SAIL HO
Weeks passed, and the work grew routine. Arabella learned her duties well, became conversant with the strange terminology used by airmen, and developed cordial relations with the men in her mess.
She overheard no further conversations in the head, nor were there any rumblings of mutiny among the crew on deck. Even the conversation she had heard might be no more than dissatisfied grumbling. Yet she feared that insurrection was brewing, and viewed every man with suspicion. She never found herself alone with the captain, and with no knowledge of which officers or men might be involved in the plot, she dared not share her worries with any one else.
Despite her caution and concerns, she gradually became more comfortable with her tasks and the other members of the crew. From time to time she was given new duties, which kept her on her toes.
The one aspect of airmanship she could not seem to master was that of tying knots, which for all its seeming simplicity proved far more complex in execution than her mind was capable of encompassing. She had never dreamed there were so many ways of tying two ropes together! But one day, as she struggled in vain to fix a loop in the middle of a line, her messmate Mills floated up to her with a raised eyebrow, his pink palms raised in a clear offer of assistance.
The man spoke little—his native language was some West African tongue he shared with no one else on the ship—but Arabella was sure he understood English as well as any man aboard. When he did speak, his words, though not always grammatical, were carefully chosen and to the point.
“I am to tie a bowline here,” she confessed, “but I simply cannot fathom how to do it when both ends of the line are secured.”
“Bowline on bight,” he said. With clear deliberate gestures he demonstrated the knot, his pale yellow eyes firm and kind upon hers as he made certain she understood the process.
She tried it herself then, and though the resulting knot was far more untidy than his, his bright white smile showed that she had tied it correctly.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, and with an amiable salute he returned to his duties.
*
The most interesting part of her day was the time she spent in the captain’s cabin, learning about navigation and the use and maintenance of Aadim the clockwork navigator. These lessons were nominally for the benefit of Binion and the other midshipmen, with herself as only a guest, but it soon became abundantly clear to all that she was by far the most adept student of the lot. Even Binion, resent the situation though he might, plainly could not deny its truth.
Though the lessons were hard—the trigonometry of sextant and compass was a particular challenge—Arabella applied herself to them with vigor and joy. Here she could exercise her mind in a way her mother, indeed all of English society, would never tolerate in a girl or even a grown woman. In these moments all shame at her continued deception fell away, replaced by anger at the opportunities denied her by her sex.
As the captain lectured patiently, Arabella could not fail to be reminded of her father, and she often reflected that he would have very much admired the captain if they had met. The two men shared a keen interest in automata, of course, but the affinity ran deeper than that—both had an actively curious intelligence, a tenacious persistence when confronted with a difficult puzzle, and a warm heart beneath a sometimes gruff exterior. But the most complex automaton in her father’s collection was a mere toy by comparison with Aadim. The more she worked with the navigator, the more impressed she became with the many clockmakers who’d designed and built his workings.
But far more impressive than those clockmakers, she realized, was the captain himself. Captain Singh’s knowledge of automata ran deep and broad as any aerial current, and he himself was responsible for much of Aadim’s design. Though the captain was no clockmaker himself, his understanding of the clockwork navigator’s mechanisms was complete and intimate. Aadim’s technical draughts were kept in a chest in the captain’s cabin, tightly rolled in a protective leather case, but the captain himself never consulted them; he knew every cog, gear, and shaft as well as he knew the names and duties of his crew.