I go back to fingering my pennywhistle, which I find I can play very softly up here in the top when the wind's blowing and not get in trouble. I've added a few more jigs, "Haste to the Wedding" and 'The Hare in the Corn," and another mournful one, "My Bonnie Light Horseman," which is powerful sad and beautiful, but the girl don't get killed and thrown in a lonesome grave in this one, for a change. It's the boy who dies. In war.
The lads are back to predicting what noble sailors they're going to grow up to be and how brave they were in the last fight, but Jaimy don't join in and is quiet, and I know it's because he don't think much of the way he acted in the fight on the pirate ship. And maybe it's something else.
A few nights ago Jaimy and I were on the midwatch and it was calm and peaceful on the ocean, just a gentle breeze, and after we got coffee for the men on watch we got some for ourselves and sat sipping it and watched the constellations wheel about the night sky.
Jaimy starts talking about his family, how there's three sisters at home and one older brother what got sent off to school, but there wasn't enough money for Jaimy, so he got sent off to sea but couldn't go as a midshipman 'cause his dad couldn't buy him a place and he had no influence with the Navy, so ship's boy was the best he could do. It purely mortified his father to send him off, and his mother like to died with grief, but what else was there to do, what with the family wine business having just about perished because of the blockades of the French ports. His father had inherited some money and his mother came from a good family, but everything was gone now. His brother, George, was in school to become a solicitor, but it would be years before he could practice law and make any money.
"So I guess it's up to me," says Jaimy, all glum. "And I haven't made a very good show of it so far."
"Sure you have," says I. "You're sure to be made midshipman soon. You're quick at the studies and Tilly's sure to recommend you, and I know the Captain's noticed your bravery."
"My bravery," he snorts, hanging his head.
"Jaimy, you were the first one over. Everyone saw that. You could not have been braver."
"But when I got over, I just stood there like a fool. I didn't know what to do."
Aye, Jaimy, I thinks. It's one thing to dream of glory in battle and quite another to actually stick a sword into another person's soft parts. Or a bullet.
"You were right behind me and you actually did something. You acted like ... like an officer. You should be the one picked for midshipman. You and Mr. Lawrence took that ship. You saved my very life."
"I shot a man in the back, that's all I did, and I'll probably have to answer for that someday. There was no bravery in it.
"No, you conducted yourself with honor. You should be proud."
"Honor?" I hisses in the dark. "Honor? Honor to me is keepin' my head down and my tail covered and hopin' I don't disgrace myself when things get chancy."
He laughs softly in the dark and says, "But you're Bloody Jack, famous in legend and song."
In the gloom, I see him reach out, as if he's going to give me an affectionate head rub, but then he stops and takes back his hand. He turns his head and looks away.
"I don't like being called that, Jaimy."
I would have liked the pet, but I don't say so.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm really not bloody-minded at all. I'm really a peaceful sort of coward."
"Right," he says. "Look. There's Orion up there."
I look up to see The Hunter turning about high in the night sky.
"Yes. There's Rigel in his leg and good old Betelgeuse on his shoulder."
"And Aldebaran up in Taurus."
The breeze slips down from the curve of the massive sail hanging over our heads and flows around us, a warm river of air. Some of Jaimy's hair has come loose from his braid and whips gently across his face. I gaze upon him in the moonlight as he looks off across the water.
Oh, Jaimy, I want to tell you so bad.
Chapter 20
It's just another Sunday, just another inspection. We scrub her down, we shine her up, and we wait for the Captain to come around.
At least we're presentable now, and I make sure the boys are all lined up nice in our kip and their uniforms are clean and crisp. Now that they're all used to wearing them, I think I shall have to make us some neat caps. A cap would be good for me, too, because I could hide my growing hair up in it. My hair ain't long enough for a pigtail yet, but it's getting long enough to make me look more like a girl and that's not good. The caps will be blue, of course, with white stripes around the headband and a blue ribbon hanging down in back and...
"Who made you the bleedin' boss?" growls Tink.
"Someone's got to get you swine all in a line, all shipshape and Bristol fashion," says I, and then Captain Locke is there, with his usual party.
"The boys are looking tidy," says he. "And they're certainly growing." He's looking at Willy's hairy legs sticking out from the bottom of his trousers.
"Very good," he says, looking about, "however, we're going to have to do something about this." He points to the pile of our bedding behind us, which I did try to fold and neaten up before, but of little use. "I won't have my guns cluttered up so."
He casts his eyes to the overhead, where the hammock hooks are attached. The hammocks are only put up at night. During the day they are rolled up and stored with the seamen's seabags over by the bulkhead. "Let's rig up some hammocks for them."
The Bo'sun murmurs something about not bein' enough room, Sir, not for five, to the First Mate, who passes on the information to the Captain, who heard it well enough the first time but naval custom must be observed.
