Getting herself into the hammock was another problem altogether. She found herself nearly glad of the close press of bodies, for without them to lean on she would certainly have tumbled unceremoniously to the floor—or “deck”—below more than once. As it was, she was forced to apologize repeatedly to those she had jostled.
Finally she found herself, fully clothed, settled and stable in the hammock’s tight embrace, and tried to sleep. But, tired though she was, the sound and movement of so many men sleeping nearby, not to mention their warmth and smell and the rocking motion of the ship, were too unfamiliar and sleep refused to come.
Had it really been just five weeks since that horrible black-bordered letter had arrived? The time since then seemed an eternity crowded with dreadful people, hideous food, filth, stink, and endless wearying labor.
And she would never see her beloved father again.
Lying in the swaying, odorous darkness, Arabella wept.
2
IN TRANSIT, 1813
8
DEPARTURE
The next thing Arabella knew, she was being roughly shaken awake. Heart pounding, she immediately sat up, determined to get the better of her assailant.
But it was her hammock that got the better of her. As soon as she sat up, it turned over and dumped her unceremoniously on the hard and filthy deck.
Shaking her head, spitting out sawdust, she struggled to her feet and raised her fists. But there was no assailant. Instead, the pitch-dark deck was crowded with airmen, yawning, stretching, and scratching themselves with vigor.
“Out or down, lads!” came an enthusiastic cry. “Rise and shine! Cosmic tide waits for no man!”
Lamps guttered to life down the length of the hold, helping every one to find his way as he took his hammock down and rolled it into a tight little bundle. Arabella, blinking, did her best to follow their example, but her hammock wound up little more than an untidy tangle of rope and fabric.
Once the hammocks were stowed on deck—it was a chill morning, the sun not yet risen and the city lights mostly extinguished—and most every man had taken his turn at the head, they all returned below and divided into their messes for a breakfast of porridge oats and good strong tea. Famished, Arabella shoveled more than half of her oats into her stomach before she realized they were actually quite tasty.
Arabella again drew clean-up duty in the galley. Though the one enormous pot was heavily encrusted with oats, cleaning it or “hogging it out” was not nearly as bad as the previous night’s cabbage and horsemeat. And the cook let her have a small portion of raisins left over from the officers’ breakfast.
As she came out on deck, munching her raisins and watching the eastern horizon begin to lighten, Arabella mused that perhaps this life was not as bad as all that.
*
“Ahoy the boat!” came a cry to Arabella’s left. From across the water came the reply, “Furnace-men!” She turned to see, making its way across the Thames in the pale light of the rising sun, a most extraordinary sight.
A huge boat, very wide and shallow, was being rowed toward Diana from the riverbank by two dozen grunting, heaving men. At the center of the boat, swiveling atop a sort of plinth, was a barrel the size of a hogshead, closed with a lid at one end, and at the other …
An enormous canvas tube, three or four feet in diameter, stretched from the bottom of the barrel down to the water on the far side of the boat. From that point the tube, bulging and trembling as though it were stuffed with fidgeting mice, floated on the Thames from the boat all the way back to the bank, where it entered a gaping door in the sea-wall. Above that door loomed a square brick building, atop which four huge chimneys belched out vast quantities of smoke.
Arabella gaped at the extraordinary craft. The laboring oarsmen were all black with coal-dust, and the grime on their faces was streaked with sweat though the morning air was quite chill.
She understood why as the boat drew alongside and was made fast to Diana with stout cables. Once the boat was secured, the oarsmen unscrewed the lid from the barrel … and a great wind, hotter than the sultriest August day and smelling of coal-smoke, roared from it with tremendous force. The canvas tube wilted slightly, yet so great was the rush of air that it remained mostly inflated. Arabella, fifty feet or more away, had to hold her cap on to her head with both hands.
Two men leapt down from Diana, bearing a similar canvas tube with them, and attached it to the open end of the barrel. At once the tube from the ship snapped taut, and the roar of wind from the open barrel was replaced by a thrumming through the deck beneath Arabella’s feet.
A rough hand smacked Arabella’s shoulder. It was Faunt, his expression stern. “Bear a hand, man!” he said.
“Aye, aye, sir!” she said without thinking.