By Fickle Winds Blown by Maryk Lewis
Gordon here will collect that when you’re ready.”
“Miss Gordon? I couldna let her do that. No a lassie, eh?” David protested in panic.
“Well, I suppose we could ask the Bo’s’n to help,” Doctor Reade suggested. “Or perhaps one of the men from your watch?”
The poor young sailor looked thoroughly alarmed. “I’d never live it down,” he fretted. “I couldna stand the teasin’, eh?”
“Then you’d best let me,” Sarah said. “It’s my job. If you don’t tease me about it, I won’t tease you.”
“I’ll never tease you, miss,” he assured her anxiously, and two tears escaped him to roll unchecked down his pale cheeks.
Later, when he could hold out no longer, he called for her to attend him, a choked, whispered call, passed on to her through Honora Mabon. The carpenter had visited him in the meantime, and had fixed sliding curtains that could be pulled around his cot for privacy when it was needed. Sarah closed herself in with him behind the curtains.
“Och, I canna do it,” he complained after several minutes fruitless trying.
“I can’t either, if people are trying to hurry me,” she said.
“Can ye no?” he wondered, and straight away he did.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it,” she commented.
“Ah, I’m like a wee baby,” he said sadly. “I’m no a man at all, I’m not.”
“Of course you are,” she encouraged him. “You must be as tough as an old boot to survive a fall like that. This is nothing to concern yourself about. It’s just something one person can do for another when need be.”
And so it was, she discovered, as she took the pan away, pushed back the curtains, and settled him down. Only as she hurried out of the hospital flat, with the pan covered with a folded towel, did she realise that when she left him she had kissed him on the forehead, just as she would a sleepy infant being put down for the night.
What had she done to him? What had she done to his pride?
She paused and looked back. His eyes were closed. He looked relaxed. Perhaps, after all, he couldn’t have thought she was babying him.
In the background Honora Mabon was smiling broadly. She had seen that kiss on the forehead, and she winked at Sarah, and followed her out of the hospital flat.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Sarah whispered. “It’s treating him like a baby, and that’s just what I mustn’t do.”
“Rubbish,” Honora denied. “It’s showing him that you don’t think any the less of him as a person. You care for his well-being. You’re making it possible for him to accept what you’re doing for him.”
That certainly seemed to be the case. In the days following, Sarah gradually became more and more at ease with the work involved in caring for a helpless patient. David too came to accept the need for what was being done for him, and when it became obvious that Sarah could not possibly attend to him twenty four hours a day, he also allowed both Honora Mabon and Bridget Earnshaw to help him.
One or other, and sometimes both, were nearly always in the hospital flat or near at hand. Little Matilda continued to take in next to nothing, and was visibly wasting away. If one of those women was not there, one of their husbands would be. Kevin Mabon was very good with the baby, gentle and careful with the tiny, delicate creature in his great, leathery fists. Sam Earnshaw, the father, was somewhat inept, unused to children, and very nervous, but he managed. Most of the time they could only sit by, and watch the poor thing napping fitfully. During those times they chatted with David, and that did much to ease the boredom of his days.
It was noticeable, though, that he never asked the men for help, and always waited for a time when he was alone with one of the women. Another thing that was noted was that Sarah had another admirer.
During those days the school became a centre of attention for everybody on board, not just the children, but all the adults as well, passengers and crew alike. Those who could read and figure began to offer to help those who were learning. It was a good way to pass the time, when they became tired of staring over the gunwales at waves, and sky, and passing clouds. For many who had never seen the inside of a schoolroom, the classes were a fascination in themselves. So this is what went on in those places! They sat by the hour, just watching, taking it all in.
Reading lessons were a delight. All of Captain Hedley’s library was borrowed at one time or another, even a copy of the Bible written in the Maori language. The brown sailor with the carved face borrowed that. He could read it, where the captain could not, and only kept it for its curiosity value. The sailor, Wai tai te Atarau, White Eye to his mates, was in fact quite a well-educated man, who had signed on before the mast simply as a way to see the world.
As soon as anybody started reading aloud, an audience gathered. They listened to anything on offer, Irish and Scottish legends, a history of the Duchy of Cornwall, or books of published letters written by settlers to their relatives in Britain.
Samantha Rutherford started on a book called ‘A Spring in the Canterbury Settlement’, which she read a few pages at a time to White Eye, because he knew the man who had written it. That was her excuse anyway. Actually she was fascinated with this real live savage from the South Sea islands. The sight of the peaches and cream little English maid with the ferociously tattooed Maori warrior caused great amusement.
Jess, working in the galley when White Eye came to collect the dinner for his messmates, was in a position to hear some of the teasing he had to put up with over the incongruous friendship.
“Like ‘em young and pink, do you?” one of the sailors asked.
“Yes,” White Eye answered with a white-toothed grin. “Good eating, eh?”
Another commented, “They’re easier to train if you get ‘em young.”
Samantha’s parent’s were not at all pleased about the association, until Captain Hedley told them that White Eye was an important chieftain among his own people, and would be one of their neighbours when they took up the land they had paid for in New Zealand.