"Well, then, set up three," he orders firmly. "We lost that many men from the lower deck in the last fight. Put the big one"—and he points to Willy—"in one by himself. The others can sleep two by two in the other hammocks, head to foot. It will do for a while. Make it so."
"It should be Jaimy and me in one hammock, Tink and Davy in the other, 'cause Jaimy and I got watch together and that way we won't be woke for nothing when the watch changes," says I, all firm and full of sweet reason. "Plus, he's biggest, not counting Willy, and I'm smallest, and Tink and Davy are the mediums, so it all works out equal, like."
"Why you want to sleep with Jaimy?" sneers Davy all leering and snide. "I swears you are one of those pederasties, Jacky, wi' all yer airs and all yer—"
"I'd rather have a hammock of me own," I lies, "but if I have to share, I'd rather it not be wi' you whose feet stink or Tink, who snores like an old sow!"
Willy's sitting with his back leaning on the mast, beaming with joy to be above the argument. "Cheer up, Davy," he says. "Ye and Tink can de-light each other wi' yer farts all the night long."
Such a delicious bit of wit from the usually dim Willy brings such gales of laughter from all of us that the question is decided in my favor.
"I still thinks ye t' be a bleedin' little fairy," says Davy in defeat.
That I be, Davy, that I be. A right little elf.
It being Sunday we have our dancing and playing and singing, and me and my whistle are a real part of it now. It ain't all just one big show, sometimes it's just quiet trading of songs and tunes and words to ballads amongst mates, and that's the way it was today. It's hot and the Brotherhood takes the time for a dowsing in the bowsprit netting and they calls for me saying, "Come on, Jacky," but I says, "No, I'm needed for the playing on the whistle," which ain't exactly true, but the lads are in there all starkers this time and I can't even take off me shirt now, let alone me pants. I get away with the excuse this time, but it won't be long, I know.
I notice the boys are growing a bit of hair under their arms and around their dangly bits. I make a note to myself to make my fake cod a little bigger.
I, too, am furring up in the same sort of places. Soon I'll be a proper little ape, I will.
That night we climb into our hammocks. Willy makes contented sounds of single comfort, and Davy and Tink make fart noises and laugh themselves stupid. Jaimy and I, after a few kicks and threats about what goes where, settle down for the night.
I know I'm tempting Fate, but I allows myself a moment of glee, thinking about how my cunning and my trickery and my generally devious nature has got me to this spot.
Grinning in the dark, I thinks, Ain't this just prime?
Chapter 21
Tilly has all us boys on the fantail for the morning class and he's testing one of his new ideas. He's become quite the engineer of late; first the lures and now the kites. This one, his latest, is the biggest one yet and is made of six stout poles, the ends of which meet and are wired together and the other ends splay out and the whole thing is covered with the thinnest canvas we got on board. There's a cross stick to make sure the poles stay spread out and there's a hook to attach the line to.
"It's all about air pressure," he says, flushed and excited. "The same physical effect that lets our ship sail into the wind. I attended a lecture in London, concerning a fellow name of Bernoulli and his work. Damned interesting. You see, it's the rush of wind over the curved surfaces of the sails and the kite, which set up a high pressure on one side and..."
I'm finding all this very interesting, but what puts a little bit of fear in me is that I spy under the kite a little leather harness that seems to be made to hold a small object. A small object like me, perhaps. Tilly has strapped a sack of flour into this harness, and with he and the boys and a few hands holding on to the rope, they let the kite lift off.
It's lucky it's a calm day with hardly a breeze blowing, or kite and all would be torn out of their hands and away, but, as it is, the kite lifts very prettily and hovers high above the waves.
Tilly laughs in triumph and gets a round of cheers from those on deck. As for me, I slip away in case he gets the idea in his head of putting the smallest seaman on board in that harness. Tilly is a dear old fool, but he puts too much faith in science.
I figure I'll make it up to Tilly for skipping out on his show by making myself useful setting up for the midshipmen class, and I break my rule about never going into the midshipmen without Tilly.
As I enter, a boot shoots out and catches me on me rump and knocks me down. I hit the floor and turn over in horror to see Bliffil standin' over me, a cup in his hand and a broad smile on his face. No one else is in the room; they're all out lookin' at the kite flyin', and I knows I made a big mistake comin' in here alone but it's too late.
"Snot the Sideboy, well, well," he says all jovial. "Come in, snot, you're just in time for a little sport."
His next kick catches me in me side and I feels somethin' let go and the breath is knocked out of me and I can't take me breath back I can't I can't and he kicks me again and again and somethin' crumbles in me other side, and I can't breathe God help me I can't breathe.
"Ain't this some sport, runt?"
He hauls back his boot again and he puts it in me belly and I retches and he kicks me in the face and I gets enough breath back to scream and I screams and then he kicks me on me forehead and there's blood flowin' over me eyes and out of me nose and out of me mouth and I screams and screams and—