His relief was obvious. 'I am grateful for your confidence, my dear.
' He stooped over her and kissed her forehead. 'Let me escort you to dinner.'
She was about to refuse, to tell him she was tired and that, once again, she would dine alone in her cabin, and then an idea struck her, and she nodded.
Thank you, Zouga, she told him, and then looked up with one of those sudden smiles so brilliant. so warm and so rare as to disarm him completely. 'I am fortunate to have such a handsome dinner companion.'
She sat between Mungo St. John and her brother, and had her brother not known better, he might have suspected her of flirting outrageously with the Captain. She was all smiles and sparkles, leaning forward attentively to listen whenever he spoke, recharging his glass whenever it was less than half filled with wine and laughing delightedly at his dry sallies.
Zouga was amazed and a little alarmed by the transformation, while St. John had never seen her like this.
He had covered his original surprise with an amused half-smile. However, in this mood Robyn Ballantyne was an attractive companion. Her stubborn, rather sharp face softened to the edge of prettiness, while her best features, her hair, her perfect skin, her eyes and fine white teeth, gleamed and flashed in the lamplight. Mungo St. John's own mood became expansive, he laughed more readily and his interest was clearly piqued. With Robyn plying his glass, he drank more than on any other night of the voyage, and when his steward served a good plum duff he called for a bottle of brandy to wash it down.
Zouga had also been infected by the strangely festive air of the dinner, and he protested as vigorously as St. John when suddenly Robyn declared herself to be exhausted and stood up from the board, but she was adamant.
In her cabin she could still hear the occasional shouts of laughter from the saloon, as she went quietly about her preparations. She slid the locking bar into place to assure her privacy. Then she knelt beside her chest and wormed her way down to the bottom layers, from which she retrieved a pair of man's moleskin breeches, a flannel shirt and cravat, with a high-buttoned monkey jacket to go over them, and well-worn half boots.
This had been her uniform and her disguise as a medical student at St. Matthew's Hospital. Now she stripped herself naked, and for a moment enjoyed the wicked freedom of the feeling, even indulging herself to the extent of gazing down at her nudity. She was not too certain if it was a sin to enjoy one's own body, but she suspected that it was. Nevertheless she persisted.
Her legs were straight and strong, her hips flared with a graceful curve and then narrowed abruptly into her waist, her belly was almost flat with just an interesting little bulge below the navel. Now here was definitely sinful ground, of this there was no doubt. But still she could not deny the temptation to let her gaze linger a moment. She understood fully the technical purpose and the physical workings of all her body's highly complicated machinery, both visible and concealed. It was only the feelings and emotions which sprang from this source which both confused and worried her, for they had taught her none of this at St. Matthew's. She passed on hurriedly to safer ground, lifting her arms to pile the tresses of her hair on to the top of her head and hold them in place with a soft cloth cap.
Her breasts were round and neat as ripening apples, so firm as hardly to change their shape as she moved her arms. Their resemblance to fruit pleased her and she spent a few moments longer than was necessary in adjusting the cloth cap upon her head looking down at them.
But there was a limit to self-indulgence, and she swept the flannel shirt over her head, pulled the tails down around her waist, stepped into the breeches, how good they felt again after so long in those hobbling skirts and then, sitting upon the bunk, she pulled on the halfthe ankle straps of the breeches under boots and buckled the arch of her foot, before standing to clinch the belt at her waist.
She opened her black valise, took out the roll of surgical instruments and selected one of the sturdier scalpels, folded out the blade and tested it with her thumb. It was stingingly sharp. She closed the blade and slipped it into her hip pocket. It was the only weapon available to her.
She was ready now, and she closed the shutter on the bull's-eye lantern, ddarkening the cabin completely before climbing, fully dressed, into her bunk, pulling the rough woollen blanket to her chin and settling down to wait.
The laughter from the saloon became more abandoned, and she imagined that the brandy bottle was being cruelly punished by the men. A long while later she heard her brother's heavy, uneven footsteps on the companion way past her cabin and then there was only the creak and pop of the ship's timbers as she heeled to the wind and far away the regular tapping of some loose piece of equipment.
She was so keyed, with both fear and anticipation, that there was never any danger of her falling asleep. However, the time passed with wearying slowness. Each time that she opened the shutter of the lantern to check her pocket-watch, the hands seemed hardly to have moved.
Then, somehow, it was two o'clock in the morning, the hour when the human body and spirit are at their lowest ebb.
She rose quietly from her bunk, picked up the darkened lantern and went to the door of her cabin. The locking bolt clattered like a volley of musketry, but then it was open and she slipped through.
In the saloon a single oil-lamp still burned smokily, throwing agitated shadows against the wooden bulkheads, while the empty brandy bottle had fallen to the deck, and rolled back and forth with the ship's motion.
Robyn squatted to pull off her boots and, leaving them at the entrance, she went forward on bare feet, crossed the saloon and stepped into the passageway that led to the stern quarters.
Her breath was short, as though she had run far, and she paused to lift the shutter of the bull's-eye lantern and flash a narrow beam of light into the darkness ahead.
The door to Mungo St. John's cabin was closed.
She crept towards it, guiding herself with one hand on the bulkhead and at last her fingers closed over the brass door-handle. Please God, she whispered, and achingly slowly twisted the handle. It turned easily, and then the door slid open an inch along its track, enough for her to peep through into the cabin beyond.
There was just light to see, for the deck above was pierced for a repeating compass so that even while in his bunk the master could at a glance tell his ship's heading.
The compass was lit by the dull yellow glow of the helmsman's lantern and the reflection allowed Robyn to