Apart from that, nobody said much about the way crew were fraternising with passengers. It was something not allowed on most ships. Captain Hedley, however, had a solid core of men who had been with him on several voyages, and he knew he could depend on them to keep order. He allowed that the school was a special case, and passengers and crew could legitimately meet for lessons, even though they must keep to their own domains at other times.
The second place where they could mingle was in the hospital flat. Sailors visiting David naturally talked to anybody else who was in there at the time.
When some of the single men discovered that some of the single women were learning to sign their names, they wanted to learn too. Then the idea spread to the crew as well. All the illiterates on the ship suddenly decided that they had had enough of the embarrassment of only being able to make their marks. During the dog watches, the two-hour shifts that the crew worked in the evenings, there was not a school slate that was not in use by somebody.
Besides that, White Eye began teaching conversational Maori to anybody who wanted to learn, Jess and Sarah among them, just a few new words each day. People were strolling around the cleared spaces to the sides of the decks saying things in Maori such as, “I see you. I see you both. I see all of you.” In Maori those were the greetings used according to the number of people one met. Telling a Maori you could see him seemed funny, because it seemed that it would be obvious that you could. However, when you understood the Maori reasoning that went with it, it made sense. If you met people from an enemy tribe, you were supposed to kill them. If you pretended that you couldn’t see them, then you didn’t have to, and you and your enemies could pass each other by as if you didn’t exist. Telling people you saw them meant that you wanted to see them, that you considered them to be friends.
With so much to do, the days were filled from noon to noon, the whole twenty four hours, with somebody doing something in every single minute of them.
Noon? Ships’ days start at mid-day, so that the officers of the last watch for one day, and the first watch of the next, can change places in daylight when it’s easier to see what’s happening. There are many sightings, reports, and logs to write up at that time, so the officers have to divide their attention between those, and the continued running of the ship.
Soon after the change over Captain Hedley would announce how far the ship had travelled in the last twenty four hours.
To the people on board it was just one wave after another hissing along the side of the ship, as they caught up on them, and cut through them. Clouds overhead were going the same way they were, but only slightly faster, so that while they were actually racing along, from the ship they appeared to be merely drifting. The wind, coming up from astern, also appeared the gentlest of breezes, despite being in truth a good stiff northerly.
Later the wind veered to come in more and more from the east, as they entered the belt of trade winds. The ship’s motion changed when she began to cut across the waves at an angle.
No matter which wind drove them, there was nothing to break the even line of the horizon all around them. Land was far away. The nearest solid ground was five miles straight down below them.
Never did another ship come in sight. By-passing the stormy Bay of Biscay had put them too far out into the Atlantic, far beyond the
“Miss Gordon? I couldna let her do that. No a lassie, eh?” David protested in panic.
“Well, I suppose we could ask the Bo’s’n to help,” Doctor Reade suggested. “Or perhaps one of the men from your watch?”
The poor young sailor looked thoroughly alarmed. “I’d never live it down,” he fretted. “I couldna stand the teasin’, eh?”
“Then you’d best let me,” Sarah said. “It’s my job. If you don’t tease me about it, I won’t tease you.”
“I’ll never tease you, miss,” he assured her anxiously, and two tears escaped him to roll unchecked down his pale cheeks.
Later, when he could hold out no longer, he called for her to attend him, a choked, whispered call, passed on to her through Honora Mabon. The carpenter had visited him in the meantime, and had fixed sliding curtains that could be pulled around his cot for privacy when it was needed. Sarah closed herself in with him behind the curtains.
“Och, I canna do it,” he complained after several minutes fruitless trying.
“I can’t either, if people are trying to hurry me,” she said.
“Can ye no?” he wondered, and straight away he did.
“There, that wasn’t so hard, was it,” she commented.
“Ah, I’m like a wee baby,” he said sadly. “I’m no a man at all, I’m not.”
“Of course you are,” she encouraged him. “You must be as tough as an old boot to survive a fall like that. This is nothing to concern yourself about. It’s just something one person can do for another when need be.”
And so it was, she discovered, as she took the pan away, pushed back the curtains, and settled him down. Only as she hurried out of the hospital flat, with the pan covered with a folded towel, did she realise that when she left him she had kissed him on the forehead, just as she would a sleepy infant being put down for the night.
What had she done to him? What had she done to his pride?
She paused and looked back. His eyes were closed. He looked relaxed. Perhaps, after all, he couldn’t have thought she was babying him.
In the background Honora Mabon was smiling broadly. She had seen that kiss on the forehead, and she winked at Sarah, and followed her out of the hospital flat.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” Sarah whispered. “It’s treating him like a baby, and that’s just what I mustn’t do.”
“Rubbish,” Honora denied. “It’s showing him that you don’t think any the less of him as a person. You care for his well-being. You’re making it possible for him to accept what you’re doing for him.”
That certainly seemed to be the case. In the days following, Sarah gradually became more and more at ease with the work involved in caring for a helpless patient. David too came to accept the need for what was being done for him, and when it became obvious that Sarah could not possibly attend to him twenty four hours a day, he also allowed both Honora Mabon and Bridget Earnshaw to help him.
