Lying on her bunk, her arms held stiffly at her sides and hands clenched painfully, Robyn heard the creak and squeal from the deck below her that meant Huron was altering course, and that the eight-inch thick rudderlines were running through their blocks as the helmsmin spun the wheel. It was a sound she had long become accustomed to, and she braced herself instinctively as the rudder lines attached to the panties trained around the enormous wooden rudder under Huron's stern and the ship altered her action through the water.
Seconds later there was a thunderous commotion from the deck above her, the blustering roar of the gale socking into the rigging, the crash of tackle coming up taut, the slam of the great sails as their awesome power was transferred into the hull, and Robyn was almost hurled from her bunk as Huron heeled wildly.
Then the cabin was filled with the exultant tbnlrnming of the bull through water, as though she were the body of a violin as the bow was drawn across the bass strings, and Huron trembled with life, lifting and dropping to the new urgency of her run.
Very faintly Robyn could hear above it all the sound of men cheering. She jumped from the bunk and clutching for handholds crossed the cabin and pounded her fist upon the door. Nathaniel, ' she called. 'Answer me this instant.
'Captain says as how I'm not to talk to you. ' His voice was muffled. You cannot torment me so, ' Robyn yelled back. 'What is happening? ' A long pause while Nathaniel considered his duty and then weighed it against his affection for this spirited young woman. We are on the wind, ma'am, ' he told her at last. 'And going like all the devils of hell with a crackerjack tied to their tails. 'What of Black joke? ' she pleaded. 'What of the British gunboat? 'Ain't nothing will catch us now. Reckon the puffing Billy will be out of sight before nightfall. From here she looks like she's dropped her anchor.'
Slowly Robyn leaned forward until her forehead pressed against the planking of the door. She closed her eyes very tightly, and tried to fight down the black waves of despair that threatened to overwhelm her.
She stayed like that for a long time until Nathaniel's voice roused her. It was rough with concern. Are you all right then, missus? 'Yes, thank you, Nathaniel. I'm just fine, she replied tightly, without opening her eyes. 'I'm going to take a little nap now. Don't let anybody disturb me. 'I'll be right here, missus. Ain't nobody going to get past me, he assured her.
She opened her eyes and went back to the bunk, and knelt before it and began to pray, but for once she could not concentrate. jumbled images kept intervening, and, when she closed her eyes, the face of Clinton Codrington was there, with those pale beautiful eyes in the darkly tanned mahogany of his face that accentuated the sun bleached platinum of his hair. She longed for him as she had never done before, he had become a symbol for her that was good and clean and right.
Then her mind darted away and it was that distant mocking smile, the taunting gold-flecked eyes of Mungo St. John. She trembled with humiliation, the man who had violated her and turned her own emotions traitor, who had dallied with her and allowed her to hope, nay, to pray that she could bear his children and become his wife. Her despair turned to hatred once again, and hatred armed her. Forgive me, Lord, I'll pray later, but now I have to do something! ' She started to her feet, and the cramped little cabin was a cage, suffocating and unbearable. She hammered her fists on the door and Nathaniel replied immediately. Nathaniel, I cannot bear it in here a moment longer.'
she cried. 'You must let me out.'
His voice was regretful but firm. 'Can't do that, missus. Tippoo would have a look at my back boneV She flung away from the door, angry, confused, her mind in a turmoil. I cannot let him carry me away to-' She did not go on, for she could not imagine what awaited her at the end of this voyage unless, and she had a vivid mental image of Huron coming into dock, while standing on the quay was a beautiful tall and aristocratic French woman in crinolines and velvets and pearls with three small sons standing at her side waving up at the tall arrogant figure on Huron's quarterdeck.
She tried to close her mind to it, and she concentrated instead on the sound that Huron made as she bore away joyously on the wind, the drumming of her hull, and the pop and creak of her planking, the clatter of tackle and the stamp of bare feet on her deck as a party of seamen walked away with a fall, training one of the yards more finely to the wind. From beneath her feet came another muted squeal, like a rat in the cat's jaws, as the helmsman made a small-adjustment to Huron's heading, and the rudder tackle ran protestingly through the blocks.
The sound triggered a memory, and Robyn froze, trembling again, but this time with anticipation. She remembered Clinton Codrington describing to her how as a young Lieutenant he had been in command of a cuttingout party sent into a river estuary that was crammed with small slaving craft, buggaloos and dhows. I didn't have enough men to take them all as prize at once, so we jumped from one to the other, cut their rudder lines and left them drifting, helplessly, until we could pick lem up later, those that hadn't gone aground, that is.'
Robyn roused herself from the memory and rushed to the corner of her cabin. She had to wedge her back against the bulkhead and push with both her feet to move her wooden chest into the centre of the cabin.
Then she dropped to her hands and knees.
There was a small trap-door in the deck, so neatly fitted that its joints were knife edges, but there was a small iron ring let flush into the woodwork. Once on the long voyage down the Atlantic, she had been disturbed. by a very apologetic carpenter's mate and she had watched with interest while he had dragged her chest aside and opened the hatch, to descend through it with a grease pot.
She tried now to open it, but the hatch was so tightfitting, that it resisted her efforts. She snatched a woollen shawl from her chest, and threaded it through the iron ring. Now she could get a fairer purchase. Once more she strained back, and the hatch moved inchingly and then abruptly flew open with a crash that she was sure must have alerted Nathaniel. She froze again, listening for a half minute, but there was no sound from beyond the cabin door.
On her hands and knees again she peered into the open hatchway. There was a faint breeze of air coming up out of the dark square hole, and she could smell the thick grease, the reek of the bilges and the awful slave stink that not all the lye and scrubbing had been able to cleanse, her gorge rose at the taint. As her eyes adjusted, she made out the low and narrow tunnel that housed Huron's steering gear. It was just high enough for a man to crawl along, running fore and aft along the hull.
The rudder lines came down from the deck above, ran through heavy iron blocks bolted into one of Huron's main frames, and then changed direction and ran directly astern down the narrow wooden tunnel. The pulley wheels of the blocks were caked with black grease, and the rudder lines were of new yellow hemp. They seemed as thick as a man's leg, and she could sense the enormous strain on them, for they were as rigid as steel bars.
She looked around for a means of damaging them, a knife, one of her scalpels, perhaps, and almost immediately realized the futility of anything so puny. Even a strong man with a double-headed axe would be hard pressed to hack his way through those cables, and there was no room in which to swing an axe in that narrow
