The two men turned from us and conferred for a few minutes. One left and came back with the man I had heard called “Captain.” Finally he said, “All right. Take ’em. But leave the other white ones with me so there’s equal.”
Then the bearded man whistled as shrill as ever I have heard, and his companion shoved Patience and me toward the railing. I found climbing down the rigging staggeringly more difficult than climbing up had been. With my foot searching and not finding hold, each web of rigging shifted under me and took my strength. Halfway down I began to tremble and my hands grew weak. My knees shook and dark spots welled up behind my eyes. I believed I was going to fall into the sea before I took a last step, but as I did, hands took hold of me and set me into the longboat. I crouched low and put my head on my knees, quivering violently.
Patience held me in her arms as they took us toward a new rig sitting shallow in the water. She climbed behind me, holding me upright as I progressed on shaking legs. The rope rigging took us over gun ports, and it made me shake with greater violence than ever. I put my toe in the mouth of a cannon to steady myself.
On the deck this ship seemed much smaller than our previous prison. Not more than forty or fifty tons. Her masts were leaner but tall as those before though raked at an angle like a shark’s fin. Everything I could make out about this vessel was sleek and lean, riding high in the water as if she were built for speed and nothing less. Above the jib the colors she flew were a long square of red and a yellow triangle, foreign to me except for the topmost one. The Jolly Roger.
I could not count the sailors. I saw a dozen but knew that some might have been plundering some other plantation onshore. There were forty-three of us prisoners on this ship. Men bunked before the mainmast, too, so the women’s ride in the aft was roughest. August restrained himself from coming to us, but he stood in his line of captives and nodded. I felt foolish, for all I dared to do was nod in return.
I gripped Patience’s hand. For a long moment I stared at her skin and mine together. I felt a great longing to hold August’s hand. Patey’s skin and mine were so alike, same freckles, same lines in the palms, same-shaped fingernails. August had my same tawny hair, almost a shade of red in the sun. It troubled me that I could not remember a sense of his skin. We three were all we had until we could get home somehow.
In short order they herded us belowdecks. As I stood in line for my turn to descend, I looked back at the other ship, so much higher in the water, pocked with cannon holes and missing a mast. None of the prisoners were still on the deck there. I supposed they had returned to that filthy hold already. At least—at least—I thought, I was here with Patience and August. A swell of distress filled my eyes with tears at the thought of having been left behind—though I knew where my feet carried me, down into this ship’s nether regions—just as I had cried over nearly having my finger crushed. I believed I would have died there. If not from cause, I would have died of loneliness.
“Ressie. Quit crying. You’re calling attention to yourself. Hush.”
“I will try.” That was when I learned to cry inside. Tears welled up and ran down my throat and through my nose, making it run. I gritted my teeth and sniffed hard.
We were prisoners, yet once a day about mid-morning we were marched up the steps and fed real soup. It was three days until I spotted August again. To my surprise he walked straight toward me, unshackled and hearty. He seemed uncommonly cheerful. “Hail, Resolute, old girl,” he said. He took my hand and bowed over it as if he were mocking a true gentleman.
“Hail a chicken’s hind foot, old brother,” I said. “I had no idea if they had kept the men and boys. You have new clothes, too.”
“We were lying before the mast, in a separate hold. That is until yesterday, when some of us became sailors, too.”
“What are you speaking of?”
“I’ve signed on. They read us the articles and I’ve signed on. I ain’t a prisoner no more. Coxswain second class. Ship’s boy. I get double what the prisoners get to eat and a share in all the plunder. All I have to do is row the captain around and sometimes climb the rigging—” Besides the crude manner, his voice had taken a lower register as if he had a bad ague of the chest.
“How you speak. Is your voice this low all the time now?”
“Of course. Why would it not be? I am grown, after all.”
“La, August. How you go on.”
“I fear, Miss Resolute Catherine Eugenia Talbot, that you mistrust my words.”