A strange comfort to be under Chard’s wing, and she thought of that night at St. Catherine’s Beach when they first shared a bottle of palm wine, and how fine he seemed to her, the warmth of his bronzed skin, the wildness of his beard, his hair, his eyes. “Yes,” she said, “yes. I will wait with you. Wait for rescue from an English ship and not these barks out in our own bight.” Thus casting her lot with him, she longed for some sign of his affection, but Chard did nothing more than clap a broad hand against her narrow back and chuckle with approval.
Great ceremony attended the launch of the Patience and the Deliverance on the fair day in May of 1610 when the marooned company departed from Bermuda for the bays of the Chesipiak. Gates had erected a cross made of timber from the wreck and to it nailed a twelvepence coin and a copper sign Jane could not read. ’Twas Christopher Carter who told her the words were of the Sea Venture’s arrival upon this shore a year ago, and how this fair cross was praise for their great deliverance. Despite the pleadings from the Rolfes, from Mr. Strachey, and Somers himself, she would not join the sojourners but hid herself with the other three upon a promontory to watch the ships set sail and diminish to mere toys before falling off the edge of the world.
A kind of desolation fell upon us all in the bathroom, as we witnessed the ships sail away across the sink, and from person to person passed a profound loneliness of spirit as if we, like those left behind in Bermuda, were the only four people in the wild world. Dolly fidgeted next to the old man and sighed in a drawn-out manner, and he had a faraway look, contemplating a horizon visible only to the inner eye, gathering in the monotonous waves on the vast and endless ocean. In her gaze, Jane, too, seemed to be recalling a distant time and the prospect of those stranded mariners, not knowing what fate awaited but certain that they were now most desperately alone. As for myself, I was astounded by the girl’s feckless bravado.
“Were you unconcerned,” the old man asked, “to be stranded with those three salt-crusted knaves?”
She rolled her eyes and parked a curl behind her left ear.
Tho by all appearance and demeanor she was one of them, a boy among men, Long John fared no better than a woman. Not only did she must keep her sex hidden at all times, but she must play the lad. The three sailors—Christopher Carter, Robert Waters, and Edward Chard—became three masters, and where in the past she had been attendant upon Ravens, she now found herself looking after three, cooking all the meals, fetching clean potable water, tending to their meager garden, mending holey breeches, and every sundry office required by her youth and station. While she oft resented her duties, they were light, and often whole days would pass with nothing to be done but to languor upon some shaded spot for hours, the men reluctant to move or bother themselves to act at all. Crab, who was Mr. Carter’s pet, could be her boon companion when the sailors were indisposed. One month gave way to the next, and when no ship appeared to rescue them before summer’s end, they contented themselves to remain on Smith’s Island of the archipelago, fishing the rich waters or killing a hog or brace of cahows for their supper, and poking through the woods or along the shores for distraction or adventure. Small treasures could be found—a trunk drifted in from the Sea Venture’s skeleton, an oyster once with a pearl inside, and all manner of shells shed from the creatures of the sea.