‘Where I go and what I do is none of your business,’ her father snapped. ‘I have a mission to complete. You – with your nonsense of playing truant from school and getting on wrong trains – have jeopardized it. And we’re scarcely an hour out of Portsmouth!’
‘Father. Please don’t put me off the boat. Please let me stay. Please.’
‘Stay? On the Sea Witch? It’s out of the question. This boat is no place for a . . . a . . . girl.’
Marina gripped the shelf more tightly. ‘I’m afraid . . . I’m awfully sorry . . . But I might just be . . .’ She clapped her hand tightly to her mouth.
‘Get her off my bridge, Brown. And quick! When she’s been sick, you can put her in the hold until Kirkport.’
‘Aye, sir. Shall I find her a hammock? Some spare galoshes?’
‘Do what you like with her. Just keep her out of my sight.’
Out on deck, Marina sank down on her haunches and took gulps of the chill sea air.
‘That was quite some stunt you pulled there, young lady.’ Brown looked impressed. ‘Although I don’t know as how it has worked out very well for you. In fact, looking at the colour of you, I’d say it’s worked out pretty bad.’
She put her head down on her knees. Brown didn’t hurry her. ‘Aye, we’re not all born to be sailors,’ he observed.
‘But I’m a Denham,’ Marina whispered on her sour tasting breath. ‘All Denhams are sailors.’
‘Don’t matter who you are or what your name is. The sea takes to some and not to others.’
She sniffed. ‘Can’t the sea stop . . . moving? Just for one moment?’
‘The sea stop moving?’ Brown laughed. ‘Not while I live and breathe. Best get you lying down. That’s the only way.’
‘Could you just wait for a moment?’ Feeling as she did, Marina couldn’t imagine getting up and walking down the steep stairs with all this rising and falling.
The voices of Finchin and her father drifted out on to the sea air from inside the bridge. They spoke of wind speeds and knots and nautical miles. It was all gobbledygook: the strange impenetrable language of the sea. If only she could speak this language as fluently – if only she, too, could make the sea her element.
Finchin’s voice floated towards her. ‘Shame Miss Marina isn’t a boy, sir. We could’ve made her one of us.’
He spoke without any malice, as if he were simply stating a fact.
10
Brown pulled up a small trapdoor cut into the sealed cover of the hold. He knelt down and peered into the dark. Seeing the light and smelling the fresh air, the dogs started barking fit to burst.
‘Oi!’ Brown shouted at them good-naturedly. ‘Enough with the chatter!’
Marina followed him down wooden steps, wrinkling her nose at the pungent smell of fish. They stood, swaying with the movement of the boat. It was a huge space, like being in a church.
‘This is where they stored the fish when the SeaWitch was a fishing vessel. Now it’s full of our stores and some of the Commander’s equipment.’ Brown indicated a wall of wooden crates. ‘And dogs.’
In the dank, close air, Marina retched again and sank on to the floor. Brown quickly strung up a hammock, all his movements quick and efficient.
‘In you get,’ he instructed her. ‘Best place for you right now if you can’t stand.’
She forced herself to get up again and staggered towards the hammock, but it swayed too much for her climb in.
‘Steady as she goes,’ Brown said, holding the hammock still while she awkwardly got in. She groaned and he threw a heavy blanket over her. The dogs whined and barked but she couldn’t take any notice of them. Brown put a bucket near her head. ‘In case you need it.’
What a dreadful end to her adventure. Her foolishness, more like.
‘How long till I’m put off the boat?’
‘We’ll reach Kirkport in the morning.’
Left alone in her hammock, Marina thought she would drown, thought the boat would drown, thought the sea itself would drown. How else to account for the violence of the pitching and rolling that tormented her? It wasn’t even that she could anticipate the strange movement of the boat: it would go up, causing her feet to tip into her body, but then it would roll to the side. Her hammock would swing so wildly she had to clutch both sides to stop herself from being flung out. I’m being flipped like a pancake, she thought.
The light faded, the hold grew dark. The dogs snuffled and settled down to sleep.
She didn’t care.
The moon rose. A slice of silver shone through the porthole and cut her in two.
She didn’t care.
All her life she had believed that she could take to the seas, like all those generations of Denhams before her. But now she realized she was one of those hated beings, spoken of with contempt by all sailors: a landlubber.
‘If I could just get off this boat,’ she told herself, ‘and be still, I will never dream of going to sea again. I will live always in the middle of a green field surrounded by mountains.’
She was aware of Brown coming in from time to time. He asked how she was doing and she croaked the same reply. ‘Awful . . . just awful . . .’
‘Give it time, miss,’ he’d said, good-naturedly.
‘How long?’ she’d whispered.
‘Can’t say’s I know.’
He got her to sip some water, told her it would help. He cradled her head as he lifted a tin mug to her lips. The water didn’t help. She sank back into her hammock, nauseous and exhausted.
A whole wretched night dragged by. But it would soon be over. When Brown came in at daybreak, she felt only relief. Soon this infernal motion would cease. Soon she would not feel sick. What a relief it would be to get off this boat.
‘What time do we stop at Kirkport?’ she asked.
‘We’ve gone past it a couple of hours ago.’
‘But I’m meant to get off
