocking their shallowness- for how could they be anything other than shallow on so short and remote an acquaintance? She had shunned all examination of his, fearing they might turn out to be the usual and she'd only end up with a fight on her hands. But now the truth burst in upon her with all the force of a religious revelation: He loved her!

An enormous calm suddenly descended on her. He saw it, too - or, rather, he saw that some great change had come over her, so that when she said, "I think it distressed you most of all," he could think of no other reply than a simple "Yes."

She smiled. It was not one of those swift smiles that comes as easily as breathing, but a slow, profound smile that speaks of ecstasies too deep for words. She held out her hands toward him; he took them between his great paws, and for a moment they stared into each other's eyes, hardly able to believe it. He was no longer Captain; she a pauper no more; this was no ship; the storm was past or had never been. This was a moment outside that time and space in which society held sway, or the elements, or even life and death itself. Briefly they were touched with an intimation of immortality.

After that there was no need for words which 1 was where he at last parted company with that callow, remembered youth who had returned from the grave to lead him to this revelation. The youth would have babbled his surprise, would have overflowed with joy and promises - as once he had to Jenny Bright before she met the Goodwin Sands; the man just squeezed her hands, nodded once or twice, relinquished them unwillingly, and made again for the door.

"Frank," she murmured as his hand touched the knob.

He turned in delighted astonishment, overwhelmed at the intimacy. "Mmm?" It was the nearest thing to a word he could think of.

"Now I do have a fever!"

He laughed and it was that laughter which signed his momentary release. "It's contagious," he assured her as he went out.