“They made me clean up the deck. Sharks, you know, circling for days. Hark, though, I have my share of rum, now. As good quantity as any sailor,” he said, nodding and forcing himself to smile.
“La, August. Are you really my brother? Maybe a good quantity of rum is the difference between what’s called ‘fierce’ and plain ‘fear.’” He turned and made away, but his steps lacked levity. I called after him, “Someone has beaten Patience and blackened her eye. You tell them to leave her be, Seaman Coxswain Second Class.”
A few days later I was still scrubbing brass as the sun began to sink; I filled a bucket with seawater from a tackle apparatus, off the port side. I had grown nimble at the task. While dropping a bucket was simple, hauling one up without spilling its contents was no small thing. So long as I pulled slowly I kept most of the water in. I was after my task as the setting sun turned the moisty air to green and then gold. Through the mist where sea and sky became one brassy cloud, I spied a ribbon of black laid on like a mark from a tarman. Not long after I saw it, a fellow rushed past me, put his dirty paw on that brass doorknob I had just shined, and called out, “Captain? Cay off the port amidships. We’re in sight of the outer reef.”
“Halloo, good man,” I called to the sailor as he returned. “What coast is that?”
The man sneered at me but he said, “Cay Largo.”
Panic took me. Where was Cay Largo? Was this the northland we had come to? The end of our travels and the beginning of some new villainy? Although shipboard life was not comfortable, Patience had endured no further beatings, and our food rations had neither been shortened nor improved. I took my bucket of water and returned to the deck as if to mop with it. Looking in before I poured it, I saw a tiny fish had come up in the bucket, a wee striped fellow. I chased him through the water and caught him against the side, lifting him from the water. His fine gills strained for air and his mouth opened and closed as if he were wishing water to flow through him as usual. The working of him was as exquisite as any clockwork toy in my bedroom, and infinitely more delicate.
I put the fish back into the bucket and carried him to the side. “It is not for us, to be in familiar waters, wee fish,” I said. “Go to my mother at the big house of Two Crowns on the lee side of Meager Bay, Jamaica. Tell her I am coming. Tell her to pray for us.” I lowered the bucket over the side, and said to the fish, “It is a long way. I will pray for you, too.”
The cries of seabirds, the freshening smell of tidewaters, and the greening of the sky swelled some longing inside me as I had never known before. I held the rope as long as I dared. I imagined that I could see the fish leaving the wooden coffin in which I had caught him and making for a southerly current. The orange of the horizon deepened. A rush of gold light painted the wood of the ship and a thickening fog softened the world to my eyes. The only thing before me with sharp edges was the bucket in my hands. Across the water I saw not merely the small cay of land but in the distance a heavy cloud perched on the surface of the sea. A foul odor came in whiffs, but the pissdale was not far from where I stood and some sailor stood before it, so I returned with my bucket to my task.
One of the captive men motioned to me. He gestured with the hob of kindling he carried. “See here, girl,” he said. “Don’t suppose you caught any tatties in that?”
Ach. He was Irish. I decided to pretend I could not tell. “No, good man,” I replied. “I am made to clean brass knobbings from morn till dark.”
“Well, see ye add some to season the pease, as we got no fresh water left nor any salt other than what crusts the splinter of dried beef at the bottom of the pot.”
“You want to make soup of ocean water?”
“Just a nogginful. It helps the taste.”
A small iron cauldron hung from a trammel over a brazier in the center of the deck. Patience and Cora knelt beside it. Under the watch of an English sailor, Cora was holding a dagger, cutting calabash in chunks and slipping them in it. A whole pineapple roasted in the coals, giving off a delicious fragrance. I hoped Patience would fare more kindly now, and cooking was a good chore for her, for perhaps she would get a little squash rind or dried beef suet that fell into a folded sleeve. I meant to ask them if they had seen the cay afloat in the mist on the water, but for a moment, I stared at the world in this strange golden light.
The sun was reaching the horizon and had painted the entire ship in shades of amber. The brass fittings appeared to be solid gold. Light flashed off the captain’s glass window like liquid fire.