One or other, and sometimes both, were nearly always in the hospital flat or near at hand. Little Matilda continued to take in next to nothing, and was visibly wasting away. If one of those women was not there, one of their husbands would be. Kevin Mabon was very good with the baby, gentle and careful with the tiny, delicate creature in his great, leathery fists. Sam Earnshaw, the father, was somewhat inept, unused to children, and very nervous, but he managed. Most of the time they could only sit by, and watch the poor thing napping fitfully. During those times they chatted with David, and that did much to ease the boredom of his days.
It was noticeable, though, that he never asked the men for help, and always waited for a time when he was alone with one of the women. Another thing that was noted was that Sarah had another admirer.
During those days the school became a centre of attention for everybody on board, not just the children, but all the adults as well, passengers and crew alike. Those who could read and figure began to offer to help those who were learning. It was a good way to pass the time, when they became tired of staring over the gunwales at waves, and sky, and passing clouds. For many who had never seen the inside of a schoolroom, the classes were a fascination in themselves. So this is what went on in those places! They sat by the hour, just watching, taking it all in.
Reading lessons were a delight. All of Captain Hedley’s library was borrowed at one time or another, even a copy of the Bible written in the Maori language. The brown sailor with the carved face borrowed that. He could read it, where the captain could not, and only kept it for its curiosity value. The sailor, Wai tai te Atarau, White Eye to his mates, was in fact quite a well-educated man, who had signed on before the mast simply as a way to see the world.
As soon as anybody started reading aloud, an audience gathered. They listened to anything on offer, Irish and Scottish legends, a history of the Duchy of Cornwall, or books of published letters written by settlers to their relatives in Britain.
Samantha Rutherford started on a book called ‘A Spring in the Canterbury Settlement’, which she read a few pages at a time to White Eye, because he knew the man who had written it. That was her excuse anyway. Actually she was fascinated with this real live savage from the South Sea islands. The sight of the peaches and cream little English maid with the ferociously tattooed Maori warrior caused great amusement.
Jess, working in the galley when White Eye came to collect the dinner for his messmates, was in a position to hear some of the teasing he had to put up with over the incongruous friendship.
“Like ‘em young and pink, do you?” one of the sailors asked.
“Yes,” White Eye answered with a white-toothed grin. “Good eating, eh?”
Another commented, “They’re easier to train if you get ‘em young.”
Samantha’s parent’s were not at all pleased about the association, until Captain Hedley told them that White Eye was an important chieftain among his own people, and would be one of their neighbours when they took up the land they had paid for in New Zealand.
Apart from that, nobody said much about the way crew were fraternising with passengers. It was something not allowed on most ships. Captain Hedley, however, had a solid core of men who had been with him on several voyages, and he knew he could depend on them to keep order. He allowed that the school was a special case, and passengers and crew could legitimately meet for lessons, even though they must keep to their own domains at other times.
The second place where they could mingle was in the hospital flat. Sailors visiting David naturally talked to anybody else who was in there at the time.
When some of the single men discovered that some of the single women were learning to sign their names, they wanted to learn too. Then the idea spread to the crew as well. All the illiterates on the ship suddenly decided that they had had enough of the embarrassment of only being able to make their marks. During the dog watches, the two-hour shifts that the crew worked in the evenings, there was not a school slate that was not in use by somebody.
Besides that, White Eye began teaching conversational Maori to anybody who wanted to learn, Jess and Sarah among them, just a few new words each day. People were strolling around the cleared spaces to the sides of the decks saying things in Maori such as, “I see you. I see you both. I see all of you.” In Maori those were the greetings used according to the number of people one met. Telling a Maori you could see him seemed funny, because it seemed that it would be obvious that you could. However, when you understood the Maori reasoning that went with it, it made sense. If you met people from an enemy tribe, you were supposed to kill them. If you pretended that you couldn’t see them, then you didn’t have to, and you and your enemies could pass each other by as if you didn’t exist. Telling people you saw them meant that you wanted to see them, that you considered them to be friends.
With so much to do, the days were filled from noon to noon, the whole twenty four hours, with somebody doing something in every single minute of them.
Soon after the change over Captain Hedley would announce how far the ship had travelled in the last twenty four hours.
To the people on board it was just one wave after another hissing along the side of the ship, as they caught up on them, and cut through them. Clouds overhead were going the same way they were, but only slightly faster, so that while they were actually racing along, from the ship they appeared to be merely drifting. The wind, coming up from astern, also appeared the gentlest of breezes, despite being in truth a good stiff northerly.
Later the wind veered to come in more and more from the east, as they entered the belt of trade winds. The ship’s motion changed when she began to cut across the waves at an angle.
No matter which wind drove them, there was nothing to break the even line of the horizon all around them. Land was far away. The nearest solid ground was five miles straight down below them.
Never did another ship come in sight. By-passing the stormy Bay of Biscay had put them too far out into the Atlantic, far beyond the