Oh, they loved her—that first night.
It was the next morning that the trouble started.
Adam was up at first light, his heart high in his chest. At dawn it was always like this. Given visibility, the Goodwill could keep away from anything that swam the seas—except maybe oared harbor boats in a time of calm—but each time the sky grayed, and especially if the night had been moonless, you looked around, staring so hard that your eyeballs ached, fearful lest some warship or worse should loom out of the murk all too close. Ships didn't show lights and they seldom struck bells when they were hunting. You might find yourself within gunshot of pretty near anything. You could even be in the middle of an enemy fleet. It had happened.
This morning the horizon held only a brig, but it was a large one, dead ahead. It was Spanish; and they fell off. The Spaniard, following them, was easily outpaced; but he was in sight until early afternoon. And no sooner had they made about on a northeasterly course again than they raised another vessel, a Frencher, which went for them with the velvety silent swiftness of a cat.
Between these raisings Adam was sent to take a look at Eliphalet Mellish.
Eli was a Newport boy, gnarled, never said anything, no beauty but a good worker. Now he had the fever, bad. His face was so hot it burned your hand, and it was steamed with sweat. He rampaged from side to side as though determined to break the bones of his own body. His eyes were shut. He didn't seem to hear anything you said.
Nobody knew when he'd been taken. He had stood his watch, night before. He'd attended prayers. But then, he was always a quiet one.
Eli had been ashore at Mr. Treadway's. But—here's the realization that douched them—they all had been, every man-jack of 'em. His breathing was horrid to hear, a sort of rattle.
They washed his face and neck and they loosened his clothing. There wasn't much else they could think of. John Bond suggested burning one of the big sulphur candles, but Adam shook his head.
"They're for purifying the air, and it takes two-three days with everything battened dowoi. They'd kill him, you burn 'em in here."
An hour later, when Lady Maisie came on deck, after having breakfasted below, Adam made no mention of Eliphalet Mellish. Some people, he knew, were superstitious.
She herself seemed in the best of health, though Goodwill was standing about a bit, the seas being tolerably high.
They chatted by the taffrail. She was not a high-and-mighty lady, really. She was easy to talk to. He let her hold the tiller, and showed her how to watch the compass, and how to make the schooner come around to the compass card rather than try to make the compass card come 'round to fit the schooner, as your landsman customarily did. This entertained her, and while she did it he rigged the awning he had promised.
Once she looked back. She couldn't have been wearing a heap of clothes under the gown, for just turning thrust out the curves of her breast and hips. Her neck was sheer cream and he wished he could kiss it. This morning she wore a black lace scarf over her head, tied beneath her chin, a Spanish-looking thing. A few strands of hair had leapt loose and were flipping and curling.
"What's that boat behind us. Captain?"
"Came from Petit Guave way. A Frencher. She likes the looks of us."
"We're not running away from them?"
"Sure are."
"By this compass it says we're going almost straight south?"
"That's right, ma'am."
"But New York is north of here, isn't it?"
"Yes, but that Frencher's north of here, too. We won't get back on our proper course till after dark. We can lose her then."
"Why can't we go 'way over to the east or west?"
"There's only just so far to go. I'll show you on the chart. Look— This is the Windward Passage here, between Hispaniola on one side and Cuba on the other. That's maybe fifty-sixty miles. And the French, they got havens at Leogane here and at Petit Guave. They're fast sailors, too."
"D'ye think there's any danger, Captaini'"
He shrugged.
She asked: "These privateers—"
"Ain't so much the privateers I'm worried about. The hands—they sometimes call this place Pirate Alley."
"I see." She gave him a smile, the first real one that morning. "Well, with you managing us, Captain, I'm not afraid."
"Thank you, ma'am. I try to do my best."
She went below; and ten minutes later they came to tell Adam that the patient was dead. He had a hard time believing it. They all did. Crammed into the forecastle there, as many as could get in, leaning far over, they examined Mellish again and again, taking his shirt off, putting their ears against his chest. They could detect no heart beat, no pulse. The sweat was beginning to dry on face and neck, and indeed all over, but the skin was still furiously hot. The drying sweat, sort of slimy, stank.
They didn't want to dispose of him until they were stone certain he was dead, but at the same time they didn't want to keep the corpse here if it really was a corpse. It was late June now, and most prodigiously hot, even for those parts.
They were quiet, for they were all scared.
They worked some threads out of a shirt and held these over his open mouth, and the threads did not stir—or most of them thought that they had not stirred.
"If we only had a mirror," said Jethro Gardner.
Adam said to the boy Rellison: "Go ask her ladyship if I can borrow a mirror. Don't tell her what we want it for."
He was back in a few moments with a thing with a long handle, a cream-colored thing grotesquely out-of-place in the forecastle, the mirror part of it octagonal, the edges inset with nacre, the back an Arcadian scene, mostly shepherdesses, in pink and light blue. There were ribbons attached to it, for no ascertainable reason.
"She says to tell you that the next time the handsome captain wants to look at his reflection why don't he come and borrow this himself? That's what she said."
It was a harmless enough message—silly, yes, but given the circumstances, not in bad taste. It was only meant to be playful, you could even say gracious. After all, Maisie did not know that a man had just died up here. Adam felt like pointing this out to the others, who scowled; but he didn't.
The mirror, held a long time over Eli Mellish's mouth, showed not the faintest film. Adam sighed and sent it back.
"See he's sewed up. And seal his box. I'll get the Book."
Late that afternoon, when she came on deck to watch a sensational sunset, she commented on the quietness of the crew. They were so subdued! Not at all like last night, when they'd been gay.
Adam mumbled something. This was not because he was ill at ease. Physically she unsettled him; in her presence, even sometimes when she was not there, he suffered a prickling of the skin, all over, that could only be a yearning for the lusts of the flesh, and, recognizing this, he fought it. But socially he was comfortable with her. In the past he had more than once wondered what a lady would be like, to meet. He had pictured something formidable, difficult to approach or even to address. Maisie, now, was as human as your next-door neighbor. Her smile was genuine—it wasn't a thing to be fished out of her reticule and fastened on her face from time to time as the occasion suggested. It came from inside.
Adam guessed that she was not sure of herself. Sometimes she was shockingly bold, forward; but of a sudden she would come all over shy, and fall silent. No doubt she was forever reproaching herself about this. She wanted to be liked, maybe even loved. After all, don't most folks?
"Don't look too chirk yourself," he commented. "Thinking of home?"
Two things about her flummoxed him, being utterly different from what he had known, and these were her clothes and her manner of speaking.