‘The thing is,’ she said to herself, picking up her kitbag, ‘Miss Smith offered to take me back to London, but I have no money to pay her back for the fare. Ivy has packed up the house and gone to her sister’s in Kent. I’ve no idea how to get to that dreadful Ladies’ College, and not enough money to get there even if I had.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I can’t go back . . . So I’ll just have to go on . . .’
She heaved her kitbag on to her shoulder and walked purposefully towards the gangplank of the Sea Witch.
8
The hull was pockmarked with rust but, once on deck, Marina could see that the Sea Witch, though old, was spick and span. She crept along the newly varnished deck, keeping an eye out for sailors. She saw Perkins, his back to her, fixing the hook of a winch to the top of the dog crate. The animals were going to be lowered into the hold. They stood up and barked with excitement. Marina tripped over a large coil of thick rope and then quickly ducked down behind a small lifeboat, capable of holding no more than twelve men.
Crouched here, she realized how stupid she was.What was she doing, cowering on a fishing boat about to sail to who knew where? If found, no one would believe that she’d climbed on board to say goodbye to her father. They’d think she was a stowaway, and her father had always been clear that those miserable wretches who neither worked nor paid for their passage were harshly treated. As if angry at her folly, the Sea Witch’s engines growled. The deck beneath her feet shuddered. She peered over the side and saw the urgent swirl of black water. A sailor on the quay pulled a mooring rope off a bollard and threw it up on to the deck of the boat with practised ease. She heard the garrulous clanking of the anchor being raised as the man sprinted along the gangplank. She should stand up now. She should run towards him and tell him that she had made a dreadful mistake and that he must let her off.
She hesitated: the man looked angry, his forehead creased in a surly frown. And he was quick. In seconds, he’d leapt aboard and was drawing up the gangplank – and in doing so, removing her means of escape, the only way she could get back on to dry land.
‘Gangplank stowed!’ It was done. She was trapped, with no way of leaving the boat that didn’t risk drowning.
The boat heaved forward, as if impatient to be out of the confines of its narrow berth.
‘The dogs are secure?’ a man’s voice called out over the noise of the engines.
‘Aye, sir!’
‘Then let’s get to sea. We’ve a long journey to the ice, and the Commander’s in a hurry to get there!’
‘Aye!’ men’s voices answered enthusiastically.
‘To the north!’ the man cried.
The male chorus roared in ragged unison: ‘To the north!’
Marina clutched the guard rail as the boat swayed beneath her. She had to make herself known. There would be a dreadful row, but she had to be put back on the quay. What had possessed her to climb on to this boat? It was going north, whereas her father had been clear that he was sailing to Cadiz. Was it possible that there were two Commander Denhams? Two Browns and Perkins? She tilted herself over the side. The water churned angrily as if it were boiling. Could she jump into that and survive? Panic drenched her. The sides of the dock seemed very high; there was no clear way that she could climb out of that water back on to the dock, even if she made it that far – her father, who thought that a deep bath was dangerous, had never taught her how to swim. This water certainly did not look as if it would hold her up and let her thrash her way to the quay; it looked as if it would swallow her and drag her to her death, just as her father had always warned her.
‘You’ll get yourself into trouble one day,’ Edward was fond of telling her. ‘You’re so impulsive.’ But she remembered how he always smiled as he said it. ‘I’d really like to be around when you do get into trouble. Because, blimey, will it be fun to watch.’
Well, this wasn’t fun. Her hands gripped the rail even tighter. If she could only risk raising one leg off the juddering deck, she could climb over and jump. Anything was better than staying where she was and being discovered. She put one foot up, her heart pounding. And then, looking back at the quay, she saw something which made her hesitate. Standing near the bollard where the Sea Witch had been tied up was a young woman in a blue-and-white striped suit, the skirt thrillingly short. The woman’s auburn hair was tucked under a little straw hat and a leather portmanteau had been dropped at her feet. But what was so surprising about Miss Smith was that she had a pair of binoculars round her neck. And she was looking at the departing Sea Witch – looking right, it seemed, at Marina.
Her father had always given voice to many superstitions: it came with being a sailor. But one of his most fiercely held was that it was bad luck to speak to anyone with red hair before a sea voyage. Marina swallowed. Had she brought bad luck to the Sea Witch by talking to the fascinating Miss Smith? But, she reasoned, she hadn’t known that she would be going on a sea voyage at
