The woman raised the binoculars. Marina ducked down. She couldn’t bear the thought that Miss Smith would see her, a silly schoolgirl, a wretched stowaway, cowering on the deck of a decrepit old fishing boat instead of being welcomed triumphantly on to a towering dreadnought by her loving father. The little boat heaved and shuddered as it caught a current. In those few moments, the Sea Witch had moved clear of her berth and the other ships moored at the dock. She was already in a channel of water and was turning, turning on a sixpence, towards the open sea.
A sharp breeze caught Marina’s hair, caught her boater and blew it off her head and on to the black water. Marina peeped through the railings and saw it bob up and down on the threads of ragged grey lace that topped the waves. Seagulls swooped, hoping it would make a meal, and wheeled up, screeching their anger at being tricked. The dogs in the hold howled and barked as they tried to make sense of the unpredictable motion of the ship.
The awful, jiggling motion of the ship. Could it not just be still for one moment? Marina gulped in the sea air, hoping it would get rid of the sour taste in her mouth.
And then, without warning, she stood up and was very sick over the side of the boat.
The sea was choppy, the breeze off the water was brisk. Marina clutched her knees to her chest in the hope that it might stop the retching. Men’s voices called to each other as they prepared the boat for the open sea.
‘Secure the winch!’
‘Get those nets stowed! And be quick about it!’
‘Seal up the hold!’
Marina could still see the coast – the blessed, unmoving coast – even as the sea currents tugged at the boat’s hull. The Sea Witch plunged up and down like a demented donkey. How many knots would a small boat like this make? Nine? Ten? But it would depend, too, on the depth of the waves the boat was labouring over. The northern waters, she knew, had waves like mountain ranges, but mountains that moved, swelled and toppled on top of any boat brave, or foolhardy, enough to sail to the Far North.
She groaned. She mustn’t think about those large and violent seas. She tilted her head up: they were already in the Channel. The Sea Witch seemed to hold herself for a moment, as if deciding whether to go forward or not. And then she dipped into the wave, almost shivering with enjoyment. There was no enjoyment for Marina. This daughter of generations of sailors and seafarers was battling raging seasickness.
The air grew colder. The afternoon sun ground the waves to crushed glass. Marina rubbed her arms. ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather,’ her father often said. ‘Only bad clothes.’ Her thin school blouse was very bad, then, as it gave her no protection from the wind. Swallowing another attempt by her stomach to force her to lean over the side, she pulled her sailcloth tunic out of her kitbag and pulled it on. The heavy cotton kept out the worst of the wind. She took a lungful of air and found that it calmed her stomach. The motion of the ship, however, was still a problem. The moment she tried to stand up, she knew she had to immediately crouch down again. She felt that if she could only be beneath the water, all would be well (a ridiculous thought). But this bobbing about on the swell was unbearable.
‘What ’ave we ’ere?’
Before she could attempt to escape, her ear was almost twisted off her head and she was dragged, howling, from her hiding place. A large red face was thrust towards her, two eyes, round and brown as currants, narrowed in suspicion. The man was short, with thick arms and a barrel chest, his head bald. It was Brown, and his voice was even more stern and humourless now than it was when the boat was being loaded at Portsmouth.
‘Let me go!’ Marina gasped. She twisted and turned her body, but Brown had her in a powerful grip and if she tried to pull away, it only hurt her ear more.
‘No point squawking,’ he said, calmly. ‘Even if you get free of me, you’re not going anywhere. Unless you can swim!’
‘Let. Go. Of. Me,’ Marina cried, desperation making her chest tighten and her voice squeak.
Brown frowned and gave her request some thought. ‘Right. I will. But you’re to come with me, and quietly, to the bridge. The Commander’ll want to see you. And then he’ll decide what to do with you.’
The boat pitched and she lurched to one side.
‘Trouble finding yer sea legs? Well, that’s going to be nothing compared to the blast the Commander’ll give you!’
‘The blast he’ll give you!’ Marina had to speak quickly before the urge to be sick came over her again. ‘You wait. He’ll have you barnacled!’ It was the rudest thing she could think of. But Brown just laughed at her bluster.
‘Not the Commander’s style to string a man beneath the hull of his boat, whatever he’s done.’
‘Don’t you know who I am?’
‘I don’t care if you’re the ruddy Queen of Sheba. You’re going to see the Commander.’
He pushed Marina towards some metal stairs that led up to the bridge. The sudden fear: Brown was right – her father would be angry with her for missing her train, for not going to school, for losing her trunk and all the new, expensive things inside it. She had spoken out of desperation and misplaced bravado. She panicked. ‘Maybe I could just wait a moment?’
‘Not feeling so brave now?’ Brown jabbed her in the back. ‘Keep moving, miss.’
At the top of the stairs, an open door to the bridge. Could she make a run
